On abuse of authority

Okay, so I deal in snark. It's my stock in trade. But I get the feeling that my propensity for snark has diluted the message somewhat on a recent post, and I wanted to make things perfectly clear.

Former Representative Mark Foley has admitted to sending sexually explicit e-mails and IMs to a page under his authority. When those exchanges started, the page had not reached his 18th birthday. Additionally, Foley's toward pages - pages, plural - has been going on for three years, if not longer.

Let me further clarify: If Mark Foley were sending sexually explicit e-mails to female pages, he would still be sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenagers. And not just that, but sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenagers under his authority.

"We will make you successful," Foley promised, "as long as you don't mind me grabbing your [deleted] once in a while."

This. Is. Not. Okay.

It is not okay for a 52-year-old member of Congress to send sexually explicit e-mails to teenaged pages. Period. Full stop. I don't care what gender you are, I don't care what party you are. If you are in a position of authority, you do not send sexually explicit messages to teenagers under your authority. While many aspects of this scandal are open for debate, that one is unequivocally not. And one more time, just for those of you who might have missed it:

It is not okay for a member of Congress to send sexually explicit e-mails to teenaged pages.

If you disagree with the above statement, you need to find another blog to frequent, because we have nothing to talk about.