THE RIGHT THING: WALKING A FINE LINE
"What are one's ethical obligations," wonders a reader from Columbus, Ohio, "when someone else is doing something wrong?"My reader was driving along a fairly busy two-lane road, dutifully observing the posted 35-miles-per-hour speed limit. Up ahead of him he saw three people - two men and a toddler - start to cross."They were crossing the road roughly 75 yards away from the nearest crosswalk," my reader writes, noting that there was a traffic light at the crosswalk but not where they were."I saw them, but did not slow down or stop to let them cross the road," he writes. "They continued to walk, until they reali

SOUND OFF: GREATER THAN ZERO
After initially suspending a first grader and requiring him to spend 45 days at an alternative school for having brought a camping knife to school _ he planned to eat his lunch with the knife's fork and spoon _ a Delaware school reassessed its position and suspended him for three to five days and required him to undergo counseling.Of those readers responding to an unscientific poll on my column's blog, 65 percent believe that, based on the child's age and circumstances, the school was right to alter its ruling, while 35 percent believe that the school should have stuck to its zero-tolerance policy."School officials who come up with non

SOUND OFF: OPRAH'S KARAOKE CHALLENGE
Singer BeBe Winans taped several appearances on Oprah Winfrey's talk show. After promotions showing Winans aired, however, as well as one of the taped shows, some viewers complained about his appearance because domestic-violence charges brought against him by his ex-wife are still pending. Winfrey had banned singer Chris Brown from her show after he battered the singer Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, and in response to the complaints Winans was removed from the show.Was it right for Winfrey to ban Winans, given her long-standing concern about domestic abuse? Or

THE RIGHT THING: DINING BY THE CLOCK
Every other Sunday, a reader in southern California heads to Hometown Buffet restaurant, the local franchise in a national chain that serves more than 160 million people a year at its buffet-style restaurants. He goes there to leisurely read his Sunday newspaper as he dines."I love the food and the atmosphere," he tells me.Lately, however, he's been wondering whether his approach to dining there passes muster ethically."I time my arrival to occur just a few minutes before they stop serving breakfast and begin serving dinner," he writes. "I admit that I have no intention of eat

THE RIGHT THING: TAKING THE HIT
About a month ago I was sitting at my desk at my home office in Boston when the phone rang. It was my insurance broker."Mr. Seglin," my broker said, "we just got a call that your parked car has been hit."Not the kind of call that one enjoys getting, but this one could have been much worse.It turned out that some fellow had lost control of his steering and rammed full speed into the back of my vehicle.My insurance broker had been called by an officer of the Boston Police Department. She wanted to make sure that I got the note that the driver had left tucked in the driver's-side door of m