Back Taxes And Marijuana

“Make no mistake. Tax cheaters cheat us all, and the [Internal Revenue Service] should enforce our laws to the letter.”- Tom Daschle, former senate majority and minority leader.

Make no mistake. This is the same Tom Daschle who withdrew his nomination as health secretary after revelations of unpaid back taxes to the tune of $140,000.

Make no mistake. Once he learned he was being nominated as secretary of health in the new Obama administration, he promptly paid up his taxes. All is fine now, right? "I got caught, but hey, I paid it back." "Now gimme the nomination."

That is precisely the point being missed. Dacschle pays his taxes after he gets caught. And he hopes he now gets a pass.

Sounds like the recent revelations of Olympic swimming star Michael Phelps, who was outed in a British tabloid newspaper. Phelps was pictured smoking marijuana from a pipe.

But he made it better. He apologized. "It won't happen again," he says. Oh, did I mention that in 2004, he got caught in a drunken driving incident and apologized for that, too?

Here's the lesson: Get caught doing something you shouldn't be doing. Second, apologize and make restitution after being caught. Then everything is all better.

Real repentance doesn't wait until the pictures appear in the newspaper or until some nosy reporter breaks an embarrassing story. And it certainly doesn't expect that once a person apologizes and promises never to do it again that all is well.

Eating the forbidden fruit got Adam and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Behavior has consequences. Sometimes they are bad ones, regardless of a desire to pretend like nothing ever happened. Sometimes because of my own mistakes, errors, and sins, things changed. Consequences came. No amount of sorry or restitution after the fact erased those consequences.

At least Daschle and Phelps go further than Governor Rod Blagojevich, who after being unanimously impeached by the Illinois Senate, still refused to admit that he did anything wrong.

Other lessons? Pay your taxes, don't smoke marijuana, and don't offer to sell a senate seat.

Then you won't have something to be sorry about.