Terms of Endearment

--Government Gone Wild

who needs answers when you got words
--Plan B
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Flash: Secret Service Scandal Not Isolated Event . . . or so went the headline in yesterday's Democrat.

A Senate committee found, among 64 allegations of sexual misconduct by Secret Service employees over five years, "(t)hree cases involved inappropriate relationships with foreign nationals, and one was a complaint of non-consensual sexual intercourse. In addition, a Secret Service agent was fired in 2008 after soliciting an undercover police officer in a prostitution sting."

Isn't "non-consensual sex" rape? Why does it get hidden behind pretty words? No means "no", except not for the Secret Service.

On Thursday's "Fresh Air" on PRI, commentator Terry Gross said of a character in a recent movie, "He had an affair with the wrong woman." Is there a "right woman" with whom one should have an affair? (Certainly Bill Clinton or John Edwards would not be the right men to advise on this topic.)

When an otherwise precise and astute social observer like Gross says something like that, it seems we have had a comedown in our national mores.

--Lisa and Jim