Have you no sense of decency?

When you can't shame 'em...

These days, we are all Joseph Welch, special counsel of the U.S. Army, who on June 9, 1954, summed up the feelings of the thinking part of the country when he went for Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s bloated white underbelly during the blighted so-called Red Scare of the ‘50s.

He sought to shame him, to remind him of what it means to be a decent person.

As it turns out, McCarthy actually had no sense of decency, and now McCarthy’s spiritual grandchildren seem to run roughshod through the democracy.

Rachael Rollins will resign from her position as Massachusetts AG after Justice Department investigation into her appearance at a political fundraiser, among other ethical issues. As of this writing, the report has yet to be released, but the AG is doing what any person involved in seeking justice is doing: She is resigning over the looks of the thing. This used to be the common approach to adult life. You cleave to ethics, which are sometimes stricter than laws (I tell my First Amendment law class that laws are yesterday’s ethics). You leave positions because you don’t want your continued presence there to taint the position — or your colleagues. You think “community” rather than “individual.”

This, from the linked AP story, is an attempt by the Justice Department to return itself to the days of impeccable ethics, but you have to ask yourself:

If Rollins is resigning over impropriety (there is no indication — also as of this writing — that she broke the law) why is Associate Justice Clarence Thomas still on the bench? This feels like more “ethics for thee, but not for me,” especially coming off the Trump administration, where Hatch Act violations hung off administration officials like grapes. And Hatch violations are just a small corner of a piece of one page of an entire book of ethical violations from that time.

Does this mean that Democrats take responsibility when they screw up or appear to have done so? Certainly not all of them, but where are the Republicans willing to admit they goofed? Is that happening and we just don’t hear about it? Or is it antithetical for a Republican to admit a mistake and seek to rectify it by resigning?

And thank you, Lois, for this idea.