“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
“I made a mistake.” ”I was insane at the time.”
So, who said that? Bone idle grifters? Sad and stubborn addicts or alkies, grubby from their roll in the gutter? Your lazy-ass sister-in-law, who never met a vacuum cleaner she could operate or passed up a chance to max out her Visa card?
Nope. It’s way scarier.
Mr. Mistake is long-serving Idaho Senator Larry Craig (Republican). He was busted in the men’s restroom in the Minneapolis airport on a charge of soliciting an undercover cop for sex. He entered a guilty plea to a lesser misdemeanor. Which he now says was a “mistake.” United States Senators make our federal laws and decide matters of major national importance. He’s been doing this for twenty years, and can’t understand what he’s doing when faced with a misdemeanor?
Ms. Insanity is Lisa Nowak. Who was a member of the US ultra-elite astronaut corps, until she was busted for stalking a romantic rival with the terrifying focus and competence you’d expect of, well, a combination rocket scientist and superior athlete. Now her lawyer plans an insanity defense. Afer she whined in court about how haaarrd it is for her to deal with that electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. Like, she has to change its batteries. And it chafes. One can only wonder how she managed all that rocket science.
I will not generalize from these events that our lawmakers don’t know much about law, or our elite officer/scientist/athlete astronauts are nuts.
I will say that these two people have demonstrated their utter lack of fitness for their jobs. Ms. Nowak no longer has hers. One assumes that the fine folks in Idaho will take care of Mr. Craig’s situation ASAP.
