Ann Coulter points out four double standards represented by the Mark Foley issue. First, that Republicans take responsibility and corrective action, while Democrats simply circle the wagons.

The object lesson of Foley's inappropriate e-mails to male pages is that when a Republican congressman is caught in a sex scandal, he immediately resigns and crawls off into a hole in abject embarrassment. Democrats get snippy.

Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a "witch hunt." He didn't whine that he was a put-upon "gay American." He didn't stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics. He didn't run for re-election.

Second, Republicans don't shift their opinion on what is appropriate behavior for a public official based on what party he is in.

In 1983, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds was found to have sexually propositioned House pages and actually buggered a 17-year-old male page whom he took on a trip to Portugal. The 46-year-old Studds indignantly attacked those who criticized him for what he called a "mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults."

When the House censured Studds for his sex romp with a male page, Studds -- not one to be shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men -- defiantly turned his back on the House during the vote. He ran for re-election and was happily returned to office SIX more times by liberal Democratic voters in his Martha's Vineyard district. (They really liked his campaign slogan: "It's the outfit, stupid.")

Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy referred to Studds' affair with a teenage page as "a brief consenting homosexual relationship" and denounced Studds' detractors for engaging in a "witch hunt" against gays: "New England witch trials belong to the past, or so it is thought. This summer on Cape Cod, the reputation of Rep Gerry Studds was burned at the stake by a large number of his constituents determined to torch the congressman for his private life."

Third, the Democrats' viewpoint on whom to eavesdrop on is alarming.

...now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush's National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman's instant messages.

Let's run this past the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: The suspect sent an inappropriately friendly e-mail to a teenager -- oh also, we think he's gay. Can we spy on his instant messages? On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that any court in the nation would have said: YOU BET!...

Democrats are on their high horses because Republicans in the House did not immediately wiretap Foley's phones when they found out he was engaging in e-mail chitchat with a former page about what the kid wanted for his birthday.

The Democrats say the Republicans should have done all the things Democrats won't let us do to al Qaida -- solely because Foley was rumored to be gay. Maybe we could get Democrats to support the NSA wiretapping program if we tell them the terrorists are gay.

Finally, the Democrats' sudden assertion that gays should be viewed as inherently aberrant pedophiles who, solely because they are gay, should be forbidden from having contact with minors is an about-face from their normal equality-in-all-regards posturing.

Democrat Bob Beckel said a gay man should be kept away from male pages the same way Willie Sutton should have been kept away from banks. "If Willie Sutton is around some place where a bank is robbed," Beckel said, "then you're probably going to say, 'Willie, stay away from the robbery.'"

That is to say, gay men are as uncontrolled around minors as Willie Sutton was around banks. Surely, the MSM will not analyze the multiple double-standards demonstrated by this one scandal.

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