Mark Foley

A Real Page TurnerThe "overly friendly" interest that Representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) had in young male congressional pages wasn't really news to Washington, D.C.'s inner circle. But it took the Net--and ABC reporter Brian Ross--to expose Foley's predilections to the world.

When ABC published the transcripts of Foley's explicit text messages with an underage volunteer last September, not even the slickest Beltway spinmeister could shrug them off as benign. Foley's disgrace may not have brought about the Republican electoral debacle last November, but it didn't help his or his party's cause.

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Monica-gate and Whitewater

On January 17, 1998, Matt Drudge broke the news that White House intern Monica Lewinsky was having an affair with President Bill Clinton. The story appeared on his Web site, the Drudge Report, and quickly turned into one of the biggest scandals in our nation's history--and established the Internet as a news source to be reckoned with.

The Lewinsky scandal put the Internet on hyperalert, drawing its attention to an ongoing and arguably bigger scandal called Whitewater. Without the influence of the Net, Whitewater might have been remembered as an endless investigation into obscure Arkansas real estate deals; instead it gathered a great deal of attention. Meanwhile, the related Independent Counsel investigation eventually led to the impeachment of our 42nd president.

The Net-wide distribution of the Starr Report in September 1998 was a fitting coda to the Clintonian soap opera. Along the way we all learned more than most of us wanted to know about blue dresses, cigars, thongs, and "that woman." But what's more scandalous: Frat boy sex shenanigans in the Oval Office? Or spending $40 million of taxpayer money for 445 pages of sordid details?

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