The headline of the DN article about the new Menendez indictment charges…

HE’S KING OF DE-NILE: NJ pol rejects new fed charge of being Egypt agent.

Actually, this is a good incentive to muse on coping with the vagaries of political attachments.

I have my attachments. They stem from a life-long passion for equal human rights. That is my ideal for this world and I cheer on, support and/or vote for people who share my sensibilities.

Ideals are never perfectly, eternally realized. They are a statement of possibilities, of belief that within the fundamental nature of humankind are two drives: the curiosity to discover everything we are capable of knowing before we die, and while we’re here, to work toward repairing the world, tikkun olam. 

Below those soaring beliefs I’ve got an ethical code. It’s practical; occasionally it has had to flex somewhat because, as I now realize, I don’t have those ethics etched into rock by Moses. Sometimes I don’t feel something is wrong until it happens and I have to sit down with my (a) ideals and (b) ethics and figure out how I feel about things.

Governance and its officials have provided numerous such questions during my life. Sexual adventurism has caused some serious thinking. Do you kick someone out of office for actions that are sleazy but not exactly criminal? And does such a character flaw prevent someone from acting effectively and ethically as an elected official, even if those potentially noble actions are stained a bit by hypocrisy?

I may not be rigid in my morality, but I never have evaluated the degree of my disgust based on the political affiliation of the disguster.

So I don’t care that Menendez is a Democrat. Whatever good he has done as an elected Democratic official, I care that he’s alleged to have committed a number of crimes against us people, against the country.

He has to leave the Senate, the sooner the better.