"Friday was a bad news day for besieged Boston cardinals, secretive former secretaries of state and mulish Mississippians.

Boston's Cardinal Bernard F. Law almost handed in his high hat and did resign as archbishop in a session with Pope John Paul II. He remains a cardinal until he turns 80.

Law, 71, the senior Roman Catholic prelate in the United States, had presided over a decades-long concealment of sexual abuse by priests, some of whom he had reassigned time and time again despite crimes repeatedly committed against young people.

The laws Law enforced were codes of silence and canons of cover-up until growing numbers of priests and lay leaders called quite vocally for his removal.

Thank God that Americans and Catholics of conscience can and do speak out.

Secrets and lies

Now real Massachusetts law enforcement officials can investigate sex crimes through a grand jury that already has issued subpoenas to Law, several priests and seven bishops, five of whom once worked for Law.

The church and the victims of pedophile priests could not start to heal as long as secrecy reigned and, as Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly put it, "The church cared more about itself than it cared about kids."

Henry A. Kissinger's comeuppance is as deserved as Law's. He never covered up sex crimes. Nations, and the dictators they enable, are never charged with molesting people.

Kissinger, 79, a former secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents Nixon and Ford, holds higher-than-cardinal rank at the altar of secrecy. He served as wartime father confessor in Nixon's cathedral of cover-up. Unlike Nixon, he never bombed. He lied better than his president.

He stepped aside Friday as President Bush's choice to lead a bipartisan 10-member commission established by Congress to investigate why the United States was not prepared for last year's terrorist attacks on New York and Arlington.

Something in common

Kissinger's sins are old and foreign policy successes legend as he and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell long ago entered the hush-hush land of international consulting and lobbying.

Conflicts of interest would be flying at night on gossamer wings from China to Chile and back unless each distinguished gentleman laid out in the bright light of day more disclosure than either could bear.

Both diplomats blinked at the thought of baring all or having to leave a firm, and stayed in the lucrative shadows. Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, took the plunge and stepped aside Wednesday as vice chairman of the 9-11 panel two days before Kissinger.

Fifth District Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount, looks principled and perhaps even prescient for writing Bush 13 days ago and asking him to consider naming someone other than Kissinger.

"I do not believe that Henry Kissinger is a good choice to head the September 11th Commission," Goode wrote the president. He did not spell out Kissinger's deficiencies but did question in an interview whether Kissinger could be trusted to "look into every angle."

In dozens of subsequent conversations with Virginians, liberals to conservatives and stalwarts of both parties, not one criticized Goode or defended Kissinger.

Quite simply, Goode was right. A Kissinger Commission report on the nation's 9-11 shortcomings would be viewed by many as more holey than wholly true and complete.

Thank God that conscientious Americans demand disclosure.

It would have taken Kissinger months to disclose everything or months to sell off his far-flung consulting business. The senior statesman and his nation may want to give decades-old deceits a rest.

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, is a horse of a different color.

Lott, 61, is too true to his roots.

He has male pattern deafness in at least one ear and in 2002 can sound racist in offhand remarks that offend. His recidivism strikes at least once a decade.

Lott meant to offend no one but it's a very good thing that he offended many.

Whether or not he steps aside instead of returning to his old post as Senate majority leader is a Republican Party problem that illustrates how far the nation, if not Lott, has come in 54 years.

Thank God that Americans of every party and every color accept as progress the racial strides of the past half century and overwhelmingly reject rhetoric that would turn back the clock.

By repeatedly saying that Americans would not "have had all these problems over all these years" if the rest of the nation had followed Mississippi in backing Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential campaign, Lott has permanently damaged his own credibility, whatever he meant.

His first "apology" was, as Julian Bond put it, "mealy-mouthed" and no one bought it.

His continued apologies through Friday, and Bush's brilliant distancing of himself from Lott's remarks, show a thirst for power stronger than a desire to serve one's own party.

Lott's radioactivity on race has a half-life longer than Bush's presidency.

As long as Lott's leadership job remains safe, Democrats will be as happy to remind people about his remarks as Republicans were to crow about a previous president's lies about his sex life.

Even cardinals know that lies and cover-ups about sex can bring down a house of cards. Americans might wonder if at least recidivist insensitivity about race matters as much as lies about sex.

Lott knows the answer, as do most who have polled Americans about race for the Republican Party, which just might be losing its legacy as the party of Lincoln.

The party of Lott rings as nicely - not. " (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, December 15, 2002)