So let us never EVER forget that Maj. Leader Bill Frist was a cat murderer:

I'm talking about the cat-killing. What perspective should we put this in?

Think of it this way: You have a sister, and she comes to you for advice. This guy named Bill has asked her to marry him. Great guy, this Bill, practically Mr. Perfect: a heart surgeon, ambitious, dedicated, everyone speaks well of him. There's just this one thing, something he felt the need to confess to her, something he did as a youth in medical school, something he now regrets, something he says he's ashamed of. It's long ago in the past, but it troubles your sister, and she's asking your advice about it because Bill-well, he lied and cheated essentially to kidnap and then dissect and kill cats.

Oh, he did it for a good cause: He had some advanced ideas about a medical breakthrough, and they'd run out of cats to dissect at the medical school, so he'd go to animal shelters, make goo-goo eyes at a cat at each shelter to get them to let him adopt the shivering strays, take them home, and then perform experimental surgery on them. For a good purpose, a higher humanitarian purpose, he says-but obviously he isn't trying to excuse the lying and cheating, or the implicit betrayal of the poor trusting animals, who thought they were going to be given a home off the mean streets at last. So there it is, the question you can sense your sister is asking you: Should she put her life, her trust, in this fellow? Was it just a youthful indiscretion, or was it a signal of something deeply twisted?

I'll take "Deeply Twisted" for $500, Alex...