The whole point of politics is the ability to take other peoples property and money with impunity. ”

Reminded me of an Orson Scott Card novel I read decades ago called ‘Treason’. Basically, it was about a prison planet where all the decedents had evolved the original groups ‘talent’ to the extreme. Those descended from Geologists can command the earth to move, Physicists control time, Doctors heal by touch…

And Politicians lie and cannot be disbelieved.

Unfortunately that was the excuse for allowing Timothy Geithner to be appointed Secretary of the Treasury after he was caught cheating on his income tax.

If she is full of it – as most of us suspect – it is a terrible slap in the face to people that do suffer from brain injuries from tumors and accidents. It really is.

Well, sure, but that just sharpens the skepticism many will have about the “it’s fine now and no it never affected my duties and no surgery was needed and no I’m not going on leave” side to the episode. There are also hints that the prosecutors might have found the defendant’s side not wholly forthcoming about willingness to corroborate the brain-tumor angle of the story by submitting medical reports and the like.

She, too, described her attempted heist of jewelry from Sears (yeah, Sears) as a “big misunderstanding”, even after the police chief reviewed the surveillance tape and announced that she appeared to know exactly what she was doing.

It just doesn’t seem to me that the available pool of qualified candidates for office is so small that we need to have criminals occupying the spots, but of course, elected criminals is pretty much a tradition in America by now. Is it that the same risk-taking propensity needed to win office is also behind the criminal activity? A narcissistic, pathological personality? The mere wages of democracy? Is our clucking in vain?