With the election very close coming into the last week, Johnson and Nixon, two of the toughest and least scrupulous political leaders in the country's history, resorted to new levels of electoral skullduggery.
By presenting Moses' unjustified accusations, the Bible is reminding us that even brilliant, scrupulous, divinely inspired leaders like Moses sometimes make mistakes.
But in the New York City school system, where Mr. Brizard spent the bulk of his career, the union representative who worked most closely with him described Mr. Brizard as an executive who put his agenda first but collaborated with union leaders and was scrupulous in following rules for dismissing ineffective teachers.
He is depicted as a patron of the arts, a valiant leader in war and a scrupulous supporter of religion.
But over the next 40 years he wrote or edited a number of volumes about Lincoln and his times that elevated him to eminence in Civil War studies, and by the mid-'60s he had joined David Herbert Donald and Don E. Fehrenbacher as groundbreaking leaders of a new, more scrupulous and objective generation in Lincoln scholarship.
Referring to Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page on Thursday said, "It now appears that both leaders have been far more scrupulous in discussing this and related issues than much of the media in either of their countries, which would embarrass the journalistic profession, if that were possible".
He predicted a glorious future for the Third Reich and concluded, chillingly, "Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry".
In other words, this former K.G.B. man, known for strong-arm tactics, was more scrupulous about observing the niceties of term limits than were New York's political leaders: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his Medvedev equivalent, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker.
"Our system of government," Judge Marrero said before imposing the sentence of 292 months, "relies not only on scrupulous preservation of the rule of law but also on faith in the democratic processes by which our leaders are elected and govern".
