The times they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan once informed us. Conservatives have been watching in horror as investigations into Biden Inc. reveal one stunning bit of evidence after another. While the corruption embedded in the Biden family has long seemed obvious to those who have been paying attention, the vast majority of the legacy media has either ignored these stories entirely (the most common response) or attempted to play them down and trivialize them by claiming there is “no smoking gun.” But this week, the Associated Press was apparently pushed to awaken from its slumber and put a poll in the field asking the public whether Joe Biden did anything wrong in his dealings with his wayward son Hunter and his many foreign “business partners.” To the surprise of few, the results were rather one-sided. More than two-thirds of respondents believe that Joe Biden either engaged in illegal activity or, at a minimum, behaved unethically. Of course, the AP doesn’t like to use words like “crime” or “illegal,” so they sum all of this up under the category of “ethical concerns.”

Ethical concerns are casting a shadow over President Joe Biden as he seeks reelection amid ongoing investigations into his son Hunter Biden and a presidential impeachment inquiry, with a new poll showing that 35% of U.S. adults believe the president himself has done something illegal.

An additional 33% say they think the president behaved unethically, but not illegally. And 30% say Biden did nothing wrong, according to the poll. The results of the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reflect both a vast political divide and skepticism about the morality of government leaders.

House Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden, seeking to tie the president to the foreign business dealings of his 53-year-old son.

There’s a rather fine line between those choosing to describe Joe Biden as having done things that were “illegal” or “unethical” in this case. On the one hand, accusing someone of breaking the law doesn’t automatically prove that they engaged in criminal acts. They need to have a trial first and be given the opportunity to put up their own defense. Until then, these are simply allegations. On the other hand, ethics are all too frequently left in the eye of the beholder. We also don’t tend to send people to prison for unethical behavior, though we can remove them from elected office over it when we next go to the ballot box.

But with all of that said, while there may not yet be a “smoking gun,” the investigations into the affairs of Joe and Hunter Biden have produced enough smoke that there is certainly some fire under there somewhere. As far as a chance to present a defense, Joe Biden has had countless chances and he has turned them all down. We know that he is a boldface liar who repeatedly told flat-out lies about “never even speaking to my son or anyone for that matter” about his overseas business dealings. And now that the House investigations have revealed mountains of damning documentation, Biden simply walks away on the rare occasions when a reporter has the temerity to ask him about it.

What boggles my mind about this poll is the 33% of respondents who said that Joe Biden “did nothing wrong.” What planet are these people from and do they ever watch anything on television other than reruns of Sex and the City? What possible legal and ethical reason would the Bidens have for setting up a massive network of nearly anonymous limited liability corporations that had no function other than to shovel millions of dollars from overseas entities back and forth, eventually landing in the private accounts of multiple Biden family members? What did Joe Biden’s grandchildren do to earn huge paydays from foreign actors in China, Ukraine, Russia, and other hostile nations? What did Biden himself do to merit all of this generosity? And were taxes ever paid on any of that money? Are the people in that 33% category even aware of these questions?

When it comes to the question of believing that Joe Biden committed crimes, the responses were also disappointingly partisan in nature. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans said yes, along with 38% of independents. But just eight percent of Democrats agreed. The question about acting unethically was split a bit more evenly. Roughly one third of each group said yes. The fact that two thirds of Republicans believe Joe broke the law but only one third said he acted unethically is certainly curious but I won’t attempt to engage in any mindreading over that issue.

I used to believe that all of this was so obviously cut and dried that we would get to the bottom of the matter in short order and Biden Inc. would be exposed for all the world to see. I’m not so sure about that anymore. The left has raised the bar on this issue so high that nothing is going to force them to open their ears and eyes unless Jim Jordan can produce a full-color video of Biden accepting a cartoonishly large burlap bag full of cash directly from Xi Jinping’s hands. And some of them would still find an explanation to excuse it.