Todd Spangler

WASHINGTON -- With reporters shouting and camera flashes exploding before his eyes, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner stood alone on a stage in New York City, trying to respond to every question. But there was no answer for one of the questions:

Why?

Why would he send graphic images to women he had met on Facebook and Twitter? How could he not know -- with any number of sex-tainted scandals to guide him -- that it could cost him his career and ruin his reputation as he lied, like so many others, to avoid the embarrassment of getting caught?

"This was a very dumb thing to do. It was a very hurtful thing to do," he said from the stage, tears in his eyes. "If you're looking for some kind of deep explanation for this, I simply don't have one."

Some psychologists, though, say they can explain the steady drumbeat of news about politicians who philander, attempt to seduce, or, as in Weiner's version of what happened, ignore the potential consequences of what he considered harmless frivolity.

DETROIT -- It was a few years back when Susan Greeson of Little Rock, Ark., was coming out of her barbershop and saw something shiny on the sidewalk. Picking it up, she saw it was a bracelet -- one of those remembrances produced by the millions in the 1970s in honor of missing or captured American servicemen.

This one had Maj. Robert Tucci's name on it. An Internet search told her all she needed to know about him -- born in Detroit, shot down over Laos in 1969. Missing in action. Greeson put the bracelet in a box so it wouldn't be lost again.

Friday, at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery, Tucci's remains are finally being laid to rest, with full military honors. Greeson wept Thursday at the news.