"I did not have text with that woman."

Can I make a serious point regarding "Wiener-gate?"

First, you must appreciate any story that can reduce even 50 year old men to snickering 7 year old boys.

Ok, my serious point ...

Netflix provides a plethora of documentaries, some good (WWII in HD for example), some bad (i.e. National Geographic's Alexander the Great). A good one, by PBS, is Egypt's Golden Age. And I viewed this some evenings ago. It was the story of how a succession of three Pharaohs starting around 1350 B.C. liberated Upper Egypt from the Hyksos and Lower Egypt from the Nubians, uniting the kingdom thus ushering in the golden era.

One of the areas of success for the Pharaohs was their spy network. It was more aggressive and sophisticated than their rivals.

1350 B.C. ... spy network, crucial.

Now fast forward to a spy world the three of us are more familiar with - the Cold War. Amidst all the groin jokes and absurdity, the several dozen pages of seedy text messages that have now come out, has it occurred to anyone how prime for black mail from a sovereign power this congressman was?

Now you may say he's just a congressman, and maybe he had access to some sensitive material, but he wasn't the national security advisor, etc. Ok, fine. But consider all the electronic communications this man put out into space and the ability, the "sophisticated and aggressive" ability, of nation states such as China, or Russia to capture that information. Now combine that with who Wiener's wife is - the former chief of staff and current top aide to Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State. Is this not exactly the type of "in", of angle the FSB (formerly the KGB) would look for? Do you see how few degrees of separation from the president himself this could be to spy masters?

The whole history of mankind is ripe with spies and their influence, and in the most technologically advanced point in the history of our species are we to believe that they aren't active NOW?

THIS is why character matters. THIS is why "sexual indiscretions" matter. THIS is why I (and Ken Starr, for that matter) was right about how serious interns and cigars are. Because while a man can separate his personal and public life, those two lives can not seperate the man. In other words a man can have two different worlds, but the same judgement governs both.