AS the leader of the Republican party in the US Senate and a possible presidential candidate, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee has a reputation for sober rectitude. The same cannot be said of his son Jonathan, a Vanderbilt University student who recently appeared on the internet wearing six cans of beer strapped to his belt.

Nor has Jonathan’s brother Bryan done much to help his father’s attempts to strike a reasonable note about US involvement in Iraq. “I was born an American by God’s amazing grace,” wrote Bryan Frist in an online profile. “Let’s bomb some people.”

While the Bible warns that the sins of the father may be visited upon their sons, the injunction may need to be revised in the age of the teenage blogger and online social networks. The sins of the sons — not to mention the daughters — are making the titans of Washington and Wall Street nervous as the internet opens public doors to what would once have been private family business.

Frist is one of at least half a dozen US politicians — and at least one US Supreme Court judge — whose public images have been dented in recent months by the internet antics of their offspring. Pictures of scantily clad daughters whooping it up have become a staple of internet gossip.

The popularity of teenage networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is proving a goldmine for political bloggers keen to compare the pious proclamations of candidates running for office with the blogs and picture-sharing websites maintained by their children.

No sooner had Congressman Louie Gohmert, a conservative Republican from Texas, unleashed a tirade against the moral inadequacies of Democrats opposed to the war in Iraq, than someone found internet pictures of his daughter Caroline dancing on a bartop and posing with a man in his underpants.

There was also embarrassment for Justice Samuel Alito, the conservative Supreme Court judge appointed by President George W Bush earlier this year. Alito is opposed to gay marriage, but a Facebook entry by his Georgetown University student daughter Laura declared, apparently tongue in cheek, that her relationship status was “Married to Kate Tice”.

While much of the internet sleuthing has produced largely harmless evidence that teenagers like to party even if their parents are famous, more awkward incidents have been picked up by mainstream media.

Roll Call, the Washington insiders’ newspaper published on Capitol Hill, recently reported that Jonathan Frist’s Facebook entry declared him a member of the “Jonathan Frist appreciation for ‘Waking Up White People’ Group”. It also mentioned a group where there were “No Jews allowed. Just kidding. No seriously”.

The Washington Post discovered last week that the son of a prominent Wall Street executive had been posting awkward criticisms of his father’s company, the telephone conglomerate AT&T, in a personal blog.

Jared Watts, 21, an employee of an AT&T subsidiary, complained in his blog about policies that were “abusive to the customer”. His father, Wayne Watts, is a senior vice-president who is currently attempting to defend AT&T’s service record to industry regulators examining a takeover bid.

Errant children have long been a fact of Washington political life, but have rarely caused any lasting scandal. Bush was untroubled by the underage drinking exploits of his twin daughters Jenna and Barbara. The president’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, was not seriously damaged when his daughter Noelle was arrested on drug charges. His son John was arrested for having sex in a car in a shopping centre car park.

The US media has in the past treated adolescent follies as largely a private matter, but the mushrooming trend towards public self-exposure on the internet is beginning to make life a misery for celebrities with children who blog.

Even Marie Osmond, a devout Mormon and squeaky-clean American family singer, was caught up in MySpace turmoil when her teenage daughter Jessica, writing under the pseudonym “F off”, declared she was bisexual and that Adolf Hitler was one of her heroes.

Perhaps the unluckiest victim of blogger sleuthing was Mike Huckabee, the Republican governor of Arkansas who is believed to be considering a presidential run in 2008. Earlier this year there were unconfirmed reports that his daughter Sarah was quitting her job in Washington to return to Little Rock to begin fundraising.

Huckabee has not confirmed that he is interested in running but someone went to Sarah’s Facebook entry and found entries from her Arkansas friends. One read: “Hey girl, I heard you were back down.” Another said: “Yay for moving home!”

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