I heard a report yesterday, don't know how accurate it is... Florida has laws which prohibit making lewd (don't have the right word) contact with minors. That includes anyone under 16 years of age.

The communications don't have to rise to the level of solicitation or resulting in an act of sex (consensual or otherwise). They just have to be obscene in nature.

The penalty is 10 years her incident, so if there are 10 instant message histories, that could be 100 years.

I think some have approached this from the standpoint that nothing illegal occurred. If there were boys under age 16, something illegal very well might have occurred.

Correction: Anyone under 18 years of age.

I think they're talking about this law, which prohibits using computers to entice or seduce, and this law prohibitng transmitting pornography to minors.

It seems that Foley was in Florida during the IMs, but was the teenager there too?

Before getting to whether there was seduction or pornography, I think the victim had to have been in Florida at the time of transmission for Florida jurisdiction to obtain:

(5) STATE CRIMINAL JURISDICTION A person is subject to prosecution in this state pursuant to chapter 910 for any conduct proscribed by this section which the person engages in, while either within or outside this state, if by such conduct the person commits a violation of this section involving a child residing in this state, or another person believed by the person to be a child residing in this state.

It's often a struggle to get to the truth. Most people hear what they want and shut out the rest. Good for you, for wanting to know more when a man's reputation and career are at stake. You're asking the sort of questions that tend to put people in the line of fire, and so they don't get asked - even though they're the right ones.

Many pulled the trigger on this matter really, really quick. They're being really, really slow in taking a second look even though it's clearly warranted.

We are judged, one day, as we once judged in life.

Mrs. du Toit - it appears that neither Foley nor the "victim" (I'm using the quotes because he may have been a prankster, not a true victim) were in Florida (e.g., Foley allegedly messaging in the midst of a House vote; the "victim" is an Oklahoman with no apparent contact to Florida). It also appears that the "victim" was over 18 at the time of the incident.

Foley is a creep, but he doesn't appear to have done anything illegal.

What will be interesting to see is if the 'victim' was with a bunch of his buddies when the IM's were being traded. If it was a prank, very few teenage boys would do something like this without a few pals around to share the laughs.

Wouldn't it be odd at the end of all this for Mark Foley to get shifted into the victim category? Creep that he is, he may have been set up and people don't take too kindly to that.

If Drudge's report is true, then it appears that Foley wasn't engaging in predatory conduct at all. Instead, it seems that he was a lonely old gay man who, while he should have resisted being played, was nonetheless weak and allowed himself to be manipulated. The harsh moral judgments against Foley that everybody has been bandying about, including myself, appear to have been premature. We assumed the worst, yet the worst may not have been true. It seems that in some respects, Foley has been the victim of a gross injustice, insofar as the accusations against him of perversion and evil are far disproprortionate to his actual offense - especially when one considers that others have done far worse things and punished much less, if at all. If Drudge's report is true, then Foley is not the despicable man he has been portrayed - instead he is to be pitied, even though Foley did slit his own throat by going along with the false come-ons.

Youths playing nasty tricks on lonely old gay men is/was a sadly typical form of queer-bashing. In the end, that is all this episode appears to be - if Drudge is correct.

No, it's Republican bashing -- using whatever stick is at hand, whatever mud might stick.

As soon as a rumor starts, if it's against a Rep ... it MUST be true!

Just like the Mass Media against America.

I'm not sure why everyone is so motivated to make excuses for Foley. The only morally appropriate response is condemnation, and at such a point that he truly repents, forgiveness. The House leadership may not have handled the situation very well, but I don't think they had any ill-intent. However, they are CURRENTLY handling the situation horribly. Hastert doesn't need to set-down, but he SHOULD take full responsibility for his in-actions and ask for forgiveness. Trying to deflect the blame is only helping the Democrat cause.

Foley's actions might have hurt a few Republican votes in November --- but this current trend of excusing his actions is going to GUARANTEE we lost a LOT more votes.

Everyone is motivated to make excuses for Foley?

Quite the contrary, from what I can see. That Foley is an indefensible jerk who abused his position and breached the public trust is beyond dispute, as are his lack of personal morality and absence of self control.

However, to expose a hardball political operation is not making an excuse. To maintain that Foley wasn't in Florida is not making an excuse. Nor is it making an excuse to say that sophisticated teenagers are not innocent children.

I might not like all this phony moralistic posturing, but that's not making excuses for Foley.

Hello, no one forced Mr Foley to write what he did. And Please read the fine print in Drudge "this does not apply to other emails" only the one from the youth from OK.

In any case, this is not about Foley or his lust for young boys. This is about the Republican Congress and their lust for power without moral bounds. Rather than protect the minor Pages, they chose to protect their majority.

The young boys give the story traction which is indeed a sad but true reflection of our society.

And by the way, I do condemn Foley!

And no, I do not forgive him!

It's the severity and magnitude of the charge that makes this so important. Ask Clarence Thomas.

There is a difference between making "excuses" for Mark Foley and trying to determine if he violated criminal law. Just because one questions opines that there is a reasonable likelihood that Foley violated no law does NOT mean that one is excusing Foley's conduct. Sheesh. Somethings can be totally reprehensible, worthy of contempt, and still not be unlawful.

Here's where things stand:
We know that Foley is a creep and made some male pages generally uncomfortable by his very presence.
We know that Foley is, clinically speaking, not a pedophile, since there's no evidence he had any interest in any boy younger than 16.
We know that Foley does have "ephobophilia," a sexual interest in post-pubescent boys (or young men).
We have NO evidence that Foley engaged in sexual contact with anyone other than ... Mark Foley.
We don't know the ages of any ex-pages with whom Foley engaged in graphic communications at the time of the actual graphic communications.
We don't if the Florida law referenced at the top of this post is even constitutional (sounds a bit unenforceably vague to me), assuming that it can be proven that Foley was in Florida for any of said graphic communications.
We do know that the age of consent in Washington, DC, is 16, so if Foley just buggered the pages on the Capitol steps, there'd be no scandal (or, at least, it would be reduced to Gerry Studds proportions).
We have no clue what exactly Dennis Hastert knew and when he knew it.

Everything else is conjecture. There are lives and reputations at stake here. Not just Foley's. His is pre-ruined now and rightfully so. But in the rush to judgment, there's also the lives and reputations of the pages such as Jordan Edmunds and, less importantly to me, of the House Republican leadership. If you're genuinely interested in protecting "the children," you owe it to those same children to wait for the evidence before trumpeting the conclusions.

Retro, you're right, it's almost all conjecture. About the only thing we REALLY know is that Foley resigned - when he was given no choice about it at all.

We don't *know* that the transcripts are real. We don't *know* if Foley has ever had sex with anyone - man or woman.

It disturbs me that a trascript of an IM session with no verifiable data attached, given to a news organization by an anonymous third party, is now considered to be enough evidence to ruin careers, start an FBI investigation and throw an election. Did we learn nothing from Rathergate?

Did we learn nothing from Rathergate?

That ought to be the question of the day.

All I've seen is dirty talk of questionable provenance, and even that's lame compared to what I used to hear routinely on Howard Stern.