Edwards violated his wife’s trust. Obama violated my civil rights by voting for the FISA amendment. I’ll save my outrage for those times when I get screwed.

I really don’t get it. We say we’re devoted, as progressives, to the principle that what two or more consenting adults do in private is their own bloody business. But we still buy the tabloids who print as fact rumors about who is schtupping whom, and insist that we have some sacred right to know every last intimate detail of the personal lives of anyone we even suspect might be thinking about running for office–and then, when, as was inevitable, evidence turns up that s/he is in fact a human being and not perfect, we turn on that candidate and rend him/her limb from limb. Is it any wonder we’re stuck with the lame-ass candidates we’ve bemoaned for decades?