On the matter of the Foley scandal, I agree with Michelle Malkin:


“What I am hearing from some conservatives inclined to pooh-pooh Foley’s behavior and carry on about Barney Frank instead does not sit well with me. You can’t possibly read Foley’s communications with minors that have been disclosed so far–including his attempts to rendezvous with one–and dismiss them as merely ‘naughty e-mails.’ Yet, that’s how White House press secretary Tony Snow described some of them this morning. Though he admitted to being too ‘glib’ and ‘clarified’ those remarks with tougher words this afternoon, the damage has been done. Fair or not, it makes the White House look flippant about sexual predation. Parents of all political persuasions are not going to be receptive to that.


“At this point, I think the GOP is making a mistake banging the drum so hard over the apparent far left/MSM orchestration of the story. However long the other side sat on the e-mails and IMs, the fact is that Mark Foley–and Mark Foley alone–is responsible for giving his enemies something to spring upon his campaign in the first place.”


Amen. Yes, obviously the timing of the story was carefully orchestrated months ago by the left and our friends in the the elite media in order to bust not just Foley’s seat but GOP control of the House. So what? The stuff Foley hasn’t denied he did was not only nauseating but an appalling violation of the trust that parents place in Congress when they send their teen-agers to Washington to be pages.


There is one aspect of the matter that bears keeping in mind, however. It’s this post last night from the Ace of Spades, regarding the Dem calls (as well as calls by some conservatives)  for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who, as you may recall, had been made aware only of e-mails to a 16-year-old page from Foley that were overly friendly (to say the least) but not sexually explicit like the revolting IMs recently uncovered:


“Democratic Strategeist Bob Beckel: Fact That Mark Foley Was Gay Should Have ‘Raised Questions’ About More Innocuous Emails


“Likens Gay Man Around Boys To Notorious Bank Robber Willie Sutton Hanging Around Banks


“On Hannity & Colmes two minutes ago.


“Hm. How quickly they change their tacks.


“Now the reality is that I would tend to be suspicious of any gay man interested in being ‘friends’ with a sixteen year old boy. (Or, for that matter, any straight man interested in being ‘friends’ with a sixteen year old girl.)


“But it seems to me the Democratic Party stands as a whole for the proposition we must have no suspicions about gay men who want to hang out with boys in the woods.”


The Anchoress comments:


“That would be about the Boy Scouts, remember? Remember, was it the 2000 convention when some Scouts processed with the flag to open the Dem Convetion and they were boo’d and conventioneers held up signs saying, ‘we support GAY boy scouts…’ Yeah, that was back in the day when my kids were called haters and homophobes for being scouts.


“Now, of course, it is politically expedient to cast suspicion and doubt upon a gay man communicating with a 16 year old boy, and the Dems love what is politically expedient.”


This is the issue that conservatives should be pushing in the Foley scandal–where exactly do the Dems stand these days on the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay scoutmasters?


BTW, don’t miss the IWF’s own Cathy Seipp’s article on our home page about the creeps who like to hang around children.