Confirmed by a 90-9 vote, the Granite State jurist who was promised as a “home run” by then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu became a rather wild fly ball hit to far left field once handed the bat of American justice.

Dubbed “the stealth justice” by the New York Times, Souter routinely sided with his colleagues on the court who have preferred a course charted not by the fixed constellation of America’s constitution but rather the expansive and swelling currents of progressive political ideals.

Justice Souter’s judicial obscurity was highlighted at the time of his confirmation by then-Senator Biden, who noted that “no nominee has come to [the Senate Judiciary] Committee with less known about his philosophy.”

And now that Souter has announced his retirement from the bench, his former clerks are lining up to extol the virtues of “Justice Cincinnatus,” as one former assistant described him last week, referring to the dictator of ancient Rome who crushed a plebeian rebellion against the tyranny of political elites.

During Justice Souter’s term of purportedly good behavior, this most clandestinely liberal member of the court became for conservatives the anti-Bork, an example of Republican tomfoolery whereby the need for a solid record of judicial philosophy is trumped by quiet personal assurances and benevolent associations.

The announcement of Justice Souter’s retirement came during a difficult week for conservatives, who must soon face a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, compliments of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s political defection and the all-but-certain victory of Al Franken over Norm Coleman in the protracted Minnesota race.

Slightly more than 100 days into his administration, President Obama now has the opportunity to shape the composition and philosophical persuasion of the court for decades to come.

Naturally, conservatives are wary.

The conservative frustration with Souter’s leftward drift results from his positions on four key cases involving abortion rights, school prayer, public displays of the Ten Commandments and eminent domain.

In 1992, Souter jointly wrote the majority opinion in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a watershed 5-4 decision that upheld a woman’s right to abort her fetus as a fundamental liberty guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. For Republicans who supported Souter’s confirmation on the soft promise that he might overturn Roe, this was treason of the worst order.

That same year, Souter joined the majority in Lee v. Weisman to forbid public school-sponsored prayers at graduation ceremonies. In a lengthy concurrence, Souter differentiated school prayer from presidential invocations and religious proclamations, which he believed to “inhabit a pallid zone worlds apart from official prayers delivered to a captive audience of public school students and their families.”

Thirteen years later, Souter wrote for the majority in McCreary v. ACLU to declare unconstitutional the public display of the Ten Commandments in three Kentucky counties. And finally, perhaps the last straw for conservatives was Souter’s willingness in New London v. Kelo to uphold the government’s seizure of private lands for a purpose that can only be described as public in the most penumbral sense of the term.

Souter might have become still more villainous to conservatives had the bachelor justice offered substantive words of concurrence on the various gay rights cases – a.k.a. expressive association in Supreme Court parlance – that came before the court during his eighteen-year tenure. For reasons unknown, the justice demurred.

The body of work David Souter left behind is notably absent any profound, original or memorable articulation of elegant jurisprudential prose. On church-state issues, Souter has been a reliably strict separationist. On issues of prenatal life, he maintained a firm commitment to reproductive choice.

When he joined the court, Souter was the great Right hope of reversing the liberal course set by his predecessor, Justice William Brennan. As he leaves, conservatives have learned a hard lesson about stealth jurists and the pain of buyers’ remorse.

It is unlikely that President Obama will nominate a centrist to replace Souter, and he doesn’t need to. With the political capital he earned last November and the supermajority his party claims in the Senate, the president will have the widest possible berth to select a nominee who advances his own leftist views of the constitution.

As for the balance of the court, however, nothing will change. The only advantage that Souter’s replacement could bring to conservatives is a more robust and formidable proponent of liberal judicial activism with whom to spar, or at least one for whom they cannot take blame.

That’s the central question in the minds of millions of Americans who have favored protectionism over free trade, gun-toting Minutemen at the border instead of substantive immigration reform and a largely ineffective and draconian system of laws that criminalize cannabis (often produced in, or trafficked through, Mexico) instead of having a serious conversation about the terrible legacy of America’s so-called War on Drugs.

There are stale and reductionist arguments on both sides. Is marijuana a dangerous gateway drug that leads to addiction, lethargy and various social ills? Or is smoking marijuana a relatively harmless little pleasure that affects no person but the user himself?

I suggest that a way forward exists in the debate whereby society can generally discourage marijuana usage without the full force of criminal statute. But first, allow me to rehearse some facts.

More than 1,500 people were killed between January and March of this year in the drug wars that have raged in many Mexican cities. To put things in perspective, this is 30 times the number of Americans who have died in the Iraq war since President Obama took office.

A growing number of politicians from both the left and the right are considering a shift in our marijuana policies. As early as 1968, the patron saint of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley, was arguing in favor of marijuana legalization. Most libertarians have long advocated the move, and it’s not that far of a stretch for liberals who believe a woman has the right to abort a fetus from the womb to support the right to inhale cannabis into the lungs.

Indeed it’s a frightening indicator of cultural decadence that same-sex marriage is more politically palatable in Sioux City, Iowa, than marijuana decriminalization is in El Paso, TX.

There are four basic approaches to the federal policy question of marijuana possession for either medical or recreational purposes.

First, the United States could legalize marijuana possession altogether, establish regulations for its production and distribution and then tax it to generate desperately needed federal revenues.

Second, we could decriminalize marijuana possession, a move that would impose civil fines similar to those resulting from traffic tickets instead of a criminal trial and a prison sentence. Under such a law, marijuana use would still be discouraged, but in a way that generates revenue for state and local governments.

Third, Congress or the president could move to declassify marijuana as a Schedule-1 substance under federal drug laws, thereby diminishing its investigative and prosecutorial priority with the Justice Department.

Or finally, as Attorney General Eric Holder has recently signaled, the laws criminalizing marijuana possession could remain on the books and the feds simply choose not to enforce them. In this regard, marijuana laws will soon suffer the fate of other ignored moral statutes: they will die the death of universal neglect. The existence of a law, however, implies its enforcement. What purpose non-enforced laws serve in the body politic is hard to understand.

There are solid reasons to consider the decriminalization of marijuana: the undoing of a violent culture that grows in the fertile soils of prohibition; the burgeoning and burdensome cost of arresting and prosecuting nearly 1 million people every year who possess only small amounts of marijuana; and the fact that some studies suggest nearly 80% of Americans under the age of 35 and one-third of all Americans attest to having at least tried marijuana.

But the repeal of marijuana laws should not occur without a serious national conversation, for the rationale of decriminalization must rest on a principle more enduring than personal preferences and utilitarian cost-benefit analyses.

The soul of America needs to be reintroduced to the basic distinctions between personal liberty and commercial vice. For instance, there was a time in America when fornication, sodomy and adultery were criminal acts. Over time, however, these laws rusted out like an old jalopy, resting unserviceable on the cinder blocks of justice.

To be sure, adultery — and, to a lesser degree, pre-marital sex — are still regarded as immoral acts, but the various states have decided that these do not rise to the level of criminal prosecution. A zone of privacy, if you will, has been safeguarded in American sexual mores.

Prostitution, on the other hand, remains almost universally illegal. This is because a particular vice like fornication or adultery on a personal level is exacerbated when a person trades and traffics their vice on the black market.

In the same way, Americans should be educated to make moral distinctions between the personal use of marijuana, punishable by an appropriately assessed civil fine and the mass production and distribution of marijuana for profit, punishable by necessarily heightened criminal penalties.

A very few cases of medical necessity notwithstanding, America should generally discourage marijuana use. But we can do so in the same way we discourage speeding in construction zones or failure to wear seat belts rather than the way we criminalize more egregious and corrupting social vices.

But the larger Christian tradition marks the calendar year with festivals designed to draw believers to reflect on significant moments in the life of Christ and his church. Sure, we Baptists know of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter. We even celebrate July 4th, Memorial Day, and Thanksgiving, having transformed them into quasi-religious holidays complete with banners and musicals and dinner on the grounds. But we know little of Epiphany, Lent, Holy Wednesday or the day on which this is being published, Maundy Thursday. This, of course, is to our detriment.

On this Thursday before Good Friday, Christians of all colors and stripes celebrate three events on the last night our Lord spent with his apostles before the Crucifixion: the washing of the disciples’ feet, the suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. The English word “maundy” is derived from the Latin word mandatum, which is the Vulgate’s translation of Jesus’ words in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.”

So during this Holy Week, I’ve been trying to think more intentionally about the events of Christ’s Passion than I have in recent years. To be honest, this is the first year that I’ve celebrated Maundy Thursday. But hopefully that’s going to change.

On the night that Jesus called his disciples to the Upper Room for the institution of the Last Supper, he knelt down and washed their feet. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been serving them for the previous three years. Doubtless, he had fed them, comforted them and ministered to them in ways they knew and didn’t know. But on that night as they gathered around a table to share this last meal, Jesus took a simple cloth and a basin of water and started to wash their feet.

I don’t think many of us know how humbling that must have been: to have the Lord of glory on his hands and knees washing our feet; to know that he was concerned about the dust between our toes, about our ceremonial cleanness and about our need to serve one another. As Jesus prepared them for this last meal, he washed them as if they were priests who were ordained to prepare a sacrifice. How little did they know that’s exactly what they were about to do.

As they left the supper, Jesus took them to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he asked them to watch and pray while he went further into the garden to be alone with the Father. It was there that he sweated the great drops of blood. It was there that the disciples slept, unaware of the cross that their Lord was to soon bear on their behalf.

There’s a mystery to the Garden of Gethsemane, something holy and silent and unseen. Like Abraham of old, the Father took his Son to a secret place where he prepared him for the slaughter. Except this time, there was no substitute. The cup could not pass to another. It was his and his alone to drink, and he drank it deeply.

And then there is the betrayal of the Christ by Judas Iscariot. The Gospel writers are careful to give us foreboding hints that we might identify the disciple who from his birth was ordained to such apostasy. In art and literature from every generation of Christian history, Judas is Kingdom enemy number one (or perhaps number two).

In Dante, it is Judas that occupies the lowest level of hell. In Rembrandt, a woeful Judas bows broken and rejected before the Sanhedrin as the coins of silver litter the ground. He is the dark shadow among the fellowship of the saints, a fly in the ointment of the redeemed. And yet, we find that our Lord is kind even to him, never hostile or bitter. We are forced to conclude that if Jesus is able to treat Judas like that, then surely we can treat men of lesser crimes with equal kindness and grace.

So on this Maundy Thursday, I have determined to celebrate with believers of more festive traditions as together we look toward the cross of Good Friday and the open tomb of Easter morn. And while the nation wonders if the economy will rise again or the various conflicts around the world will come to a resolution, I’m reminded of the One who rose from the grave and defeated the infernal foe, even death, to give men not what we deserved, but what we didn’t.

Last month, I joined more than 8000 other conservatives from across the country for the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the historic Omni Shoreham Hotel overlooking Rock Creek Park in the posh northwest quarter of Washington D.C. Before the conference began and running through its three-day program, disempowered and occasionally distraught conservatives plotted endlessly an array of strategies to resurrect a party suffering two cycles of election-day drubbings.

A line-up of aspiring party leaders was organized to fulfill a tall order: soothe the pain and fire up the faithful. In this regard, CPAC 2009 was equal parts analgesic and epinephrine.

The pain conservatives feel is acute, however, and the internal tensions are profound. The fusionism of the 1970s and 80s whereby fiscal and social conservatives forged an alliance with economic and political libertarians is suffering the threat of fissionism in the age of Obama. Today, everybody is pointing fingers at the other guy looking for a plausible scapegoat.

Fiscal conservatives point to disasters like congressional intervention in the Terry Schiavo case or the divisive issues of gay marriage and abortion as proof positive that social conservatives are out of touch with the country. Similarly, social conservatives point out the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican congress that allowed the national debt to reach $10 trillion and the budget deficit to swell. To be sure, there is more than enough blame to go around.

Compounding the electoral losses we Republicans have faced are the personal losses we have experienced. In the last six years, we have buried three of our greatest heroes: The President, Ronald Reagan; the philosopher and publisher, William F. Buckley; and the preacher, Jerry Falwell.

The loss of these influential conservatives has left a vacuum that could have been filled by George W. Bush had he not become political kryptonite thanks to a wild-eyed federal spending spree, a tanked economy, and a prolonged and expensive struggle against international terrorism. And while blaming Dubya helps salve the conscience of recklessly complicit congressional leaders, it does little to revive a party with its least political power since the aftermath of Watergate and the election of Jimmy Carter.

So conservatives arrived at the Omni Shoreham, so to speak, between Barack and a hard place. On one side, we are in minority opposition to the most popularly-elected Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964. On the other side, every day when we turn on CSPAN we see Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid presiding over the United States Congress. Both realities are viscerally disturbing to conservatives.

If you listened to media reports after CPAC, you might be convinced that Rush Limbaugh’s red-meat keynote was the highlight of the week. To be sure, Rush brought the house down with the carnival showmanship of P.T. Barnum and the clever wit of H.L. Mencken. If Rush got one thing right, he knew that conservatives needed to laugh again.

Part of what made Ronald Reagan the gold standard for conservatives was his cheerfulness and buoyant sense of humor. It seems like ages since we’ve had that kind of hope, and President Obama doesn’t really provide it for us. Rush gave some laughs, but the cheerfulness and optimism were missing.

For me, the highlights were the speeches given by men like Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), a compelling leader of the next generation in Congress whose “Roadmap for America’s Future” offers real policy initiatives for entitlement and tax reform that empower Americans to direct their own lives with the kind of liberty that the Founders envisioned.

Or the speech by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who continues to generate ideas by the bushel for reforming America’s healthcare system and addressing our energy crisis. Or Congressman Mike Pence’s (R-IN) sober counsel to conservatives “in the wilderness” of political power that no circumstance of electoral defeat should force them to jettison their first principles.

Or the one by former Governor Mitt Romney, who urged conservatives to answer a liberal agenda in Washington with “good will and honest words.” Or the encouragement of Congressman Aaron Shock (R-IL), who at 27 is both the youngest member of Congress and one of the most articulate.

What I saw and heard were conservatives figuring out how we came so far from our basic commitments to strengthen families, eliminate waste, cut spending, defend liberty, and unleash American industries and entrepreneurs to compete in a global marketplace.

Conservatives again were reminded that the movement is about principles not personalities. That whether you like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter or hate them, whether you voted for McCain or Romney or Huckabee; whether you remember Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan or if your political memory is limited to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, it’s always the right time to be on the Right.

Sure, there are some incredible challenges ahead for conservatives and for the nation. Those who once stood for limiting the size of the federal government will have to deal with the bloated bureaucracies that have grown in the last eight years. Those who oppose unrestricted abortion rights will have to prepare themselves for the judiciary confirmation battles ahead. Those who believe in the fundamental justice of capitalism will have to hold the line against calls for greater regulation and nationalization of financial markets.

Being in the minority, however, is not only about holding the line.  It’s about reforming and renewing your commitments.  It’s about articulating what conservatives are for as much as what we’re against.  With this in mind, I suggest a few commitments for conservatives.

First, we must recognize that the same guiding faith that causes us to speak out against injustices to the unborn should cause us to withhold our curses of fellow countrymen on the other side of the political aisle.

Second, we must be as fierce in our indictment of corporate corruption as we are in our defense of deregulated free markets. With the same breathe we must steadfastly explain why our ideas offer a better future for all Americans, not just privileges for a fraction thereof.

Third, conservatives need to get back to basics and refuse liberals further opportunities to pin the label “obstructionist” on us.  To be conservative does not mean total opposition to change or progress.  What it does mean is adapting to new challenges without forsaking the tradition of one’s fathers. It means that we look to the Constitution — as adopted and amended by the States — as the fixed star in the constellation of our politics.  Every legislative initiative, every policy proposal is judged by it.  Conservatives in the Congress must remember that they too have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and that interpreting the document is as much a responsibility of the legislative branch as it is of the judicial.
 
Fourth, conservatives must be guided by the prudence of prioritization.  That is, we must discern which battles are worth fighting now and which ones can wait for later. When the economy is in a freefall and the war in Afghanistan is hanging success on a thread, it’s not time to be introducing constitutional amendments on flag burning or school prayer.  Conservatives waste valuable time and resources by focusing their efforts on issues that don’t pass the basic test of prudential prioritization.  Pandering to one’s base is not leadership in a time of national crisis.
 
Fifth, conservatives need to learn a new language of compassion.  Regrettably, compassionate conservatism got a black eye in the past eight years.  So much that sailed through Congress under President Bush’s agenda of compassion has resulted in greater disparities in wealth and more intense political division.  The concept of social justice is almost alien to conservatives, but the time is long past for us to cede liberals total claim to any area of public policy.  The incidence of poverty, illiteracy, and domestic instability are major concerns in America, and they should be major concerns for conservatives. There is a reason that a community organizer ended up in the White House, and cracking jokes about President Obama’s record of service in Chicago is not going to win the hearts and minds of the voters.

For the time being, Republicans exist in the land of the judges with no king in Israel and every man doing that which is right in his own eyes. Until the dust settles from 2008 and a unifying man or woman rises who has the personal character and political savvy to lead the disparate conservative tribes, Republicans are, as Rep. Pence said, in the wilderness.

But like Israel of old, the wilderness is a good place to reacquaint yourselves with where you came from, remind yourselves where you’re going, and figure out how to bring as many people with you as possible.

For many American boys, these two moments are among the most significant rites of passage to form the framework within which we learn our constitutional heritage. As humans, it is our natural right to worship God freely according to the dictates of our conscience and apart from government intrusion or coercion. As Americans, it is our constitutional right to keep and bear firearms.

I’m not sure many young men conflate the two, as if somehow our freedom to worship is safeguarded by our freedom to pack heat. But this month, the 87th General Assembly of the State of Arkansas is considering a bill that is causing critical reflection about these two separate but equal guarantees.

On January 27, 2009, Republican State Representative Beverly Pyle of Cedarville, Ark., introduced House Bill 1237 to amend a state law that prohibits licensees from carrying a concealed firearm into churches and other enumerated public spaces. The bill — which removes churches from the restricted list — passed the House on Wednesday, February 11, and is now awaiting final approval by the State Senate. The effort, according to the bill’s sponsor, is a response to the growing incidence of church shootings across the nation.

As would be expected, Baptist pastors across the state are weighing in on the issue. And like every other issue about which Baptists squabble, there is no shortage of opinions. Some ministers oppose the bill because they fear that concealed weapons in their worship services would disturb the “tranquility and sanctity of church.” Others oppose the bill on a more substantive theological basis, advocating instead an ethic of Christian nonviolence. Still others default to the separation of church and state and argue that the government is constitutionally restricted from interfering in church affairs.

For some reason, the questions of God and guns always ignite our passions.

Most of us, at the moment of crisis, are unable to engage in the serious task of weighing moral responsibilities. Adrenaline kicks in, and the flight-or-fight instinct trumps our previously planned course of action when confronted with a choice between life and death.

As a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment who believes that the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms is a double bulwark against both totalitarianism and anarchy, I bristle every time the Left tries to restrict my gun rights. As a thinking Christian who is able to weigh the moral distinction between passive resistance and self-preservation, I’m aware that the Second Amendment does not supplant the gospel call to suffer injustices for Christ’s sake.

The question for me is one of competence. That is, who exactly is competent to tell me when and where to worship? And who, exactly, can tell me when and where to can carry a gun?

Perhaps this is where it is helpful to read both the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence side-by-side, for the latter draws a distinction between alienable and unalienable rights while the former draws a distinction between the jurisdictions of federal and state governments.

It seems to me that these are two different rights grounded in two different laws and subject to two different facets of ordered liberty. The freedom to worship is one of the individual conscience grounded in the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, to borrow a Jeffersonian formula. This right, as the Founders aptly saw, is among those unalienable rights that men possess irrespective of their age, race, creed, or position in society. Not even a death-row inmate loses his right to worship God freely, for there is no shackle on earth than can constrain the soul.

Which is why, of course, even when the State is determined to deprive a man of his life for a capital offense, he is still permitted the ministries of a priest or pastor in the event he desires one.

The freedom to keep and bear firearms, however, is not an unalienable right. It is a constitutional one, lawfully and rightly retained by citizens who do not oppose just and reasonable laws. It is not a right to be retained by the irresponsible or the unlawful. We cannot keep a crazy man from worshipping a stick of butter, for instance, but we can certainly keep him from attempting to shoot those who prefer to prostrate themselves before a crock of margarine.

What House Bill 1237 has truly exposed, rather than a question of drawing lines between church and state, is the brilliance of Federalism. We are beholding the people of the State of Arkansas determine through a process of representative democracy what the laws of their state shall be. And it is prudent that this question is determined by the state legislatures and not by the United States Congress.

I say it is prudent because of the cultural differences that exist between the states. A boy growing up in Longview, Texas, for instance, is more likely to receive a gun from his father than a boy growing up in Newark, NJ. The fear that a gun rack in the back of a pickup truck would cause in Arkadelphia, Ark., is much different than it might cause in San Francisco, CA.

So I cannot say that a Christian should or should not carry a gun to church. Nor can I determine whether or not the State of Arkansas should allow it. All I can say is that until a man is compelled by the democratically-determined greater good of his society to relinquish his right to carry a concealed weapon to church, he is free to do so. Because he is free, however, does not mean that he is obliged. As a general rule I’m committed to maximizing the freedoms of citizens and limiting the power of government, though I realize a society where fathers do not take the care to raise responsible law-abiding sons might require the intervention of government to preserve ordered liberty.

In other words, only once a lower social institution (i.e. the family) fails to achieve its ordered end may a higher institution (i.e. the government) assume those responsibilities not ordinarily within its competent authority.  And then, it only does so temporarily and only to the degree that is needed to support rather than supplant the family.

On the other hand, no government has the authority to form or bind a man’s conscience in matters of worship. Fortunately, no major religion in America requires its adherents to worship the Almighty with both shotgun shells and chorus bells.

While Bauer’s treatment is concerned primarily with sins of the flesh, most of her observations hold true for sins less titillating to the body politic. Sins like those of former senator Trent Lott, who got “caught” paying tribute to an aging South Carolina senator, or like two of President Obama’s recent cabinet nominees of who failed to pay a portion of their income taxes.

Since the 111th Congress began, the confirmation of the president’s nominees has been – for the most part – a tranquil sea of uninterrupted approval. Nevertheless, two of the men originally slated to be most responsible for implementing President Obama’s domestic agenda – Timothy Geithner at Treasury and Tom Daschle at Heath and Human Services – have hit troubled waters.

The unpaid tax burden of the newly-confirmed treasury secretary was relatively minimal. His sin was understandable. Before the Senate Finance Committee, Geithner acknowledged his “careless and avoidable mistakes,” though he noted they were “unintentional.” When the final reckoning of his tax burden was complete, Geithner paid the federal government a meager $50K and received confirmation by a vote of 60-34.

Then this week, Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle released his own pious confession for failure to pay back taxes in excess of $140K. It seems that the former senator didn’t think it necessary to claim the benefit of a company-provided limousine or hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

In a multi-page mea culpa sent this week to the Senate Finance Committee, Daschle apologized for his “errors,” and acknowledged the “deep and disappointing embarrassment” that his tax bungling had caused. Like Geithner before him, Daschle was careful to locate his sins under the rubric of “unintentional.” Unlike Geithner, the pressures on Daschle to withdraw mounted.  Earlier today, Daschle removed himself from consideration and became the first confirmation casualty of the Obama administration.

During my years as a Baptist pastor, I learned a few things about sin and the confession thereof. Whether walking a deacon through a heart-wrenching process of post-adultery marital reconciliation or chasing down teenage addicts of various sundry controlled substances, I’ve been schooled in the subtle differences between sincere catharsis and half-hearted self-immolation. I’ve learned when public confession is necessary, and when it’s not. I’ve also learned to distinguish between greater and lesser sins, between those requiring a lash on the back and those requiring a slap on the wrist.

It seems to me that neither Timothy Geithner nor Tom Daschle have committed sins sufficiently venial to justify much in the way of political penance. Rather, their sins have exposed a weakness in the law as much as the law-breakers.

At its most recent publication, Title 26 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations – most commonly referred to as the tax code – is 3,387 pages, or roughly three times longer than a large print version of the King James Bible. It is complicated, convoluted, and utterly incomprehensible. And if a former United States senator and a member of the Federal Reserve Board are incapable of navigating its complexities and rendering unto Caesar his prescribed tribute, then the rest of us have little chance.

I don’t think that either man’s tax transgression is a grave indictment on his character or a reason to doubt his ability to guide the agency to which he has been nominated. Sure, it’s an embarrassment, but who among us has not pulled out our hair, screamed and wailed come every April 15th. But for some reason – in spite of endless frustration and perennial calls for simplification – the tax code maintains its enshrined and lofty position among the guiding documents of American political life with an amendment threshold almost as foreboding as the Constitution itself.

I suppose that a little prodding around every American’s tax records would result in a few unintentional mistakes. Ignorance of the law, as we all know, is no excuse for its violation. Neither does the multiplied company of fellow transgressors provide a defense. But ignorance of a cumbersome and complicated system of laws like the U.S. tax code should qualify for some special dispensation of forgiving grace.

The public inquisition of Secretary Geithner and Secretary-designate Daschle for their tax sins is to be expected given the partisan climate of Washington politics. It seems to me, however, that once the country is through these woods, prudence demands a serious revision and reduction of a tax code that neither former members of Congress nor future members of the Cabinet can get right.