The Natural Truth About A Dirtbag Congressman

Mark Foley, disgusting pedophile wannabe? You bet. But beneficiary of secret GOP plot to lock down the pedophile priest vote? Hardly.

The reason you find this story so confusing is that it has been so confusingly reported. If you aren't paying close attention, you're likely to "hear" that the GOP House leadership knew about Freaky Foley's sexually explicit emails to former pages and did nothing more than give him a slap on the wrist.

This is (as of the latest media reports) simply not true.

What Hastert knew about last year is what the St. Petersburg Times knew about last year---and didn't report. They knew about five questionable emails with no explicit sexual content. Don't believe me? Read them for yourself.

It was only after ABC reported on these emails that other pages stepped forward with the explicit IMs involving the measurement of male organs and monkey spanking.

So, what are Democrats complaining about? They are "upset" that Denny Hastert didn't act when the first, vague, non-sexually-explicit emails were discovered. Democrats apparently believe that what Hastert should have said was:

"We've got a Congressman who asked a 17-year-old boy for a picture. Obviously Foley's a homo--and a pedophile to boot! So we're holding hearings, we're ordering all pages to stay away from him and we're running a primary opponent against him. We have to--you know how them GAYS are!"

In other words, Democrats are denouncing the leadership of the GOP for not being homophobes.
Brilliant.

UPDATE: Read this AP story about Foley's teary-eyed farewell speeches to the pages (male and female), and you'll see why a pre-emptive declaration of Foley as a pedophile would have been difficult. Everyone who had an overly-emotional band director or youth pastor knows the type. Are they perverts? Most of the time, no.

The Democrats really are being idiots about the Foley case. But that doesn't mean it won't work.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal nails the homophobia issue here.