SOUND OFF: NEWLY MINTED ETHICS
Disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, whose fabrications and plagiarism wreaked havoc on his readers, on his colleagues and on the newspaper industry as a whole, has tried to shift careers to become a "life coach." Recently Washington and Lee University's Journalism Ethics Institute invited him to deliver a talk called "Lessons Learned" in which he would discuss his misdeeds and what he has learned from them. The university presents Blair's talk as an opportunity for students to hear from someone who can speak to the "pressures and temptations"

THE RIGHT THING: `HERE'S MONEY FOR X, BUT NOT FOR Y'
According to a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the largest charitable organizations in the country are expecting their greatest drop in donations in the 17 years the journal has been collecting such data.The expected drop for 2009 is 9 percent, after an uptick in contributions in 2008 of 1 percent, which itself was down from the 5-to-6-percent donation increases that these organizations had been experiencing for years. The latest data from Canada, collected in 2007, suggests that the Canadian rate of charitable giving was already flat even before th

THE RIGHT THING: GRANDMA PUT ONE OVER ON HIM
America is aging, they tell us, and apparently so are its con artists.That's the word from a reader living outside Columbus, Ohio, who plaintively writes, "I was robbed by Grandma."My reader and his wife held their first-ever yard sale in early September. The grandmother in question appeared as a customer, accompanied by her daughter and her grandson, who called himself "Blaze." Because the grandmother had selected several items for purchase, my reader gave her a discount on her purchases."I even threw in a couple of odd ball boxes to go with the items she was purchasing,"

SOUND OFF: PANTS ON FIRE?
Of the readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 81 percent believed that Rep. Joe Wilson (R.-S.C.) was wrong to shout "You lie!" when President Barack Obama recently addressed Congress on health care. Wilson later apologized to the president for his outburst."Rep. Wilson was wrong to make the outburst in the joint session of Congress," one reader writes. "That he was correct - the president did not tell the truth - does not make the impulse appropriate.""Wilson's apology does not make right his wrong outburst," writes William Jacobson of Cypress, Calif. "It was a breach of decorum that w

SOUND OFF: SHOULD `ZERO' MEAN ZERO?
After initially suspending a Delaware first grader and requiring him to spend 45 days at an alternative school, for having brought a camping knife to school in order to eat his lunch with the knife's fork and spoon, the school has re-evaluated its position. Now he will be suspended for three to five days and undergo counseling.The original punishment reflected the school's zero-tolerance policy for students who come to school with weapons of any kind. The revised policy came about after widespread media attention prompted the school to decide that a child's "cognitive level" should be considered in determining punishment in such cases.Given t