2) "CREW edited the e-mails before sending them to the FBI!" Um, no. Contrary to the GOP Talking Points CNN
et al keep mindlessly (or dutifully?) spewing,
CREW sent the FBI intact, unredacted copies of the e-mails, as the FBI had requested.
3) "There's no evidence that Foley committed any crimes!" Again, no. These weren't just naughty e-mails (or IMs). At a minimum, he violated his own 2006 anti-online child sex predator law.
4) "Barney Frank ran a prostitution ring out of his home!" This is a two-fer: Not only is it a lie, it has nothing to with Mark Foley's being a pedophile. But it's been debunked already, anyway.
Step right up and tell me about some more myth-debunkings!
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UPDATE #1:
5) "The case is tricky to prosecute criminally!" Not at all. As a lynn notes, Title 19 of the United States Code is chock-full of statutes that can be made to apply in this case.
6) "It's a prank or a setup!" Not hardly. As cowgirl states, why would Foley resign so abruptly over a prank? Remember, Foley bailed less than twenty minutes after he found out that ABC had the IMs from another page, in addition to the original e-mails from the Louisiana page. Also, the Wayback Machine shows that several other pages and former pages were discussing Foley's behavior -- and warning current pages to steer clear of him.
7) "Gay Equals Pedophile!" No. As hopesprings mentions, pedophilia authority Gavin DeBecker has shown that most pedophiles are straight, heterosexual men. This goes for pedophiles that target boys as well as girls. DeBecker's judgements are echoed by many if not most experts in the field (at least those who aren't in the pay of the Fundies).
8) "Gerry Studds got away with it!" Yeah, if you call being censured by the full House "getting away with it". Oh, and this in 1983 -- nearly a quarter of a century ago. You're only bringing him up because he's the only Democratic page-boffer you can find. Unlike Foley, he only boffed one page, who was of legal age, in a consensual affair. The affair took place ten years earlier in 1973, when Studds was in his thirties (a good deal younger then than Mark Foley is now), and the former page himself was so horrified to find out that his former lover was being attacked that he made a point of publicly appearing with him to denounce Studds' being censured by the House. (And Studds' own decade-old activities were eclipsed by the hanky-panky of Dan Crane, who was still nailing his own 17-year-old page when he was caught in 1983.) Thanks to Steve Gilliard for bringing this up.
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