First the Trumps
The most well-known conservative columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks, is testing the mettle of his conservative followers more than usual this week.
No fan of Donald Trump (few conservative columnists are, actually), Brooks wrote a piece titled "Moral Vacuum in the House of Trump."
The piece posits that the Donald Trump Jr. we see through the Russia scandal story is not malevolent. Instead because of family conditioning, his moral compass is warped, thus he seems "simply oblivious" that there could be anything wrong with accepting the Russian government offer of Trump campaign help that it came across his email.
President Trump's grandfather was a German immigrant and draft-dodger who ran two different bordellos. His father was a scandal-ridden, success-obsessed builder and workaholic who "encouraged those around him to be killers in their field." And we all now know of the myriad Trump University-like schemes of Donald Sr.
Brooks writes that he reminds us of Trump family history "because I don't think moral obliviousness is built in a day. It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a person's mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing; to take the normal human yearning to be good and replace it with a single-minded desire for material conquest; to take the normal human instinct for kindness and replace it with a law-of-the-jungle mentality.
"It took a few generations of the House of Trump, in other words, to produce Donald Jr," according to Brooks.
Even in Junior's interview with Sean Hannity last week, he seemed to miss even a sense of embarrassment at having been caught lying - several times.
"That's what we do in business," Junior told the friendly Fox News host. "If there's information out there, you want it."
Who can blame us now for wondering what else "out there" the Trumps want and will accept.
When will the next shoe drop?
NBC has learned that another person with Russia ties was in the room for the June 9, 2016, Clinton dirt meeting with Donald Trump Jr., his father's campaign manager Paul Manifort, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Also present was a Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties with Russian intelligence.
And maybe another person, as well.
Junior had told Fox News "everything" was out after he confirmed the emails by releasing them on Twitter to scoop a New York Times story about the emails and the meeting.
Daddy Trump - and his spokespersons - continue to say there is nothing to see here, and Junior is "a good boy."
Trump's second son, Eric, tweeted: "They [we guess he means reporters who are looking for truth] can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other."
Actually, Eric, that's the only thing in this whole sordid saga that is remotely reassuring: There is at least - so far - enough morality among the Trumps to be close as a family. Would that you thought of your country with that respect.
And what about the rest?
But it isn't just the Trumps who seem morally challenged.
How about the GOP lawmakers who voted last week against revoking son-in-law Jared Kushner's security clearance?
The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday rejected two amendments to a key spending bill intended to revoke Kushner's clearance. One would have barred funds from being used "to issue, renew, or maintain a security clearance for any individual in a position in the Executive Office of the President who is under a criminal investigation by a Federal law enforcement agency for aiding a foreign government." The amendment failed in a 22-30 vote.
The other amendment was aimed at revoking the security clearance of White House staffers who deliberately fail to disclose meetings with foreign nationals or governments on their questionnaire for national security positions. The committee also rejected the amendment 22-30.
The GOP called the amendments "a political stunt."
What do they call lying on federal forms and trying to aid a foreign government?
And what was moral about the GOP Senate maneuver to steal a Supreme Court seat?
What's moral about cloaking a tax cut for the wealthy bill as a "health care" bill?
What's moral about standing by quietly and numbly as a president assaults the free press?
What's moral about the House of Representatives slow-walking a vote on the stalled Russian sanctions bill - the one the Senate passed 98-2 last month over Russian meddling in the our presidential election and other abuses? (To his credit, Tennessee's Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the House delays were "doing nothing but helping Russia.")
Frankly, viewed with these questions, the moral vacuum of the Trumps pales beside the cavernous moral void of the GOP.