Mark Souder and His Part-time Lover

What happened to Mark Souder--or, more appropriately, what Mark Souder did to himself--is what Malcolm would probably refer to as "chickens coming home to roost." He is just another politician who has made his living moralizing to others while living his own life in accordance with a separate (lower) standard of personal virtue. I am not personally offended by his affair because I think a man's (or woman's) personal life is his own business. He set himself up for this, and be it Karma or poetic justice, he got what he deserved.

The reason why I'm commenting isn't about his sexual hypocrisy, though. (Notice, for example, I don't blog about outted anti-gay conservatives caught with men. Most of us pretty much expect that any more.) Outside of having been my Congressman in my last years in Fort Wayne, Mark Souder was the #1 drug warrior in Congress. All of his braying nonsense about morality, abstinence and what have you take a backseat to his amoral stance of imposing his anti-drug crusade at the point of a gun:

One of the reasons why then-Speaker Dennis Hastert originally appointed me to the Homeland Security Committee was to pressure Congress and the Executive Branch not to forget about our duty to fight illegal drugs in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Although Democrats now control Congress, in my position as the Republican leader of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, I am continuing to insist that we include battling narco-terrorism as a critical part of our homeland security efforts. Like child and spousal abuse, we will never completely eradicate illegal drug use, but we have a moral obligation to fight this battle.

Narco-terror isn't different from any other kind of terror, save the fact that its driven by profit from the prohibition of drugs. The overzealous war on commerce that Souder and his ilk wage upon American citizens, third world farmers, and nearly every type of person in between, helps fund global terrorism while deploying state-sanctioned terror into people's homes. There are alternative solutions, of course, but his high and mighty morality--blind to the immoral outcomes of his preferred policies--pressed him into waging war against his own country.

I don't care that he shtupped a "part-time" staffer. But, for the good of the country, I'm glad he did and was forced out of office by it.