When the news first broke I insisted on taking a wait and see attitude because something just didn’t seem right about it, and too much info was second hand and unsupported.

Granted the guy resigned, which leads one to assume guilt, but scandal and guilt are not always connected.  So did he bail to avoid a deeper scandal or out of shame?  Only he knows. 

Let me stop for a minute and say without qualification that if the allegations are true, he needs help.  A 50 something guys should not be flirting around with a 16/17 year old kid.  Not to mention that as an elected official, and the kid a page this is a classic case of conflict of interest and abuse of position even in the best of circumstances.

It is also a representation of the predatory culture that crosses all boundaries, with the only common element the ease of access the Internet provides.

Let’s unravel it.  What first broke was a claim that he had sent several emails to a former page too personal to a

Sixteen-Year-Old Who Worked as Capitol Hill Page Concerned About E-mail Exchange with Congressman

A 16-year-old male former congressional page concerned about the appropriateness of an e-mail exchange with a congressman alerted Capitol Hill staffers to the communication

The emails were from Foley’s personal account, and were mostly harmless, though i retrospect they could be Foley trolling for interest.  They were sent in the summer of 2005.  It was noted that the boy initiated the contact with a thank you email, but that is irrelevant except maybe for one minor question that I have not heard asked:  Did the kid send the email to Foleys private address, or did Foley just answer it there.

Regardless, the responsible response is "your welcome".

The end.

Foley’s office claimed:

…that Foley wrote the e-mails to the young man but says they were completely innocent and that Foley is at most guilty of being "too friendly and too engaging" with young people.

I don’t find that inaccurate, but read above.  Any contact after the fact, on private accounts is bordering inappropriate.  The questions he asked were personal, but all within a certain level of normality.  They are all brief, more in line of a passing thought then a deliberate drawing out, but still, they do border on the inapprorpriate.  We do not see any of the boy’s responses, only the Congressman’s words.

Apparently the young man sought some kind of clarification….in 2005.  Yes, over a year ago.  He sent an email August 31th 2005 to an unknown party saying:

"Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but seriously.  This freaked me out."

So in August he is freaked out, and also calling Foley sick for being so personal. 

Why did it take a year to find out?  That is the question of the hour, and frankly the delay and sudden release just before election day is really the reason there are baiting accusations.

Then the instant messages came out.

ABC posted snippets here: http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/foley_excerpts4.pdf

They are disturbing.  In the message the kid clearly stats he is seventeen, and won’t turn 18 till Feb.  Interestingly he told Foley his birthday was in December in the emails.  There are no dates in the IMs, just times.  The other person’s username is blanked for privacy.

The assumption was that it is the same kid, but I am not so sure.  In fact, the facts lead otherwise.

According to the Washington Post, Speaker Hastert claims some of the instant message date back to 2003.

Hastert also wrote that, because some of the more sexually explicit instant messages were written in 2003, "there should be an investigation into the extent there are persons who knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the appropriate authorities."

What concerns me is we have no validation who the person taking here is, and no verification that the other party is Foley, though I am told he has not denied it.

But also concerning is how easy these are to forge and how hard to verify.  AOL is not likely to release their server logs, but that is the only way that this can be verified.

In fact, according to this article, they cannot:

AOL has always protected its ability to use publicly posted messages and chat room postings as promotional tools elsewhere on the site," he said. "But users’ privacy rights in terms of their personal communication remains unchanged. We do not read, review or store personal communication between users." (emphasis added)

So what we have is communication that I could recreate in Wordpad.  I could make a conversation between me and anyone else saying essentially anything and in theory it is unverifiable.  In other words the most damning pieces of evidence against him are potentially the most inadmissible, not that anyone in the media is covering that.

Even the emails are subject to edit, which brings me to this interesting bit I read at Flopping Aces.

There, he examines one of the original emails that has been released to the public in two different forms.  The differences are not major, but they are clear evidence of some editing at some level.

Just Barking Mad found this email on that blog Stop Sex Predators:

All fine and dandy. But check out the release from CREW, from page 5 of their release:

Same exact email based on the narrative but a different subject line….

He then posts a side by side comparison by another blogger:

Wild Bill has posted a copy of each one of the disputed emails with the differences pointed out:

First the one from CREW:

And now the one from SSP:

You know it almost looks like the author of SSP was read the email, maybe over the phone, and tried to produce something that looked like a faxed copy. Thing is he forgot all the little stuff.

So in trying to unravel this I am left wondering if anything is valid or verifiable.

Note, a big nod to Wild Bill.

There are a lot of questions remaining about who did what and who he talked to when and such.  Right now it would be nice if the media frenzy would slow down enough to let the truth out, but fat chance.

Was he set up?  Did someone use one of these kids as bait?  Perhaps. The possibility of altered emails makes such speculation possible.

None of this relieves Foley from the burden of being a predator, and seeking inappropriate contact with the boys.  He deserves whatever shame and prosecution he has coming.  And we owe the boys a debt of thanks for coming forward.  Even if this was a setup as some speculate, maybe that is a good thing, getting Foley off the street.

But larger issues remain that are not yet being discussed.  Like maybe killing the High School intern program altogether.  There has been enough inappropriate contact before this that I wonder why we don’t?

Also, we will now likely see some testing of the validity of evidence gathered via second hand electronic means.  It will be interesting to see what precedents are given.

The Republicans will likely lose the seat, and the Democrats have more ammunition about the culture of corruption crap they are spewing, not to mention their glee at accusing them of a cover up.  To me that is the continuation of the pot kettle game, as both sides cover up anything they can,

At least Foley had the guts to face it and quit, unlike William Jefferson and his ice box piggy bank, though I find Foley’s "I am an alcoholic, I need rehab" to be somewhat lame.

Me?  I would like more attention paid to the damage to the kids on the hill and less gloating about scandals and cover ups.

If it were my kid I would likely be kicking Foleys ass right now.

But I would also call for an end to the program, and protect the other kids form the other Foleys, in both parties.

For more, see:

Michelle Malkin, La Shawn Barber, Tom Maguire, Gateway Pundit, Blue Crab Boulevard, Rick Moran, Sister Toldjah, Hot Air, LGF

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