Now That It's Out...

He was 18 at the time. Correction: HotAir notes he was 17 during some conversations, 18 during others.

This doesn't make it right. It does, however, turn it from a case of the criminal to a case of the strongly socially disapproved. It's a firing offense (or, here, a resigning offense), to be sure, but not a criminal offense-- but boy, did the MSM present it as the latter.

Does this mean Mark Foley isn't a scumbag? No, he still is, and he's still an embarrassment to the party. However, the page in question's age has now crept slightly closer to the age of Monica Lewinsky, whose affair with a sitting president, we're told in no uncertain terms, was no one's business but their own.

PoliPundit notes, now that ABCNews has already flooded the zone with erroneous information, that the "boy" here was actually a "young man."

Radar jumps on the fake blog story, and notes it seems connected to the Daily Kos, through a poster calling himself "WHIntern."

Dan Riehl points out that Kos has WHIntern's IP, and could break a little news if he wanted to. But of course he won't, because WHIntern is most likely a DNC hack or a gay liberal blogger.

As far as I can tell, the Passionate American put all this together first. At least that's where I first saw it. I didn't mention it (sorry), because he mentioned the name of the young man involved, which I thought was dicey.

But it's out there now, and there's hardly any point pretending anyone doesn't know the name, or can't quickly get it if they so choose.

Again, Mark Foley's behavior was, to harken back to the 90's, "simply reprehensible." However, that's hardly a reason to juice the story up further than the fact will support.

And... This is important, because without any clear criminality or anything approaching pedophilia, it limits what Denny Hastert could have reasonably been expected to do.

posted by Ace at 10:44 PM

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