Now, even if we can still afford such occasional obligations, the recession has provided something of a get-out-of-jail-free card: it's an excuse with which few would argue.
This elevation to extraordinary power was the last straw for Caesar, and with Crassus dead, Pompey was looking for any excuse with which to crush Caesar, and establish himself as the master of the state.
And still it was a call of, "No excuses" with which President Obama admonished black citizens at the NAACP's centennial celebration recently in New York.
These are new phenomena in German politics and help to explain – though not excuse – the stubbornness with which misguided policies have been pursued.
Asked about the letters, according to the report, agents and officals gave "a variety of unpersuasive excuses" — the casualness with which their requests had been granted had, perhaps, dulled their excuse-making faculties.
There is a wry satisfaction to be gained from "The Look of Silence," as it assembles a catalogue of all the excuses and dismissals with which the guilty, now as ever, slough off their sins: "What could we do?
That's the excuse, more or less, with which Rick Santorum is distancing himself from a snippet of his 2005 book, "It Takes a Family," in which "radical feminists" are disparaged for giving women the idea that they might find greater fulfillment outside the home.
If by chance we ever elect a bent and unscrupulous Republican president, he or she will have a whole new thesaurus of excuses, public and "private," with which to fend off impeachment.
In our globalised world – if you'll excuse the tautology – the ease with which most leaders can and do pop across the planet to visit each other and their flocks makes it rather harder to think of people whose visit would be really significant.
However, that does not excuse the disdain and "disgust" with which these men are portrayed or spoken.
He manufactured joy, that rarest of commodities, with which he excused everything, even himself.
