A game show about integrity and other news and views

'American Idol' Can't Compete With Liberia's 'Integrity Idol' - She was one of the five finalists in an American Idol-style competition. But she did not have to sing. This was Integrity Idol 2015 in Liberia. The candidates all worked for the government and had a record of integrity. The public voted by phone and by the Internet. The winner, announced this week, was Jugbeh Taplar Kekula. She's a registered nurse who works nights in the emergency room at the Liberia Government Hospital in Buchanan, the third-largest city in the country, and also educates people about family planning through Planned Parenthood of Liberia. ...

It {the program] was the brainchild of Blair Glencourse, who runs Accountability Lab, a nonprofit group that fights corruption. "We thought, 'What about some kind of TV show calledIntegrity Idol where people would vote for honest government officials instead of pop stars?" he recalls. The goal is to recognize people "for simply doing what they think is their job and being the person that they are" — to give them "a sense that they're on the right track."

Right wants door open for Christian Syrians - Conservatives are outraged over the small number of Christian Syrian refugees who have been allowed to enter the United States — even as some on the right float a ban on their Muslim counterparts. The U.S. has allowed just 34 Christians to enter as refugees from Syria since the civil war broke out there more than four years ago, according to the State Department’s most recent available data. That accounts for just 2 percent of the roughly 2,100 Syrian refugees the U.S. has accepted — disproportionately smaller than the 10 percent of Syrians who are Christian.

Tax sugarcane farmers, not sugary drinks - Mixing morality and taxation typically produces hypocrisy.