That's odd

With the latest report that there is actually an Ebola Czar (Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response) who is just not present, it struck me that there seem to be a lot of female sacrificial lambs of late. As best I can tell, women make up perhaps 30% of the senior cabinet members and other senior positions in the administration. But they seem to make up a striking percentage of resignations owing to incompetence, malfeasance or other circumstances.

Lois Lerner thrown under the bus and pleading the fifth regarding illegal IRS targeting of citizen based on their political beliefs is one who still remains in the spotlight.

Then there is Kathleen Sebelius, former Secretary of Health and Human Services who "resigned" after the Obamacare debacle, including but not limited to the failed website rollout.

Then there is Nancy-Ann De­Parle, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who led the initial work on the Obamacare website disaster. She was later replaced by Jeanne Lambrew who in turn was replaced.

Then there is the recent resignation of Secret Service Director, Julia Pierson, taking the fall for the breach of White House security which allowed an unbalanced intruder to race around in the residence until eventually tackled by an off duty Secret Service agent.

Hilary Clinton has resigned as Secretary of State following multiple failures (Arab Spring, Green Revolution, Libyan war, Iraq, rise of ISIS, loss of Yemen, China territorial expansion efforts, Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc.) including the loss of four Americans to terrorist attack in Benghazi.

Those names were just top of mind. Just statistical chance? What about other bungles. I went googling.

I had forgotten about the resignation of GSA Administrator Martha Johnson for a strikingly wasteful Las Vegas extravaganza "training" session held for some of her employees.

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, resigned, not because of any particular scandal, but certainly under a shadow.

Shirley Sherrod was thrown under the bus for some ill-considered morality tales to an NAACP conference.

There are some top males who have been forced out owing to dubious practices including Eric Shinseki who resigned as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs owing to the waiting list scandal; Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA for domestic spying, David Petraeus, Director of the CIA for an affair, General Stanley A. McChrystal for overly frank comments about the Commander in Chief.

It would take more time and effort than I am willing to invest to come up with both an exhaustive list of resignations under scandal conditions and to properly define categories for comparisons. I know there has been some sort of simmering scandal around EPA Gina McCarthy and secret email accounts or something like that.

Still, for only a 30% representation in the Administration leadership, there seems to be an overrepresentation in scandals. Are they just easy political sacrifices to make? More principled in accepting responsibility? Promoted beyond the Peter Principle and therefore more subject to missteps?

Someone, somewhere, sometime might dig in to it a bit, but it seems striking to me.