I had to laugh when I read one of today's headlines, which states "Bush Orders Staff To Uphold High Ethics." First of all, isn't that ironic coming from the mouth of someone whose very ascendance to the presidency was marked by such a nasty, bitter struggle in a state where his own brother was governor?
The second funny aspect is that President Bush feels that he has to tell his staff to remain ethical. What could they be thinking? "Oh jeez, I was going to embezzle a lot of public funds, but now that George has told me that I am 'accountable to the law and to the American people', I guess I won't." A person is either ethical or he isn't. I suppose that reminding people may make them pause, but I don't believe that it will change their basic nature.
I can't claim the moral high ground here myself. I've done many, many things both personally and professionally that I recognized even at the time as less than morally pristine. Some were for personal gain, some were for expedience, and some were for motives darker yet.
Nonetheless (or perhaps all the more), I can still find humor in what amounts to an attempt to legislate morality. It smacks of the same sort of backwards thinking that puts forth abstention as a reasonable method of birth control, a thinking that denies the essential character of the human animal. I'll laugh even harder when the inevitable scandals start surfacing. After all, the Democrats have to do something for the next couple of years.
You can respond to my ranting here.
Let he who is without sin cast the first rant.