Clarice on Foley

Clarice Feldman makes sense of the Foley fiasco, from the American Thinker:

ABC has not disclosed the names of the recipients of the instant messages which were sexually explicit, years old, and not seen by anyone else. We do not know how anyone but the recipients could have retrieved them. We do not even know if they are authentic. None of the recipients has come forward and identified himself. What we do know is that reputable media and the Republican leadership acted appropriately on the initial innocuous correspondence and could not proceed further in view of the parents’ demand that their son’s privacy be respected only to find months later just before the election that same correpondence showing up on an unlikely blog site and then almost simultaneously on ABC and on C.R.E.W.’s site. As for the demand that a special prosecutor be appointed, maybe Patrick Fitzgerald can be appointed. Then he can fail to ask ABC or C.R.E.W. how they got the correspondence, ignore their political motivations, conflate their partisanship with “whistleblowing”, not look for the sources of the later sexually explicit emails, and nab Hastert for forgetting when he went to the bathroom on the day he heard about the emails.

I think Foley is a creepy little man but I also think that this whole thing is about as accidental as the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

And while this might get me in trouble, I also have to say that 16 is not a little child. Let's not make it worse than it is by treating Foley like a thrice convicted child molestor. Unethical as he is, none of this may actually be criminal. He should still be ashamed of himself, however, and so should some other people who can't wait for the facts before they judge.