Before the comparisons with Rep. Chris Lee -- who resigned from Congress after shirtless pictures he had distributed via Craigslist emerged -- get out of hand, let us remind ourselves of the differences between Rep. Lee's situation and that of Rep. Weiner.
It's relevant, because Andrew Breitbart has already invoked Rep. Chris Lee, his scandal, and his subsequent resignation, as a way to suggest that Rep. Weiner should resign, too. Right now,The Wall Street Journal is running a push-poll, pointing out that Rep. Lee resigned "after sending shirtless pictures of himself to several women. Should Rep. Weiner resign, too?"
And lest you think only the right-wing is floating this here's the exact same equivalence being run on The Atlantic, which is not really famous for right-wing leanings.
In politics, Lee was a low-profile Representative, while Weiner had national visibilty -- so we're talking about different scales of politician, too.
When photographs of Rep. Chris Lee shirtless, distributed via email to a woman he had met on Craigslist, emerged, he almost immediately resigned. Why? Some would say that it was because of his respect for the office. However, soon thereafter, Gawker broke the story that Lee had been corresponding with two different transgendered women via Craigslist, saying that he had posted an ad on Craigslist seeking transgender women.
Let's be clear about what happened here: when the shirtless story broke, Lee knew (a) that the transgendered women were likely to appear soon as well; that the conservative Republican party would immediately abandon him, pull his funding, and run against him in the next primary less than two years later. This would utterly destroy his political career within the conservative Republican party.
Rep. Lee resigned not because shirtless pictures of him emerged (although, that may have been enough in itself to run him out of the Republican Party) - it was to avoid the onslaught of coverage of the story which never went big, because he resigned and made it moot: that he was online seeking out transgendered women. Think about how those "victim" interviews would have played out on ABC, CNN and MSNBC.
That's a somewhat different situation from Rep. Weiner's.
Fair? Probably not. There's no legal difference between sending flirtatious pictures of yourself to women and transgendered women -- or to men, or just close friends, or large audiences of people for example. Should doing so be considered "bringing the House into disrepute"? I dunno -- I think the House does quite a job of disreputable work all the time, like giving Bush permission to pursue global war unchecked, logging thousands of American deaths and trillions of dollars in debt -- an historic crime against our country which renders a Representative's distributing flirty pictures of himself to whomever a complete non-event.
That Rep. Lee resigned is more an indicator that his party was not willing to stand with him in what likely would have been a firestorm in the conservative wing, which has never been particularly friendly to transgendered people. But that's the Republicans' problem to deal with.
Why should the Democrats stand with Weiner? For now, they shouldn't. When a Rep. is caught lying about something, it indicates there's a problem, and there should be an investigation for illegality, and for ethics. A fair investigation would be speedy, balanced with completeness.
But when people start invoking Rep. Chris Lee's pictures while calling for Rep. Weiner to resign, let's remember that the reason Lee resigned was not because of the pictures, or their distribution -- it was because he wouldn't survive the discovery of who he distributed the pictures to.