The career-wrecking avalanche of sexual harassment cases continues unabated. Ever since The New York Times reported the multiple abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, nearly three dozen prominent lawmakers, executives, news personalities and entertainers have been outed for lewd or abusive behavior.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., faces a Senate ethics investigation over accusations that he forcibly kissed sports announcer Leeann Tweeden during a December 2006 USO tour and posed for a photo jokingly reaching for her breasts as Tweeden slept. Another woman alleges he grabbed her buttocks while posing for a photo.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., is accused of sexually harassing a congressional staffer, then using his office funds — taxpayer money — to buy her silence. The Detroit Free Press called on Tuesday for Conyers, 88, to resign.

CBS and PBS interviewer Charlie Rose has lost his job amid credible allegations of lewd behavior and harassment. New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush is suspended amid accusations he groped and kissed colleagues. Michael Oreskes, a news chief at National Public Radio, has left his job after apologizing for serial harassment.

The list goes on an on. These are all educated, smart men who clearly understood the difference between right and wrong. Many, like Franken, have been promoters of social justice and leaders in the fight for equal workplace rights for women. They all knew better; they have no excuse.

Highly successful people in the entertainment and news businesses have been summarily booted onto the street, their careers ruined. In the political world, the punishment options aren't quite so immediate or simple.

It seems unfair to equate Franken's unwanted kissing case to Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged predatory behavior targeting teens and an underage girl. Nor does Franken's behavior compare to Donald Trump's recorded statement, long before he became president, that he regarded it as a perk of power to grab women's genitals. Trump has admitted to deliberately walking in on naked women as they were dressing for his beauty pageants. Voters knew that Trump, a Moore supporter, was a pig before they elected him.

Franken, however, has portrayed himself as a happily married family man. In his 2017 book, "Giant of the Senate," he writes that his daughter challenged him at their Thanksgiving dinner table in 2006 as he weighed whether to run for the Senate: "If you have something to tell us, tell us now." Franken writes of himself and his wife, "We were clean."

Days later, he would betray them.

The only bosses who can fire harassment-prone politicians are the ones who elected them. Voters ultimately must decide which, of all these sordid examples, constitutes a firing offense.

All of these men have lost any claim to a moral high ground. But the competition for the gutter grows fiercer by the day.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH