The Federal Aviation Administration’s reputation may have hit a low point last week. Two agency inspectors told Congress that FAA officials cozy with Southwest Airlines executives had stymied their inspections of Southwest planes. But the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Paztor reports that the FAA has been an astute ...

Is this a great country or what?  Come on -- buck up, people!  Every day there are indications that this government works and that the Republic may actually survive for a while yet.  I mean, where else but in America could you have a major investigation into the investigating arm of government?  If anyone else is doing it, I still say we do it better.

Joe Darby, the military policeman who first alerted U.S. military authorities to the photographed acts of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, has seen threats on his life and his wife, and graffiti smeared all over his former home in Maryland (Darby and his wife have relocated with ...

We all have seen questionable practices in the office but have failed to say something about them.  Maybe we felt that we didn’t know the whole story.  Maybe our boss would get mad.  Maybe we’d get isolated – or fired.

There are many reasons for not surfacing improprieties.  But ...

What is the cost of whistle-blowing?  What is it when reporting someone or something to the Inspector General‘s office?  What is the result of not exposing malfeasance?

What is the price of silence?

There are so many human emotions and dynamics swirling around offices that it is virtually impossible ...

Our readers will be interested to learn that Congress is working to strengthen legal protections for federal whistle blowers based on recent court rulings.  Unfortunately, specifics are absent from Stephen Barr's article today about the nature of these enhancements.  I’ve invited Senator Akaka’s (D-HI) office to describe the changes contained ...

Some good news (for a change) about shoring up protection for those unmasking waste, fraud, and abuse.  Several national legislators are working to reverse what some think is a diminution in safeguarding employees who speak out.

This measure is supported by well-known politicians in an apparent bi-partisan, bi-cameral effort to clarify how well-intended workers may be shielded from employer retaliation.

...

This week’s topic is obvious.  It must be the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that whistleblowing on the job is not a constitutional right.  Employees can’t assert First Amendment protections for their actions. 

 

Interestingly, the Court said that First Amendment rights already exist for employees making public comments when off ...

Fred Apelquist note:  This segment from Charles Peters’ “Tilting at Windmills” is especially interesting in light of yesterday’s (May 30) U.S. Supreme Court decision to ignore “on the job” first amendment rights protection for whistleblowers.

The ”our snack room is filthy’” whistleblower

The American Foreign Service Association presents four ...

On the same day, the Times also reports that the Supreme Court has acccepted for rehearing a case in which the Bush administration wants the court to make it harder for government whistleblowers to win lawsuits claiming retaliation. Justices had seemed conflicted last October when they took up the appeal involving Los Angeles County ...