It's official:  what differentiates us from chimpanzees is not our intelligence, our ability to deal with the abstract, or our ability to tell jokes. According to the decision of a five-member New York state appellate panel yesterday, "Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, …

Partial withdrawal from participation is not a sufficient cure for an apparent conflict of interest. When there is any involvement, it can be seen as providing preferential treatment, as being unfair. Once again this is made clear, in the most controversial local government problem of the year:  a …

I left out one big local ethics/election story from my blog post yesterday:  the approval of an excellent ethics reform initiative in Oakland, with an approval percentage of 72%, according to the KQED News website. For a description of the referendum, read my July blog post.

Two big local ethics/election stories come from Contra Costa, CA and Tallahassee, FL. Ethics Reform Package Features a Different Sort of Public Campaign Financing Program According to an article this morning on the Tallahassee Democrat website, by a 2-1 margin Tallahassee voters approved a charter …

This was a project that was helped by Represent.US and supported by citizen groups from right to left. I worked on the drafting of the referendum language. Here is today's press release from Represent.US: On Nov. 4th, 2014, voters in Tallahassee, Florida, made history by approving the first city An…