Catching Hypocrites - But What About the Terrorists?

The Senator-Playing-Footsie-in-the-Men's-Room scandal is troubling to us. Not because the "sex sting" uncovered potentially lewd behavior in a public toilet, though we guess we should be thankful for that. No, what bothers us more is that, with all the talk of terror threats at airports, the police in Minneapolis-St Paul are still able to deploy a big-gun officer undercover to root out lasciviousness lurking in the loo. Instead of "the guy that we get out of the 'hood", as the arresting officer put it, the operation trapped a big, fat ("fairly wide guy", as the hapless Senator Craig described himself) hypocrite.

America and the world are safer today with another disingenuous politician disgraced. Meanwhile, the war on moisture continues - and Osama traipses around the netherworld between Pakistan and Afghanistan, trundling along with his dialysis equipment and evading capture or bombing. The US continues its adroit handling of General Musharraf, its pointman in Pakistan, by forcing him to enter into a devilish deal with the discredited Benazir Bhutto, a corrupt former prime minister now deemed to be a necessary evil in what we suppose to be Washington's "cunning plan" to ensure stability in that critical frontline state.

So fairly-wide-guy-senator is goaded into resigning by his fraidy-cat Republican colleagues worried about their re-election prospects, while the man whom they should be dumping sits in the White House still, dreaming up ways to mess more things up over the next 16 months. And in airports across the United States, gung-ho police officers are trawling toilets for that insidious menace to the American way of life - the elected hypocrite.