You couldn’t be more correct, my dear anonymous one. You noted: "So there must be some distinguishing between truly courageous whistleblowing and self-serving tattling. How to distinguish those two, I don’t know, but in public discussion of whistleblowing, you certainly don’t hear about any kind of distinction between these two types and that is not helpful."

Where do such public discussions occur? In the court room? If so, could this be related to recent complaints about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito being unsympathetic to the little guy? Maybe Alito and others in his courtrom deemed a complainant or two to be the "lackluster alcoholic ‘whistleblower’" you described.

Ah, how to be certain? I guess we can’t. I suspect even if all of us were in a courtroom when such matters were being evaluated, we probably wouldn’t achieved unanimity in determining whether or not the whistleblower was worthy of protection.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

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