Dumber Cum Laude

Is it not called 'The Butterfly Effect'
How one small act the future can affect,
And how, when manifold mishaps multiply,
The cumulative harms may amplify?

Here some exceptions, there a broken rule,
Yale's lowered admission standard into school,
The National Guard not punishing desertion
Nor Harvard censuring lack of exertion.

'Twas all these institutions' sacrilege
To sweep the primrose path of privilege.
Then bailouts for a businessman bankrupt
And favors from the highest court corrupt,

Conflicts of interest, hunting ducks with rifles. [1]
Though sinners may have deemed such faults mere trifles
Or petty peccadillos at the time,
See how concessions in cascade combine

To court calamity upon the earth,
The damning consequence of truthhood's dearth.
How sad that no integrity arose
To nip the bud that birthed this yellow rose.

September 2004

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[1]      Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court went duck hunting with vice president Dick Cheney in 2004, even while a case was before the court that sought to compel Cheney to make public the names of industry executives and lobbyists who helped secretly craft the administration's energy policy. Scalia refused to recuse himself from the case, even after this connection was revealed.