My Foley Talking Points

#1 I haven't followed this in detail but I know if he did anything criminal he would have been arrested already.

#2 From everything I have seen he acted exactly how we want someone who has a unhealthy urge to act. He seems to like young boys, when the are under 18 he keeps hands off. If only all the catholic priest just asked how the boys were doing and gave them ice cream and pizza. And when they were over 18 he began to try to have consensual relations. I have know people whom as children were victims of sexual predators. This circus trivializes a serious problem that hurts many children.

#3 The media circus is harmful and embarrassing

#4 We need to ask ourselves --

What is public and what is private for an elected official ?

What Foley did do was icky. It has obviously destroyed the district he represents ability to have some one represent them (since he basically quit mid election season).

What we see here and with Clinton is that private behavior that is icky to some but legal has true consequences for the people they represent. For example when they piled on Clinton they didn't support his actions against Bin Laden stopping his ability to act aggressively against him in 1998.

So the question is this.

Should we increase the sphere of private for elected officials so it
doesn't affect their job. Or should we reduce and eliminate their
private sphere to basically say if you are an elected official you
live in public. Your phone calls are monitored and recorded, your
e-mail. Your letters, the people you meet is all public info ? So
ideally elected officials wont do these icky (to some) things.


Update: My Give A Damn's Busted