Columnist Mike Lowe (“Patriots Beat: NFL’s punishment excessive for Brady, Patriots,” May 12) is way offside with his misplaced lament about punishment assessed by the National Football League against the New England Patriots for “Deflategate.”

That incident symbolizes what is wrong with leadership at all levels. Everyone is testing how much they can get away with before being called to account – nations, politicians, criminals, protesters, police, businesses, athletes, the league, the Patriots and Tom Brady.

We seem to be losing all sense of integrity, reputation and discipline. Responsibility always rests somewhere else, and sycophants too frequently offer excuses for unacceptable behavior.

The NFL set the stage for this fiasco by being the only professional league that doesn’t properly control balls used to play the game; incredibly, teams furnish their own. It then failed to monitor the showcase AFC Championship game, even after recurrent rumors that something might be amiss with the Brady bunch.

Lowe decries “overreaction,” implying that penalties for obvious tampering and other infractions should continue to be lenient wrist slaps.

The only way to send a strong message that the level of public tolerance has changed is to get tougher, a lesson that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell may finally be learning.

We are supposedly a nation of laws, currently operating under 175,000 pages of complex federal regulations and those of countless organizations. Mike Lowe might better question whether the effect of rampant overregulation in general has fostered widespread underreaction in enforcement.

George C. Betke Jr.

Damariscotta

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