A Foley Surprise

I'm sure you've heard as much about the Foley Scandal as you ever wanted to hear, but something in the Drudge Report deserves a look. Jordan Edmund was the Congressional page who exchanged the disturbing AOL instant messages with Foley. Bear in mind, the emails that Speaker Hastert saw were not explicit or sexual in nature. The emails were excessively friendly, so Hastert told Foley to knock it off, but saw no need for further discipline. The reporter obtained the IM messages in August, but in his great concern for the children who might be at risk, he held the story until October Surprise Time. The IM postings contained the disgusting material over which Foley resigned. Drudge reports that two sources close to Edmund allege that the explicit IMs were a prank perpetrated by a few pages. The sources maintain that Jordan Edmund is not a homosexual, but he posed as one to get a few laughs at a Congressman's expense. This story seems extremely likely because boys at that age pull pranks like this one. Foley was known to attempt to befriend pages, inviting them for ice cream, etc., so to the pages, goading him into explicit chatter over IM would seem like a perfect comeuppance for a creep. I'm glad Foley has resigned, of course, especially if the new allegation of one page that he and Foley got intimate turns out to be true. Now, I'm sure the Democrats will start proposing resolutions favorable to the Boy Scouts for protecting their boys from Scoutmasters like Foley. (That last line: hat tip to William Kristol.)
We already know from the Plame affair that in the realm of the Drive-By Media, what constitutes scandalous behavior (perjury) for Republicans (Libby) is called saving the Constitution when Democrats (Clinton) do it. Just in case anyone has forgotten, twenty years ago a Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts named Gerry Studds seduced a male page in what amounted to statutory rape. When the House censured him, he turned his back to the Speaker in defiance. No one called for the Democratic Speaker's resignation or questioned "what did he know and when did he know it?" Studds got reelected six more times. Maybe I should make sure you got that last remark. STUDDS, A CONFESSED STATUTORY RAPIST, GOT REELECTED SIX MORE TIMES. Voters in Massachusetts are today voting for one killer of a young girl and one slanderer of American soldiers every six years at alternating intervals, so the citizens of Studds' district saw nothing amiss in the inclusion of a rapist. To think they're Americans too.