ON THE OTHER HAND...

From ABC News courtesy of Eschaton:

Three More Former Pages Accuse
Foley of Online Sexual Approaches

"I was seventeen years old and just returned to [my home state] when Foley began to e-mail me, asking if I had ever seen my page roommates naked and how big their penises were," said the page in the 2002 class.

The former page also said Foley told him that if he happened to be in Washington, D.C., he could stay at Foley's home if he "would engage in oral sex" with Foley.

And

The page said Foley maintained e-mail contact with him even after he started college and arranged a sexual liaison after the page had turned 18.

Click here for the rest.

Well, this appears to be the serious solicitation that seemed to be missing from the im's and emails reported earlier in the week. At this point, I don't think a criminal investigation of Foley is out of line, nor are demands for the resignations of Republican Congressional leaders who acted to hush all this up.

I mean, this new information, along with the fact that he's been doing this for eleven years and has yet to be actually accused by a victim, also indicates that Foley was careful to some extent about actual attempts to hook up, waiting as he did for this one page to turn eighteen, which suggests that he was trying to stay away, at least as far as having sex is concerned, from the underage boys with whom he was corresponding. Maybe he was grooming these kids to be potential future sex partners, but it seems certain that he was attempting to set up liasions, one way or the other. It's not unreasonable to imagine that this particular dirty old man was up to something more than simply being a dirty old man. I'm not sure about specific legalities here, or what constitutes probable cause for an investigation of statutory rape, but "come to my place for oral sex" strikes me as being much better than the old "I thought I smelled marijuana" line cops use to justify searching hippies' cars.

So, okay, I am now officially ready to jump into the feeding frenzy.

Nonetheless, I still stand behind everything I've said about the Foley scandal thus far. The issue of Republican hypocrisy is extraordinarily big, and I'm afraid that what I believe to be a major key to discrediting the Conservative Movement overall is being lost in the stampede to unseat the Congressional leadership. Also, the Democrats went for the jugular on this way too quickly, making great use of, and thereby legitimizing, the conservative and fundamentalist continuing crusade to drive mainstream American culture into hysterics over sex crimes and sex in general: the words "predator" and "molester" were being thrown about by Democrats, as well as the corporate news media, well before they had any real reason to use them--strengthening anti-sex hysteria can only come back to haunt the so-called liberal party. Finally, it's quite disgusting that this, a trashy sex scandal, is the only issue about which Democrats feel moved to display brazen and righteous indignation. As if torture, illegal wiretapping, illegal invasion, election tampering, environmental destruction, coddling the rich while screwing the poor, failure to protect us from terrorists, a seemingly infinite number of lies, and on and on, wasn't enough.

This Foley scandal, however it ends up, has taught me a great deal about how politics in this country actually work, and I already thought I knew a lot. I didn't think it was possible, but I think I'm becoming even more cynical.

CODA: If you still think I'm foolish for being cautious about calling Foley a "predator" or "child molester" for some quick and cheap political gain, check out these two Wikipedia articles here and here about a couple of enormous scandals from years gone by that ended up being totally bogus. And that's just two; there have been and will be many more. It's always good to withhold judgment, especially when nobody else is.

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