Walter Shapiro has very bad judgement by believing leftwing scum like Edwards. So does he believe other left-wing scum like Pelosi, Obama, The Clintons, or Harry Reid?

If a man declares his love for his wife, has even recited vows or promises reflecting his love and loyalty and then betrays his own honor in his actions - well, can we expect that he will be loyal to his country and its citizens?

This is the question we need to ask ourselves about all of these candidates. That is why we look at their personal lives.

Can we trust a man who will betray the love in his marriage

to consider the welfare of his country before his own deisire for money or power?

Something about the man I never trusted. Just seemed too perfect, too plastic, too put-together. Now I know what my internal meter was telling me: "JERK ALERT! JERK ALERT! JERK ALERT!"

I have an aversion to philandering men. To let me know you are a philanderer is to lose every single ounce of my respect, and you will never get it back so don't bother trying.

To reveal a cheating past is to tell me you are a bum. No woman should have had her life ruined by the likes of you. Okay, maybe not her whole life, but any part of her life. No woman deserves to be cheated on. The man has only to speak up and say, "This is not working for me, I'm leaving." There is never a valid reason to dally outside a relationship and then make excuses.

John Edwards' wife should turn her back and RUN. Same as Hillary Clinton should have turned her back and RUN. And I should have turned my back and RUN.

Eventually, each of us learns to stop tolerating the emotional abuse. I have already reached that point--I hope Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton are heading down the hallway behind me.

I've admired and respected Walter Shapiro's terrific commentaries for a number of years and I've often told him so ever since I very early predicted that Mike Bloomberg [Mayor Mike]was going to win his initial NYC Mayoral campaign when only his Mom, Mike's daughters and I were giving him more than a snowball's chance in Hades!

Walter, I don't respectfully believe you should be so hard on yourself as a reporter concerning John Edwards. Bernard "Bernie" Goldberg, e.g., a well-respected Fox-News contributor, and former CBS kahuna, indicated that Elizabeth Edwards isn't to be completely exonerated in this sordid situation.

Supposedly, Walter, Elizabeth has tremendous ambition herself that significantly overshadows her relationship with John. Accordingly, while I certainly don't condone what John did, but if the truth be known, there are probably more than two sides to this story that tragically has impacted so many lives.

Perhaps, Walter, you can shed some additional light on the foregoing.

Come on Shapiro, the guy is a slip and fall lawyer

and you're surprised he's a sleaze bag. Please.

Who is buying this? The Democrat media won't report the shortcomings of their party's contenders to the American people. Then, when their candidates' corruption is center stage and irrefutable, and the dirtbag is no longer in the race, they come out with a pathetic piece like this to try to breathe life back into their debased credibility.

If anyone thinks that Shapiro didn't know Edwards was a sleazy, hypocritical, little con artist, I have a used car I'd like to sell him.

He and his comrades covered up for their boy and if Edwards were the nominee today they would still be covering up for him.

If you doubt it, look at their non-coverage of Obama's vile ideology and loathsome associations.

this is not aboutsex, it is about abandonment. it has to do with illness of the worst sort. it has to do with immature males who go on after the first twenty years of marriage to the next lady. so sordid. and it is so jerry springer. my mistake was to shun that program for its people who were so sad and so stupid, yet here it is in full narrative flower on regular news. takes you aback. no, we can judge these guys and their gals all we want. freud would do the same. we live in a community where all is fair to consider. women are abandoned and men can be tarred and feathered. the private is public where women are concerned, that was the mantra of the true femininsts now long sullied by the likes of clinton, spitzer and the rest of the zoo.

John Edward's ego and self-described narcissism allowed him to delude himself he could get away with adultery and payoffs and still run for president - Just as Clinton's hubris and out of control sex drive convinced him he'd never get caught cigar-ing Monica in the oval office.

Stupid, contemptible and reckless, but understandable.

But what about Elizabeth Edwards? Here her husband TELLS her about the affair, which he then quietly resumes after confessing. She knows she doesn't have much time left on earth. She is smart enough to know that no one can get away with this kind of stuff anymore in today's political climate. Why didn't she tell him not to run?

I don't think it's due to an overwhelming urge to redecorate the White House. By letting the man run and leave himself open to tabloid scrutiny, the lady ultimately got what she wanted - revenge.

Why old school scribe's letter isn't an instant editor's choice confounds me. Perhaps it's because it's criticism of Shapiro.

I can't imagine that people who run for president would be able to do it if they had meek, humble characters. And I'm not sure that we'd want our presidents to be this way, either. It's the old story of there always being a negative to positive aspects of character. Powerful people like power and its perks. They have to be self-centered, self-regarding. They have probably cut some questionable deals: they have to have done so to get things accomplished, etc. etc.

But, while understanding that their natures and jobs may mean they do some questionable things, and forgiving them for some of those things, we should be looking to see that our candidates follow some basic ground rules, that they have some core ethics. One rule should be to avoid hypocrisy: to be quiet rather than trumpet untruths about themselves. They should not, for instance, run on the pretense that they have perfect marriages. How could marriage between a person of such towering ambition that he/she wants to be president and anyone else be "regular"? A second rule is that given that it is the nature of life and politics (kind of the same thing)that you will sometimes muck around in morally and ethically ambiguous areas, you will nonetheless have a line over which you will not go. This line should be the one that separates totally self-serving actions from self-serving actions which basically also serve the public good. It follows that the third rule is that your towering ego defines itself as being towering in the public interest, and that you never forget the public interest. And the fourth rule should be that you know your towering ego needs input from a variety of sources so that you can continue to seek with some objectivity what the public good is.