Moral authority? We don’t need no steenking moral authority!

I’m having trouble keeping track of our, um, gummint offishuls.

A few days ago, I complained that President Obama would probably ignore the growing clamor among Latin American heads of state to consider legalizing drugs. Which he did. President Obama and his administration and the Democrats are adamantly opposed to that, as are most Republicans. No surprise there.

So you might think that when our leaders go on a trip to Columbia where these issues are certain to emerge,  they’d be, like, if not on their best behavior, at least restrained.

You’d be wrong. OK, so the Secret Service personnel were hiring prostitutes. While I think that’s their individual business and I don’t believe prostitution should be illegal, some of these people have wives, and such behavior abroad really doesn’t convey the impression of professionalism or restraint. When you’re in law enforcement in a foreign country representing the United States, you’re supposed to conduct yourself in a dignified manner. And while it might be OK to hire a prostitute discreetly, this was anything but discreet. The worst aspect of it is that they apparently were so cheap that they didn’t even pay for the services. (Even if you think prostitution is OK, that’s bad.)

I didn’t say anything about the prostitution issue or the non-payment issue, but they kept running through my mind as I thought about our country’s position on drug legalization. The argument against legalization is supposedly based on morality, right? How do you think Latin Americans like being preached to by an American administration when law enforcement agents in its entourage are so lacking in moral authority as to stiff prostitutes? Were I a Latin American, I’d be in stitches.

And while I had not written about any of this during the past few days, I nonetheless kept thinking of Hillary Clinton’s amazing statement that we can’t legalize drugs because “there’s too much money in it.”

That’s this Hillary Clinton. Our “dancing, beer-slugging secretary of state” — who wants to lecture other countries and dismiss their arguments by making an astounding remark about how there’s too much money in the drug war to consider legalization.

I think she needs a caption to go with the “dozen beers, two glasses of whiskey and bottles of water.”