There's this one detainee, Ahmed, and boy is he fat!

(How fat is he?)

He's so fat, when he blows himself up, he blows himself up!

[M]ore than 90 such letters were sent by inmates Mohammed Salameh, Mahmud Abouhalima and Nidal A. Ayyad between 2002 and 2004. The recipients included Mohamed Achraf, alleged leader of a plot to blow up the National Justice Building in Madrid, and others with links to terrorists suspected in the March 11, 2004, attacks on commuter trains there.

At least 14 letters were exchanged between the Colorado inmates and the Spanish terrorist cell, the report said, and one suspect arrested in Spain used the letters in recruitment efforts. In one letter published by an Arabic newspaper, Salameh wrote:

"Osama bin Laden is my hero of this generation."

[T]he FBI failed to gather intelligence on incarcerated terrorists even when there was evidence that they remained active through outside associates. As an example, investigators list the FBI’s negligence in monitoring the three 1993 World Trade Center bombers housed at the Florence Colorado prison. It wasn’t until Spanish authorities informed the FBI that the three men had been regularly corresponding with Islamic extremist in Spain that the FBI showed interest.

Sex scandals involving politicians are as old as Thomas Jefferson, but the outcome seems to depend on which party you represent. In recent years, for the most part, Democrats have been able to survive their sordid escapades while Republicans have paid with their political lives. ...

With a Republican at the center of the seamy scandal, however, it was almost a slam-dunk that Foley would have to quit.

That's how it usually turns out for members of the conservative, traditional-family-values party. Just ask Bob Livingston, Jack Ryan, Bob Packwood, Dan Crane or others in the GOP who've watched their careers go pffft! with salacious disclosures. Or ask Bill Clinton, Gerry Studds, Barney Frank and other Democrats who've withstood embarrassing revelations to govern another day. ...

The clearest illustration may be in the divergent outcomes of the cases against Crane (R) and Studds (D) in 1983. Both men were censured by the House for having sex with underage congressional pages -- Crane with a 17-year-old girl in 1980, Studds with a 17-year-old boy in 1973. Crane, of Illinois, apologized for his actions, while Studds, who declared he was gay, refused. Crane lost his reelection bid the next year; Studds, of Massachusetts, kept winning his seat until he retired in 1996.

A double standard? And if so, by whom?

"The reality is that Democrats seem to get away with more," says Chuck Todd, editor in chief of the Hotline, a daily political journal. "They can have an affair and bail [themselves] out. There's a lower threshold for Republicans. I guess it's more of a hypocrisy thing," he adds, because such scandals put Republicans at odds with the party's socially conservative image.

Todd thinks he knows who's to blame for this: "It's the media, to be honest. What is the standard 'gotcha' story in the media? It's hypocrisy. If we can prove hypocrisy, we have a story. . . . So in a sex scandal, the bar for Republicans is lower."

Democrats have decided to make national political hay out of this ugly sex scandal -- as far as we know, a sex talk scandal. On Monday morning, the network news shows were predicting excitedly that this could be a killer issue for Democrats.

"But this is more than just one man's downfall," insisted Matt Lauer on NBC. "It could be a major blow to the Republican Party, desperately trying to hold on to control of Congress in the coming midterm elections." NBC's story then carried angry soundbites from outraged Democrats.

"Any legislative leader that knew ahead of time and did nothing should resign," thundered Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Then came Illinois' Sen. Dick Durbin pointing the accusatory finger at the GOP leaders: "The fact that they didn't stop him, the fact that they didn't bring in law enforcement -- I think they have to be held accountable."

Both ABC and CBS asked Tony Snow on Monday morning whether Republican House leaders should resign.

Stop. Since when have the Democrats ever insisted a politician be held accountable for a sex scandal involving a staffer, let alone the politician's party leaders? Take Durbin. Did he vote on any impeachment counts against President Clinton for perjury or obstruction of justice over Clinton's sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky?

Did Democrats -- the party of feminism, the party that hates sexual harassers -- demand accountability when President Clinton was accused of putting Kathleen Willey's hand on his crotch as she asked for a job? Or demand accountability when President Clinton was accused of dropping his pants in front of Paula Jones and asking that state employee to kiss his genitalia?

You know the answers.

Gerry Studds, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, described his activity with a male page a decade earlier as "a mutually voluntary private relationship between adults," despite evidence that he plied the 17-year-old boy with alcohol before initiating sex. The House Ethics Committee also charged that Studds unsuccessfully solicited sex from two other male pages.

The House of Representatives voted to censure both members but chose not to expel either one, with some members saying it was up to the voters to decide whether the men deserved to keep their seats. Crane was defeated the following year, but Studds went on to be re-elected six times. If there is any lesson in this scandal, it is that Republican voters are less tolerant of such misbehavior than Democrats. ...

Unlike his predatory predecessors, Foley now faces a criminal probe into his behavior. If the Republican leaders were slow to react to the initial allegations against Foley -- and they were -- it is clear they're serious now about punishing the offender, which is more than can be said of the Democratic leaders who were in charge of Congress a generation ago.

One difference, of course, is that thanks to Foley and others in Congress, it is now a crime to use the Internet to solicit sex from minors. But it would be some irony if sending vile instant messages to underage boys resulted in jail time for a Republican, while getting a teenager drunk and statutorily raping him resulted in nothing more than a slap on the wrist and 12 more years in Congress for a Democrat.

Democrats are surely correct to bludgeon House Republicans with the Foley scandal. Nonetheless, their outrage seems somewhat incongruous when we take into account their moral belief system. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who labeled House Republicans' behavior here "abhorrent," is a vocal opponent of parental consent laws with regard to abortions for underage girls. ...

Democrats cannot condemn Foley for his proclivity for 16-year-old boys; they are the party that supports both homosexuality and reduced age of consent. Democrats cannot condemn Foley for his exploitation of Capitol Hill employees; they are the party that calls such exploitative imbalance-of-power situations "matters of personal choice." ...

On what moral basis do Democrats condemn Foley? They have no basis for moral outrage, since they have championed the destruction of traditional morality for decades. Instead, they condemn Foley and the Republicans for hypocrisy. Foley, when he wasn't spending his time molesting teenage boys, pushed for legislation to crack down on child pornography. House Republicans, when they weren't busy ignoring Foley's scummy behavior, pushed for legislation to uphold traditional values.

The big sin here, according to the social left, is that Foley and the Republicans tried to bolster antiquated sexual mores while simultaneously bucking them in personal life. Were Mark Foley a liberal Democrat from San Francisco, liberals would be hard-pressed to spot a problem with his behavior.