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I was a bit stunned by E. J. Dionne’s defense of David Vitter. In his syndicated Washington Post column, he said:

My defense of Vitter is qualified because I believe that married guys have a moral obligation not to seek the pleasures of “escort services.”

Nor do I like hypocrisy. During the battle over the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Vitter wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune that if no “meaningful action” were taken against the president, “his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture.” Vitter, then a state representative, suggested that Clinton was “morally unfit to govern.”

But a big part of me is rooting for Vitter to survive because I so want to return to a time when we — that “we” includes the media — chose to pay little attention to the extracurricular sexual activities of our politicians. The magnitude of our public problems does not afford us the luxury of indulging in crusades about politicians’ private lives, even those involving a high degree of hypocrisy.

So essentially, he’s advocating that we turn a blind eye to hypocrisy, even when it involves someone who is actively trying to promote discrimination against an entire group of people and push for a fundamentalist christian theocracy. What else should we forgive, Mr. Dionne? Pedophiles who are otherwise gosh-darn good legislators? How about the fellows who line their pockets by promising favors – as long as they’re not taking tax dollars like Sharpe James, does that count as part of their personal lives that shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny?

He continues later:

But if we are to get out of this habit of destroying the distinctions between public and private lives, liberals need to give the conservative hypocrites a break.

We should acknowledge that the outing process is erratic and leaves many falls from grace safely shielded from public view. We should also admit that we are tougher on the moral flaws of politicians who belong to a party other than our own.

I see. So since some of them get away with it, we should stop outing everyone entirely. And you know what, I think there are two reasons the focus is on “a party other than our own.” First, that party is making the most noise about infringing on certain people’s rights because they belong to a group other than THEIR own. If you think it’s OK that adulterers and serial monogamists and clients of prostitutes can make laws prohibiting long-term, legal monogamy to a specific group of people because it’s a threat to the “sanctity” of marriage (something with no legal basis or impact), or try to override the Constitution by promoting an official religion in the form of official prayers, display of religious items like the ten commandments or a portrait of Jesus on taxpayer-owned property, and teaching of religious lessons in science and health classes in public schools, then you are just as guilty of wanting partisan accountability. Second, if we completely stop any oversight, then it means that we are essentially allowing politicians completely free rein – unsupervised, carte blanche permission to screw over the American people up, down, and sideways. Hey, while we’re at it – we don’t catch everyone who robs convenience stores or rapes women, so how about we ease up on that, too? That’s an awfully boneheaded argument, IMO.

At the end, he winds up:

Typically, we make fun of public figures who seek our sympathy by admitting to “sin.” But maybe a politician who admits to sin gains a certain degree of humility in the process. Let’s grant Vitter our collective absolution and move on.

Mr. Dionne, we’re not all just making fun of him. The people whose rights he actively seeks to deny are not laughing, they’re outraged. He’s not being humble, he’s being sorry for getting caught. If he could, he’d be like Dennis Hastert or our illustrious VP and try to put a better spin on it, but he doesn’t have that luxury, so he HAD to ‘fess up.

Here’s some Vitter statements and “accomplishments”

From Vitter’s press releases:

July 18, 2006 –
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter issued the following statement after today’s U.S. Senate vote on H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act:

“At a time when many Americans believe that killing human embryos is immoral, I do not believe that the federal government should use taxpayer money to fund research that would do so. That is why I am so disappointed in today’s action by the U.S. Senate. I believe that we must be careful not to compromise our values and we must fight to protect the sanctity of all human life. It is my hope that President Bush will follow through with his threat and veto this bad bill.”

Sanctity again. We should not be legislating based on “sanctity”. If the life of these embryos should be subject to legislation based on “sanctity”, then I want to see some bills prohibiting their creation or enforcing implantation or each and every one. Because there’s no “sanctity” in them getting tossed in the garbage, either.

January 22, 2007 –
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter today introduced a resolution supporting the right to open school board meetings with a prayer. Last year courts banned prayers during the opening of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings as unconstitutional.

“A small but active group of radical judges are trying to chip away at right to free religious expression,” said Vitter. “Our constitutional fathers didn’t intend to prohibit all mention of God or expression of religion. The First Amendment protects the freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”

Vitter’s resolution reaffirms that voluntary prayer by an elected body should be protected under law and that the Supreme Court was right when it said that courts cannot single out and punish religious speech simply because it’s religion.

“The U.S. Senate opens every day with a prayer, as does the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures across the country. School boards should not be treated any differently,” Vitter said.

And we’ve already seen what happens when that prayer doesn’t issue from one religion in particular, haven’t we? If prayer doesn’t include every single person at a meeting, and there’s no way it can, it’s not protected speech, it’s promotion of religion.

April 18, 2007 –
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter today made the following statement applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a federal ban on partial birth abortion:

“This is a landmark decision that builds a legal consensus for protecting and cherishing life. I supported the federal ban on this gruesome practice when I was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and today’s decision reaffirms the constitutionality of that ban,” said Vitter.

The Supreme Court ruled 5 – 4 in favor of upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Act.

This is an absolutist, uninformed, religious point of view that will condemn women to death, and take decisions out of the hands of the educated and informed doctors who should be making them. It’s not an elective procedure like a boob job.

June 25, 2007 –
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter last week authored a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee expressing support for reauthorization of the Title V Abstinence Education Program of the Social Security Act. Twelve senators joined Vitter in writing in support of the program.

“This a valuable program with proven results, but it is nearing its expiration. We must reauthorize this program so we can continue the incredible strides we have made in teaching teens about both risk avoidance and protecting themselves from potential abuse,” Vitter said.

The proven results are that teen pregnancy rates are higher in school districts with abstinence education. There are numbers on this somewhere, but all I could find was the general results on the Planned Parenthood site and a few of the studies they cited. ugh. I know they’re out there somewhere, I’ll post them when I find them.

OK, fine – maybe Vitter did some good things. Mostly he tried to get money for his state, and stood behind a religious Republican agenda. You know what, if he’s using his “moral values” to initiate or support, he should be upholding those values in his personal life. We have the right to criticize a person of great wealth who takes money from the poor and middle class and pontificates about how they should be pulling themselves up from their bootstraps. We have the right to criticize a person who benefits from comprehensive insurance and medical care who favors more expensive and restrictive medical care for everyone else. And when someone wants to deny an entire group of people the right to pursue happiness because it is “immoral”, promotes prayer of his particular flavor at public meetings because it’s “moral”, and delcares medical procedures and research that save lives “immoral”, then his own practice of “morality” should be scrutinized. Indeed, it’s essential. We do not need our rights being decided and denied by people who live by the tenet “do as I say, not as I do.”

Mr. Dionne, the women who will die because of politicians who don’t approve of a procedure that will save them, the people whose diseases will not be cured by stem cells that end up in a dumpster, the people who are taxpaying citizens who are excluded by christian prayer at government meetings, and the devoted couples who will be denied the rights that accompany marriage because a married man who frequents prostitutes declares that their union threatens the sanctity of his have every right to criticize Mr. Vitter. We have every right not to forgive and forget. We have every right to know about the private life of a hypocrite, Mr. Dionne, when he condemns the morality of others in order to deny them their rights while giving lip service to morality when it benefits him.