TRENDING: THIS WEEK'S BIG 5

SECRET SERVICE SCANDAL WIDENS: The scandal involving U.S. Secret Service personnel and prostitutes in Colombia widened this week to include possible involvement of DEA agents, as well. The Washington Post has provided the most comprehensive coverage of the story to date, including this week’s revelation that some Secret Service employees are fighting their dismissals with claims that they are being made scapegoats in the investigation. This week, Congressional Hearings began about the Colombia incident, with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) claiming the scandal may be just the tip of the iceberg: “This was not a one-time event,” said Collins, “The circumstances unfortunately suggest an issue of culture.”

FACEBOOK’S INITIAL PUBLIC DEBACLE: It was supposed to be one of the largest Internet company Initial Public Offerings in history, but it turned into a case of big talk and no walk. Facebook opened its company up to investors and promptly flopped. Forbes Magazine has done a stellar job in interpreting this mess for the masses, especially offering solid reasons the IPO was a bust. It should have been a top-shelf week for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who saw his fiancée graduate from med school and then got married the day after the IPO debut; instead, Zuckerberg, more of an idea guy than a corporate animal, is learning the hard way that playing in the big leagues is unpredictable and pretty ugly.

UNCLE WALTER UNMASKED: Three years after his death and three decades after he signed off for the last time at CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite is the subject of a sometimes unflattering new biography by historian Douglas Brinkley. Brinkley, whose is renowned for his deep research and thorough approach to his subjects, uncovered a few fatal flaws about “the most trusted man in America.” Cronkite, it seems, was not immune to accepting favors and gifts from companies or organizations about which he reported.

It is widely known that Cronkite was against the Vietnam war, but not until Brinkley’s book did we find out that he actually pushed Robert F. Kennedy into a presidential run in 1968. “You must announce your intention to run against Johnson,” Cronkite reportedly told RFK, “to show people there will be a way out of this terrible war.” One could say the newsman was attempting to create the news, which as all decent journalists know, is about as against the rules as against the rules can be. The book also details Cronkite’s disdain for his successor, Dan Rather. Read more about Brinkley’s revelations at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

STEALING SHERIFF JOE’S THUNDER: If there is one word to describe Arizona, it is “persistent.” This week, the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the living thorn in President Obama’s side, decided to send a deputy to Hawaii to prove once and for all that Obama was not born in the U.S. There was just one problem with Sheriff Joe’s timing: Also this week, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett received final verification from Hawaii Attorney General David Louie that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

Bennett was threatening to keep Obama off the November presidential election ballot if he could not be fully assured that Obama was born in the U.S. Meanwhile, Sheriff Joe might want to focus his energies on his own tenure in Arizona: The U.S. government has filed suit against Arpaio for racially profiling Latinos. Note to “America’s toughest sheriff”: Uncle Sam is one mean mother.

AND YET, NO APOLOGY: The judge in the Dharun Ravi (below, left) case wondered out loud before imposing a 30-day sentence on the 19-year-old who clandestinely taped his Rutgers University roommate having sex with a man: “I haven’t heard you apologize.” Yet Ravi’s lack of stated remorse did not seem to influence Judge Glenn Berman to exact extreme punishment. 30 days in jail, $10,000 fine and community service work. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, after discovering that Ravi had distributed the video online, jumped to his death from a bridge.

The light sentence touched off a firestorm of disagreement among observers, but Judge Berman said simply, "I do not believe [the legislature] envisioned this type of behavior" when it passed the anti-bias statute at the heart of the case.” In other words, in his estimation, the act did not rise to the standards of a hate crime. As Forbes Magazine staff writer Kashmir Hill points out, this was not a murder case, but what about the obvious invasion of privacy? Now that we have such easily accessible consumer technology, maybe it is time to revisit our privacy laws and bring them into the 21st century.

GONE TOO SOON: Justice for Two Bullied Boys

When Houston resident David Truong arrived home on Thursday evening, he saw his stepson, Asher Brown (right), curled up on the floor. Truong thought Asher was listening to music or reading. If only. Asher was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Once the back story was revealed, one could safely say that Asher Brown was bullied to death.

Asher, 13, had told his parents that very morning that he was gay. Smaller than other children, described by his step dad as a bit “clumsy,” Asher was also a follower of Buddhism. According to news reports, one of the boys who continually taunted him had tripped him and caused him to fall down a flight of stairs at school – twice. Reportedly, this followed 18 months of continual bullying by a group of boys who called him derogatory names associated with homosexuality, and who made fun of him because of his Buddhism. The parents’ appeal for help from the school administrators fell on deaf ears.

Upon reflection, one could say Asher was rather evolved for a barely pubescent boy. To have come to terms with his sexuality, to have made steps to understand a rather complex philosophy, and to endure the constant wrath of his peers suggests that Asher was a person of real substance. But every person has a breaking point. Here is what Asher’s mother and stepfather had to say about him:

The same day that Asher’s suicide was reported, there was another suicide in the news. This time it was a male Rutgers University freshman and violin prodigy, Tyler Clementi. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi and another freshman, Molly Wei, both 18, conspired to plant a webcam in Clementi’s room and broadcast a live image over the Internet of Clementi having sex with another male student. When Clementi (right) found out, according to two witnesses, he jumped to his death from the George Washington bridge.

Many of you who are reading this were bullied when you were children. I was. I was an asthmatic kid who couldn’t do much running with the other kids, and I was the only Jew as far as the eye could see in my middle-American, middle-class, mid-20th century neighborhood. I was different. It seems in our culture we can sum it up like this: Different, bad; Conformist, good. If you were bullied as I was, you were probably fat, or foreign, or gay, or learning disabled, or quirky, or physically weak, or naturally artistic, or poor, or physically disabled, or … well, fill in the blank. You were different. Tyler Clementi was reportedly an introverted, gay violinist. A prototype for bullying, you might say. Watch:

We could chalk the whole bullying sub-culture up to youth, ignorance and peer pressure, I suppose. But how, then, do we explain the husband who continually bullies his wife, even to the point of physically abusing her? And how do we explain bullying within the corporate system? I worked in the corporate system for what seems like 100 years, and I witnessed repeated instances of bullying in board rooms, in office settings and in the presence of clients and co-workers. I witnessed male corporate bullies verbally abusing female subordinates, seemingly so that they could maintain the status quo of the corporate boys club. I witnessed female corporate bullies verbally emasculating male subordinates in the name of 1970s feminism and progress. Bullying is really about power. And the power that it represents is really about ego. It seems there is an ego-centric need among some humans to belittle other humans.

Bottom line: I believe Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei (below, right) should be charged with first degree murder, which of course, implies full intent to kill. If they did not intend to physically kill Clementi, they surely intended to murder his spirit. So far they have only been charged with crimes related to privacy, which carry maximum prison sentences of three to five years. There is legal precedent to at least charge them with civil rights violations. What is clear is that Clementi, whose body has not been found, died because of Ravi and Wei.

I believe the boys who taunted Asher Brown should be expelled from school, turned over the juvenile authorities and tried in court as adults – for murder. The boy who tripped Asher and caused him to fall down a flight of stairs twice had intent to cause bodily harm. The fact that Asher did not die until later, by his own hand, does not change my mind. I believe bullies murdered Asher Brown. School administrators, who now claim they never received complaints of bullying from the parents, are clearly lying. I believe they should be tried in court, as accessories to Asher’s murder. It is now about accountability.

Had he lived, Asher, a Buddhist, may have brought peace in the world. Clementi, a skilled musician, may have brought melodic art into the world. Ravi, Wei and Asher’s tormentors brought nothing into the world except pain and death. In our society, when one brings about pain and death, they are tried by a jury of their peers and punished. Am I missing something here, or are these individuals not criminally responsible for the deaths of two young people? And since they are, I want justice.