So at first I couldn’t see what the fuss was about with the Mark Foley scandal. Those initial email exchanges seemed a bit odd, but rather tame, and perhaps explainable. But then ABC News released this. Yikes. That looks to me like prison time.

Foley was one of the leading GOPers scoring cheap political points with a panoply of “let’s get tougher on sex crimes” legislation:”

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children.

“They’re sick people; they need mental health counseling,” Foley said.

Which gives rise to this delicious bit of irony:

Federal authorities say such messages could result in Foley’s prosecution, under some of the same laws he helped to enact.

Jeremy Lott, call your agent.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 8:00 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.