Listen up: The wingnuts are going to try really, really hard to smush this all up with Monica Lewinsky. (Brit Hume's already been on the air trying.)
We MUST not let them do this. There is NO comparison between the two.
The thing the GOP forgot -- but America remembered -- about Monica is that she was a big girl, legally and morally able to make her own sexual choices. (Right-wingers don't believe women in general are capable of making their own sexual choices, and thus still continue to insist that she was preyed on. But she herself made it very clear that wasn't the case; and that is, in the end, why they lost that battle.) What she did with Bill was nobody's damn business besides hers, Bill's, and Hillary's.
The Foley case is not remotely comparable, for at least two reasons:
1. The kid was a KID. He was not over the age of consent, as Monica was. Anybody who makes sexual overtures to a minor is committing a crime. Foley knew this particularly well, since he'd written some of those laws himself. And that's what he'll be going to jail for.
2. Any adult who knew about this and did not report it to the appropriate authorities was also committing a crime. We have mandated reporter laws in this country. It doesn't matter what the parents said they wanted -- everybody from Hastert on down had a legal responsibility to call the DC child welfare office, regardless. Their failure to do so is the real crime here; and those people should be facing full legal penalties as well.
Every time anybody tries to drag Bill and Monica in this conversation, we need to remind them once again of the core issues here.
Let's also remember that the GOP, as an institution, knows a hell of a lot more about both prosecuting and defending against sex scandals than we do. This is a gift, but we need to play it like pros to get the most mileage out of it.