Investigating Ethics?

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Congressman Anthony Weiner has been the talk of the town this past week. His claim to fame: Twittering lewd photos of himself in (and out of) his underwear to at least six college-age women across the country. After being caught he then boldly took to the nation’s airwaves and unequivocally denied everything—claiming to be the victim of a hacker rather than the perpetrator of deception and immorality.

After spinning his web of denial for several days and finding himself inextricably trapped by the graphic facts of his own photographs, Weiner finally came forward yesterday and admitted everything.

Nancy Pelosi’s response to all the above was to immediately call for an “ethics investigation.” Congress, it seems, has the responsibility to determine if anything wrong has been done and if Weiner has, thereby, compromised his leadership.

Seriously—after hearing the sordid details of all the above, our country’s leaders apparently are so morally numb that they have to do an investigation to determine if there is anything unethical about sending raunchy pictures of yourself to unsuspecting coeds and then lying about it!!

There was a time when ethics was defined as that self-evident ought that guides a moral people. This oughtness was otherwise known as natural law or, in biblical terms, “the truth of God written on every human heart…” Personal behavior was considered good when it corresponded with this “ought” and bad when it didn’t. An investigation stemming from an act of Congress was not needed to measure morality, for it was assumed that people knew intuitively that lying was wrong and that texting iPhone images of your genitals was, well, unethical!!

Lord help us if we’ve really come to the point where we can’t call Weiner’s behavior wrong without spending millions of dollars (that we don’t have) on an investigation!