What are the ethics of removing a player from a tournament before it starts if he seems to be a higher rated rated player that has just lost quite a few straight and dropped his rating. For the last several months he had an avg of over 1400 but lost a few straight so he was under 1300 (the limit) for a day or so. Any ideas?

Were the people above or near his rating?
Were they actual losses, not timeouts or resigning even though he wasn't in a lost position? If the answer to both of these is yes, then I would say keep him. If not use your judgement or ask the other participant's opinion on playing this person.