WHO SAYS IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE?

After almost 7 months in office, during the George W. Bush Addministration, the greatest single act of terrorism on American soil occurred.  The then Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, asked "Who could have imagined that highjacked aircraft could be used as flying bombs", thus absolving her boss from blame.  Mr. Bush then invaded Iraq, ignoring voluminous documents in the State Department warning of sectarian violence that could be unleashed, destabilizing that country as well as the whole Middle East.  When criticised for not taking into account the Sunni/Shia problem, Bush again pled ignorance because he didn't do nuance.  Mr. Bush was rewarded, with a second term in office, by the American people.

A few feet from Chris Christi's desk in the Governor's office, sat an aide who sent an order to a Christi appointee, at the Port Authority, to cause traffic problems in Ft. Lee, N.J.  Since, Mr. Christi proclaimed his innocence because he was ignorant of something occuring a few feet from his desk, he is able to run for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Another such Presidential candidate, Scott Walker, sitting inches from an employee, who was illegally soliciting funds for Mr. Walker's campaign and is serving a prison sentence on her felony conviction, also claimed ignorance of  what was going on and is one of the front runners for the nomination.

To be fair, the Republicans do not automatically accept ignorance as a defense.  When the Internal Revenue Service, a quasi independent branch of the Government that was then being run by a Bush appointee, delayed issuing some tax exemptions, to the Tea Party,  Republicans insisted that Barack Obama was guilty of malfeasance in office, regardless of whether he even knew about it at the time, because, after all, it happened on his watch.