So what to make of the Mark Foley "Pagegate" scandal? And of Republican efforts to "de-Foley-ate" themselves of collective blame for his actions in time for November? Four points:

First, as with Watergate in the ‘70s, Iran-Contra in the ‘80s, and the Bill Clinton sex scandals of the ‘90s, nobody really knows what to think, amidst an ever-increasing swirl of allegations and rumors. Was President Richard Nixon really a crook? (Yes.) Had President Ronald Reagan really lost control of his White House to rogue gun-runners? (Yes, but only temporarily.) Did President Clinton have sex with "that woman," an intern just a few years over the age of consent? (Yes, and with other adult women, too, but the American people decided that they didn’t mind.)

In each of these scandals, months went by before pundits and partisans could feel confident they knew the basic outlines of the situation, let alone all the facts. Such ignorance didn’t stop many of them blabbing in the meantime, of course -- and many chatterers were made to look like dupes, or shills, or Chicken Littles when all the information did come out.

Second, for all the talk about the decline of the mainstream media, the Foley story proves that the MSM still has the power to break stories, set the agenda and throw additional logs on a plenty-hot fire. Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned his House seat within hours of the first reports from ABC News.

The story is now being stoked by, among others, The Washington Post, which still has the substantial human resources to "swarm" a story with able and determined diggers. And so yesterday, for example, three Post reporters shared a byline on a piece in which "more than a dozen" former congressional pages detailed Foley’s over-friendly contact. Don’t be surprised if such digging, at John Henry levels of intensity, continues at least through Election Day.

Third, while some conservatives and Republicans -- notably Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich -- are mounting stout defenses of the GOP, especially embattled Speaker Dennis Hastert, what’s really notable is the degree of glee that many on the right are showing toward the House Republicans’ troubles. And the origins of that anti-GOP glee precede Foley, going back to the Republican record in the last few Congresses.

Indeed, many activists, ideologues and bloggers have long been disappointed by Capitol Hill Republicans on federal spending, or as right-leaning critics would call it, over-spending. Conservative concerns about "bridges to nowhere" have contributed to the stony silence of many who might otherwise be defending the Republicans, and such concerns no doubt accelerated the willingness of The Washington Times editorial page, a flagship of right-leaning opinion, to urge Hastert to resign.

Fourth, we might as well ask: How long before Mark Foley appears on The Oprah Winfrey Show? Barely more than two years after Jim McGreevey resigned the New Jersey governorship in a gay-related scandal, he published a tell-all or maybe a spin-all-book, thereby gaining himself a place onstage with our national Queen of Public Confession and Pseudo-Contrition. And Foley, even as he "recovers," has laid some useful predicates for his Oprah Moment, letting it be "known" that he was molested as a child and that he suffers from alcoholism.

Given Foley’s history of lying about his own personal life -- not to mention his hypocritical championing of child-protection legislation -- we have no particular reason to believe either of these "revelations."

But that’s the point: As of now, we just don’t know what’s true and what’s not true. All we know for sure is that lots of people, with lots of motives, are digging. And during the Foley feeding frenzy, just about anyone who has ever worked on Capitol Hill -- and who possesses a good memory, a good collection of files or a good imagination -- has a chance to step forward and make the leap from obscurity all the way to notoriety.