We deserve better. We should demand better.

Rep. Anthony Weiner

Today marked another in a long list of US politicians that have been recently caught in an embarrassing sexual scandal.

At this point I am not interested in discussing the politics of all of this because, honestly, it happens on both sides of the aisle; Republicans and Democrats alike.

Mark Sanford. Elliot Spitzer. John Ensign. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Lee. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. John Edwards. David Vitter. Anthony Weiner. And many more.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is all the lying.

Let us all take a step back for a minute. Even if we strip away the discussion of Judeo-Christian morality and monogamy we are still left with questions for these men.

These politicians put up a persona, a facade that is intended to make them electable by the majority of their constituents. They fudge a little here and there to make their family look happy and well adjusted, yet we find that in many cases the life we see is really little more than a cardboard prop; a thin veneer that hides the truth about these men and women we choose to lead us.

How can we really trust someone when nearly everything we know about them is a lie? How can we trust anything they tell us when everything they have told us about themselves is, at best, a well spun half-truth?

And what happens when the deeds of the past threaten to surface?

In the latest scandal to surface there were six women who each had enough to individually blackmail Rep. Weiner.

How do we know that they hadn't already?

How are we supposed to be sure that parts of the massive amount of debt the federal government has racked up was not a sole result of governance of the people?

It is one thing to debate the merit of Keynesian economics verses free market capitalism, but something entirely different and sad to consider the possibility of using tax money to cover up a scandal.

There really is no way to know what extra funding, what road project, what hidden earmark was written into a bill in order to pay a blackmail ransom.

These are not the kinds of things we should have to be wondering about those we choose to govern us.

They should have honesty.

They should have integrity.

They should have character.

But instead we elect whomever can hold on the longest in the centrifuge we call our election process.

Who ever can dig up the most dirt on the other guy while keeping his mess a secret? Yep, that is the candidate that will win.

But shouldn't we have more?

We deserve better, and we should demand better.