-Donald Rumsfeld at a news conference October 11, 2006

When did the phrase, "I take full responsibility," come to mean not taking any real responsibility at all?

Talk about a numerical tribute to American hypocrisy, Google up that phrase and you'll find some 212,000 references to it.

Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, is only the latest to accept full responsibility for some outrage but only verbally. Evidence mounts that other high-ranking Republicans in the House or their staffers were aware of a colleague's suspicious e-mails to House pages.

All over the country, police and sheriff's deputies are sitting in dark little rooms monitoring the Internet for just the kind of messages this congressman was sending young people. But in his case nobody thought to call the cops. Instead it was all kept in-house, or rather in-House.

So far Mark Foley, he of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, has been the only one to resign his office. But not without making excuses for his conduct - via his lawyer, of course. He's an alcoholic, he was molested as a child, etc. In their own way, his excuses are as repellent as his e-mails.

The Brits handle these things better, or at least used to. Remember John Profumo? He was the Cabinet minister who got caught in a sex scandal, and then did something really bad. He lied about it to his colleagues in the House of Commons. Not done, old boy. Bad form and all that. Especially for an officer and a gentleman, and John Profumo was an aristocrat to boot. Of Italian heritage, he was technically the 5th Baron Profumo of the Kingdom of Sardinia, though he never used the title.

Jack Profumo signed up for the Army on the outbreak of the war in 1939 (Northampton Yeomanry), and in 1940 became the youngest MP in the House of Commons when he was put up by the Tories in an unexpected by-election at Kettering. The 25-year-old Profumo would cast his first vote as one of the 30 Conservative members of the House who joined with Labor to bring down the Chamberlain government and open the way for Churchill and the British Empire's finest hour.

Mentioned in dispatches during the North African campaign, young Profumo landed in Normandy on D-Day with an armored brigade. Then, after serving on Field Marshal Alexander's staff in Italy, he was discharged as a brigadier and awarded an OBE (military). He would lose his seat in the Labor landslide of 1945, but return as MP for Stratford-on-Avon in 1951 and begin his smooth political rise. By 1960 he was secretary of state for war and member of the Privy Council.

Then came his fall, and it was a doozy.

In early 1963, he was accused of cavorting with Christine Keeler, tart extraordinaire. To add security risk to scandal, she also had a thing going with a Soviet naval attache, that is, spy.

At first MP Profumo tried to brazen his way out of it with a concocted story, the help of Tory colleagues, the full backing of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and a perfectly straight face. "There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler," Mr. Profumo announced in a great display of righteous indignation. In its time, that line was repeated by lovers of political irony the way "I never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" is today.

With an investigation pending, the Rt. Hon. Mr. Profumo confessed the truth to his wife Valerie over lunch in Venice. Her reaction? "Oh, darling, we must go home as soon as we can and face up to it." They did. Not since Mrs. Alexander Hamilton supported her husband throughout that unfortunate business with Mrs. Reynolds has a loving spouse shown such grace under pressure.

Caught in his lie, John Profumo resigned his high office in disgrace, and the Macmillan government would fall soon thereafter. It was quite a crash.

The rising star had plummeted to earth. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Profumo showed up at Toynbee Hall, the London soup kitchen and settlement house, and volunteered for menial work. It took considerable persuasion, but he was finally talked into giving up his janitor's mop and heading a fund-raising drive for the charity. It was successful enough to keep Toynbee Hall afloat.

And for the next four decades, the 5th Baron Profumo would devote himself to helping the poor of London's East End. Continued...