Regrets only

1 Moderators for the conservative blog Free Republic allowed readers to post a slew of horrific comments on their website directed at a picture of Malia Obama. Obama was pictured in Italy, wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on it. One comment mused that the 11-year-old looked like “ghetto street trash,” where someone else compared her to a “typical street whore.” Does it go without saying that the website’s editors should have apologized for hosting such a discussion? Apparently not.

2 Posterity has born out what many have known from the start: The people of New Orleans were denied even baseline relief as Hurricane Katrina ravaged their city. Response problems were so deep that many lost their lives, and even more their homes. The federal government owes the city an apology.

3 It may not be the case that Cambridge, Masschusetts Police Officer James Crowley was motivated to arrest Henry Louis Gates, who was struggling to enter his own home, because Gates is black. But that’s what it looked like to the rest of us—Crowley’s folly made many feel unsafe in their own city. Things might’ve gotten pretty loose during Beer Summit at the president’s place, but not loose enough for Crowley to apologize. And apologize he should’ve.

4 A Danish advocacy group recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of women’s issues. The campaign is centered on a website called “Hit the Bitch,” which allows Internet users to batter a virtual woman, rating the user on a scale that ranges from “100% pussy” to “100% gangster.” Users are eventually called “100% IDIOT,” but this self-defeating campaign, while high schoolers may laugh at it, is regressive at best. The group should cut their losses and apologize.

5 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been running an offensive, if entertaining, public campaign to marginalize himself on the world stage. He recently referred in jest to the American first couple as “sun-tanned.” When a journalist asked if he would apologize, Berlusconi said, “It is you who should apologize to Italy.” Perhaps a grappa summit is in order.

6 Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian activist and prominent critic of Shell Oil’s environmental record, was convicted of dubious charges and hanged by that country’s military regime in 1995. Saro-Wiwa’s son sued Shell, and this May the lawsuit was settled out of court. Shell offered $15.5 million to the Saro-Wiwa family—peanuts in a region that generally produces more than 400,000 barrels of oil a day. The company denied wrongdoing and cited humanitarian reasons for the settlement.

7 Early this month, five immigrant men who had been detained and deported after 9/11 reached a $1.2 million settlement with the federal government. The federal government owes an apology to these five men, and to the 165 other men who were detained by the F.B.I. largely on the basis of ethnicity.

8 Alan Grayson, a Democratic representative, recently remarked that Republicans want the sick Americans to “die quickly,” and compared health care to the Holocaust. Inflated sentiment has always been part and parcel with politics, but Grayson’s statements were inflammatory to the point of absurd. Statements like these only contribute to a political climate wherein people squabble and politicians do nothing.

9 Perhaps sensing that the federal government is on a roll, some Chinese-Americans have started asking the United States for an apology. Chinese immigrants were the target of the first race-based exclusion laws; they were also routinely denied the right to own property and attend public schools. So why not apologize?

10 Torturing combatants in secret prisons, while a good way to extract questionable information, is an even better way to rally foreign enemies against Americans. The federal government should apologize for the lives destroyed by the practice, if only to signal a shift away from it.