Americans continue to have a bit of trouble exercising our judgment over truthfulness.

Two recent stories have attracted much comment in the national press, and together they illustrate the point.

First, pop singer Michael Jackson alleged that he was mistreated while in custody of the police. This week, disgraced former baseball player Pete Rose came clean with the news that yes, despite what he has said these past 15 years, he did indeed gamble on baseball.

Now, singer Jackson perhaps can be excused his child-like displays, for he is widely understood to be a special case of arrested development. Rose's admission, coming as his publisher prepares to distribute a half million copies of his new book, is just another way of telling us what most people know: "Charlie Hustle" was an inveterate gambler and a liar. For all these years, he lied about what he did, and he lied about whether he was lying, and he put honorable people like former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent through years of turmoil. Vincent was actually booed out of a Cincinnati stadium some years ago by fans who chose to take the side of the ballplayer over the executive. Now we know, the baseball hero really did have feet of clay.

The problem of course about lying is the impossibility of knowing the veracity of the people who make it their habit. Pete Rose says now that he lied about his gambling, but can he be believed? Maybe he was telling the truth all those years, and is lying now so as to help sell his book, and by the way, get a chance to be voted into baseball's Hall of Fame. When can we believe an admitted liar, and when not?

A person's capacity for falsehoods can often be predicted by their life circumstances. People who abuse drugs most often cover up the truth, often developing elaborate cover stories. Persons who abuse alcohol tell themselves they can handle it, they do not have a problem. Fooling themselves, they attempt to fool their families, usually with tragic results. Such deceptions go hand in hand with addiction, whether drugs, alcohol or gambling.

There are all kinds of examples: those priests who abused children over the years became greatly skilled at lying; Richard Nixon and his people developed an elaborate scheme in the wake of the Watergate break-in; Saddam Hussein told the world he had no weapons of mass destruction; George W. Bush said that he most certainly did.

Who do we believe, what do we believe, when can we believe people who do not tell the truth? It is truly one of life's conundrums.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practise to deceive," wrote Sir Walter Scott. "All I want is a second chance," says Pete Rose.

Most often a lack of veracity is a sound reason for a person to have a tarnished reputation. The good they do - Jackson's delightful music, Pete Rose's brilliant athleticism - becomes tarnished by questions about their truthfulness.

Our last president once answered a question by asking what "the meaning of 'is' is." In these current circumstances, people should ask just what the truth is.

- Ed Forry