Does the NFL have higher ethical standards than the U.S. Senate?

The State's Attorney for Sagamon County, Illinois which includes Springfield has decided that he lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute Roland Burris for perjury for the lies of omission Burris used to obtain his Senate seat. The level of evidence needed for a jury to convict  Burris is very high.

About the same time as the state's attorney was declining to prosecute Burris, NFL Commissioner Goodell issued his decision regarding Cleveland Browns' player Donte Stallworth. Stallworth had successfully minimized the criminal consequences for having killed someone while driving drunk. Goodell judged that the resolution of the criminal charges did not shield Stallworth from further civil consequences. Goodell indefinitely suspended Stallworth.

The Senate Ethics Committee continues to review what Burris said and withheld. They would do well to follow Goodell's example.

Could Jeremiah Wright have picked a worse time?

In the recent interview in which President Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright complained that "them Jews" are keeping  him from seeing President Obama, he added that:

Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing [by] the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel...

Israel waged an unjust war and used force that exceeded legitimate self-defense needs. Israel's continued refusal to negotiate seriously on outstanding issues was another reason that the situation with Gaza deteriorated into another war.

However, calling what Israel did in Gaza "ethnic cleansing" is hateful, evil, vile, and demeans the real ethnic cleansing that has occurred in the past and continues to this day as in Darfur.

If Israel was engaged in ethnic cleansing, the populations of Gaza and the West Bank would not continue to grow under occupation, blockade, and continuing violence. That the Palestinian population is able to grow under Israeli rule is a rebuttal to charges of ethnic cleansing but in no way a justification for Israeli policies.

When ethnic cleansing occurs, vast areas are without their former populations, for example the areas of Europe without any significant Jewish population after the Nazi Holocaust or the areas of Turkey without any significant Armenian population after the Armenian genocide.

Israel can justifiably be accused of many things. "Ethnic cleansing" is not one of them.

Wright's statements become even more shameful as they were made almost at the same time as an African-American security guard died defending the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum against an attack by a anti-Semitic white supremacist.