People united for swindles and hucksterism

Jesse Jackson, the Baptist minister, apparently had no intention of waiting for the afterlife to get his taste of the good life. With his Rainbow/Push Coalition bringing in millions of dollars a year at its peak, Mr. Jackson indulged in expensive homes, cars and companionship, mostly with his ministry's money.

That's a paraphrase of how The New York Times began a news item about a fallen preacher -- not Jesse "Show Me the Money" Jackson, but "televangelist" Jim Bakker, head of PTL ministries, swiftly deposed after a sex scandal in the '80s.

Bakker's affair was evidently limited to a single night, there was no "love child," and over the course of seven years Bakker paid his lady friend about half ($265,000) of what Jackson admits to paying his mistress in two years ($472,000) -- and about one-third of what the National Enquirer reports Jackson has paid ($640,000).

Jackson's mistress probably needs the money more: Having had her affair with a black liberal, she cannot expect lucrative offers from smut magazines to pose nude. The pornography industry is primarily interested in prolonging the humiliation of Republicans.

Indeed, the entire establishment is truly gleeful only when discussing the sexual scandals of putative conservatives. By contrast, the Jackson "situation," as a New York Times column put it, merely "illustrates the need to acknowledge that our leaders will occasionally disappoint."

The Times column sneered at the idea of using a "test of sexual propriety" as a basis for moral judgments. Real moral lapse -- not to be confused with a 59-year-old man trying to derive sexual satisfaction from a young female staffer -- is being a Republican. Immorality, it seems, can also be "cut(ting) millions of the needy from welfare rolls," or firing Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders because she had "suggested that masturbation should be openly discussed with young people."

It takes a particularly fanatical socialist to believe the government is required to teach adolescent boys to masturbate -- but this logic demonstrates: Disbelief in the ministrations of the federal government is the only known liberal iniquity. Immorality incarnate is either Perverts or People Who Believe in Tax Cuts. Take your pick. Democrats are the proud party of perversion.