That’s one of the questions at the core of a recent federal lawsuit challenging the right of a company to patent—in effect to own—human genes.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against Myriad Genetics, which owns the patents for two genes linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The ACLU contends that patenting genes is unconstitutional and hinders research into a cure for cancer.

“Patents were designed to protect human inventions, and you can’t invent the gene,” said an ACLU attorney. “What they have really patented is knowledge.”

Myriad also owns the patent for testing the two genes, which means a patient can’t get a second opinion test—before a mastectomy or ovarian surgery—because no other company can legally perform the $3,000 analysis. Six breast cancer patients have joined the lawsuit, suing along with 100,000 scientists, pathologists, geneticists, and women’s health groups, all opposed to gene patenting.

Myriad says it will vigorously defend what it calls “our intellectual property rights.” The company noted that it held 23 genetic patents, all awarded by the U.S. Patent Office, which has been granting genetic ownership rights for years. “It may be a shock to people outside the industry,” said a genetics expert, but “this has been the established way of doing business.”

The sticky helix of ethical questions prompted newspaper readers to weigh in. “If you create a novel gene from scratch, patenting makes sense,” wrote one. “But patenting something you’ve just taken a look at? It seems an awful lot like patenting gravity.”
“The plaintiffs’ real motivation is that they want cheaper access to this technology,” wrote another, which “we wouldn’t have but for the promise of patent protection,” which requires massive amounts of money risked in research and development.

Tell us what you think: Should human genes be patented? If a company spends millions of dollars cracking a genetic code, what should its rights be? Where would you draw the line between what can and cannot be patented?

Resume inflation—with its over-written under-achievements—has long set the workplace standard for autobiographical unacceptability.

But is resume deflation just as irresponsible?

Employment agencies and job recruiters are reacting to the growing numbers of unemployed workers they see dumbing down their experience and credentials in an effort to land a job for which they are over-qualified. Their deflationary techniques include “hiding advanced degrees, changing too-lofty titles, shortening work experience descriptions, and removing awards and accolades” from their resumes.

The new bio-degradable biography isn’t sitting well with some employers. “I’d never feel comfortable putting a really high-level candidate into a lower level position,” says an employment agency recruiter who now sees doctoral degrees listed at the bottom of resumes instead of at the traditional top. “How do I know I can trust them later down the road,” she asks, “if there’s something on their resume they decided to take off so they could have a better chance getting that job?”

For over-qualified job seekers, “scaling back the truth—or at the least, some of their experiences—can feel like the only chance at an interview.” The new semantics include downgrading titles like “manager” to “staff” and “office support.”

Job seekers are frustrated and confused by which face to show the new workplace. One under-employed, over-experienced, executive-level resume-sender deleted details of her speaking engagements and board positions. Another complained that when she minimized her experience on paper, a potential employer called her references, only to find out she was over-qualified.

Yet another laid-off worker with years of executive experience sent out thousands of accurate resumes, only to receive zero job offers. “But I can’t dumb down my resume,” he says, “because that would be lying.”

Tell us what you think: Is dumbing down a resume unethical? Should survival trump responsibility, and if so, where do you draw the line? Is it more responsible to state your true experience, or to land a paycheck?

But Vick’s new role—campaigning with the Humane Society to end dog fights—unleashed a torrent of public skepticism, from infuriated animal lovers to sports and opinion writers.

“People won’t easily forgive a man at the center of a ring that killed dogs that failed to fight well by hanging, drowning and electrocution,” stated one newspaper editorial. “A nation that fawns over Bo and Barney and queues up for ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ and ‘Marley and Me’ will understandably be skeptical about giving Vick a second chance.”

As people pondered whether Vick was truly sincere, genuinely remorseful, and/or accepting responsibility for his actions, an assistant sociology professor at Tulane University declared that Michael Vick had been punished for “our crimes” as a “nation of outraged lobster-boilers.”

“What did Michael Vick do that is morally reprehensible?” asked Professor Shayne Lee, writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Some of us forget that dogs are mere animals, and that animal mistreatment is as American as Apple iPods. Like Vick, most of us shamelessly abuse and kill animals”—for science, “leather jackets, ham sandwiches, or horse-racing.”

Noting that Vick’s actions “did not lead to the abuse of one single human being,” the sociologist said, “I think we have it backward. Let’s give the federal sentences to athletes who harm humans by beating them or jeopardize their safety by driving drunk. And let’s give slaps on the wrist to animal abusers.”

His conclusion: “If Vick is guilty, then we all are.”

Tell us what you think: Are we all guilty—or responsible—as charged? Michael Vick did the time for the crime, so should he be forgiven? Was his sentence too harsh?

Party Guest takes a sneaky look inside a dinner party where a man and a woman meet, flirt, and are drawn into a game of calibrating their moral compasses.

What happens when the GPS satellite starts to wobble?

When desire is inexplicably short-circuited?

When the science of certainty crashes in a near-miss?

What happens when we judge others, but we’re not sure of all the facts?

Watch Party Guest and ask yourself if what you think you saw is what really happened.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Party Guest was directed by Michael Apted.

Significant genomic accomplishments in the past year have increased the possibility of bringing back to life two extinct creatures: woolly mammoths and Neanderthals.

“I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable,” said an expert on ancient DNA who consulted on Jurassic Park. “But I’m not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It’s just a matter of working out the details.”

The genetic details of the woolly mammoth—yielded from carcasses buried in the Siberian permafrost—have been painstakingly decoded by scientists who have now unlocked 70% of the animal’s genome, including much of the data needed to clone one.

The genome of the Neanderthal—driven to extinction 30,000 years ago—has been completely reconstructed. According to a leading genome researcher at Harvard Medical School, a Neanderthal could be brought to life using current technology for about $30 million.

But questions of ethics and responsibility nag at the nucleus of changing science fiction to non-fiction.

If we cloned our relatives the Neanderthals, asked one expert, “Are you going to put them in Harvard or in a zoo?” And woolly mammoths, notes a paleontologist, were highly social animals. “Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab—not in its native habitat, which no longer exists. You’re basically creating a curio.”

A science writer asked his readers, “Should we try to resurrect a Neanderthal? And if so, what kind of precautions should we take, and what kind of lives should we help them lead?” Many respondents expressed concern about a cloned Neanderthal’s quality of life. “What kind of life is that?” asked one, to be “raised from birth with the knowledge that they exist solely for the sake of a scientific experiment.”

“They’d have more important lessons to teach us than what we’d have to teach them,” wrote another, worried that our egos “would not see the wisdom in a species who are perhaps uglier, slower, and clumsier than us…They’d be miserable. Leave ‘em be.”

“How about making another Einstein or Bach or Rembrandt?” suggested another. “Wouldn’t that be more challenging and more scientifically useful?”

Tell us what you think: Is cloning an extinct animal responsible?

But are any of them meaningful?

Since President Obama’s inaugural call for “a new era of responsibility,” and his subsequent, frank admission— “I screwed up”—about the vetting of a Cabinet appointee,
the market in mea culpas has risen as steadily as the Dow has dropped.

One by one, people have been supposedly sorry for brazen bonuses, Ponzi ploys, steroid secrets, bloodying their girlfriends, and other assorted blunders of judgment, some even boldly echoing the President’s words.

“I screwed up, big-time,” declared baseball icon Alex Rodriguez at a press conference where he discussed his past use of a banned steroid. Asked if he thought he had cheated, Rodriguez replied, “That’s not for me to determine.” He didn’t think the drugs he injected for three years were steroids, he said, then added, “I knew we weren’t taking Tic Tacs.”

The audacity of dope.

Sports writers scoffed at A-Rod’s A-Pology, declaring it more strategy than sincerity. PR and leadership experts saw it as the empty new fashion of confession.

“It was lacking in authenticity,” said one. “Like most apologies in the public sector, there was no mention of amends, and an apology without amends is just public relations.”

The apology plague has spread beyond borders, catching the attention of the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times, which recently rated the sincerity of some well-known apologists on a scale of 1-5. Olympian Michael Phelps’ mea culpa for bad bong behavior—“I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way”—was awarded a 3.5 for showing he’s “man enough at 23 to take responsibility for his mistakes,” according to the newspaper.

Singer Chris Brown scored an anemic 1 for his formulaic written statement—“Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am…”—after charges of assaulting his pop star girlfriend Rihanna. “We’re not impressed,” hissed the Straits Times.

Wall Street bankers were smacked down by the newspaper as well, earning a measly 2. Morgan Stanley chief executive John Mack’s insistence that he was “especially sorry what’s happened to shareholders” and was “taking responsibility” prompted this reaction from the newspaper: “Three words: Return your bonuses.”

Which brings us back to A-Rod. in a YES Network interview after his less-than candid press conference about steroid use, the Yankees third baseman threw in the towel about the public’s perception of him, post-apology. “I feel like right now that not too many people like me, so I’ve given up on that,” A-Rod said. “I’m not very good with words,” he continued, “but no matter what I sit here and tell you today, it’s not going to express how truly sorry I feel for what I have done.”

No word yet on how the Singapore Straits Times would rate this latest apology.

Tell us what you think: If love means never having to say you’re sorry, does apologizing now mean you never have to accept responsibility?

A group of soccer parents in Bethesda, Maryland was recently ordered away from the game and exiled to a nearby hill, where they needed binoculars to see their daughters play.

The banishment was punishment for the adults’ “unsportsmanlike” conduct at a Washington Area Girls Soccer League match, where a parent loudly accused a referee of making a bad call. The league has levied fines against parents in the past for over-the-top behavior, but some have simply paid the money without lowering the volume.

So when the parent raised his voice at the ref, and others piled on in an “aggressive” tone that culminated with one yelling at the referee’s daughter, “Your father should be fired,” the league’s disciplinary committee deemed that collective punishment was in order. All parents of girls on the Bethesda Legacy team were sidelined to the hill for two games, guarded by an additional ref who made sure none ventured within 100 yards of the playing field.

“For parents to be shrieking on the sidelines and belittling people goes against everything we’re trying to do,” said the league president. “It’s not acceptable behavior.” The disciplinary committee’s report noted that parents’ “egregious” behavior has “no place in youth sports.”

Chastised parents were tight-lipped. “It’s embarrassing,” said one. “This is seventh grade soccer.”

“We’ve got to shut up and keep going,” said another. “You just have to sit on the sidelines and not say anything.”

But some questioned this latest entry into the parental playbook. “Since when did it become a crime to yell at the referees for a bad call?” a Bethesda resident wrote in a letter to the newspaper editor. “In my view, parents are simply expressing their passion.”

Tell us what you think: Is it irresponsible for parents to yell at their kids’ referee? Where do you draw the line between expressing “passion” and unsportsmanlike behavior? In this case, does the crime fit the collective punishment?

But the story of the fed-up New York lawyer/mother who kicked her bickering daughters out of the car and onto the curb of a suburban street spread faster than flu, as parents around the world weighed in on whether the action was irresponsible—or irresistible.

“They had it coming. Give her a medal,” was typical of comments in support of Primoff, whose 12-year-old daughter managed to get back in the car, while her 10-year-old—in tears—was picked up by a stranger who bought her ice cream before calling the cops.

The family was three miles from home when Primoff made good on one of parenting’s most oft-repeated threats: Stop fighting or I’ll stop the car! “As a responsible parent, she gave her children a choice,” said another supporter, “and when they ignored her, she followed thru. I say good job!”

But the police said You’re under arrest. Primoff was jailed overnight and charged with endangering the welfare of a minor, an action many supported in online comments. “If the girls were acting up, then punish them when they get home,” wrote one. “You do not leave a child on the side of the road alone. Ever.” Another said, “It’s our job as parents to protect our children…Maybe she should put herself in time-out next time she has a mommy meltdown.”

There’s something larger going on, argued a prominent mom-blogger, who saw Primoff’s actions as a “mommy misdemeanor” and cautioned that her story “should not result in a free-for-all vilification of a mother-gone-bad.” Primoff made a bad choice, she continued, “but should she be condemned to wear a scarlet M? I’m not interested in judging her. I’m more interested in hoping that the public scrutiny fixated upon her will further expose motherhood for the truly complex job that it is.”

Tell us what you think: Were Madlyn Primoff’s actions irresponsible, irresistible, or something else? A “mommy misdemeanor” or a “mommy felony?” Does her right to decide how to deal with her squabbling kids have to conflict with the law?

In America they’re called “boomerangers”—adult offspring who return to live with their parents, sometimes bringing a spouse and children, unable to financially make it on their own.

Everywhere they have been the stuff of sitcoms and punch lines: irresponsible losers adding to the sofa’s sag while subtracting from the kitchen cupboards.

But the freeloader image may be inadvertently falling away, a welcome casualty of the ongoing recession, which, in some cases, is helping reshape what it means to be a responsible American family in an era of mounting crises.

A married Utah couple who could no longer make ends meet moved into his parents’ basement. “Staying close to your family in times of need, that’s the most important thing in the economic crises,” the husband said. His wife added, “It’s sad that people feel like they can’t turn to their families for help, or they feel like there’s something bad in doing that.”

Boomerangers are now more likely to help than loaf, splitting the costs of food and shelter in their parents’ homes and sharing domestic responsibilities. “As Americans face tougher economic conditions, we’ll likely see more of this,” said a vice president for AARP, which recently analyzed census data and recognized some new changes in families. In the past year, more than a third of retirees have had to help their offspring pay bills. More adult children are living with their parents, continuing an upward trend since 2000. And the number of multi-generational households has increased from 5 million in 2000 to 6.2 million in 2008.

“Kin is becoming the safety net of last resort,” wrote one reporter, “in part because overwhelmed social service agencies are reaching their giving limits.” A social services expert added, “Families, friends and social networks are becoming more important ways that people are coping.”

Tell us what you think: Is it still parents’ responsibility to launch self-sufficient adult children into the world? What would you do if your adult kids wanted to move in and be bailed out?

Those stinging public assessments of Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle resurrected one of the oldest rules of responsibility—Don’t judge a book by its cover—and set off an ongoing debate about what judging others reveals about ourselves.

As much of the world knows, the unemployed Ms. Boyle—thick of brow and middle of age—has a voice that went viral after singing on a TV show called “Britain’s Got Talent.” Videos of her performing have since been viewed something like a hundred million times on YouTube.

But her sudden fame came with a discomforting level of nastiness about her non super model looks.

“Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we?” asked a British newspaper writer in the soul-searching aftermath. Why are we so shocked, the writer continued, “when ‘ugly’ women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else?” Declaring that it was the audience that was “ugly,” the writer concluded, “Britain’s Got Malice.”

“What is it about this woman that touches us so deeply?” pondered an American writer regarding Ms. Boyle. Partly it was “the age thing,” she continued, but added that “we were weeping for the years of wasted talent, the career that wasn’t, the time lost.”

Experts say that our reactions to an outlier like Ms. Boyle are based on “the science of stereotyping,” which includes the propensity to make snap judgments. Our brains use stereotypes, social scientists say, because “often they give us broadly accurate information, even if all the details don’t line up. Ms. Boyle’s looks, for example, accurately telegraphed much about her biography, including her socioeconomic level and lack of worldly experience.”

But while some turned to science to explain the Boyle brouhaha, others turned to religion. “The world generally looks askance at people like Susan Boyle, if it sees them at all,” explained a Jesuit priest. “But God sees the real person, and understands the value of each individual’s gifts.”

Presumably without watching YouTube.

Tell us what you think: Do we have any responsibility to move beyond snap judgments? Is the old adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover” obsolete?

He’s also got to make the toughest decision of his life.

Growing up in pre-Katrina New Orleans, Isaiah’s days are lean on creature comforts but long on love, anchored by a father who constantly drills him in basketball, and a grandfather who continually encourages him to play the trumpet.

By the time Isaiah is a high school senior, he’s got too much game—he’s a basketball champ and a soulful musician. And now he’s under intense pressure to make a definitive decision about his future.

Which path will lead him out of his meager existence? Should he honor his father, or realize his own dream? Will he follow the money, or follow his heart?

Prodigy reminds us that sometimes during indecision, our biggest responsibility may be to ourselves.

Prodigy was directed by Brandon Camp.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Two scenarios about the travails of raising kids are currently highlighting the issue of parental responsibility versus police intervention. And once again, parents are struggling with the question, What would you do?

A reader of The New York Times’ Motherlode blog wrote that she “asked the police for help” after she discovered her 17-year-old daughter had stolen her ATM card more than once. To “demonstrate the seriousness” of the girl’s actions, the mother allowed a police officer to handcuff her daughter in the back of a squad car while explaining the consequences of a felony.

Readers of the mother’s story offered kudos—“she made her decision with the best intentions”—and criticism: “I think the police should only be called when there is an issue of safety.”

A related story drew similar attention on momlogic.com, where readers were asked if they thought a mother was too tough on her son for insisting that police also charge him with car theft after he was stopped for DUI. The mother advocated that the teen should spend the weekend in Juvenile Hall “while the seriousness of his actions” set in.

Again, readers were divided about pressing charges. “If an arrest and taking responsibility makes that teen think before getting in the car drunk again, then yes, it’s worth it,” wrote one. But another said, “I would never press charges on my son. I think this is just taking it too far.”

Tell us what you think: Should discipline by parents ever involve the police? Where do you draw the line between parenting and policing?

Then there are the caregivers’ symptoms—fatigue, insomnia, back pain, headaches, and a nagging question that never fades: if you’re responsible for a family member with Alzheimer’s, how much of your own life are you responsible for sacrificing in the process?

Last year, an estimated 10 million Americans—mostly family members—provided a staggering 8.5 billion hours of unpaid care to loved ones with Alzheimer’s Disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. As patients get older, the burden grows for caregivers. A recent survey showed that many Alzheimer’s caregivers want more support from within their families and beyond. But they’re reluctant to ask for it.

“They tend to say, ‘This is my parent or relative, and this is my responsibility,’” said one gerontologist. “Caregivers tend to believe they are bothering others.”

One of the most frightening Alzheimer’s issues is wandering. 60% of Alzheimer’s patients wander away from their homes one or more times during their illnesses. But fewer than four out of 100 are able to return home without help.

“We live in a bolt-locked house,” said a woman who takes care of her stricken mother. “We have boards across the stairs. We have hung bells on the doorknobs.”

Bracelets and clothing tags using radio signals or GPS technology can be worn by Alzheimer patients, making it easier in some circumstances for police and rescuers to track and find them. But still there is no peace of mind. “ I can’t help flinching,” a reporter wrote of the devices. “If a person with Alzheimer’s recoils from the idea of a tag, do you impose it on them?”
There are 5.3 million Americans with Alzheimer’s. While deaths from heart disease, stroke, breast and prostate cancer declined from 2000 to 2006, Alzheimer’s deaths rose 47 percent.
“ Alzheimer’s is a family disease,” said former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose husband has Alzheimer’s and no longer recognizes her. “It may directly attack only one member of a family, but every family member feels the effects. Every family member loses something.”

Tell us what you think: If you’ve been responsible for the care of someone with Alzheimer’s, what have you sacrificed in the process? Should dealing with such an insidious disease continue to be almost the sole responsibility of family members?

Three days here. Six days there. A week, two weeks, a month. Thousands of workers in dozens of industries are making the trade-off of losing pay for saving jobs.

But is everyone stepping up simply because it’s the responsible thing to do?

When the University of New Mexico asked for furlough volunteers in order to avoid layoffs, a 30-year-old paid intern raised her hand and said, “I’m glad to do what little I can” to help the school weather the recession.

While one co-worker saw the move as “gracious,” another worker publicly questioned the young woman’s motivation, saying she was trying to “suck up” to her bosses for future employment. “Supervisors love that attitude,” said the critic. “What she has said will ensure her a good-paying job once she finishes (her) internship.”

The tension at the university “highlights a behind-the-scenes drama playing out in a growing number of workplaces,” reports The Wall Street Journal, where the question of whether to volunteer for a furlough has sparked contention and anxiety among workers.

Some employers are shielding the identity of furlough volunteers from the rest of the staff. “We didn’t want there to be any sense of competitiveness, like ‘I did this, why didn’t you?’” said an Iowa executive whose employees are taking secret furloughs.

Employment experts offer advice about the politics of volunteering for an unpaid furlough. “In this job market, the last thing you want is for people to think they can do without you,” one said, cautioning that an employee who sacrifices a lot of time off “may be viewed as expendable” rather than as a team player.

At the University of New Mexico, a staff head said employees are worried not just about image, but reality. “I have people emailing me and saying, ‘I’m one paycheck away from homelessness. I can’t miss one day of work.’”

Tell us what you think: Are you responsible for saving a colleague’s job by reducing your own hours and pay? If you were asked to volunteer for unpaid time off, what would you do?

Parenting these days includes an arsenal of tools to find out what kids are up to online, on the street, on the phone, and everywhere else in between. Some say it’s about safety. Others say it’s about spying. And many question the boundaries of parental responsibility.

But should parenting go to the dogs?

Absolutely, according to a New Jersey-based company called Sniff Dogs. For $200 an hour, parents can rent a specially-trained Labrador Retriever that sniffs for drugs in their kids’ bedrooms. Heroin, crystal meth, cocaine. The dogs can even smell a marijuana seed from 15 feet away, as well as the lingering scent of the drug smoked days earlier. If contraband is detected, the pooch sits down, his handler marks the spot, and the parents take over the search from there.

The key, according to Sniff Dogs, is to conduct the search when children are not at home, and without their knowledge. That way, says Sniff Dogs co-owner Debra Stone, “the conversation is not, ‘Are you using drugs?’ but ‘We found the drugs.’” The stealth searches are legal, and Stone insists they don’t constitute snooping. “It’s not a violation of trust,” she said. “It’s what parents often do when monitoring other areas.”

Others disagree. “There are major repercussions for this type of intervention,” said a clinical psychologist. “When parents do this it erodes trust and goodwill.”

“As a parent, you worry,” counters a mother who hired a Sniff Dog to suss out her three kids’ rooms. Though no drugs were found, she says she’ll use the dogs again. “I trust my kids,” she said, “but you can only trust them so far.”

Tell us what you think: Is secretly using a drug-sniffing dog parental responsibility or parental snooping? Does a child’s personal safety ever justify her parents spying on her?

After the producers of the Broadway musical “Rent” spun off a modified version of the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play, high schools across the country showed interest in staging it. “Rent: School Edition” was intended to replace aging school performances like “The Music Man” with an edgier production that doubles as a teaching tool about discrimination and tolerance.

The school version omits some profane language and same-sex contact. But the story, centered on a group of New York City artists—gay, straight, drug addicted, and HIV-positive among them—remains the same. And that has rankled school officials, who have in turn enraged drama teachers, leaving students caught in the middle.

“I know drugs are out there, I know children are having babies at twelve…But I don’t know if we need ‘Rent,’” said a West Virginia schools superintendent who forbade a local high school to stage the show, explaining that West Virginia families wouldn’t find the content of “Rent” appealing.

But broadening perspectives is the point, say supporters of the show. “ My responsibility as a drama teacher is to expose my students to a variety of different types of plays,” explained a California high school teacher who said his school principal told him to cancel the show after disapproving of its gay characters. The principal denies it, and flabbergasted students were told they might stage “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” instead.

The controversy over “Rent” got so intense in Rowlett, Texas that Rowlett High’s theater director cancelled the production himself, to spare his students the pressure of local residents who called the subject matter immoral, anti-family, and inappropriate for a high school audience. “Everyone is pretty upset,” said a student with a leading role.

All of which prompted one of the original Broadway cast members from “Rent” to remark, “You’re going to be upset in 2009 about a show because it has a man onstage in women’s clothing? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Tell us what you think: When teens are shielded from reality, is it a help or a disservice? When it comes to responsibility in the arts, who should decide what’s appropriate?

In the new era of billion dollar bailouts, Americans across the country are re-examining long-held views about personal responsibility with a question that’s hitting close to home: Is it fair to make people who faithfully paid their mortgages bail out those who didn’t?

“I don’t appreciate paying for someone else’s mortgage,” said a 38 year-old Massachusetts mother. “I almost feel it’s bailing out someone who overspent on their credit card.”

“Maybe I’m too old school,” said a 52 year-old mortgage holder who’s never missed a payment. “But you sign on the bottom line, and you’re responsible for it.”

Another solvent homeowner said, “I rescued myself by buying a house I could afford and paying it off. What kind of reward do I get?”

Of all the bailouts—banks, auto makers, and people who can’t afford their homes—analysts say the housing handout has struck a particular nerve. “The average family doesn’t have a huge stock portfolio,” one bailout expert explained. “But you have 100 million families that own homes.”

Not all families in danger of foreclosure irresponsibly bit off more real estate than they could chew; some have been victims of job cutbacks in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Like it or not, some analysts say, we are linked by our lousy economy as a band of economic brothers’ keepers. “ Sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent,” wrote a columnist. “The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we’re all in this together. If their lives don’t stabilize, then our lives don’t stabilize.”

Tell us what you think: Should responsible people bail out the irresponsible? By doing so, are we sending a message that irresponsibility has no consequences? How far should you go in being your brother’s keeper?

$8,000 for kitty’s kidney transplant?
$12,000 for doggy’s dialysis?
$155,000 to clone a dead Labrador named Lancelot?

Sir Lancelot was a yellow Lab that loved bagels, pillows, and shoes. His death last year from skin cancer “devastated” his owners, Ed and Nina Otto. “He was a human dog,” Mr. Otto lamented. “He read your emotions.”

Years before Lancelot got sick, the Otto’s froze and banked his DNA. Last summer, they turned it over to a company that auctioned off the chance to clone a pet. The Otto’s winning bid: $155,000

In January, the Otto’s new puppy—a 10-week-old yellow Lab named Lancelot Encore— flew from South Korea, where he was cloned, to South Florida, where the Otto’s live on 12 acres with nine other pet dogs and various cats, birds, and sheep.

When the clone arrived, so did the criticism: that designing a pet was an irresponsible use of technology, especially when U.S. shelters euthanize millions of unwanted pets each year; and that Lancelot cost a lot.

“For $155,000, we could do spays and neuters for six months,” said the head of a local Florida animal services department. The Otto’s, however, have been steady donors to the Humane Society in Palm Beach County, giving $300,000 in the last three years—double the cost of the clone.

But the Humane Society calls cloning “disreputable” and says “cloning cannot replicate an animal’s uniqueness. Cloning can only replicate a pet’s genetics, which influence but do not determine his physical attributes or personality.”

Nina Otto disagrees. “I think he’s Sir Lancelot,” she said of Lancelot Encore. “I know there are a lot of people in this world who think this is an unfair thing to do. I don’t.”

“Think about this,” said Ed Otto. “You could have your favorite dog with you your entire life. I don’t think that’s too far-fetched.”

Tell us what you think: Is paying $155,000 to clone a dead pet responsible, irresponsible, or something else? If you have money, does it matter how you spend it?

Thou shalt not smoke in thy apartment
Thou shalt inform authorities of anyone who does smoke in an apartment

Belmont is home to America’s most restrictive secondhand smoking law, which now makes it illegal to light up in an apartment or condo that shares a wall, ceiling, or floor with another unit. Violators face a $100 fine from the city, as well as eviction if smoking violates their lease agreement.

Additionally, the new law makes citizens responsible for enforcing it by encouraging them to call authorities and report their neighbors if they light up in any home other than a free-standing house.

All of which has left some residents fuming—outside.

“I’m absolutely outraged,” said one apartment dweller who now must leave home to smoke her two packs a day. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.”

Proponents of the new law, including the California Lung Association, see it differently. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace,” explained a spokesperson.

“They” is the Belmont city council, whose members have received hate mail for passing the no-smoking-at-home ordinance, which one former council member likens to other matters of shared-living etiquette. “You can’t walk around naked in your house with the blinds open, or you’ll get arrested,” he said. “You can’t play loud music in your house and bother your neighbors. It’s illegal.”

But even some supporters of smokers’ responsibility to so-called third parties, such as neighbors, are questioning whether Belmont should butt out. “There are good scientific and public health reasons for restricting smoking in closed public spaces,” said an expert in public health ethics. “But when such restrictions are extended to beaches, parks, sidewalks and now to the homes of smokers, the argument that third-party harms must be prevented becomes increasingly untenable.”

Tell us what you think: Should smokers be responsible for their neighbors’ health? Should citizens be responsible for turning in at-home smokers? How far should government go in determining what you can do in the privacy of your home?

1 single mother

8 newborn octuplets

14 total offspring

15 minutes of fame

From miracle mom to mother of all outrage, Nadya Suleman’s spectacular fall from public grace continues in an avalanche of revelations: disability, inability, food stamps, no job, no spouse, and no viable plan for raising 14 children under the age of eight.

The responsibility dragnet snared her fertility specialist—at a clinic now under government scrutiny—and settled squarely on Ms. Suleman, who declared in a TV interview that she is a responsible parent, even though California taxpayers have been asked to pay the million dollar-plus hospital bill for her eight preemies.

“I personally do not believe I’m irresponsible,” Ms. Suleman said. “Everything I do revolves around my children.” Saying she was a single parent by choice, she questioned a perceived double standard between her unconventional lifestyle and that of couples who experience multiple births. “Why are they exempt from being called irresponsible?” she asked.

Selfish. Unstable. Irresponsible. The opinions continue to pour in by the thousands on talk shows and blogs, in headlines and on the street: Put her in therapy. Change the laws. Take her kids away. In a season of Wall Street bailouts, a Sesame Street bailout for the 14 kids of America’s mega-mom has not only angered many people, but, as one journalist put it, “exposes how publicly divided and personally judgmental we are” about the reproductive decisions of others and the question of how many children is too many.

“The ‘right’ number seems to lie somewhere between China and Nadya Suleman,” wrote another journalist. “But on what do we base that belief? The ability to pay for the children? The limits on the attention they will receive? How many is too many, and who gets to decide?”

Tell us what you think: Is there such a thing as too many children? Other families receive welfare, food stamps, and disability payments for their children; should Nadya Suleman be held to a different standard? Should Ms. Suleman’s reproduction—usually a private matter of personal responsibility—be the subject of such public debate?

The score heard ‘round the world—100 to 0—came to light in January, with the infamous mismatch of two girls’ high school basketball teams in Dallas. The Covenant School—Christian and private—pummeled Dallas Academy, small and private and catering to students with dyslexia, “concentration” problems, and “learning differences.”

The Academy girls haven’t won a game for more than four years, but Covenant’s unrelenting steal-and-layup punishment offered its own lessons.

“My girls never quit,” the Academy’s proud coach told a local newspaper reporter. “They played as hard as they could to the end.”

His words were a layup to readers’ hearts. Soon another aphorism—Everyone loves a winner—was being turned upside down.

In a rapid cascade of events, Covenant’s headmaster posted an unprecedented apology on the school’s website, calling his team’s winning performance “shameful” and “a victory without honor” which “does not reflect a Christ-like” approach to competition. Announcing it was forfeiting the game, Covenant praised losing Dallas Academy for their “strength, composure and fortitude in a game in which they clearly emerged the winner.”

Covenant’s coach disagreed with the headmaster’s mea culpa. “We played the game as it was meant to be played,” he wrote to a newspaper, and refused “to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.” Hours later he was fired.

“Our national ethics lesson,” one reporter dubbed the incident which left many divided over who did or didn’t do the right thing. Dallas Academy knew the rules going in, some said, and if it couldn’t stand the heat, it shouldn’t have played the game. Others lamented the loss of sportsmanship. Some felt that the school’s apology and the coach’s firing were unnecessary, while others said winning doesn’t matter and the schools shouldn’t have kept score.

Tell us what you think: Who bears what responsibility in this case—the Covenant coach, the Covenant team, the Dallas Academy team? Who won, who lost? Is it really true that winning doesn’t matter?

The Responsibility Project and Parade magazine recently partnered to create “Doing What’s Right,” a special insert designed to spark conversations about everyday moral choices and personal responsibility. Here’s how readers responded to a series of questions. What do you think? Weigh in with your thoughts below.

#1 – Would you pretend your cellphone dropped a call to end a conversation?

54% Yes 46% No Add A Comment

#2 – Would you lie about your age?

33% Yes 67% No Add A Comment

#3 – Would you tell a friend that his or her spouse is cheating?

66% Yes 34% No Add A Comment

#4 – Would you report someone you see shoplifting?

84% Yes 16% No Add A Comment

#5 – Would you take a sick day when you’re healthy?

63% Yes 37% No Add A Comment

#6 – Would you look at a spouse’s e-mails or phone records?

59% Yes 41% No Add A Comment

That’s the guts of an icy-hot debate about the continued role of brawling in hockey, sparked by the recent death of a 21-year-old Canadian player. Despite his amateur league’s rule forbidding the removal of helmets, the 6’2” defenseman’s head gear was off when his skull struck the ice during a fatal in-game fight.

The tragic incident has led to calls for an end to the culture of sanctioned fighting across all leagues, including the National Hockey League, where altercations have increased a reported 24% from last season. “This being the 21st century,” wrote one Canadian sports writer, “aren’t we supposed to be against violence in sports, especially hockey?”

Not necessarily, said the NHL commissioner, who called fighting “integral to the way the game is played.” Hockey is the only team sport in which one player who pummels another is not ejected from the game. The League will consider safety measures, the commissioner said, but won’t ban fighting outright because “fans enjoy that part of the game.”

According to a recent poll, a narrow majority of Canadians now believe that the NHL should ban fisticuffs. But of those polled who identified themselves as avid hockey fans, a whopping 68% said let the fists continue to fly.

“I find it ironic that there are two different laws for violence,” one man wrote to a local newspaper. “One law for those who play hockey, and the other one for the common folk on the street. One can assault another individual on the ice, but if the same situation were to occur on the street, those individuals would likely be charged with assault.”

“Whiney wimps,” retorted another. “I hear there are some non-violent chess matches or badminton games you can watch if you don’t have the stomach for the sport of hockey.”

Tell us what you think: Is allowing fighting in ice hockey irresponsible, or just part of the game? Is the problem just a sports issue, or a societal one as well?

In December, two Colorado snowboarders ducked out-of-bounds at a ski resort and into an area with live explosives set for avalanche prevention. Their punishment? Revocation of their ski passes by the resort, for just two weeks.

When a New Mexico snowboarder ditched resort slopes on New Year’s Day and then became lost in an out-of-bounds wilderness, he triggered a dangerous and expensive rescue. Ski patrollers finally found him at 2AM, hypothermic and lying in the snow. His punishment? Possible revocation of his snowboarding pass by the resort for an undetermined number of days.

“It’s not smart behavior, and it’s not responsible behavior,” said one of the rescuers, who risked his life to find the errant snowboarder.

But it’s definitely controversial behavior.

The deaths of 13 avalanche victims in Canada this season—including an out-of-bounds snowboarder and a skier—have prompted the government to consider for the first time legislating penalties for rogue skiers, boarders, and snowmobilers. A new national discussion about the slippery slope of responsibility quickly turned shrill.

“Time to bill idiots for rescue,” blared an editorial in a Canadian newspaper, which bluntly took to task rogue skiers and boarders. : “As long as we have a moral imperative to save these numbskulls from themselves, there’s no reason they shouldn’t pay dearly for the cost of our kindness.” A typical out of bounds rescue is expensive, with searchers, backup help, and frequently a helicopter.

But a Canadian official says forcing rule breakers to pay for their own rescues might backfire. “People may not call (for help) if they think their family is going to be faced with a huge bill,” he explained.

Tell us what you think: Should skiers and snowboarders be held responsible when they break ski resort rules, even if no harm was done? Should rogue skiers and boarders have to pay for their own rescues?

Also shattered in the accident was the very definition of what it means to be a Good Samaritan, undermined by a troubling new legal question: Can you be sued for trying to save someone’s life?

Van Horn and several friends had just left a bar at 1:30AM when the driver of the car she was in lost control and crashed. Following behind in a second car was Van Horn’s friend Lisa Torti, who stopped and rushed to help. Torti said she saw smoke and feared that the wrecked car would catch fire or explode, so she pulled the incapacitated Van Horn from the passenger’s seat.

Van Horn later sued Torti, saying that her spinal injuries from the accident were made worse by Torti dragging her from the car “like a rag doll.” Torti argued that she was covered by California’s Good Samaritan law, which provides legal protection to people helping in an emergency. The case was dismissed.

But in a controversial new ruling, the California Supreme Court said the state’s Good Samaritan law applies only to emergency medical care. Rescuing someone from a car crash doesn’t qualify. Hence, the court said, Van Horn has the right to sue her Good Samaritan. And so she did.

“Careless rescuers are not good Samaritans, really,” said a law professor after the court’s ruling. “We don’t want people interfering with other people and hurting them a lot worse, right?”

California legislators immediately proposed three separate bills to amend the law, but many future Samaritans had already downgraded themselves from Good to Hesitant to Never. “The next time I see someone in need of help I will look the other way and mind my own business” was typical of the many postings on internet message boards.

“This is absolutely ridiculous,” wrote another. “I’m sure that if she hadn’t pulled the woman from the wreckage and the car had exploded, she’d be charged with letting the woman die.”

From parable to terrible, the Good Samaritan’s drop in stock may have been summed up best by a newspaper columnist who wrote, “As for that New Testament passage, in which the Samaritan comes across a man who had been robbed, beaten and left for dead, ‘and bound up his wounds…and took care of him’—it’d be a shame to have to put an asterisk there, with the notation, ‘Not applicable in California.’”

Tell us what you think: Would you still help someone in an emergency, knowing you could be sued? Where would you draw the line between helping and turning away?

But would you ever ask, “Who can I sue?”

That question is the focus of WhoCanISue.com, an online service that matches potential clients with lawyers, while begging a different question: does the site’s blunt come-on irresponsibly encourage more lawsuits?

No, says the Miami attorney who founded WhoCanISue and sees it as the future “go-to choice when people feel they’ve been wronged and are looking for answers.”

The site is searched through suggested “grievance” categories, like Medical Malpractice, Family Law, and Accidents. If you haven’t slipped on a banana peel, perhaps you slipped on a sub-prime mortgage, which is discussed under Mortgage Fraud in the “Hot Topics” section of potential reasons to sue someone.

After answering a series of online questions, users receive a list of lawyers willing to be contacted for possible representation in a lawsuit. The service is free for potential plaintiffs, but lawyers pay to be included on the site. “I don’t think WhoCanISue.com is going to, by itself, increase the number of lawsuits there are,” says its founder, “but it may make people more aware of what their rights are.”

Critics, however, contend that WhoCanISue makes a mockery of the legal system by suggesting that lawsuits are “frivolous and an easy way to make money.”

“Frankly, the whole process is not only scary, it is bound to give the public a rancid taste in their mouths about the profession,” fumed an article in Chicago Lawyer magazine. “As if there aren’t enough lawyers out there inventing lawsuits, now we’re going to invite the public to do so,” said a prominent trial attorney of WhoCanISue. “It encourages, if not creates lawsuits.”

Tell us what you think: What’s the verdict on WhoCanISue—responsible site for the aggrieved or incubator for irresponsible lawsuits? Has suing become too easy?

But one such headline refuses to go away: Indian woman, 70, gives birth to first child after IVF treatment.

Part oddity, part odyssey, the story of septuagenarian first-time mother Rajo Devi has reverberated around the world, sparking a fierce debate about whether giving birth late in life is responsible.

For 50 years of marriage, Devi tried unsuccessfully to have a child. Her husband, now 72, even married Devi’s sister in an effort to produce a child—an acceptable practice in their region of India. But the sister did not become pregnant either. News reports said the couple endured great cultural shame because of their inability to have children.

So with the help of a fertility specialist, a donor egg, and her husband’s sperm, 70-year-old Devi became pregnant and delivered a baby daughter. “We longed for a child all these years,” she said, “and now we are very happy to have one.”

But not all the world shared the couple’s joy. From India to Ireland, Australia to America, people reacted to the same critical questions, summed up by a newspaper columnist: “Where does the yearning to be a parent become selfish disregard for the life of the child being created? A child whose parents will almost definitely not see her into adulthood? How old is too old to have a baby?”

Absurd. Appalling. Selfish. Many readers offered the same objections. “Wow, she will most likely be dead before the child’s 10th birthday,” one wrote. “What a terrible thing to do to a child, to insure that they will live most of their life without a parent.” While some quoted news reports that the baby had a large extended family to help, others countered: “Do you know a child who has lost their mother before their 12th birthday? Go try saying to them, ‘Oh well, at least you’ve got an extended family’ and see what reaction you’ll get. No one can ever replace your mother.”

Some readers were less disapproving: “Who knows, having the wisdom of being 70 and raising a child might be one of the best things for that kid.” Another questioned, “Who are we to judge? Just because a mother has a baby at 20 does not guarantee she will see the baby into adulthood. Sometimes having a parent who really wanted a baby is far more valuable.”

Still others took issue with the doctors’ role: “Surely the physicians who treated Rajo Devi were equally responsible for this moral quandary? Who are they to help ‘create’ a child condemned to a parentless life?”

Tell us what you think: Did Rajo Devi act responsibly or irresponsibly in giving birth at age 70? When personal dreams collide with personal responsibility, which should take precedence?

Now parents can map Johnny’s genome to help him win his own race—or football and soccer games—by searching for a gene that supposedly predicts exceptional abilities in sports

Genetic testing for the ACTN3 gene, starting with infants, is now being marketed to parents by a Colorado company, with this tease: “Finding any great Olympic champion normally takes years to determine. What if we knew a part of the answer when we were born?”

In other words:
Mouth swab to identify ACTN3 gene: $149
Identification of future sports-great while still in diapers: priceless.

A 2003 study of elite adult athletes who carry the ACTN3 gene found that variants of it are linked to a natural predisposition to excel in speed and power sports like sprinting and football, as well as endurance sports like distance running.

Sign my kid up, said the mother of a 2-year-old who takes soccer lessons. “I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things,” she said, “but I think it’s good to match them with the right activity.”

Critics of the testing say matching 2-year-olds with one sport—and at the expense of broader experiences—carries no guarantee that a kid will grow up to bend it like Beckham. “The idea that it will be one or two genes that are contributing to the Michael Phelpses or the Usain Bolts of the world I think is shortsighted because it’s much more complex than that,” said a genomics expert, who noted that athletic performance is affected by at least 200 genes.

Test results—known as a “Genetic Athletic Talent Report”—come with a certificate called “Your Genetic Advantage.” But it’s a disadvantage that has many talking. “What I fear it would become is one more way for parents to insure that their children never learn to fail,” wrote one mother, who paraphrased a psychologist: ‘If you never fail, you never learn that you can pick yourself back up again.’

Tell us what you think: Is helping a child excel at sports a parental responsibility or a parental obsession? Should genetic testing of children be used to establish sports dominance?

That question has split the residents of Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, in an ongoing debate about doing the right thing.

Three year old Adolph Hitler Campbell’s birthday was December 14. When his parents—who gave the child his legal name—tried to order a birthday cake from a nearby ShopRite grocery store, employees there refused to write “Adolph Hitler” on the frosting.

“We believe the request to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolph Hitler is inappropriate,” said a ShopRite spokeswoman.

The store offered to make a cake leaving space for Adolph’s parents to decorate with their own inscription, but they refused.

“ShopRite can’t even make a cake for a 3-year-old,” the boy’s mother complained to the Express-Times newspaper, which ran a story noting that the family has “swastikas on walls, on jackets, on the freezer and on a pillow” in their home. Adolph’s little sister—JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell—turns two in February and has also been refused a full-name birthday cake by ShopRite.

The Campbell’s said they wanted their children to have unique names and didn’t expect the names to cause problems. “Other kids get their cake. I get a hard time,” said Adolph’s father. “It’s not fair to my children.”

Some local residents detected a hunger, but not for birthday cake. “What I see here is a craving for media attention,” one commented to the newspaper. Another pointed out that “No one puts the whole name of someone having a birthday anyway. Just put Happy Birthday Adolph on the cake and let it rest.”

“Hooray for ShopRite’s decision!” another reader wrote. “I am so tired of people feeling there are no boundaries to freedom of expression.” But others took issue. “By not writing on the cake,” one said, “ShopRite is basically saying that they make the decision as to what is acceptable and not acceptable in your homes. Do you really want to trust this to a supermarket?”

“This is America,” another commented, “not the United States of ShopRite. I’m sure ShopRite would not refuse to personalize a cake for Barack Hussein Obama, who turned out great in spite of his given name.”

Tell us what you think: Did ShopRite employees do the right thing? Is it irresponsible to give children highly provocative names? Should the newspaper have given the parents a public forum for their complaint about a cake?

It strikes at different times for different people, with a clarity that can transform a life.

Joe’s moment comes when he’s down.

On the floor.

Of his filthy apartment.

After an all-nighter celebrating his 30th birthday.

In the film Be Good, the main character, Joe, is hung over and screwed up, a man with everything— parties…girls…beer! And nothing. He’s the ultimate slacker, living a life of zero relevance.

But Joe does have charm. And wicked comic timing. So armed with those attributes, he embarks on a hilarious mission to inject some responsibility into his life.

It’s a cosmic crash diet that’s sometimes only a crash. But as Joe steers wildly and impulsively through the trials of becoming a responsible person, he’s more shocked than anyone at the surprise ending that finally gives meaning to his life.

Be Good was directed by Barney Cokeliss.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Does the age-old marriage vow of fidelity need to be updated to make husbands and wives responsible for their behavior online?

Infidelity is “just as painful, whether it’s electronic or physical,” says an expert in how the internet affects relationships. “For awhile there was this impression that as long as it’s online, it doesn’t matter. But research has shown it’s not a separate world.”

In what is said to be the first case of its kind, a woman is now divorcing her husband after catching the animated character he created online having a fictional affair in a computer role-playing game with an animated online character created by a woman he’d never met.

“It’s cheating, as far as I’m concerned,” said the 28-year-old aggrieved wife.

The couple, married for three years and living in England, originally met online as fans of the cyberspace community Second Life, a game in which players create animated fantasy alter egos called avatars, and act out virtual lives with virtual relationships. It was in Second Life that the husband’s avatar strayed, though he says, “I don’t think I was really doing anything wrong.”

That one cartoon character cheating on another cartoon character could trigger a real-life divorce caught the attention of psychologists around the world. A British newspaper reported that counselors had found “an increasing number of people whose real-life relationships were falling apart because of what was happening in their parallel, unreal worlds.”

“If you travel in that territory,” warned a San Diego psychologist, “it is unmapped,
unchartered, unpoliced, unsupervised. Somebody’s going to get hurt…I don’t think that people are fully aware how deeply they can hurt one another with these types of games.”

Tell us what you think: Where does personal responsibility begin and end when it comes to the actions of fictional online characters? Should cheating with an avatar even be considered as grounds for divorce?

Is saying “I’m sorry” out of fashion?

A lost art?

A species so endangered we need a law to protect it?

“Consider The Apology Act,” a piece of legislation up for debate in Canada and aimed at allowing people to say “I’m sorry” without assuming legal responsibility for their actions.

In other words, saying you’re sorry can’t be used against you later as evidence in civil court. “The goal of the legislation is to encourage sincere apologies,” said the Ontario Attorney General. “Saying sorry for a mistake or wrongdoing is the right thing to do.”

Proponents of the law say the ability to make an apology without legal consequences will help ease hard feelings, resolve disputes, and reduce the number of lengthy, costly lawsuits.

The Apology Act is partly based on the actions of more than 30 states across the U.S. where apology laws have been enacted specifically to make it easier for doctors to say “I’m sorry” instead of “See you in court.” Under those laws, an apology for a medical mistake is inadmissible in court.

Research has found that medical apologies can actually help patients heal and doctors avoid malpractice lawsuits. Both the University of Michigan Health System and the University of Illinois have seen significant drops in malpractice filings since adopting a policy of disclosing medical errors and offering apologies and fair compensation.

Meanwhile, in the greater apology-challenged world, writer Henry Alford has embarked on a policy he calls “reverse etiquette”—supplying a tongue-in-cheek apology when none is forthcoming from an irresponsible offender. After a grocery store clerk dropped Mr. Alford’s apple on the ground, then put it in his bag with nary a word of contrition, Mr. Alford helpfully suggested, “Sorry about that—I really didn’t mean for you to drop that.” The clerk stared, uncomprehending.

“I like to think,” Mr. Alford writes, “that in some instances my behavior, by causing others to wonder what I’m going on about, may help to carry out etiquette’s mandate: to promote empathy.”

Tell us what you think: Do we really need a law in order to take responsibility and apologize? If to err is human and to forgive is divine, why is apologizing so difficult?

The image-conscious National Football League is cracking down on players’ off-field behavior with a new “personal conduct” policy, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, has NFL teams hiring former FBI agents and police officers to spy on players.

Video surveillance cameras in locker rooms. Guards posted in hotel hallways to ensure players don’t sneak out. Bed checks.

The current efforts to manage the morals of pro-football stars include the Seattle Seahawks declaring an entire downtown entertainment district off-limits to team members, and the Denver Broncos’ security chief wrangling a network of dozens of bartenders and bouncers who call him when players show up, divulging details of the women they’re with and how much they’ve had to drink.

With at least 57 NFL players arrested this year alone, the NFL is determined to protect its image by fining and suspending players not just for committing crimes, but for any act that’s deemed harmful to the NFL’s “integrity and reputation.”

Critics of the crackdown say fines and suspensions are excessive and unfair, particularly in cases where a player has been accused of but not found guilty of a violation of law.

Dallas Cowboy cornerback Pacman Jones was suspended indefinitely by the NFL after an alleged tussle with a bodyguard, even though no arrest or charge was made. He missed six games before recently being allowed back on the playing field. And when someone intentionally spilled a drink on Buffalo Bills offensive lineman Langston Walker at a bar recently, he worried how the NFL would have reacted if the situation had escalated. “When you start not to trust your own organization or governing body,” he said, “who can you trust?”

Tell us what you think: Can personal responsibility be forced or enforced in pro football? Are NFL players being held to an unfair standard of off-field responsibility?

The 10 megapixel camera cost $69.

And the Black Friday shoppers determined to get those door-buster bargains cost a Wal-Mart employee his life.

The ugly scene that shocked America during the Thanksgiving holiday played out just before 5AM, with no police in sight. An unruly crowd of 2,000 people broke down the doors of the store in Valley Stream, New York, and in the process trampled 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour to death.

Four other people in the store were injured and treated at a hospital.

Wall-Mart said it had added extra security staff and installed barricades, among other measures. “Despite all of our precautions,” said a spokesperson, “this unfortunate event occurred.”

The police detective in charge of the investigation had a different view. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”

At least part of the incident was caught on surveillance cameras, but news reports pointed out that even with the video and eyewitness accounts, “officials acknowledged that it would be difficult to identify those responsible.” There were plenty of suspects, however, beyond the store and the shoppers, including the economy.

“I think it ties into sort of fear and panic of not having enough,” said a consumer psychologist, noting that a “herd mentality” can make individuals feel anonymous to the point of trampling someone. “Fear combined with the group mentality?” the psychologist pondered. “It doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Others blamed the media for having cheered on shoppers in numerous stories leading up to the Black Friday incident, which one reporter described as “the ungovernable mix of greed and thriftiness.”

Tell us what you think: Where does the responsibility lie in this case? With the crowd? The store? The police? The economy? The media? Why would people in a group do something they would never do as individuals?

Tough new government nutrition standards that are being enforced in public schools state-wide are eliminating foods that can be sold on-site during the school day. Long-time bake sale favorites like cookies and cupcakes are disappearing because they exceed legally-mandated limits on sugar, fat and calories.

Comfort food is suddenly being wrapped in uncomfortable language like nutritional disobedience and competitive foods, as policy makers try to reduce unhealthy consumption to “do for junk food what smoking bans and taxes did for tobacco” according to one health scientist.

“The intent of the legislation was not to eliminate bake sales, but to improve the quality of food that’s available to students,” said the policy director of the California Center for Public Advocacy, one of the sponsors of the legislation. “Schools were financially dependent on selling food to kids that was fundamentally bad for them.”

But opponents of the culinary crackdown say it’s half-baked. “Bake sales are one of the quickest and easiest ways for schools to raise money,” said the president of one local California PTA. “To limit this option has a significant impact on fundraising. And as a parent, it should really be my choice if I want to buy my child a cookie or slice of pizza after school.”

While a California kindergarten offered a “Healthy Halloween vegetable platter,” as a trick-or-treat alternative, one critic questioned the larger impact of a cupcake prohibition. “Children should learn that there are many foods available, and the responsibility is theirs to choose the best and healthiest foods. Instead, through limiting their choices, we are teaching them to blindly trust whatever is placed before them and to forego individual responsibility.”

Tell us what you think: Have bake sales become nutritionally irresponsible dinosaurs? What should take priority—raising healthier children or letting them eat cake?

Some say it’s madness.

Some say it’s fondness—for friends, families, co-workers, baby sitters, mail carriers, teachers, hairdressers, newspaper delivery people and everyone else we want—or feel compelled—to remember with a present.

And some say it’s time to rethink a more responsible approach to holiday giving, especially in this year’s brutal economy.

Newspaper columnist Ron Lieber thought he had the solution—“a grand alternative that would allow everyone to start the next year with at least one great present and a sense of spiritual uplift”—but he was surprised at just how reluctant we are to change our gift-giving patterns.

Lieber based his extreme makeover on the alternative gift-giving model of ECHOage.com, a web company started last year by two mothers trying to “stop the madness around children’s birthday parties.”

Gift-givers send the amount of money they would have spent on a birthday present to ECHOage. The company takes a service fee and then splits the rest of the money—one half goes to a charity chosen by the birthday child; the other half goes to the child, who can buy something he or she really wants.

But when Lieber suggested using the same model for the holidays, the discussion of giving was met with many a misgiving. There were outright objections from people unwilling to change the way they’ve exchanged gifts for decades. Others chafed at the imposition of a blanket plan, and some at the “relentless practicality” of the approach.

The trick, Lieber concluded, “is to ask carefully, so as not to make others feel greedy if they still want a big pile of gifts.” But there was one particular idea that repeatedly stood out for him: “I was touched by the number of people who suggested extending the Thanksgiving spirit through the end of the holiday season this year. Their recommended gift? A thank-you note.”

Tell us what you think: What’s your idea of responsible holiday gift giving?

Parent’s reality: leave your unruly child with someone at a hospital in Nebraska, and walk away forever, with no legal consequence.

Every state in America has a so-called “safe haven” law, under which a troubled parent can safely surrender a newborn baby, usually at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked.

But Nebraska’s safe haven law is different. Intended to protect only infants, it was written with the word “child” left undefined and without an age limit, opening a gaping legal loophole for an unprecedented human bailout.

Since the law took effect in July, at least 30 children—almost all between the ages 8 and 18—have been dumped in Nebraska hospitals by parents or guardians who say they can no longer cope with their kids. “According to the law, the abandonments are legal, and the parents cannot be held criminally responsible.”

One desperate widower dropped off nine of his children at a local hospital, then left. Other parents traveled long distances to legally ditch their kids in Nebraska, including the mother of a delinquent 12-year-old boy, who drove 1,000 miles from their home in Georgia. “I ran out of fight,” she said, after abandoning her son. “I ran out of hope.”

Authorities were stunned. “I think they’re just irresponsible people who are not very caring for their kids,” pronounced one state senator. But others saw the situation as a serious wakeup call about the increasing needs of struggling families. “They are desperate people, in a spot,” said another senator, “and don’t know where to turn.”

Tell us what you think: Should parents have the legal right to abandon a child—and their own responsibility—because of behavioral or other problems? Is abandonment a better option than abuse? Does Nebraska’s safe haven law protect children or contribute to their neglect?

It used to be one of the dominant decisions for consumers.

But as more and more supermarkets and other stores have phased out the use of so-called disposable plastic bags, a different environmental question still lingers: Paper or electronic? Bills, that is.

For many people, paying bills online is a no-brainer way to save time and resources. But millions of Americans continue to receive all their bills by mail, which they pay with paper checks, send with postage, and add to the handling of even more paper mail moving around the country.

It’s estimated that if every American household went paper-free for bill-paying the environmental impact would include

• Reducing solid waste in U.S. landfills by more than 800,000 tons a year
• Saving an estimated 18.5 million trees every year
• Curbing the release of greenhouse gases by 2.1 million tons a year

Some hard-copy holdouts cite security concerns in not going paperless. But others are unable or unwilling to cross a psychological barrier. “I choose to get and pay my bills by mail because it feels more substantial to me,” says a 30 year-old colleague who otherwise recycles and reduces elsewhere in her life. “I just don’t think it’s my responsibility to go paperless if it makes me feel insecure.”

Tell us what you think: Should you be responsible for reducing your carbon footprint by putting away the checkbook and paying bills electronically? When the environmentally responsible route makes you feel uneasy, is it personally responsible to override it?

Including your vote.

As stock markets around the world continue to nose-dive, an unusual futures market called Intrade is heating up, with global investors focused on one bet: the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

Unlike typical financial markets where profits are tied to a company’s growth, Intrade’s profits rise and fall on the results of political, cultural, and geological events—including weather. Traders buy and sell “contracts” that function like stocks.

But it’s not just investors who are keen on Intrade. Pundits and politicians routinely analyze it as they follow the McCain and Obama campaigns, trying to determine the probable winner before the actual vote. According to Congressional Quarterly Today, “experts have found that the Intrade market is generally more accurate in predicting the outcome of major events than other leading indicators, including public opinion polls.”

However, scholars of so-called predictive markets issued a caveat about Intrade: “The relatively small scale of the market and its lack of outside regulation could leave the system vulnerable to unscrupulous investors.”

Sure enough, a rogue trader on Intrade seems to have been responsible for mimicking Wall Street maneuvers by buying suspiciously large purchases of McCain futures to boost his standing in the race, while selling off blocks of Obama futures to lower the market’s predictions of his chances of winning. The manipulation left pollsters uncertain.

Tell us what you think: Does betting on political races irresponsibly sway votes? Is it more responsible to put your money where your mouth is and vote?

Actor Tate Donovan stars as Michael, a relentlessly responsible father. But the Tony at issue isn’t his son. It’s his son’s teddy bear. Or more vexingly, his 6-year-old son’s lost teddy bear.

And therein lies the crisis, the challenge, and the question: Can you ever be too responsible?

Certainly parents who make the ultimate sacrifice of taking a family trip to Disneyland can already claim to have done the right thing for the kids. So when Tony is lost on that trip, shouldn’t a replacement bear be good enough?

Watch Tony and see how one man’s dedication and determination to track a child’s inanimate toy takes on a life of its own and buoys the spirits of a most unlikely search party along the way, struggling to find a bear—and their own surprising new depths of personal responsibility.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

When it comes to defining personal responsibility, many people say taking care of themselves and their family is at the very top of their list. Knowing their neighbors is at the bottom.

Those are some of the findings from our Responsibility Project Index, a poll of Americans across the country, undertaken to better understand your views about all things responsibility.

The vast majority of those polled—more than 70%—believe they’re more responsible today than in the past five years, with teachers, young Americans, married people, and African Americans giving themselves the highest rankings for personal responsibility.

And while we value personal responsibility, we don’t necessarily recognize it in others. An overwhelming number of Americans—74%—believe that many people have become less responsible. Could it be that we don’t really know those beyond our families and close friends? A whopping 85% of those polled believe we’re less connected with our neighbors today than 20 years ago.

It’s clear that we form communities differently now than in the past. Less talking over the backyard fence. More coming together online. That’s what hundreds of thousands of you have done by logging onto the ResponsibilityProject.com, to watch the films, read the blog, and take part in the ever-changing conversation about responsibility.

And while the Index tells us a little more about how we view responsibility from a statistical standpoint, the most valuable things we learn about responsibility are from each other. So thanks for your continued involvement in the Responsibility Project.

Tell us what you think: Do you think you’re more responsible now than you were five years ago? Do you believe most of the people around you are less responsible? Does knowing your neighbors matter any more?

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Twenty year-old Felicia Salazar admitted to a court that she failed to provide protection and medical treatment for her 19-month-old daughter. The baby was beaten by her father and suffered broken bones and other injuries. She recovered and is in foster care. The father was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

But when Salazar—who had no previous criminal record—appeared for sentencing, Judge Charlie Baird gave her a suspended prison sentence and 10 years probation with what he called the “reasonable condition” not to conceive or bear any more children during that time.

“She has a fundamental right to reproduce,” said the judge, “so I couldn’t order her to be sterilized. But she can be forced to forfeit certain fundamental rights.” The judge added that he is “not even preventing her from having intimate sexual relations. I’m only preventing her from becoming pregnant.”

Legal experts questioned the constitutionality of the sentence, while others debated its enforceability. “If Salazar becomes pregnant,” asked a law writer, “must she choose among concealing the pregnancy, abortion, or incarceration? Alternately, could Judge Baird order her to carry a pregnancy to term but then give the child up for adoption?”

The prosecutor, who had not sought the sentence, was surprised. “I think when the average person hears a story of a mom who failed to protect a child,” she said, “their instinct is that she doesn’t deserve to have a child. But we don’t get to decide that for her.”

Tell us what you think: In an effort to prevent future child abuse, should the court be responsible for deciding if a mother can have more children? What about the father in this case—should he be under court order not to father more children?

We’re truly busy, and mentoring a kid, teaching an adult to read, or lifting someone’s spirits at a nursing home takes time.

We don’t know how to use a hammer.

We’re not experts.

It’s not our responsibility.

Now, after years of quietly gathering speed, there’s a growing movement to elevate public service to national service and in the process, set up incentives and opportunities that make it easier for each person to help another in need. The goal is to make volunteering as fundamental as voting.

The concept of relying on all able citizens to give back has even garnered the support of both John McCain and Barack Obama. Each has promised, if elected president, to make national service a priority and to promote it as a unifying force for 21st century America.

The frustration expressed by many Americans—wanting to volunteer for something, but not knowing where to start—is now beginning to be addressed more widely, from corporations offering paid leave for employee volunteer service, to universities integrating a “service” year into students’ studies.

Even the federal government is trying to make it easier for Americans to roll up their sleeves and volunteer, with a proposed piece of federal legislation called the Serve America Act. Among other things, the Act proposes to establish five new national volunteer “corps” such as international service, disaster relief, green energy, education, and poverty, then train and link volunteers to the projects that suit them best.

One of the toughest obstacles to volunteering is finding the time, but it may be as easy as turning off the TV. Experts note that the biggest statistical distinction between volunteers and non-volunteers, is how much television they watch—15 hours a week for volunteers; 23 hours for non-volunteers. That mathematical difference—more than 400 hours a year—could make a world of difference from a volunteer.

Tell us what you think: Is volunteering a civic responsibility? Should government be involved in public service?

But are we also a nation that needs to pull up its pants?

A 17-year-old Florida boy was recently jailed overnight for violating a local “sagging pants” law after a police officer spotted him riding his bike with his pants slung low enough to reveal four or five inches of boxer shorts.

“Your Honor,” the boy’s public defender told the court, “We now have the fashion police.”

A Florida judge later declared the law unconstitutional, but that hasn’t deterred authorities in California, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and other jurisdictions from proposing or enacting similar measures, arguing that the sagging fashion is akin to indecent exposure.

The style of wearing over-sized pants that sag to reveal large expanses of underwear started in prisons, where big pants were issued with no belts. In the 1990’s, the look seeped into the popular culture—and under the skin of politicians and police.

“We’re not going to sit here and let that happen in Flint,” declared the police chief of Flint, Michigan, where wearers of saggy pants can be arrested “if the pants are at the knees and your underwear is exposed.” He calls the look “disorderly” and “immoral self-expression.”

The south Chicago suburb of Lynwood, which also bans the buns look, claims the fad has gone so far as to effect economic growth and discourage businesses from investing in Lynwood.

ACLU attorneys counter, calling the laws “idiotic” and arguing that “You can’t arrest people because of their style of dress.”

Tell us what you think: Should government be responsible for dictating what citizens can wear? Is publically exposing your underwear freedom of expression, indecent exposure, or your personal responsibility?

Not if you’re using Slydial.

As its name suggests, Slydial subverts the process of calling someone on their cell phone by routing the caller directly to the recipient’s voicemail. The service bypasses the usual ringing that alerts an incoming call, and thereby negates the chance—or risk—of having a conversation. A new message appears, but only after the fact.

Slydial describes the feat as “the illusion of communication without the hassle of engaging in a time-consuming conversation.” The company’s suggested uses for the service include these for college students: “breaking up with a significant other…juggling a hectic dating life…or calling home for cash.”

While there are other uses for Slydial—it’s good for shy people, someone pointed out, and for legitimately not interrupting the recipient—many question whether a tool that encourages users to avoid direct communication is a responsible use of technology.

“Talk, that most valuable human asset, is shunned,” explained a communications professor. “If these are the technology’s primary uses, it brings with it a world where conversation and community take a back seat to one’s immediate wants—a world where ‘me’ trumps ‘we.’”

A 26-year-old woman who used Slydial to break up with a man she’d been dating explained, “Text messaging someone ‘I would prefer not to see you again’ is really not my style. But at the same time, I wanted to avoid an awkward conversation.”

Some say a new trend has emerged: We are constantly just missing one another—on purpose, and are more interested in “broadcasting” information than in true conversational give-and-take.

“When I was growing up,” lamented one critic, “when the phone rang in the house, it was a big deal. You would have to get up to go answer the phone. And then you would have to stand next to the phone, because the phone was attached to the wall. You didn’t know who it was before you answered it. That was the exciting part. Who was calling? Will it be for me? Will it be a boy? Will it be Grandma calling long distance?

“Now the phone rings and you think, ‘Shoot, more talking. I’ve had enough talking. Can’t they just email?’”

Tell us what you think: Is it irresponsible to make a technological end-run around someone to avoid a difficult conversation? Where does our responsibility to talk to someone begin and end? Are we becoming a society more interested in “me” than “we”?

The kid, in this case, was 9-year-old Jericho Scott, who played summer baseball on a youth team in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jericho’s “crime” is his talent. He’s a pitching sensation who throws an awesome 40 mile-an-hour fastball that’s never hit a batter and rarely misses the plate. But the prodigy pitcher himself was struck out—by adults.

Parents of opposing team members first objected that their kids were unable to hit any of Jericho’s pitches. Strike one.

Then youth league officials wanted to move Jericho up to an older team, but his parents refused. Strike two.

League officials asked Jericho to play any position other than pitcher, but his parents said no again. Strike three.

Game over.

The league disbanded Jericho’s entire undefeated team, and the second place team was declared the season’s winner.

But the post-game show of who’s responsible for the collective benching of so many kids continues to play out across the country, with headlines that sound like…well…more lessons in parenting, like this one from Jericho’s hometown newspaper: Sometimes parent involvement can be way off-base, experts say.

Other adults were criticized, too. “The league obviously felt batters would suffer irreversible shame and humiliation if they had to face Jericho again,” wrote an Ohio sports reporter. “Tell me, how does that prepare kids for the real world? Haven’t we all encountered someone more skilled in our field, and haven’t we all survived?”

Ironically, the only person who stepped up to the plate to accept responsibility was perhaps the least culpable of all: Jericho, now 10 years old. “I feel sad,” he said. “I feel like it’s all my fault that nobody could play.”

Tell us what you think: Can a child be “too good” to play a game, and if so, does he or she have the responsibility to step aside? In the case of Jericho Scott, who’s more responsible for baseball’s abrupt ending—parents…league officials…Jericho?

The study is about children and chores.

University of Maryland Professor Sandra Hofferth—who is an expert on how children use their time—reports that 6 to 12 year-olds now spend an average of only 24 minutes a day doing household chores. That’s a 12% drop from 1997, and a 25% skid since 1981.

The chore-defying dive reflects “important behavioral and values shifts that will affect lives for years to come,” says Dr. Hofferth.

Doing household chores as a child turns out to be a major predictor of whether an individual does volunteer or community work as an adult, according to sociologists, who note that housework is an important teaching tool. And when it comes to domestic bliss, the distribution of domestic duties—grounded in childhood chores—can make or break a marriage.

According to experts, children’s chores are declining in part because they’re spending more time on reading, studying, and other activities. But even their parental role models are doing less work around the house, hiring help instead or simply letting chores chill.

Within days of the news that chore times had dropped like the Dow, a new website called NannysCircle.com began promoting itself as a novel solution to motivating kids by making a “virtual” game of chores. Instead of nagging Junior to feed the dog, parents log on and send a virtual note, which their child retrieves from his virtual room. In real life, the child supposedly feeds the dog, then emails his parents that the task has been completed.

But success may come at the expense of another domestic chore: parent-child communication. “You see the appeal,” wrote a reporter about the website. “Parenting, a messy series of weary battles that never seem to lead anywhere, becomes something that can be checked off and filed. No back talk. Just hit ‘send.’”

Tell us what you think: Should children be responsible for doing more chores? Are chore-less children really responsible for failed marriages and fewer volunteers? As a responsible parent, would you turn over chore supervision to a computer?

But if you only want a temporary friend, should you rent a dog?

Jackpot, Pirate, and Tango are among the pooches available to lease by the hour or the day from Flexpetz, a dog rental company with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London.

While some upscale hotels have lent dogs to guests over the years, Flexpetz is making a business out of it. For a $99 administration charge, a $99 monthly membership fee, and a $150 mandatory training and orientation session, a customer can rent as many dog day afternoons as desired, for an additional $45 each.

Who rents a dog? People who travel a lot, people who live in places that don’t allow pets, and people like 26 year-old Sarah Stevenson, who moved to New York from Scotland. “It’s been difficult for me to meet people because everyone in New York just kind of goes about their business,” Stevenson lamented. But when she’s out walking a rented cockapoo named Oliver, “It becomes a nice way to meet people.”

Flexpetz says all of their dogs—some of which were rescued from animal shelters—wear GPS tracking collars and are fed “holistic dog food.” But that’s not enough to stop some critics from howling fowl over what they say is the unacceptable promotion of dogs as accessories.

The company was banned in Boston after the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance making dog letting illegal. “To rent a dog just seems wrong,” said one legislator. “I’m not for legislating morality, but it just seems like cruel and unusual treatment of a poor, defenseless animal.” A Boston newspaper editorial took issue with what it saw as people who “want the comfort of a pet, but not the full-time responsibility.”

“Pets are not like cars or furniture,” the Humane Society says. “Moving them from person to person, home to home, can induce problems such as anxiety and depression.”

But a psychologist counters that people who want to borrow a dog usually just want some companionship. “It may be a short bond,” he said, “but it’s a real bond.”

Tell us what you think: Is it irresponsible to rent a dog?

At issue are the increasing number of hurricane “hold-outs” who refuse to leave their homes, even in the face of mandatory evacuation orders and National Weather Service warnings of “certain death.”

Some stay because they are elderly, infirm, or have no place to go. Others say evacuating is too “expensive”—they can’t afford to fix a broken car and don’t have money for gas anyway.

“You need to be scared,” implored New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the city. But even his Category 5 language—“You need to get your butts out of New Orleans now”—had little bearing on people determined to stay.

The most defiant group of hold-outs includes those who hunker down to protect their property from forces other than nature. “I am staying here because of what happened to my pub when Katrina rolled in—looting and mindless destruction,” explained a New Orleans bar owner who ignored Gustav’s mandatory evacuation order. “I will probably stay until someone with a rifle and uniform shows up.”

And that’s what worries authorities—when someone’s personal decision to ride out a hurricane goes awry, other lives are put on the line, most notably, rescue workers. As Hurricane Ike hit its Texas bulls-eye, thousands of bold hold-outs who had stubbornly stayed suddenly swamped emergency dispatchers with frightened pleas for help.

Galveston’s city manager described the situation as “very frustrating,” while a newspaper editorial plunged right into the swelling question of personal responsibility and hurricanes “It is usually thought of as a strong and noble character trait identifying one’s ability to manage his or her own affairs responsibly. But in the wake of Hurricane Ike, it has proven to ally with sheer stupidity.”

Tell us what you think: Is your greater responsibility to the law, or to personally protecting your home and possessions? Whose responsibility is it if someone dies in defiance of a government order to evacuate from a storm?

Then Google came along and flipped the format, allowing so much information to be amassed before meeting someone that the encounter itself was sometimes obsolete.

Now there’s CriminalSearches.com, a new online service that invites users to type in the name of any adult, anywhere in the U.S., and search to see if the person has a criminal record. For free.

“Do you really know who people are?” CriminalSearches asks, urging users to run criminal background checks on nannies, neighbors, teachers, acquaintances, locksmiths and even “hedge fund managers.”

Besides searching by name, users can also type their addresses into the “Sex Offender Finder” and the “Neighborhood Watch” feature, both of which produce maps that reveal crimes and identities of people in the neighborhood—the burglar down the block, the drug dealer around the corner, and the sex offender on the route to school.

But the site “contains some mistakes,” reports The New York Times. “Some records are incomplete, and there is often no way to distinguish between people with the same names if you don’t know their birthdays (and even that date is often missing).”

When a Times reporter ran the name of a colleague through CriminalSearches, the system reported a “criminal offense.” It turned out to be a speeding ticket. “I went to traffic school so this wouldn’t appear on my record,” the stunned colleague explained. “I’m in shock.”

Tell us what you think: How do you balance the right to know with the responsibility to be accurate when it comes to criminal background checks? Do you have a responsibility for how you use personal information you find online? Should everyone be allowed to access anyone’s personal legal history, whether or not it’s criminal?

It’s teacher’s pistol.

In an effort to deter a Columbine-like school massacre, the local school board recently decreed that teachers could carry concealed weapons at school and in the classrooms, the first school in the U.S. to do so.

“Country people are take-care-of-yourself-people,” explained school superintendent David Thweatt. “They’re not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

The nearest police are based 17 miles away. Lacking funds to hire security guards, the school board decided that letting teachers carry guns would result in better security anyway, since an attacker wouldn’t know who might shoot him.

Harrold’s school—which houses about one hundred students from kindergarten to high school—has a card-swipe security entry system as well as screening for visitors. But Mr. Thweatt, who calls himself as “a contingency planner,” says gun-free schools are simply targets for attack. “That’s like saying sic ’em to a dog,” he said.

The armed teachers have received mandatory firearms training and will use special bullets designed to reduce ricocheting—in this case, off chalk boards and desks.

Though “Don’t Mess With Texas” has long been a state mantra, making gun-toting teachers responsible for school security has some critics up in arms. “They are not trained to make life and death decisions,” said one Harrold resident. “There are too many things that could happen.”

“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” said a Houston teacher’s association official. “It’s up there with the worst ideas in the history of education.”

Tell us what you think: Should teachers be responsible for providing school security by carrying guns? Schools are expected to protect their students, but where does a teacher’s responsibility end?

But when a political pollster or survey taker asks, do you have a responsibility to tell the truth about who you’re voting for?

Approximately 10% of Americans admit they’ve lied to pollsters. In a close election, a 10% false answer rate is more than enough to confuse pundits, confound candidates, and contradict a predicted outcome, especially in the current presidential race.

“This election is exceptionally tricky,” says one pollster.

Perhaps the only thing that is predictable is what people lie about. “They’re not candid on questions about sex, violence in the house, a whole range of things that are tough to talk about,” says Andy Kohut, Director of the Pew Research Center. They’re also not candid about race and age. “People don’t want to be stigmatized,” Kohut explains.

But researchers found that when people answer survey questions privately online, they’re less likely to lie than when they’re questioned by an interviewer, because they tend to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear.

In an experiment, 58% of those surveyed told a phone interviewer they exercise regularly. But when the same question was asked privately online, only 35% made the same claim. The oscillating honesty factor continued across a range of personal topics. 56% told an interviewer they regularly attend religious services, but when they answered privately online, that number dropped to only 25%. And when asked about drinking, 39% told an interviewer they had alcohol in the last week, but online, 53% ’fessed up.

Many political pollsters say they’re taking precautions and adding questions about age and race to current surveys in an effort to better predict the outcome of the November elections. But one expert has a reminder of why we shouldn’t be so surprised when the predictions don’t match the vote, saying, “That’s what anonymous voting allows.”

Tell us what you think: Do you have a responsibility to tell the truth to pollsters? Have you ever mislead a survey taker with inaccurate information? How and why?

The city of Los Angeles recently sank its teeth into the issue by banning any new fast food restaurants from opening in a 32-square-mile area of low-income South Central LA for at least one year.

South Central has the city’s highest concentration of fast food outlets—and the highest rates of diabetes and obesity. 30% of adults in the area are overweight. Saturated by food that experts link to health problems, and with few supermarkets or green grocers offering healthier food and fresh produce, the area has been labeled a ‘food desert.”

The goal of the moratorium is to stop the fast food clock while the city tries to attract grocery stores, sit-down restaurants and other fresh food sources to set up shop in the neighborhood.

But do the new regulations serve up food for thought, or food police?

The intent is not to crush food choices, says the city councilwoman who sponsored the initiative, but to encourage variety and more nutritious options. Supporters of the ban say making healthy decisions about food is difficult when low income residents must choose between the nearest grocery store five miles away or a cheap cheeseburger from around the corner.

Critics of the measure say legislating eating habits won’t work. “Limiting people’s food options is not really the way to go,” says a prominent community leader. “Nor is the role of government to tell people what they should or should not be eating. French fries aren’t contraband.” Opponents also scoff at the suggestion that residents are “intellectually incapable” of deciding what to eat.

The fast food industry says the moratorium is misguided. “What’s next?” asked a spokesperson. “Security guards at the door saying ‘You’re overweight, you can’t have a cheeseburger’?”

The food-and-government debate is being played out far beyond South Central LA as states and cities across the country seek to limit other food choices by banning trans fats in restaurants and bakeries and mandating that calorie counts and nutritional information be publically posted.

“But let’s face it,” said a West Virginia newspaper editorial, “until egg-white omelets are cheaper and tastier than doughnuts, it will remain a gargantuan challenge.”

Tell us what you think: Are food choices a personal responsibility or a matter of public health? Should government ever have the right to dictate what you should or shouldn’t eat?

A parent.

Worse than poison ivy, today’s camp parents are itching to control every aspect of their children’s daily lives at camp very place meant to teach independence and responsibility away from Mom and Dad.

“It kills them not to know that Johnny’s on the basketball court right now, or in the bathroom, or changing his shirt,” says a camp association executive. “Parents expect a totally different kind of communication than they did years ago.”

And at so-called “high end” sleep-away camps—which charge $10,000 summer “tuition”—parents get special treatment from a “parent coordinator,” one of whom describes her job as “almost like a hotel concierge listening to a client’s needs.”

Those needs often include parents’ demands for instant access to their kids, through webcams, cell phones, texting and email. Some parents try to bypass camp directors entirely by smuggling cell phones to their children in hollowed-out books or sewn into stuffed animals. Camp counselors and administrators—in addition to their primary job of looking after their young charges—spend hours each day taking and posting pictures of kids for their high-maintenance parents.

“I have parents calling and saying they saw their child in the background of a picture of other children and he didn’t look happy, or his face looked red, has he been putting on enough suntan lotion, or I haven’t seen my child and I have seen a lot of other children, is my child so depressed he doesn’t want to be in a picture?” says a long-time camp director.

Why the increase in parents-gone-wild? “Nobody goes to school for how to send your child away from you,” explains a parent liaison, noting that in a post-9/11 world, parents need help to “become independent.” In fact, says another camp director, homesick campers aren’t nearly as big a problem as “kid-sick” parents.

Tell us what you think: Should summer camps return to the days of no cameras, no cell phones, no parents? Do parents have a right to know how their kids are spending their time away from home?

But should sportsmanship be more important than winning, even at the Olympics?

Yes, says the International Fair Play Committee, a little-known organization dedicated to rewarding altruistic athletes who believe that fairness is “more important than winning at all costs.”

As an affiliate of the International Olympic Committee, Fair Play hands out awards each year to self-sacrificing athletes, in addition to athletically responsible kids and coaches. Any organization or individual can nominate someone for a prize.

But Fair Play has a problem. They get very few nominations. And though the Olympic Committee made a special public plea for more, recommendations haven’t exactly been pole-vaulting in, even during the Olympic Games.

Fair Play’s president thinks there’s a reason why fairness can’t compete “Victory is a huge motivation,” he explained. “A great number of people make money off athletes. Sports federations, commercial sponsors—everyone pressures them to get to the top. Athletes live under threat.”

Olympic-sized questions of poor sportsmanship aren’t difficult to find.

• The angry Swedish wrestler who disdained and discarded his bronze medal on the floor during the awards ceremony was disqualified for “violating the spirit of fair play at the Games.”

• Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was criticized by the president of the Olympic Committee for showing a lack of respect to his competitors with his chest-thumping, show-boating gold medal wins.

• When U.S. tennis player James Blake lost to Chile’s Fernando Gonzalez after a match that included a questionable call, Blake accused his opponent of being flat-out dishonorable. “Maybe I shouldn’t expect people to hold themselves to high standards [of] sportsmanship,” he said. “Maybe I did expect a little more out of the Olympics.”

But behind the disappointing headlines, acts of responsible sportsmanship have also played out, albeit more quietly. Dara Torres failed to get the gold, but she didn’t fail to help a Swedish competitor whose swimsuit tore just before her competition. Wildly waiving her arms to get the officials’ attention, Torres delayed the start of the race so her opponent could have a fair chance.

And when aquatic superhero Michael Phelps earned his seventh gold medal by a breathtaking hundredth of a second over second-place Serb swimmer Milorad Cavic, the win was immediately protested by Serbia. But in an unusual gesture of sportsmanship, silver medalist Cavic said, “If it was up to me right now, I would just stop the protest. “I’m not angry. I’m stoked. I’m happy. You’ve got to understand I came into this competition with a goal to win a bronze medal.”

Tell us what you think: Do Olympic athletes have a responsibility beyond winning or doing their best for their country? Should the priority be sportsmanship first, winning second? Which Olympic athletes do you think should be awarded for upholding the standards of fair play?

The slacker.

The loud-mouth in the adjacent cubicle.

The person who leaves the paper jam in the photo copier.

And then there are the rest of us, who like to think of ourselves as responsible.

Except when it comes to a certain chair.

Hot Seat takes us on a hilarious comic roll with the wobbly, broken, reject chair that seems to inhabit every office, clandestinely dumped from the last annoyed worker onto the next unsuspecting colleague, in an endless orbit of not-my-responsibility.

The animated office in Hot Seat is populated by whimsical, bustling rabbits, working away in a warren of cubicles. All is well until the dreaded wobbler chair—lopsided and tipping because of a missing wheel—starts lurking like a land shark, unloaded by one sneaky rabbit onto another and then another.

As the chair gets passed, so too does the buck. Is it no one’s responsibility? Is it everyone’s? Switched and ditched throughout the office, the broken chair logs more miles than a frequent flier, until the situation reaches crisis proportions.

Only when the fur flies do the rabbits realize how far off track the broken chair has taken them, and what they must do to glide back to their tranquil four-wheeling environment.

Pull up a chair—if you dare—for Hot Seat and see how true office chair-ity begins in every cubicle.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

The director of Hot Seat came back from a break one day to find that her perfectly decent office chair had been replaced with an imperfectly indecent one.

Broken. Alarmingly fuchsia-colored.

So low to the ground it wouldn’t roll.

But where some people find irritation, Janet found inspiration. In this case, the chair switch-a-roo was the genius genesis for Hot Seat industrious rabbits, who must come to terms with their own carrot-and-chair calamity.

Don’t worry about Janet, though. She traded in her broken seat for one with a better fit—the director’s chair.

Responsibility Project: This film clearly focuses around the notion of office etiquette – why did you choose this topic?

Janet: The office is an environment that everyone can identify with, and a good setting for animation. Rows of cubicles with unrelated people (or rabbits) who have to interact can lead to interesting conflicts.

Responsibility Project: How long did it take to make this film, from start to finish?

Janet: Development of the idea, and working out the story kinks took about six weeks. The animation, coloring and backgrounds took about six months.

Responsibility Project: Can you walk us through the process?

Janet: I started with rough sketches of characters and the environment, and a written story treatment. I then developed the story, along with the central characters, and from there drew up a storyboard. The frames were scanned into the computer to create an animatic, which had each scene timed out, and a few sound effects. From there all the animation was drawn right in the computer using a program called “Toon Boom”. Backgrounds were created in Photoshop, and the scenes were colored and combined with the backgrounds in Toon Boom. I edited as I went along, retiming and reworking the scenes as needed.

Responsibility Project: How many different people were involved in the making of this film?

Janet: Four other people helped with coloring, animation and backgrounds. Everything was done over the internet, with the work being done in Los Angeles and Montréal. There were several others involved in digital compositing and sound.

Responsibility Project: Why did you decide to use bunnies as the main characters?

Janet: I guess I was just in a rabbity mood. I think the rabbits fit nicely into the office environment.

Responsibility Project: What do you hope people will think or feel after watching this?

Janet: I hope that people will have fun with the silliness of the story, but also recognize that the situation is not so different from real life. Maybe they will wonder what they would do in a similar situation, or think about being considerate to their neighbors. Maybe one of them is the one that took my chair and will feel remorse.

Responsibility Project: What project are you working on next?

Janet: I am finishing a children’s book called “The Delicious Bug”, which is based on the film Dinner For Two also being shown as part of The Responsibility Project.

I have been developing an adult animated series called “Penguins Behind Bars”– a dark and funny prison series featuring a cast of vixen she-penguins. Hopefully it will be picked up by broadcasters and we will produce it.

But do you have the right to bare underwear—or sheets, shirts, socks, and the rest of your laundry—on an outdoor clothesline on your private property?

Perhaps not, if you’re one of tens of millions of Americans who live in houses and condos governed by local homeowners associations, many of which ban outdoor clotheslines for aesthetic reasons.

There’s more on the line than laundry, which the associations contend is responsible for lower property values.

“When realtors show a home, as a buyer do you want to see clothes hanging in the backyard of the neighboring home?” asks a supporter of the ban. “Or if clotheslines are allowed, what if a homeowner chooses to leave the same clothes hanging for weeks on end?”

But where some see an eyesore flapping in the breeze, others see an answer blowing in the wind. According to the Right to Dry movement, clothes dryers account for five to ten per cent of residential electricity use, second only to refrigerators. Line drying allows environmentally responsible consumers to reduce their energy use and save money.

“Everybody has to do their laundry,” says a proponent of the movement. “The clothesline is beautiful, gorgeous, sentimental and nostalgic for many.”

And the clothesline has become the focus of protective legislation. Florida, Utah, and Colorado have enacted laws upholding their citizens’ right to dry. Seven other states are considering similar safeguards.

That the clothesline would be hung out to dry as an unsightly endangered species has left many people scratching their heads and putting their thoughts on the line. “We see clothes, including underwear, in stores all the time, and no one I heard was offended,” said one. “What’s the worst that can happen hanging laundry?” asked another. “Heaven forbid you might actually have to talk to a neighbor hanging theirs.” And this: “I believe that we all have to take some responsibility in ‘cutting back’ and ‘going green.’ It just seems that a ban on clotheslines is a step backward and shows irresponsibility on the part of the homeowner’s associations.”

Tell us what you think: Should outdoor clotheslines be banned as irresponsible, view-ruining relics of the past? Should you show greater responsibility to a homeowner’s association or to what you think is best for your family and the environment? Where do we draw the line—if clotheslines can be banned for aesthetic reasons, what about pink flamingos, holiday decorations, and other personal public displays?

It’s the current mantra of environmental responsibility.

Many consumers have reduced their primary footprint by making changes in their daily lives, like shrinking electricity use, switching to more energy efficient light bulbs at home, and cutting back—or cutting out—driving a car.

Consumers who want to reduce their so-called secondary footprint have to make tougher decisions about products and services beyond their daily control, weighing the whole lifecycle of the things they consume, as well as the environmental practices of the businesses they deal with.

But in many cases, going green costs green—and raises a question about whether consumers should be responsible for paying the price of reducing a business’s carbon hoof marks.

Some small businesses are now asking their customers to pay extra to help them, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a San Francisco engineering firm that tacks a modest surcharge on to every bill to help pay for the company’s own renewable energy credits as a way of reducing its carbon footprint.

So far, no customer has refused to pay the extra fee. “I think they would feel too guilty,” said the CEO.

But the answers were very different when the Journal posed this question to its readers: “Would you mind paying extra to help a business reduce its carbon footprint?”

“Yes, I would mind,” one person wrote. “I do not ask you to pay for my charity work. It is pretty arrogant and self-righteous to ‘slip’ that into the bill.” Another reader was also opposed: “I would not pay something to someone to do something they should morally be doing anyway.” And there was this more business-like response: “Couldn’t they just bill more and not charge a separate fee?

Tell us what you think: Should consumers be financially responsible for helping businesses go green? Where does personal responsibility end and business responsibility begin when it comes to the cost of helping the environment?

That’s the most common response law professor David Cole gets when he calls on disengaged students during class at Georgetown University. The question, Cole says, “is usually asked while the student glances up from the laptop screen that otherwise occupies his or her field of vision.”

The laptop—the favorite in-class tool for college and university students across the country—is coming unplugged.

When used responsibly—for taking notes or quickly accessing research—a laptop provides valuable educational support. But when used irresponsibly—for watching YouTube, surfing the web, emailing, IM-ing, playing games, checking sports scores, and shopping for shoes instead of engaging in class — laptops become the scourge of professors, some of whom are now banning them, especially in law schools.

“I was happy to compete with Minesweeper and solitaire,” said University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog, but not “the entire internet.” Herzog banned all laptops from his classes for a day, and was so “stunned by how much better the class was,” that he has vowed to make the embargo permanent in the fall.

Professor Herzog is not alone in his class action.

At Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, professors have nixed classroom laptops as well. At the University of Chicago Law School, classroom Wi-Fi was recently cut in response to an “epidemic” of web browsing. And at UCLA School of Law, when the meandering minds of the country’s future lawyers need to be jolted back from cyberspace to the Socratic method, professors can activate a “kill switch” to disable classroom Wi-Fi.

Many students disdain their professors’ attempts at online mind control, saying if classes weren’t so boring, they wouldn’t look for so many distractions. Ann Althouse, a professor from the University of Wisconsin Law School agrees with the students. “The idea that we’re going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” she said. “Especially in law school, I’m on the side of individual responsibility and freedom.”

Tell us what you think: Should students be busted down for booting up in class? Should professors be responsible for making lectures and classes interesting enough to hold students’ attention? Do students have a responsibility to pay attention?

When a student or professor uses brain enhancement drugs, he or she is likely to be called smart and focused.

Is chemically boosting your brain for an unfair advantage over competitors the same as chemically boosting your body for an edge to beat others? That’s the question at the center of a new debate about drugs and cheating.

Originally prescribed for people with medical conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, brain enhancement drugs such as Ritalin and Provigil are increasingly being used by students preparing for a test and academics and other professionals gearing up for that big presentation.

Users of the drugs say they are able to focus more intensely, work faster, and be more creative.

So what’s the matter with grey matter boosting? Plenty, say critics of the practice. “The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods,” says biotech author Francis Fukuyama, cautioning that the increasing use of brain-boosting drugs could unfairly create a new category of haves and have-nots. He and other critics question whether the continued use of the drugs for the purpose of mental advantage will change the connection between human struggle and human character-building.

Others see less profound implications, as well as a distinction between brain doping and body doping. “I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading,” says neuro-psychologist Martha Farah, “because in sports it’s all about competition…who’s the best runner or home run hitter.” For students or academics, Dr. Farah says, “there is an element of competition, but it’s secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you’ve got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus.”

Doctors note that the drugs can be addictive and can produce side effects including restlessness and irritability.

But a participant in a radio talk show questioned all the hubbub “Who hasn’t had coffee or cola before an exam or important meeting? The main issue should be whether the substance is safe. If people can do a better job by eating a good breakfast or taking a drug, who should complain?”

Tell us what you think: Should chemical brain doping be considered unethical, just as body doping is? Is it fair for some students to gain an advantage over others by taking brain-boosters before a test like the SAT?

Dogs on downers.

Pets on Prozac.

Fido has a new medicine chest. And though it’s still stocked with worm and flea treatments, it increasingly includes medications that were originally developed for humans. On the front shelf: behavior modification and “lifestyle” drugs, now for pets.

Is your dog overweight? The first canine obesity drug is available to help him slim down. Is your dog lonely? “Reconcile” was developed to help man’s best friend deal with separation anxiety when man has to leave his best friend alone all day. The drug works like Prozac, though the doggie version is chewable and tastes like beef. Is your pooch having “senior moments?” There’s a pill for that too—the same medication used to treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases in humans.

Are pets mimicking their owners’ behavioral and lifestyle problems?

“All of the behavioral issues that we have created in ourselves, we are now creating in our pets,” says Dr. Nicholas Dodman, founder of the Tufts University Animal Behavior Clinic, “because they live in the same unhealthy environments that we do.”

According to a New York Times article titled “Pill-Popping Pets,” Dr. Dodman’s theory suggests that humans and their pets share similar causes for what ails them. “Whether cubicle or cage-bound, we get too little exercise; we don’t hunt, run or play enough to produce naturally mood-elevating neurochemicals.”

And the new prescription treatments, The Times says, are sometimes more for the convenience of owners than they are for the health of the pets.

Modern owners are increasingly trying to “sterilize” pet ownership, says veterinarian and animal behavior specialist Ian Dunbar. “What people want is a pet that is on par with a TiVo, that its activity, play and affection are on demand,” Dr. Dunbar says. “Then, when they’re done, they want to turn it off.”

“In the wild, the dog’s major activity is looking for food,” Dr. Dunbar explains. “What most owners do is they feed the dog in the bowl, and within two minutes you’ve stolen his raison d’etre. So now the dog is looking for activity, which we label ‘trouble’ and diagnose as all sorts of things like compulsion and separation anxiety.”

Tell us what you think: Are we responsible for making our pets fat…driving them to despair…making them lose their minds? Could it be that when we look at our pets, we see a bit too much of ourselves?

But a recent public admission from former tennis great Andrea Jaeger was startling for very different reasons. Jaeger said she purposely allowed Martina Navratilova to beat her in the 1983 Wimbledon final. And her rationale for doing so involved an ethical decision virtually unheard of in the competitive arena of pro sports.

“I went on the court in complete peace,” said Jaeger, “knowing that giving the match away was the right thing to do.”

Jaeger was 18 at the time, and unbeknownst to many people, she harbored a strong dislike for the ruthlessness of pro tennis. She also had a deep devotion to God and an overwhelming desire to help kids in need. She prayed secretly and played competitively. “I really didn’t want to be world number one,” she said, “but who do you have that conversation with when you’re young and number two in the world? It’s not something people want to hear.”

The day before the Wimbledon match, Jaeger had a fight with her father/manager over—among other things—a bag of potato chips she ate. She ran to the apartment next door to call a taxi to escape the paternal wrath. The apartment was occupied by Navratilova, whose trainer let the distraught Jaeger in. Navratilova looked at Jaeger, who was visibly upset, then turned away without saying a word or offering help.

The indifference hurt Jaeger. But she also believed she had unfairly jeopardized Navratilova’s concentration in preparation for the match. “I had to make it right,” Jaeger said, not wanting her off-court actions to trigger an opponent’s loss.

So Jaeger decided that intentionally losing the match to Navratilova was the right thing to do. “During the match, I missed balls on purpose,” Jaeger said. “I hit right to Martina.” Winning at Wimbledon, she said, “meant more to Martina anyway.”

Two years later, she suffered a career-ending shoulder injury.

Today, Andrea Jaeger is no longer a tennis player. She is Sister Andrea, a Dominican nun in the Episcopal Church. Her days are dedicated to helping kids suffering from cancer, neglect, and poverty through the Little Star Foundation, a charity she founded with her tennis winnings.

“I’ve always been called to help those in need,” she said. “It’s just been in my soul since I was a child. I think that’s why I struggled so much on the tennis circuit, because you have to be selfish to succeed in an individual sport.”

Tell us what you think: Is there a place for extreme ethics in the extreme world of pro sports? Is deliberately losing the right thing to do? Instead of throwing the match, do you think Andrea Jaeger should have dropped out and told the world why?

When role models fall in the field of sports, what do you tell the kids?

The story of Josh Hamilton, says a chorus of sports reporters. “Maybe you’ve heard it before,” wrote one. “Some stories are worth hearing again.”

Hamilton is the comeback story of the year, a baseball center fielder for the Texas Rangers who hit an amazing 28 home runs in the first round of the recent Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. But more amazing is the fact that Hamilton had previously been banned from baseball because he was addicted to crack cocaine.

For three years, Hamilton fed his habit and starved his career. Then one day he showed up at his grandmother’s door and experienced the kind of epiphany that fans love. “He saw something in her eyes that made him choose life over drugs and alcohol,” said a reporter. “Baseball is a game of second chances.” And eight attempts at rehab, in Hamilton’s case.

But it was Hamilton’s love of baseball that ultimately saved him, the crack of a bat stronger than crack cocaine. “Addiction is such a big thing,” Hamilton said. “Any time somebody comes up and tells me that my story has inspired them, it lets me know that’s what it’s about.”

On the night of the 28 homers, four teenagers chosen by a national children’s charity happily retrieved the balls that didn’t sail out of the park. “I think the highlight for everyone was cheering on Josh Hamilton,” said a representative of the charity, who noted that the kids were inspired by the power hitter because he overcame adversity.

Tell us what you think: Does every fallen sports hero deserve a second chance? Who does? Who doesn’t?

But does a responsible mom also pack a gun?

The question was recently raised on the website BabyCenter, which chronicles all things motherhood, from conception to inconceivably picky eaters and back-talking three year olds.

On the site, a mom blogger described the terrifying experience of a mother who was attacked at home in a safe neighborhood by a rapist with a gun. The woman fought, the attacker fled, and the blogger posed a question: “Do you think that every mother should own a gun?”

The point-blank debate about point-blank defense revealed that some moms are packing heat.

“I carry a Keltec 380 (small pistol) on my hip everyday,” revealed a mother of a one year old and a two year old. “I feel comfortable knowing that I will be able to defend my kids and I if we are in a life-threatening situation.”

Another mother—eight months pregnant and with a toddler—wrote that her husband works the night shift, and “our gun is the only way I could defend myself and my children should someone intend to do us harm.”

And there was this disclosure from a police officer mom: “I keep a loaded 9mm in my Coach diaper bag.”

Suddenly, it seems, mothers with guns are everywhere—movie star moms included. Recent news reports quote actress Angelina Jolie as saying she keeps a gun at home for security, and that “if anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I’ve no problem shooting them.”

Tell us what you think: Should a mother’s responsibility to protect her children include having a gun?

Especially in summer.

‘Tis the season for cranking up the air conditioning, as shops and stores across the country blast arctic air out their front doors, wide open, non stop.

But if you embrace the door-busting chill, are you a cool customer or an unwitting accomplice to an irresponsible environmental crime?

“It’s about as wasteful an energy practice as one can imagine,” says an environmental attorney about running ACs full throttle with exterior doors open. “It’s like leaving the gasoline station pumps gushing fuel whether the vehicles are filling up or not.”

In New York City, where the mega-consumption of electricity in hot weather can lead to blackouts, brownouts, and assorted other meltdowns, some citizens are aghast at doors agape, with cold air “pouring wastefully, senselessly—outrageously—onto the sidewalk”, as one newspaper columnist described it.

Consumers who confront store clerks about squandering energy are invariably dismissed with the most frigid of responses: “It’s company policy.” A city councilwoman introduced legislation to stop the practice, saying businesses won’t do the right thing unless the law forces them. Her proposal includes fines of $200 for each open door or window. But the initiative lacks the support of the mayor, who believes it’s not the city’s responsibility to force cold change.

That has left residents who see red to act green on their own, going to offending establishments and closing the doors. The super-heated debate could lead to a slippery slope, cautions a University of Toronto psychologist. People waste energy in all sorts of ways, he said. “Should there be a law against leaving the lights on unnecessarily?”

Tell us what you think: Should wasting energy be illegal? If it’s not cool to crank out cold air, who’s responsible for shutting the door?

“I was 14 the first time I got falling down drunk”, Time Magazine reporter John Cloud admits in a recent article examining underage drinking. Back then, Cloud says, such antics were viewed as a “right of passage.” Today, however, an increase in the number of young hard-core drinkers has heightened concern. So is it time for parents to take a different approach toward kids and alcohol?

“At first it sounds a little nutty,” Cloud says, “but you might consider drinking with your kids.”

Drinking with your kids at home, Cloud writes—which he cautions is not the same as buying them alcohol for a party—is “a good way to teach responsible drinking behavior.”

The idea is to present alcohol not as an “alluring risk,” but as part of ordinary family life.

Addiction expert and psychologist Stanton Peele says he started giving his daughter “a few sips” of alcohol as a child at family meals. The key, Peele says, is not to make “a big deal about it.” When the girl turned 16, she was allowed to have a full glass of whatever the adults were drinking. “A second glass probably doesn’t make sense,” Peele explained, “but making hard-and-fast rules creates the sense that alcohol is some magical potion.”

But for many families, “demystifying” alcohol by consuming it with their teenagers may produce a parenting hang-over. And there is additional concern that alcohol could hurt teens’ developing brains.

Tell us what you think: Can parents teach responsibility by drinking with their kids?

Chase, Siearra, Jenna, and Carlos are all students. And all wise beyond their years. Of various ages and disparate backgrounds, these kids nevertheless share a common denominator: each has taken on a measure of personal responsibility. Some small, some big.

No one demanded their actions. No one told them how to proceed. They simply saw a challenge and stepped up to the plate. With matter-of-fact eloquence, the four students deliver a profound lesson for the rest of us: There is no age requirement for doing the right thing.

Many people who face adversity see an insurmountable dead-end. These kids saw a garden and made responsibility grow.

Growing Up was created by Geoffrey O’Connor, Paul Speaker & Ken Yagoda.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Yes, say three men in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The men—all city-employed water department workers—were on the job when they discovered an abandoned safe at the side of a road. The safe had been stolen by robbers who broke through the wall of a local bank during a winter ice storm.

Inside was $11,000, credit cards, several bags of blank traveler’s checks, some presumably valuable watches, and bank records.

The three workers notified authorities of their find, and the stolen safe was returned to the bank.

But the story didn’t end there. Two of the three workers told the local newspaper they felt they hadn’t been properly thanked—by the city or the bank—and suggested that virtue might not be its own reward.

“We did the right thing,” said the 62-year-old supervisor of the group. “No one even knew that we were out there, and we (still) kept the money secure.”

Another of the men said, “We did the right thing, but are the other people doing the right thing? That’s my question to the bank.”

In response, the bank manager and the mayor offered thanks, but newspaper readers offered criticism. In a letter to the editor, one wondered, “Would they have not done it if they had known they wouldn’t get the proper praise or reward?” Another reader wrote, “They did the right thing. But do we have to be rewarded for doing the right thing?”

Tell us what you think: Should the men have been financially rewarded by the bank? If you found valuable property belonging to a bank or other company, but you knew in advance you wouldn’t be rewarded for its return, would that change the way you dealt with your find?

This is one of the best family movies of the summer, a refreshingly wholesome story with a winning heroine, an absorbing story, and a touching conclusion. The details of the era, including the harsh financial circumstances, are vivid but gently conveyed. And like all good stories, it creates an excellent opportunity for family conversation about the factors to consider in making responsible choices. Some of the questions families might want to consider are:

Who in the movie best demonstrated responsibility? Which characters did the most to help others?

Why were some of the characters in the movie ashamed of being poor? Why were others not ashamed?

Will made an unusual choice to help Countee. Do you think it was the right one?

Why did Miss Bond change her mind?

Why did Kit trust Will? Why did she trust Miss Bond?

Kit has to do some things that are very hard for her. Which were less hard than she expected and what did she learn from them?

If you were going to write a story about your experiences for a newspaper, what would it be about and why?

For more reviews from Movie Mom, visit her blog.

But is there also an age when people are no longer expected to be responsible?

How about 73? That’s the age a California widower named Robert Pyle was when he made a series of decisions that triggered a financial freefall, resulting in the loss of his $650,000 home and $500,000 life savings.

Now 81, Mr. Pyle is suing the financial institutions and various people he trusted with his money, claiming he should be compensated because he is too old to bear full responsibility for his actions.

“I still make pretty good decisions about most things,” said Mr. Pyle, a retired aerospace engineer. “But for others, I guess I’m not as sharp as I was before, and people take advantage of that.”

Mr. Pyle is part of a growing trend of older Americans filing lawsuits against people and companies they say defrauded them of precious financial resources. Their argument is the same: because they are older they should not be held responsible.

According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, protecting senior citizens from financial victimization—even when it’s caused by their own mistakes—is now critical. “If we don’t solve this,” said a spokeswoman, “millions of older people will suddenly be reliant on their families or the government.”

After Mr. Pyle’s loss, he was forced to move into a small room in his stepdaughter’s house. “I guess I’m just kind of waiting for the end,” he said.

But allowing people to void contracts, get refunds, and abdicate responsibility simply because of advanced age is unfair, critics insist. One of the defendants in Mr. Pyle’s lawsuit says “There is no business on earth that can function if its customers can say, ‘I’m tired of abiding by this contract, so I want out because I’m old.’”

Tell us what you think: Is there an age when we should no longer be held responsible for our actions? Should elderly people be exempt from responsibility if they make bad financial decisions?

“I don’t have fertility problems,” she wrote, “but I would like IVF because it would be better for my career and lifestyle if I could give birth to multiples rather than prolong my family planning.” The woman then posed this question: “Is it immoral to want fertility treatments to become pregnant with more than one baby?”

That was in 2003, and the responses have continued since, some barbed, all blunt.

“Do you realize how insane and ridiculous you sound?”
“You are better off with a goldfish that doesn’t require your time.”
“Not only are you talking about something immoral, but something that’s just wrong!”

Many women wrote to tell their own stories of the difficulty and danger involved in multiple births, aghast at what they saw as a selfish quest for a “designer” family. “Putting your babies’ lives at risk for the sake of convenience is incredibly irresponsible,” one stated. A mother of triplets answered the original question head-on: “It’s not immoral to try fertility treatments when they’re unnecessary, but it is unethical.”

Others were less judgmental, like this mother who was pregnant with twins as she responded. “You have to do what’s right for you. If you want more than one child, then it’s your decision, no one else’s.” And another woman attempted to create room for discussion. “There are more of us out there that have had that same thought,” she wrote, “although some may not admit it.”

Tell us what you think: Is having unnecessary fertility treatments for career and lifestyle reasons immoral…irresponsible…acceptable?

It’s a debate that continues as the trend for not vaccinating children increases.

Parents who believe that vaccinations are linked to autism, or who object for religious or other reasons, balk at government regulations that bar their unvaccinated children from attending school if they don’t have the required shots. One anti-vaccination group calls forced vaccination “a violation of human rights.”

But those on the opposite side of the argument say not vaccinating violates the rights of others. According to officials at the Centers for Disease Control, “The decision not to vaccinate is a decision for your child but also a decision for society.” They say that unlike other medical issues where refusing treatment affects only the patient, refusing vaccinations puts others at risk as well, including newborns and people with suppressed immune systems.

Parents of unimmunized children rely on the vast majority of kids who do get their shots, figuring there’s little polio, measles, chicken pox or other pathogens to be found among so many protected kids. But with recent measles outbreaks in four states, that protection may not be enough. “We are seeing outbreaks that look different, concentrated among intentionally unimmunized people,” says an immunization official. “I hope they’re not the beginning of a worse trend.”

Tell us what you think: When it comes to vaccinations, do parents have a responsibility beyond their own children?

It wasn’t the first time Gloucester made international headlines. The tragic 1991 loss at sea of a Gloucester fishing boat and its crew prompted the book and the movie “The Perfect Storm.”

Now a tidal wave of finger-pointing about who or what was responsible for so many pregnancies tipped toward a “perfect storm” of outside influences.

Some blamed Gloucester’s depressed local economy and the demise of its once-thriving fishing industry. Others indicted so-called broken families and directionless youth. Gloucester High, it was suggested, had brought the predicament on itself, by providing easily accessible on-campus day care for the babies of student mothers. And Hollywood shouldered its share of responsibility—the movie “Juno” was blamed for glamorizing unwed teen motherhood, and the media’s obsession with pregnant celebs having babies as “accessories” was called out as well.

But soon cracks began to appear in the cultural blame game. A reproductive specialist noted that the pregnancy trend at Gloucester High began before “Juno” hit the theaters. Gloucester’s mayor said the pregnancy rate was a statistical “blip” and rued the lack of health education funding. And the School Superintendent stated that he’d never heard the term “pact” used by the students, only by the media.

After days of silence, one of the girls finally appeared on national television. 17-year-old Lindsey Oliver denied the existence of a pact. “There was a group of girls already pregnant that decided they were going to help each other to finish school and raise their kids together,” she said. “I think it was just a coincidence.”

Tell us what you think: Are the Gloucester teen pregnancies the result of a “perfect storm” of outside influences, or does responsibility lie elsewhere?

Spying, and proud of it, say parental proponents of stealth, who insist that protecting their children has no limits. “If I’m responsible for their actions, then I should be able to snoop,” says a mother in Tennessee. A Texas mom is point-blank: “I have made it perfectly clear there is no privacy in my house.”

And no difficulty violating it. Just a single piece of spy ware makes subterfuge simple, allowing parents to view everything their kid does online, including both sides of IM conversations. Parents who don’t like what they see can secretly shut down the kid’s computer by remote, then blame it on a mysterious network problem.

“I can see why some people worry that parents will become too controlling,” says a Texas father of five, “but I’ve found that technology actually lets you give kids more freedom.” By controlling what his kids do and see, he says, he hopes to “eliminate” the possibility that they’ll make bad decisions that could bring lasting harm.

Care or control? Insight or intrusion? The debate continues, especially in the increasingly popular grade-tracking programs that allow parents almost hourly access to their child’s progress in school, with the cooperation of teachers. Depending on the software, parents can check test and homework grades, disciplinary notices, attendance, missed assignments, and their child’s daily class ranking, on command.

A Georgia mother who used to incessantly check her child’s school progress by logging on each day at 6AM, has re-thought her dependence on electronically tracking every aspect of her daughter’s daily life. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”

Tell us what you think: Should parents use technology to monitor their kids? Is it parenting, spying, responsible, or something else?

That was the mind-boggling moral journey undertaken by a writer named David Holthouse, who, along the way, was forced to define and redefine his views of personal responsibility.

At age 7, Holthouse was sexually assaulted by a high school football player. He wrote about the attack in his diary but told no one—not even his parents, who were close friends of the assailant’s parents.

For 25 years, Holthouse kept the awful secret. Then he learned that his attacker had moved to the Denver area, the same place Holthouse—by then a journalist—had moved to work for a local newspaper.

First he fixated on the memory.

Then he fixated on murder.

“I arrived at a point in my mind,” Holthouse said, “where it seemed to me that murder was entirely rational, justifiable and even a morally responsible course of action.”

With a gun, a silencer, and a plan, Holthouse staked out the man’s house and followed him to and from work. But before he could lure him to an out-of-the-way baseball field—“a good place for a killing”—his mother inadvertently foiled the plot. She happened upon the old diary, read about the assault, and informed the assailant’s parents.

So the murder Holthouse planned became the murder he wrote. In a remarkable newspaper article, he divulged the chilling details of his intent to kill, but not his would-be victim’s name. And he arranged a different kind of meeting with his attacker. Instead of shooting the man—who apologized—David Holthouse forgave him, choosing redemption over revenge.

His story has become an oft-sited primer about the power of forgiveness, but some readers say Holthouse did the wrong thing by not naming his assailant, saying that statistically the man is likely to abuse other children. “The victim is WRONG! He should have revealed the rapist’s name,” wrote one critic. “He condemned untold others to being victims of sexual crimes!”

Tell us what you think: Should David Holthouse have responded differently? Would it have been more responsible to reveal his abuser’s name?

It started in a spin class, when a 49-year-old Wall Street investment partner named Stuart Sugarman began yelling and grunting comments like “You go, girl!” and “Good burn!” as he cycled.

Another participant in the class—45-year-old stockbroker Christopher Carter—was offended by the loud outbursts. He twice asked gym instructors to silence Mr. Sugarman, who continued to shout his self-encouragements.

Mr. Carter exchanged words with Mr. Sugarman, whose retort, “Make me” struck Mr. Carter as a call to arms—and biceps, triceps, pectorals, and deltoids. He grabbed Mr. Sugarman’s handlebars, tipped the bike backwards, and sent the grunter into a wall.

Mr. Sugarman was hospitalized for two weeks with neck and back pain. Mr. Carter was charged with assault.

But while the injured Mr. Sugarman awaited his day in court, the court of public opinion issued a surprising verdict in favor of Mr. Carter. “Don’t know Chris Carter, but can we give him a medal?” was typical of the comments left on a blog and a newspaper website.

Another backer of the alleged assault-er over the assault-ee sized up the situation as “a small part of a much larger issue,” explaining his theory in a comment to The New York Times: “Many Americans have an increasing sense of entitlement. That is, what they want to do is more important than anyone else.”

A Times columnist picked up on the “outsize sense of entitlement,” calling it a phenomenon that helps explain “ballpark loudmouths” who don’t care who their drunken swearing offends, people who answer their cellphones in movie theaters, and “dog walkers who block sidewalks with their long-stretched leashes.”

Did a jury agree? Mr. Carter was found not guilty of assault after jurors expressed reasonable doubt that he had caused Mr. Sugarman’s neck and back trouble. One juror made a point of commenting on Mr. Sugarman’s gym etiquette: “I was like, why must he be obnoxious and disrespectful to the others?”

Tell us what you think: Was justice served? What’s the responsible way to deal with annoying behavior at the gym, the ballpark, the movie theater, or any other public place?

A lopsided obligation.

A lonely and thankless job.

In the wonderfully animated short film Lighthouse, a grumpy lighthouse keeper makes sure that a safe little seaside town stays that way, by dutifully maintaining the beacon that shines above it.

But as the faithful light makes its endless orbits, the cantankerous keeper’s grunts and grimaces pose a wordless question. Why must he alone shoulder the titanic task of keeping ships and citizens free from disaster, while the townspeople play and party, oblivious to his singular responsibility?

Then the light goes out.

Hope is extinguished.

And disaster threatens, full-speed ahead.

The subsequent events—perilous and terrifying, surprising and uplifting—test the depths of the keeper’s abilities.

Until he finally sees the light.

Watch Lighthouse and see how responsibility shines and soars when the burden is shared.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Writing in the Washington Post about her desire to have a “sprawling” family like the one she grew up in—“with seven brothers, real and step”—Paul mused about the high cost of raising a child these days: $204,060 according to a new federal estimate.

In many expensive American cities and suburbs, Paul noted, a third child has become “an ostentatious display of good fortune,” on behalf of the decreasing number of parents who can afford to feed, clothe, and educate the “luxury good” known as baby number three.

But while Paul considered the economic impact of having a third child, some irate readers excoriated her about what they say is the environmental impact of a bigger family.

“The oceans are dying, the oil is almost gone,” wrote one reader. “Large families are criminally irresponsible in such a desperate time.”

“More than two kids per couple means you are not just replacing yourself on the planet,” wrote another. “You are claiming more of the Earth’s resources for your family simply because it will be ‘fun.’”

Selfish…stupid…killing the planet with your overproduction of children. The baby shower of criticism stunned Paul, who wondered in a follow-up article why she—who viewed herself as a responsible mother who recycled, conserved water, and didn’t even have a car—was being accused of “destroying” another mother: Earth. “Golly,” Paul wrote. “I’m not even pregnant yet.”

“The days of big families should be over,” responded a critic. “Get a dog from an animal shelter instead.”

Tell us what you think: Do you believe that having a third child brings the pitter-patter of little feet, or the destructive carbon footprint of the future? When it comes to having more children, is three an irresponsible crowd?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are needed to describe the video of a man being struck by a hit-and-run driver and left to bleed unaided in the road, while numerous motorists and pedestrians casually maneuver around him and continue on their way?

Two, according to the blaring newspaper headline in Hartford, Connecticut, where the horrific incident took place: “SO INHUMANE”

At 5:45 on a recent Friday evening in plenty of remaining daylight, 78-year-old Angel Torres was crossing a street in a working-class Hartford neighborhood when he was struck by one of two cars driving recklessly across the center line.

The impact—caught on a streetlight surveillance camera—flipped Torres into the air, then sent him crashing to the pavement. As Torres lay in the road bloodied and paralyzed, the surveillance tape shows approximately nine motorists slowing to have a look at him, then driving away.

Other people are seen on the tape staring from the sidewalk or venturing into the street. Though it was later reported that several witnesses called 911, none of the gawkers halted traffic or aided the severely hurt Torres. Approximately a minute and a half after the impact, a police car arrived. Torres was taken to a hospital in critical condition, paralyzed from the neck down.

“We no longer have a moral compass,” said Hartford’s shocked and angry police chief, after releasing the surveillance tape in hopes of identifying the hit-and-run driver. But the tape—capturing the inaction of so many bystanders—also caught the attention of outraged Americans, who swamped blogs, message boards, radio shows and more, wrestling with the same inconceivable question: Why didn’t anyone give more help to Angel Torres?

Tell us what you think: Is there any acceptable reason not to have helped Angel Torres, or anyone else in a similar situation? Do you think the people seen on the tape have been misunderstood? What would you have done?

But when teenaged Brittney didn’t hit the books hard enough to pass the test, the judge threw the book at Brian Gegner, ordering the father jailed because the daughter failed.

Should a father be responsible when his 18 year-old daughter can’t do the math?

Yes, said the judge, who did the math like this: 6 months in jail for Brian Gegner for contributing to the unruliness of a minor by not following the court order to make Brittney get her GED.

Brittney—who lives with her mother, her one year-old daughter, and her boyfriend—started skipping school around fifth or sixth grade. It’s “ridiculously wrong” she said of her father to be jailed because of her failings.

Her mother volunteered to be locked up instead, noting that Brittney is almost 19. “She’s an adult now,” said Shana Roach, “and it’s not right to rip an innocent man from his home.”

But the judge stood firm, saying that the court retained jurisdiction because Brittney was a juvenile when the truancy case began.

Outraged child and family advocates urged supporters to call the judge and the governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner’s release from jail. Under the judge’s logic, they argued, the mothers and fathers of more than a million high school dropouts across America should all be jailed as well.

Within a week, the judge relented and released Brian Gegner on the condition that Brittney take classes to complete her GED by the next scheduled court date in July 2008. And the judge issued an ominous warning: if Brittney doesn’t attend classes four days a week, he’ll send her father back to jail.

Brittney’s step-mother is worried that jail time will cause Brian Gegner to lose his job. They tried to keep Brittney in school, she said, but “You’d take her to school and she’d go out the other door.”

Tell us what you think: What are the limits of a parent’s responsibility in educating a child? Does the lesson of jailing a parent get an A or an F?

In a bar?
With a nanny?
Starting a new life with someone else?

Your recent comments here on other posts show there’s lots of spirited debate about responsibility when it comes to how and where we care for our kids.

So, do babies belong at the office every day?

Yes, say employers at more than 80 companies across the U.S., where parents are allowed and encouraged to bring their babies to work on a daily basis—keeping, feeding, and caring for them right at their desks.

Bosses who back the controversial new trend say it helps them retain vital employees who might otherwise not return after the birth of a baby.

After four employees at an Austin advertising firm got pregnant at the same time, the company’s president feared they wouldn’t come back. So she turned the workplace into nirvana for new parents. Baby mamas—and daddies—are offered private offices in which to work while tending fulltime to their infants, who are welcome to clock in every day until about nine months, when they usually start crawling. Babies regularly attend meetings and are frequently fed on the conference table.

The company says having babies on board is good for morale.

Not so for everyone, critics counter. They say babies at the office bring increased distraction and decreased productivity for both co-workers and parents, who can’t possibly focus fully on the job. And those without children, a job recruiter notes, “often come to resent the perception of coddled working parents.”

Tell us what you think: They say it takes a village to raise a child, but should it take an office, too? Do babies and work make a responsible mix?

But a happy ending was not what Grammy-nominated violinist Philippe Quint envisioned when he saw a taxi pull away from his New York City apartment with a four million dollar Stradivarius violin on loan to him still inside.

Quint was returning home from Dallas, where he had performed with the irreplaceable 285 year old instrument. After unloading his luggage from the cab, Quint turned to retrieve the Stradivarius, but the sonorous strings were replaced by the onerous site of the taxi’s retreating tail lights.

Stradivarius precarious.

“I almost fainted,” Quint said.

Unable to get the cab’s license number, the panicked 34-year-old musician called the police and the taxi commission before heading back toward the Newark Airport—where his plane had landed and his ride began—to view taxi mug shots with authorities.

New York has an impressive history of taxi drivers responsibly returning various Stradivarius and other expensive strings inadvertently left in their vehicles, including a $4 million cello, and later, a $2.5 million cello belonging to the virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma.

In this case, the taxi was a minivan, a clue that narrowed the search to just eight possible cabs. The next day, the driver was identified and contacted. Mohammed Khalil immediately looked inside his taxi, which had been parked overnight on a Newark street. A man of modest means, it didn’t occur to Mr. Khalil to do something nefarious with the four million dollar Stradivarius he found safe and sound inside.

Instead, he rushed to do the right thing, reuniting the violin with the violinist, who fell to his knees and wept, then emptied his wallet and handed the contents—$100—to Mr. Khalil.

But the real reward wafted over the taxi holding area at Newark Airport two weeks later, when a grateful Philippe Quint gave a special performance of thanks for Mohammed Khalil and 200 of his fellow drivers, as taxis idled and airplanes taxied in accompaniment.

“Anybody out here would have done the same thing,” asserted a modest Mr. Khalil. Moved by the music and the motivation behind it, another audience member noted, “A lost violin brought everyone together.”

Tell us your story: Have you ever lost something of great value and then gotten it back through the kindness of a stranger? Have you ever been the stranger who returned someone’s irreplaceable item?

A North Carolina lawyer named Staples Hughes wrestled with that question for 22 years, while a man he believes is innocent of a double murder continued to serve two life sentences in prison.

“I don’t know whether ethical behavior is always the same as being a moral hero,” Hughes said. “Maybe if I was some kind of moral hero, I would have told.”

What Hughes didn’t tell is that in the 1980’s, a client of his confided that he alone had committed a double murder for which that other man was serving the two life sentences. But Hughes could not reveal the confession because he was bound to secrecy by attorney-client privilege, a legal rule that prevents an attorney from disclosing any confidential information obtained from a client.

So for 22 years, Hughes kept the information to himself, while the man he believed to be innocent—Lee Wayne Hunt—remained in prison.

Then Hughes’ client died, and with him, Hughes reasoned, the confines of attorney-client privilege.

“It seemed to me at that point ethically permissible and morally imperative that I spill the beans,” Hughes explained.

Appearing before a judge, Hughes finally revealed his secret, explaining that his client was dead. “My disclosure can’t hurt him,” Hughes told the court, “And I have to weigh that disclosure against the continuing harm” to Lee Wayne Hunt.

Wrong, said the judge, who refused to consider Hughes’ new testimony and then reported him to the state bar for disciplinary action, saying he had violated attorney-client privilege, even though the client was dead.

Experts in legal ethics echoed the judge’s decision, saying that attorney-client privilege is so sacred it remains in effect even after a client’s death, and can only be broken to stop an execution—not to free an innocent man from life behind bars.

The North Carolina state bar recently dismissed the judge’s complaint against Hughes, but Lee Wayne Hunt remains in prison.

“I go home, have a glass of wine, work in the yard,” Hughes said. “And there’s a guy sitting in a prison camp two counties away, and my feeling is he’s going to be there for the rest of his life.”

Tell us what you think: Do you agree that a dead man’s confidence should outweigh a potentially innocent man’s chance for freedom? What would you do if the law said doing the right thing was actually the wrong thing?

The one with the waggley tail may seem like a bargain these days compared to the dog with the $3,000 pacemaker. Or the cat with the $8,000 kidney transplant. Or the pet chicken undergoing radiation therapy after cancer surgery.

Medical care for pets now rivals medical care for humans, with veterinary oncologists, neurologists, cardiologists and other specialists providing high tech, big-bucks treatment for Fido and Fluffy.

But when cats have chemo and dogs have dialysis, their owners have something too: unexpected ethical issues triggered by enormous medical bills.

“Is the 15-year-old tabby worth $12,000 in dialysis?” asks a newspaper story with the nagging headline: Do some pet owners go a little too far?

“I admit sometimes questioning the reality of spending $11,000 on my cat when there are greater human needs,” said a California college professor, who readily paid for feline chemotherapy and pancreatitis treatment.

U.S. pet owners will spend more than $24 billion this year on pet medical care, an amount greater than the gross domestic product of more than half of the world’s countries.

But when man’s best friend is a integral member of the family, the question of whether it’s appropriate to spend top-dollar for animal medical care is often more emotional than financial. With the unconditional love, friendship, and support of a beloved companion at stake, many pet owners feel they don’t have the option of not providing—and paying for—expensive medical care.

It’s not a simple issue, said one veterinarian. When you hear of a medical bill of $14,000 for a dog, he explained, people ask, “Should you not just buy a new dog and give the money to charity? That, I have to say, is a non-starter of an argument. You then have to ask all sorts of questions about how people spend their money—should they spend it on big cars?”

Tell us what you think: When it comes to expensive veterinary medical care, is it more responsible to pay for a pet or perhaps give the money to charity instead?

We all tell white lies, but when we do, are we being irresponsible?

And when we tell white lies as parents—I’ll leave work early for your soccer game—are we harming our kids?

“Don’t feel bad,” says psychologist Alan Hilfer. “We all tend to lie to our children on a regular basis.” Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Those kinds of little white lies, which stoke kids’ imaginations and make for happy memories, are apparently pretty benign.

In fact, our ability to tell white lies actually starts when we are young children and our parents and other adults coax us to spare the feelings of others—Tell grandma how much you love the book she sent you.

According to Professor Victoria Talwar at McGill University, not only are junior’s white lies OK, they’re actually a positive developmental milestone that all children need to achieve.

Such “pro-social” lying shows that kids have developed sympathy and empathy, which are important aspects of social communication, says Professor Talwar. Her revealing hidden-camera tests with children show that fibbing is part of normal brain development.

So if lying starts as normal, when are white lies no longer white? Is the current political trend of “misspeaking” something less than lying? Is bluffing OK? White lies have no place on the reality game show Moment of Truth but wouldn’t one be preferable to admitting the truth on national television that you’d prefer to be married to someone other than your spouse?

Tell us what you think: At what point do white lies start to yellow? Can lying ever be responsible? Do we need to go cold turkey on white lies and learn to value the truth?

Gradually, in each circumstance, the anxiety begins to fade, a new normal emerges, and life moves along.

But what if the stakes were higher, and being the new kid also meant carrying a weighty burden of responsibility? That’s the challenge facing Joseph, the school-boy character at the center of New Boy.

After witnessing the brutality of soldiers against his father in Africa, Joseph is relocated to safety in Ireland, but he soon finds himself the unexpected victim of another kind of brutality: bullying at school.

Straddling two worlds, this new boy must struggle to fit in without giving in. And with the memory of his father ever-present, Joseph must learn to stand up for himself while acting responsibly—just as his father would have wanted.

Take a step back and a step forward with New Boy and see how the expected becomes the unexpected, with the playground yielding common ground between old and new.

New Boy was directed by Steph Green and was produced by the Irish Film Board and Zanzibar Films. New Boy is based on the short story of the same name by the acclaimed author Roddy Doyle.

The film has won numerous awards, including Best Irish Short at the Foyle Film Festival 2007, Best Short Film at the prestigious Irish Film and Television Academy Awards 2008 and a Special Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival amongst other wins. It is being shown at film festivals throughout Europe and the US.

Parents and/or teachers may want to view the film to determine its appropriateness for children or students.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

When two children are in a cage to fight each other, it’s part of the fastest growing sport in America: “ultimate fighting.”

Also known as cage fighting or mixed martial arts, ultimate fighting is a no-holds-barred combo of wrestling, boxing, and martial arts that is increasingly popular, often bloody, and usually staged in a cage.

Now, in the sport’s latest spin-off, kids as young as six are brawling in cages, using kicks, body blows, and choke holds in a contest of physical submission.

Unlike adults who engage in ultimate fighting, kids wear padding and head gear. And also unlike adults, kids who cage-fight can only do so with the consent and support of their parents, who say the violent fighting is no more dangerous than wrestling and believe it teaches skills like discipline, respect, responsibility, and control.

“It’s wonderful,” said a Missouri mother who encourages her 10 and 14 year old sons in ultimate fighting. “They build such good character and good friendships, and that’s what you need to further yourself in life.”

But while some applaud, others are appalled. “I have parents who kind of scare me sometimes,” said the owner of a Massachusetts gym where kids train in ultimate fighting. “Moms and dads letting their kids choke them just for practice reasons. The days of Dad throwing a ball with little Billy are over.”

Medical experts are also concerned about the pummeling kids endure in cage fighting, saying it can cause significant injuries to the neck and bones.

There are no standardized laws governing children’s cage fighting matches in the U.S. Massachusetts and Missouri allow youth contests, while other states ban the practice or don’t regulate it at all. “I think it borders on child abuse,” said a Missouri legislator who has introduced a bill to ban ultimate fighting for children in that state.

As a spectator sport, ultimate fighting continues to grow, its ever-larger TV audiences turning cage combat into a mega-millions fight club, with an increasingly younger face. “I daydream during school,” said one 14 year old ultimate fighter, “of me being in the cage with everybody watching me on TV.”

Tell us what you think: Is cage fighting for kids a responsible sport? Should anyone be responsible for regulating it—parents?…the government? Do viewers of ultimate fighting play a role in the sports increasing appeal to children?

That’s the responsible balance Lenore Skenazy was seeking when she recently allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the New York City subway alone for the first time.

As a writer for the New York Sun newspaper, Skenazy penned a column about why she fully supported young Izzy’s desire to undertake his solo ride-of-passage. “Over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself,” she wrote. “A child who thinks he can’t do anything on his own eventually can’t.”

Armed with a map, a subway fare card, and emergency cash but no cell phone, Izzy navigated the underground, transferred to a city bus, and arrived home, unescorted and unperturbed.

The kid was exhilarated.
The mother was excoriated.

“Sending your nine-year-old on the subway alone: child abuse?” begged a typical newspaper headline. A radio show caller wondered how Skenazy could give her son “a day of fun that would probably end in death.” And on the Today Show, an introduction to her was point-blank: “Is she an enlightened mom, or a really bad one?”

Bad or good, Skenazy had re-ignited an old debate about determining when a child is old enough to take on the world alone. In a follow-up newspaper column she titled “America’s Worst Mom?” Skenazy wrote, “People kept pulling me aside to say that they had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids.” But there was a dramatic generational twist. “In the next breath they admitted: They would never let their kids do the same.”

All of which prompted America’s worst mom to launch a blog called Free Range Kids, which she hopes will also launch a movement of “sane parenting.” Free Range’s mission statement gives a nod to protection—“We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts”—but also a wink to future solo subway-riding kids: “We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail.”

Tell us what you think: What’s the responsible way to take off the training wheels and let kids go solo into their everyday world?

But did you also bypass a responsibility to work within the justice system?

A Florida newspaper reporter observed just such an extra-judicial bartering session between a victim and a thief at the scene of the crime, which, ironically, was a Tampa courtroom.

The victim—whom the reporter referred to as “Pinstripe Suit”—was 52 and in court for a case involving her son. She briefly stepped out of the courtroom, leaving her keys and cell phone behind. When she returned, the keys and phone were gone, and Pinstripe’s seat had been taken by a 25 year-old woman wearing a red velour sweatshirt.

“Red Velour Sweatshirt”, as the reporter dubbed her, denied having seen Pinstripe’s possessions. So Pinstripe walked to the back of the court room, borrowed a cell phone, dialed her own number, and followed the sound of her buzzing phone—in Sweatshirt’s pocket.

Pinstripe plucked the phone out of Sweatshirt’s pocket. Two sheriff’s deputies watched but did nothing.

According to the reporter, Pinstripe then leaned over Sweatshirt and whispered, “I am going to have you arrested if you don’t give me my keys.”

Sweatshirt replied, “I don’t have them.” Pinstripe then parked herself on the seat next to Sweatshirt and waited. And waited. Until finally Sweatshirt pulled a gold Lexus keychain from her other pocket. She dropped it into Pinstripe’s lap and said, “I have enough problems already.”

Noticing that Sweatshirt had started to cry, Pinstripe hugged her and said, “Everything will be all right. Bless your heart.”

Afterwards, Pinstripe told the reporter she didn’t turn Sweatshirt in because she didn’t want her to go to jail.

Sweatshirt already had one arrest for theft, at age 16. Now at 25, she was in court fighting her second arrest, a child abuse charge.

Tell us what you think: Did Pinstripe do a favor for Sweatshirt, or a favor for herself? Was this an act of kindness, a disservice to the justice system, or something else? In similar circumstances, what would you have done?

But should the main one be at the bank?

School districts throughout the country are increasingly paying students for coming to class, taking tests, and improving their scores as part of controversial incentive programs known as “cash for grades.”

In Baltimore, high school students who make the grade can make some money—up to $110 for raising their scores on state assessment tests.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, passing students can turn a school day into pay day, earning $300 if they attend 90% of their classes for the year.

And near Atlanta, eighth and eleventh graders who take part in a special after-school study program are paid $8 an hour—more than the
minimum wage in most states.

Supporters of earning while learning point to increased attendance and higher test scores at underperforming schools where no other form of educational motivation has worked. “We’re in competition with the streets,” said one Bronx junior high school principal of her students. “They can go out there and make $50 illegally any day of the week. We have to do something to compete with that.”

But critics of the programs—many of which are privately funded—say the payments are simply bribes, and that using money as a motivator sends the wrong message to kids about their responsibility to learn.

Would George Washington Carver have come up with his inventions in horticulture if someone had “bribed him?” asked one critic. Would Marie Curie have been inspired to spend long hours in the lab? “What kind of message do we give unmotivated kids,” he wondered, “when we give them something they never earned?”

Tell us what you think: Should schools pay students to learn? Is learning all the way to the bank responsible?

Moral identity is how you view and describe yourself in ethical terms—honest, caring, opposed to cheating, committed to doing the right thing, etc. But two business researchers say people with a strong sense of moral awareness can actually become the biggest failures in the face of moral challenges.

In a study reported by LiveScience.com and originally published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the researchers asked a group of people if they considered themselves moral, and if they would cheat on a test.

The people who said they would never cheat described themselves as very moral—no surprise. But the people who said they would indeed cheat also described themselves as very moral. Huh?

The study deduced that when a person with a strong moral identity is faced with a moral decision, they choose their fate—for good or bad—and then pursue it until the extreme end, driven by their extreme moral identity.

In other words, they justify cheating as a means to a moral end, as in this example given by one of the researchers: “If I cheat, then I’ll get into get into graduate school. And if I get into graduate school, then I can become a doctor. And think about all the people I’m going to help when I’m a doctor.”

Is doing the wrong thing—but claiming it’s for the right reasons—ever really right?

Big Brother isn’t watching. But small websites are.

Drivehonest.com, Dont date him girl.com, Bitterwaitress.com, I Saw Your Nanny.blogspot.com

They’re called “tattletale” or “shame” sites. Dozens in number—we recently told you about the blog I Saw Your Nanny —the sites are e-free-for-alls for what some call others’ unacceptable behavior.

Cut someone off in traffic? Look for yourself on the Top Ten Jerks list at drivehonest.com, where the anonymous driver you offended can take revenge by posting your license plate number and a photo of your vehicle for all to see.

Not nice to your ex-girlfriend? It’s payback time on dontdatehimgirl.com, where women wreak havoc by naming names and telling tales of two-timing boyfriends and husbands, posting pictures—and plenty of vitriol.

Proponents of the sites say the public humiliation forces offenders to take responsibility for bad behavior they would otherwise get away with. When bitterwaitress.com blasted celebrity Bounty Hunter Duane “The Dog” Chapman and rocker David Lee Roth for being lousy tippers, the naming and shaming was picked up by numerous media outlets across the U.S.

But critics argue that the mostly anonymous sites need accountability. A 62 year-old Arizona accountant was surprised to find himself on bitterwaitress.com for leaving a $2 tip on a $16.82 pizza order—especially since it was take-out. “It’s incredible that people can say bad things about people that may or may not be true, and here it is online for everyone to see,” said the man. “There’s no way of stopping it, and there’s no way to refute it. Where does it end?”

Tell us what you think: Have you ever posted something on a tattletale site? Or been posted about yourself? Is the anonymity factor a call to do the right thing, or an invitation for abuse?

But should responsibility extend to forgiveness? Giving second chances? Seizing the moment before it’s lost forever?

Those questions come barreling at Helen—the main character in Father’s Day —when she’s forced to face an issue that has hurt and haunted her for years. With the present blocked by the past, she has to confront both—as well as her own responsibility in an unending emotional logjam.

We all have baggage in our lives. Father’s Day —explores how we haul it around, and challenges us to honor the responsibility of dealing with it.

Watch the film and follow Helen’s journey. But be prepared to be profoundly moved along the way.

Father’s Day was directed by Laurence Dunmore.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Wills is a mailman in St. Petersburg, Florida, with 480 people on his route. The mail he delivers to them—from high-end catalogues to bundles of bills—speaks volumes.

So, as it turns out, does the condition of their yards.

After weeks of silently cursing an overgrown thicket blocking his path to a front door mail slot, 30 year-old Wills was struck with an insight that would change the lives of many of his customers, and ultimately his own.

Un-mowed lawns, he realized, were a cry for help.

He knocked on the offender’s door. An old man answered and said that the lawn was the least of his worries. So Wills cut the man’s grass. For free. Two weeks later, using his own mower, he did it again. And again.

Soon Wills was taking on other unkempt yards along his route, mowing for free on his days off and buying extra gas for his sputtering old mower. After two years, he was mowing 15 yards, all for free.

He had been searching for a way to give back, he said, and mowing the lawns of his needy customers was “just my little way of making a difference.”

His good deeds were discovered by a local newspaper reporter, who wrote a story about the mowing mailman, including his phone number in case anyone else needed help.

Strangers started calling, but not about their lawns. They wanted to give back. To Eric Wills.

Ninety people sent money for gas—$3,500. Three people donated riding mowers that cut grass, and time. A landscaper volunteered to help with planting. Another well-wisher had a custom trailer built for hauling the new mowing gear.

But the best gift of all, Wills said, was inspiring others. One man wrote that he’d been pondering for years whether he should look after his elderly neighbors. “Reading your story,” he said, “might push me over the edge from thinking to doing.”

Eric Wills was mowed over.

But unlike most competitive athletes, Corey Gahan’s father insisted on supplying that winning edge, regularly injecting his son with steroids and human growth hormone, the same illegal substances at the heart of the ongoing major league baseball scandal. And unlike the pros, Corey started to receive the shots when he was just 13 years old.

In less than a year, Corey’s blood tests showed he had more than 20 times the normal testosterone level of an adult male. His father continued the shots. Corey says he felt “like I was doing something wrong.” But the teenager trusted his father.

By age 15, Corey was a national champion; at 16, a record-setter. On the rare occasions Corey lost, his father refused to speak to him. When he won, the paternal rewards included televisions, PlayStations, and an American Express gold card.

And then Corey failed a drug test. And another.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency suspended him for two years, and a criminal investigation was begun to determine who had supplied Corey with steroid shots. He was ordered to forfeit all the races he had won in the previous two years.

But the final shot was the one through Corey’s heart, when he did what he believed he had a responsibility to do. Having already lost his status as a sports champion, Corey Gahan lost his father, by turning him in to authorities.

James Gahan—Corey’s father—was sentenced to six years in federal prison. He is believed to be the first parent in the U.S. convicted of providing steroids to his child.

Tell us what you think—Was there any other way Corey Gahan could have done the right thing without implicating his father? Should the son share responsibility with the father?

A long-time New York resident, Miriam is fully aware of the city’s urban imperative: mind your own business.

But she couldn’t help but notice the crying of a nearby baby, approximately nine months old, strapped in his stroller facing the sun, while his nanny ignored him and chatted with another nanny.

The minutes passed…5…10…15…the baby’s skin got redder, the crying persisted, and the nanny’s only response was to periodically bark, “Shh! Be quiet!” while brusquely shaking the baby’s stroller.

And that is when Miriam decided she had to do something: she had to stop minding her own business.

In New York, where the number of scary nanny stories surpasses the number of scary subway stories, an increasing number of citizens are posting reports about bad nanny behavior on a blog called I Saw Your Nanny.

The posts—complete with date, time, location, physical descriptions of nanny and child, and sometimes a cell phone photo—will stop the heart of any parent who recognizes his or her nanny or child: I saw your nanny …grabbing your boy by the ear and twisting him…mistreating and roughly handling your 3-5 year old girl…fell asleep right on the bench where she was sitting with her back to your son.

Launched in August 2006, the blog has sparked a debate about the obligations—and limits—of personal responsibility. Critics contend that it’s potentially libelous for strangers to publicly attack a nanny’s professional performance.

But that didn’t stop Miriam from confronting the nanny about the neglected baby. “She told me to mind my own business. Then she started yanking the baby in the stroller. That’s when I told her I was calling 911.”

Aware that NYPD was on its way, the nanny bolted to leave the location, still yelling, “Mind your own business!” Miriam ran ahead of the woman and snapped her picture with her cell phone. But by the time the police arrived, the nanny was gone.

Tell us what you think: When is it right to stop minding your own business and start minding someone else’s? How far would you go in reporting disturbing behavior by a nanny or anyone else?

The third grade plotters—nine students between the ages of 8 and 10—were allegedly readying a revenge assault against a teacher who had given one of the children a time-out for standing on a chair.

Tipped off by a student, police seized the kids’ menacing arsenal at school, including a steak knife, duct tape, handcuffs, and a heavy paperweight. The teacher specialized in learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, though it’s not known if any of the plotters had those diagnoses.

The sophistication of the plan—with kid-assigned jobs of covering classroom windows and cleaning up after the attack—stunned even the police.

“We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her,” the police chief said, “but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely.”

The big question—who or what was responsible for the children’s shocking behavior?—was debated across the U.S. on message boards and Main Street.

The culprits ranged from peer pressure to parenting, with violent video games and television getting much of the blame. “Kids naturally think now that the solution to everything is to shoot someone like they see on TV,” one comment read. “I weep for the future of America.”

For the present, local authorities are uncertain exactly how to proceed. In Georgia, children under 13 can’t be charged with a crime. Being declared “delinquent” by a judge may be the only legal penalty, but the state doesn’t have detention facilities for third-graders.

Tell us what you think. Given the restrictions with the law, how do you make punishment for third graders fit the crime? How much responsibility do their parents bear? And what about the rest of us—should we also be accountable as members of society?

Karl Svensson’s future as a doctor seemed certain when he was accepted to medical school at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute.

Famed for choosing the annual winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine, Karolinska hand-picked its medical students, selecting an elite group best suited for grappling with the ethics of life-or-death decisions and leading lives devoted to saving others.

But four months into Svensson’s studies, the 31 year-old’s future became unhinged by his past: would-be doctor Karl Svensson had killed a man.

Karolinska officials received two anonymous letters informing them that Svensson had been convicted of murder seven years earlier, shooting to death a trade union worker, in part because Svensson disagreed with the man’s politics. At the time, Svensson had been under surveillance by Sweden’s equivalent of the FBI for neo-Nazi involvement. Police classified the killing as a hate crime.

Svensson maintained his innocence, but was sentenced to 11 years in prison. After six and a half years, he was paroled, and soon accepted to med school.

The medical school could not expel Svensson because there was no government policy allowing for such action under the circumstances. Only when officials discovered that Svensson had falsified his high school transcripts by changing his last name from Hellekant—his legal name under which he was convicted—could they expel him. They did.

But students and officials remained divided. Some argued that a killer should never be allowed to practice medicine. Others said that since Svensson had served his time, he should be permitted to stay in school and become a doctor.

Tell us what you think: Should a man who was responsible for murder be allowed to be a doctor with the responsibility for saving people’s lives? Is it possible for a person to make a responsible contribution to society after making the most heinous one?

Well, the baby didn’t actually walk into the bar—it was in a stroller, pushed by its mother, who was going to have a drink or two with some other moms who brought their kids, and…that’s why this is no joke.

There’s a bar fight brewing across the country. In Seattle, Austin, Philadelphia, Boston and beyond, bar patrons are getting lathered up on both sides of a polarizing parenting issue: is it responsible (or even acceptable) to belly up to the bar with young children in tow?

Those opposed to the mix of cocktails and sippy cups have posted their unequivocal sentiments on numerous online message boards and blogs, like this one in Philadelphia: “I do not want to be in a bar around children. Ever. Bars are for adults.”

Stroller grid-lock has been increasing in bars—often under signs that say “No One Under 21 Admitted”—along with the irritation of patrons who object to shoving crayons out of the way of their cosmos.

Those pushing for more kids in more bars are usually the same people pushing the strollers: mothers of the pre-school set, who say: “We want to do everything we always did, but with our babies.”

So when the owner of a bar in Brooklyn recently posted a “Please No Strollers” sign, he opened yet the latest front in the battle of the bottle. Moms seethed, while critics— like this one in Tucson —applauded: “Grow up, people,” she wrote. “Your lives are different now.”

Tell us what you think: Are we lowering the responsibility bar by allowing kids in the neighborhood bar?