Sex Scandal Rebounds & Klein's Primary Colors

From yesterday's Washington Post article "Vitter, Sanford and Weiner: Comebacks having a moment:"

It only took a few years in the Senate woodshed, and now the political rehabilitation of Sen. David Vitter looks complete. Our colleague Paul Kane Tuesday has Vitter — whose number showed up in the notorious black book of the “D.C. Madam,” causing the Louisiana Republican to admit before the cameras a “very serious sin” — back in the good graces of voters and colleagues alike. 

But the senator’s reversal of fortune isn’t unique. There seems to be a boomlet of political comebacks underway. Maybe it has something to do with the onset of spring, the season of renewal? Take Mark Sanford down in South Carolina. The former governor, who lied about hiking the Appalachian Trail while visiting his mistress in Argentina, has a legitimate shot at becoming the Republican candidate in the Palmetto State’s special congressional election. And in the three-makes-a-trend rule, there’s also former representative Anthony Weiner, who this month tested the waters with polls gauging the public’s willingness to put aside those photos of his undie-clad crotch he sent to a young woman who wasn’t his wife.

Want a novel about a politician who gets caught in a sex scandal and bounces back? Try Primary Colors by Joe Klein:

The book begins as an idealistic former congressional worker, Henry Burton, joins the presidential campaign of Southern governor Jack Stanton. As the primary elections grind on, Stanton's affair with Cashmere, his wife's hairdresser, comes to light and threatens to derail his presidential prospects...

Abstinence Education & Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher

For the "it's news to me" file, here's a week-old U.S. News report "Congressmen Introduce Sex Ed Reform Bill:"

On Valentine's Day 2013, Illinois Reps. Randy Hultgren, a Republican, and Daniel Lipinski, a Democrat, re-introduced the Abstinence Education Reallocation Act, which would reform federal funding of sex education. An earlier version of the bill would have allocated $110 million in annual federal funding to educational programs that include a focus on forgoing sexual intercourse until marriage.

Perfect companion novel? The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta:

Thanks to an off-hand remark made during a class discussion of oral sex, sex-ed teacher Ruth Ramsey finds herself a target of the Christian evangelicals who are increasingly influencing the schoolboard of suburban Stonewood Heights. Forced to attend remedial sessions with a smug “Virginity Consultant,” Ruth is isolated and alone, caught in the polarized red-versus-blue landscape of present-day American suburbia.  Then one morning at her daughter’s soccer game, Ruth meets Tim Mason, a cute forty-something volunteer coach. Ruth feels an instant attraction to Tim, but when he draws the girls together for a spontaneous prayer circle after the game, she angrily yanks her daughter away from the proceedings, placing herself once again in the sights of the evangelicals.