It's fair to say that the Massachusetts Democratic candidate for US Senator, Richard Blumenthal, had misled voters about his Vietnam military record. He didn't have one. But Blumenthal, with one exception, stayed on the right side of the literal truth. When the New York Times, reporting the story, released a tape in which a kinda-sorta truthful statement was edited out, it appeared to a lot of voters that the out-of-state-big-city Goliath of a newspaper was smearing the local small town hero. It looked like a preview of Andrew Breitbart snipping and stitching Shirley Sherrod's speech.

So the real credit goes to Mark Kirk (R-IL) for getting the ball rolling. He claimed to have won military awards he really hadn't won; being under fire in Iraq; serving in Desert Storm, when he was never under fire and had not served in Desert Storm. He told of his heartwarming experiences as a church school nursery teacher, which the church said was untrue. As a teenager, he had a near death experience after his boat tipped over, swimming for his life. Except witnesses say he just waited on top of the boat for a while until someone picked him up.

Just when it couldn't get worse, reporters brought up his big area of expertise, foreign policy. One expert fact after another had just been made up. Once the story became a discernible pattern, reporters felt free to let go of the finely calibrated he said-she said non-reporting that is the norm, and actually reveal facts. Other candidates are also not immune.

But reporters are unused to the new motif, clumsy about actual facts. Congressional candidate Ben Quayle (R-AZ), son of the unfortunate no-Jack-Kennedy Dan, produced literature in which he was described as an ardent family man, pictured with two cute little girls. Reporters found he has no kids. News stories told of this misleading ad. A primary opponent gleefully described Quayle's "rented" family. What a fake! And another one bites, another one bites, another one bites the dust. Career stillborn.

Quayle finally responded. The two kids were his nieces, part of his extended family. Oops. So Quayle, the newly vindicated, wrongly accused family man (extended) is the new front runner. Gotcha!!

Rand Paul, the extreme libertarian who captured the Republican nomination for US Senate in Kentucky has devoted much of his time aiming his high caliber weapons at the targets he wears in place of shoes. He said BP was treated unfairly. He told miners that safety issues are best left to mine owners. Then local press came up with a scandal. It seems Paul never graduated from Baylor University. His campaign never bothered to correct countless reports that said he did. Except it turns out Paul was guilty of no more than excessive modesty. It seems his academic record was so impressive, Duke University's School of Medicine asked him to attend before he had a chance to finish at Baylor. Gotcha!

There is good reason to vote against Paul. It has nothing at all to do with Baylor. Reporters would do well to focus on the real scandal: Turns out Rand Paul supports the horribly mistaken policies and beliefs of Rand Paul.

After South Africa freed Nelson Mandela from decades in prison, ended apartheid, and went to majority rule, an interesting divide happened. The all-white Afrikaans party, the National Party, had ruled South Africa since before most grandparents of today's South Africans were born. Their conservative policies were supported by conservatives here in the US. Dick Cheney, then a member of Congress, rose in opposition to allowing Mandela out of captivity. Africans chanted "one man one vote." US conservatives derisively referred to prospective majority rule as "one man, one vote, one time." Sub-Saharan black people could not be trusted to cast ballots.

But all evil things must come to an end, and the long arc of the moral universe did eventually bend toward justice. Nelson Mandela traded iron bars for a presidential mansion, as the head of the ANC, the African National Congress. And that is where a curious alliance came about.

The ANC was for a post-racial Africa. Economic development, not racial division, should command attention. Tribalism should phase out, becoming a faded memory. And so, the all black, Zulu based, Inkatha Freedom Party found itself joined by the all white National Party, the rabid Afrikaners. Both were prepared to struggle together for the right to impose rigid tribalism. They had a common vision quite different from the unity of the ANC.

The vision of unity, that of the African National Congress, prevailed. The National Party dissolved, then reformed as the New National Party, then, about 5 years ago, gave up the ghost, merging into the ANC.

I was thinking about South Africa, and its uncomfortable alliances, as I read about some of the 9/11 aftermath that is with us today. President Bush, in one of those grown up acts that earned the gratitude of Americans like me, made it clear early on who the enemy was. It was not Islam. It was not even a major division of Islam. We regarded ourselves as at peace with Shiites and Sunnis. Our enemies were the attackers, the terrorists. After his election, President Obama promoted the same vision.

al Qaeda, of course, has a different vision. They are frustrated at the international popularity of the American President. They wish to purify Islam, destroying all Shiites and all but the few Sunnis who share their goal of harsh religious dominion. They envision a global clash of civilizations.

Oddly enough, they are joined by those Americans who want to see just such a clash. Opposing Muslims who wish to build their own houses of worship, angrily defying efforts of those who plan to erect a living Muslim monument against terrorism, an Islamic center near the heart of the radical attack of 9/11. It will serve as a demonstration that all real Americans, regardless of faith, unite against an ideology of hate. Feisal Abdul Rauf leads the efforts and regards it his personal mission to defeat the terrorist vision.

I consider the arguments against those efforts, those promoting just the sort of global clash that is al Qaeda's goal, and I am reminded of unexpected alliances that can come from a shared vision.

The bottom line is: I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules.

Well, as political moments go, Rand Paul's interview with Detail Magazine doesn't match the most horrible imaginable. "I was for it before I was against it." "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here." But I could think of better ways to put the libertarian point of view.

At it's heart, his philosophy is not only not cynical, it's idealistic. The world would be a much better place if everyone would act in accord with their own enlightened self interest. Laissez faire means let well enough alone, as Washington Gladden acknowledged in the nineteenth century, "but also, 'Let ill enough alone.' Its contention was that ill enough, if let alone long enough, was sure to turn out well enough. About that there is question."

Well, Duh!

I would much rather see the USDA inspection label on the food we will prepare for our children than trust that everyone along the chain of production and distribution will be diligent about safeguarding the future effects of any tarnish on their reputation. Company inspectors at the Peanut Corporation of America found 12 instances of contamination during the final month of the Bush/Cheney administration. They shipped tainted peanut butter out anyway and 8 people died, a final testament to the efficacy of corporate self-interest.

Rand Paul is right, of course. A mining company should be sufficiently deterred by the prospect of bad publicity so that miners can work knowing that a company electrician would never deliberately disconnect the methane detector, or any other safety device, on a piece of heavy equipment. We have the right to be skeptical that families of the 29 workers who died as a result of the failure of that theory may take comfort in the fact that corporate carelessness will make it harder to recruit workers. "You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here," he said of employer self-interest. "If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs."

There are people I trust. In most cases, they have earned it over a long relationship. I would trust my life to a few people. I would trust the lives of children to a very few.

In the end, that is why I have to reject the enlightened self-interest, no-one-wants-a-bad-reputation, let's-throw-out-all-regulations approach of conservatives like Rand Paul. His pixie dust will kill, but he is the likely next Senator from Kentucky. I have a fond hope that voters will take him at his word: "...don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules."

I don't mind trusting some folks with my life and the lives of those I care for.
I so don't want to trust everyone.