and the great part of all this mess is the fact that this shit was known almost a year ago.. gotta love how fast the system works..

Teenagers are not children. The law says as much in almost all countries where age of consent is typically 14-16. The indidividual states as well have lower ages of consent than the federal govt uses to define a “minor” for internet/telephone contact. Even in DC, age of consent is 16.

In fact Foley did not commit a crime, because the age of consent in the jurisdiction is 16. Federal solicitation charges depend on the laws of the jurisdiction. There's no indication that he offered to pay for sex. Sexual harassment is also an unlikely charge because the page in question was not in his emply.

"In fact Foley did not commit a crime, because the age of consent in the jurisdiction is 16. "

Hello? Even if what he did wasnt illegal, it was immoral; a clear abuse of power: It was my understanding the pages worked for him, but even if they didnt he was in a position to recommend them for future government work. Plus, he was in charge of the committee responsible for missing and exploited children–if anyone shouldve curbed their taste for chicken, its him.

Thats not even getting into the fact that, as a high-ranking Republican, he supported legislation that was harmful to the gay community.

There may not be a way for charges to be brought against him, but I believe he'll get what's coming to him in the end (and it wont be a high-school lacrosse player).

while we will stand by our contempt of Mark Foley, and our opinion that these alleged acts are pretty sick, never did we say in our description of these acts that Foley broke the law.

but, really, politicians just shouldn't be asking 16-year-olds how they whack off.

I agree with the law readers. However distasteful this may seem to many, the question is did he break the law. Anything else is a matter of ethics and propriety. And from the excerpts I've been reading, these boys haven't been forced into sharing their masturbation techniques. They seem quite willing, which strikes me as odd that one trollish old senator can find so many young boys. I mean, I was a horny 16 year old myself once and would have humped anything that moved too (save for women - eeeewwww ) but even then I had me some standards. In the age of myspace hookups with fellow hotties from your H.S., why would so many of these youngins go into detail about this stuff with some old fart? It's not like this is the naive days of Leave it to Beaver. Kids today are pretty clued in - almost too much. It just strikes me as either very odd or very fortuitous if you like chicken. Weird.

The whole irony of this story is that he DID break a law - the law that originated in his committee of Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucas, in which he was chairperson. The Adam Walsh Act made it a crime to solicit or facilitate a crime with a minor over the internet, and 16 is a minor.

Now, if he had just said those things in person, he would have only been possibly guilty of sexual harrassment and definitely guilty of being creepy. But, because he used the internet, he committed a crime.

A little to little and a little to late…hopefully he can look forward to getting raped in prison

Well, if he knew it wasn't a crime, why would he resign immediately after finding that he couldn't cut a deal with ABC?

I'll tell you why…because this is just the drizzle of a shit storm that's ahead. In the last eleven years you think that all he did was IM these little boys, and ask them to take out their rulers? It's only a matter of time until SOMEBODY finds out that he actually acted on his pervy impulses. And something tells me that it won't be someone of consentual age.

Somewhere, Bill Clinton is laughing his ass off.