While they react with fury over the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, Democrats maintain a discreet silence over the numerous sex scandals that have rocked their own party.

And unlike Republican scandals like Foley's, where shame and resignation were the outcome, the Democrats' shameful behavior were either blithely ignored or jocularly accepted.

For example, former Chicago Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds received a commutation of his six-and-a-half-year federal sentence for 15 convictions of wire fraud, bank fraud and lies to the Federal Election Commission. He also was convicted of having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. But Jesse Jackson added Reynolds to Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's payroll.

As Deroy Murdock, a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, wrote back in 2002: "This is a first in American politics: A [democrat] ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate, won clemency from a [democrat] president who had sex with a subordinate, then was hired by a [democrat] clergyman who had sex with a subordinate.

More notorious was the case of Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., In 1989, male prostitute Stephen L. Gobie admitted that Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., knew that Gobie had operated a prostitution service out of Frank's Capitol Hill apartment. Frank, an openly gay member of Congress, confirmed that he had Gobie as a roommate in his apartment. Frank said he fired Gobie when he learned that clients were visiting his apartment.

Was Frank told by the Democratic leadership to resign his seat as Foley was forced to do?

Not at all. That was 17 years ago, and he is still a member of Congress, a respected member of the Democratic minority and is slated to assume the chairmanship of a key House committee should the Democrats recapture control of the House.

When former Rep. Gerry Studds admitted having sex with a teenage page, nobody in the Democratic leadership demanded he resign, nor did he offer to resign. He had a joint press conference with the boy and bragged about their affair. He was renominated by the Democrats and re-elected six times before retiring.

As Rush Limbaugh noted Monday, "The truth is that the people on the left who are acting all outraged and stunned and angry, they don't see what Clinton or Barney Frank or Gerry Studds did as repugnant. In fact, they view those things as private matters that didn't affect anybody's work, and it's nobody's business what somebody does with their private life, particularly when it comes to sex."

Unless it involves a Republican. Then it's a matter of outrage and hypocrisy.

# posted by O. Markum : 8:50 PM