Deal Hudson, Bush's liason to the Catholic Church, has resigned from the Republican National Committee. The former Baptist minister, who has been married three times, and who is the editor of Crisis, a consevative Catholic magazine, is now experiencing what crisis is all about.

Hudson, a crony of Carl Rove's, is upset because some reporters are looking at his past. What they've found is ugly. I'll start with the more benign piece of dirt: Hudson played a key role in ousting Ono Ekeh, an employee at the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for African-American Catholics. Ekeh's sin? He posted on the Catholics for Kerry Web forum, and was therefore not a suitable person to work for the bishops. Hudson says he is not sorry that he got Ekeh fired from his job.

As chairman of the NRC's Catholic Outreach movement, Hudson had regular contact with the White House. He made a public statement that John Kerry should be "denounced from the pulpit" whenever he campaigned as a Catholic.

You can already see, from these examples, that Hudson runs fast and loose with the morality issue. But the best is yet to come. In 1994, Hudson, a married man and a member of the philosophy faculty of Fordham University, met an 18-year-old freshman who had been in and out of foster homes most of her life, and who suffered from suicidal depression.

Hudson took the girl to a bar. There was a lot of drinking, and she observed him French-kissing a couple of NYU girls, then enhancing his margarita experience by licking salt off their necks and eatiing lime slices from their breasts. The 18-year-old was drunk by the time she and Hudson left the bar, and he touched her breasts in the taxi, then took her to his office, had oral sex with her, and told her not to tell anyone.

But she did tell someone. She reported the incident to Fordham authorities, and when they announced there would be an investigation, Hudson resigned. He wasn't able to bury the story, however, and now, thanks to an investigation by the National Catholic Reporter, he has resigned from his fancy White House post. He is, of course, blaming "politics" and the "liberal press" for his misfortune.

There is obviously no vetting process at this White House. Periodically, someone connected with it or working in it has to leave because a big blot is discovered on that person's record. It is starting to look like the Reagan White House, where there were hot and cold running indictments and resignations 24 hours a day.

Of course, the record of both Bush and Cheney are smeared with big blots, and neither the public nor the media seems to care. Drunk driving (Bush and Cheney), insider trading (Bush), and being head of a company whose financial dealings were highly suspect during the time of that leadership (Cheney) have never been issues, either before or since the 2000 selection.

Nevertheless, it boggles the mind, this Republican "morality" movement and its leaders. In addition to Bush and Cheney, there is the former Morality Czar, a compulsive gambler; the governor of California, an unconvicted sex criminal; and the chief mouthpiece, a drug addict.