One of the Ethics Scoreboard's very first Ethics Heroes (February 2004) was Senator Orrin Hatch. Hatch received his recognition here for refusing to support a member of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's staff who without authorization had reviewed thousands of e-mails to and from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and subsequently leaked some of their more disturbing contents to the Wall Street Journal. The staffer, attorney Manuel Miranda, resigned and had an unpleasant few months while his ethics were being deplored in many op-ed pieces that took up Hatch's refrain that "gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail." Senator Hatch was roundly condemned by conservative stalwarts for turning on a devoted paladin of the Right who had exposed some genuinely shady tactic employed by the Judiciary Committee Democrats to block Bush conservative nominees for judgeships.

The Scoreboard's conclusion illustrates the peril, an occupational hazard of ethics commentary, of evaluating the conduct of those who work in a unique professional environment like politics. Discussions with those in a position to know have revealed that Senator Hatch's handling of this incident was in truth an example of a leader throwing a subordinate to the wolves in order to burnish his image. Hatch himself has a well-earned reputation as a prolific leaker of confidential and even classified information, and also had a role in creating the atmosphere of bitter ideological combat on the Judiciary Committee that led to the incident. There is also evidence, though not conclusive, that Hatch encouraged the inaccurate perception that Miranda had actually "hacked" the e-mails, when in fact they were simply improperly stored so that others could gain access to them. Miranda did not violate any law.

Mr. Miranda, a thoughtful and passionate man who has become a successful and much-quoted conservative pundit, still maintains that his expropriation of the Democrat e-mails was justified by the illicit activities they revealed. The Scoreboard emphatically disagrees: self-serving though it may have been, Hatch's verdict about reading other people's mail was ethically unassailable. Reading other people's private correspondence is wrong, and unethical conduct can never be retroactively redeemed by its results. Still, though Senator Hatch was right about the principle involved, it has become increasingly clear that his handling of the matter, as is usually the case on Capital Hill, was motivated by expediency and not heroic ideals.

So Hatch was no hero. And though the Scoreboard will not retract its assessment that reading the e-mails was wrong, it does regret the harshness of its rhetoric in the original piece. Miranda behaved in a manner that reflects the toxic environment of ideological warfare in Congress these days, an ethically barren environment in which the Golden Rule seems as quaint and irrelevant as a Mother Goose rhyme. The so-called "Memogate" affair was a symptom of the pervasive lack of respect, fairness, and integrity that now clouds the nation's lawmaking and politics. We have seen more since.

Meanwhile, the search for a hero continues.