No one will take responsibility for their actions

Cowards all. IOW’s, no shame.

Those of us who regarded his lying – both to the public and to the judicial system – as extremely dangerous to democracy itself (not to mention criminal) – spent years trying to make that point in reply.

And now you come along and confirm the worst charges of the Clintonites – apparently for you, it was all about sex.

Well, sorry. That wasn’t it for me, and it has nothing to do with my libertarianism. It has a lot to do with my respect for honesty and transparency in healthy democratic systems.

It will disappear immediately after the election for precisely that reason. I “question the timing” (somebody has that trademarked but I don’t care). The “release” of this story was timed to allow for maximized screaming but not enough, pre-election, for sensible settle-down or reprisals (dirty tricks by the Republicans).

Unless, of course, this was the “October Suprise” Rove is alleged to have promised. If he knew this was coming and had a counter-attack prepared we’ll see that over the next couple weeks.

It would be a fair guess that there are a few other members of congress squirming at the moment thinking their constituents might not see a huge difference between sleazy, gay sex-talk IMs with a 17 yr. old page and gay, or non-gay, sleazy sex-talk with 17 or 18 or 19 year old pages or interns or baby-sitters or whomever. Congress has more than its fair share of sleazey idiots and sleazey idiots are prone to this sort of thing.

Of this, there is absolutely no doubt. It’s one of those stories that, if you were to delve deeper, *everyone* would come out looking sleazier. I submit that it will probably “go away” rather quickly, as not many in the hallowed halls of Congress could stand the scrutiny.

I have to start with the disclaimer that I am not defending Foley and do not, in any way, condone what he’s done. I would not want, and would take action to stop, someone from having those sorts of instant messaging exchanges with my daughters (more on that momentarily).

I’ve put all the time I intend to put into my very cursory effort to “read the IM’s”. What little I’ve seen puts them in the category of idiotic phone sex 900 numbers. With the exceptions, of course, that the exchanges happened with a young person. It is entirely possible that the full contents of IMs, when conducted with a person of that age, may constitute a crime. Regardless of the potential criminality it was, to my standards at least, sick. I’ll leave the criminality to law-enforcement to determine.

There seem to be two basic charges against Foley. One is, essentially, pedophilia. Well… this is sleazy, skeevey, sick, perverted… any number of words apply but is there evidence of actual pedophilia? Does the “teen” who was the other half of this IM exchange qualify, to whatever degree necessary, to establish the “ped” in pedophilia? Next, does sick sex talk, gay or otherwise, qualify? I don’t know the answers to those things but I suspect they’d be down toward the rather tepid range of “pedophilia”.

Talking dirty to the kiddies is bad but it ain’t touching. There’s a fundamental line here that most of us (well, me anyway) would rigorously stay far to the proper side of (heck, the vast majority of us wouldn’t consider getting anywhere near such a line). The OTHER side of that line is far worse. Did Foley go there?

The other charge seems is the nearly always ridiculous charge of “hypocrasy”. Well, hell’s bells, Margo, the quickest way to clear out politicians (and most of the rest of us for that matter) would be criminalizing hypocrasy. I fail to see how it is any more or less “hypocritical” to excuse a POTUS for getting BJ’s and playing hide the ceegar with a 21 yr. old intern than it is to fail to take action against a congressman who engaged in sick sex talk. I don’t give a rat’s patoot about the “hypocracy” catfight. It’s all hyperventilated claptrap anymore as far as I’m concerned.

Let’s return to the matter of the IMs. If you have teenage offspring and you’ve paid any attention there’s a good chance you’ve noticed that they IM like there’s no freakin’ tomorrow. And the chances are reasonably good (especially if they are female) that they’ve been subjected to some unwanted and suggestive messages that at least skirt where Foley went – probes to see if they will engage in that sort of banter and, presumably in at least some cases, further.

I haven’t done so myself (honest injun!) but I am told (by other parents and my daughters) that if one pokes around on places like MySpace and FaceBook one will find some remarkably “randy” sorts of e-behavior by the yutes – even ones much younger than congressional pages. (I’ve actually spoken with other parents who have been left sobbing by what they’ve seen on their teens sites.)

None of that makes any of this “right” or excusable in any way. It does, however, point out the unfortunate fact that many of our teens are not particularly innocent when it comes to this sort of thing. They know all about it and they generally even know how to rebuff or prevent further exchanges with sickos. I witnessed it with my own daughters while they were engaged in group IM chats with buddies. The minute some sicko encroaches they alarm goes out and in a few short seconds they’ve got the sicko blocked and reported. Quite amazing, actually. They had the problem recognized and resolved faster than I might have recognized it in the first place. And then I would have spent an hour or more trying to figure out how to block and report the sicko.

Our yutes are familiar with this sort of thing and sometimes engage in it. None of that excuses a mature man like Foley. He got tossed out on his ear and he served that. If anything he did qualifies as a sex crime then he deserves prosecution. He should have kept his sticky fingers off the danged keyboard but if he kept them off the teen then he didn’t engage in anything that isn’t an astonishingly common in today’s world and, therefore, hardly worth the level of shrieking this incident is provoking. The level of shrieking about this strikes me as political theater and luring eyes and ears to the tubes.

And none of that touches on what seem to be some developing claims that that there’s some “opposition research” games here that have been taken to a level that may be no less “sick” than what Foley has done. Foley reeks, no doubt about it. There are some other nasty odors wafting through the air on this one.

One of my fantasies is to have elections on April 16th, the day after we write the check to Uncle Sam for our yearly tax bill, unlike they are now, which is to be about as far away from April 15th as the calendar will allow. This, I suspect, would result in the make-up of Congress being totally different than what it is today.

You are right to ask what happened here. A gay Congressman plays internet sex games with a 16 year old page. Maybe or maybe not, a crime. At a minimium, a huge “media crime” which cuts into the base of the GOP. This may sound the death knell for the GOP in the House. The media loves it, it is all over the TV, the press is calling for the ouster of the Speaker and the whole affair fits with the monthly carnival of scandal laid at the feet of the GOP.

A media crime does not fit the definition of a common law crime, it a crime that the likes of Nancy Grace and Keith Olbermann find offensive.

Poor Dennie Hastert. What can you possibly do when the Mark Foley dog manure is laid on the rug of your office a few weeks ago. If you call the Floridian in and chastise him, you are gay bashing. If you call Sister Mary in to monitor his telephone calls and IMs, you engage in an impossible task. You can’t force the congressman to resign, or, you incur the wrath of the likes of Andrew Sullivan. You can’t leak it as you need the seat, nor can you call for an ethics investigation, because then the Dems will leak it.

“Woe is me,” cries Dennie.

In general, I’m no puritan or bluenose and I don’t think people should get “poleaxed” over blowjobs, but I do think the President of the United States getting a (several) blowjob from a junior employee in the corridors of the Oval Office is a little bit off the charts.

I guess that makes me not-a-libertarian. But, as I’ve said a hundred time, I’m not an anything these days (except late for lunch, etc.)

And, er, Knucklehead. There’s a lot more here than a couple of randy emails. I don’t think you’ve done your research … not that I blame you. Check the IMs.