While New York has it own maybe-political scandal brewing, the new political hot potato scandal is Florida Representative Mark Foley's graphic emails and instant messaging conversations with underage Congressional pages (you can read them here at ABC News), which has lead to Foley's resignation and subsequent check-in to an alcohol rehab clinic. The bigger question is whether Republican leaders knew about Foley's inclination to pursue high school age male pages, and, if they did, why didn't they stop it? And in a (western) NY connection, people are wondering if Representative Tom Reynolds did too little to stop Foley.
The NY Times and Daily News both tackel the Foley Follies with editorials. The Times essentially notes that the Republican party has reached a "point of decayed purpose" and the House GOP "always picks wrong" and places the need for change on voters shoulders The Daily News calls it a "Capitol Hill creepshow" and mocks the Republican reaction of trying to distance themselves. The Post takes a pass on an editorial but has four letters the editor about the matter: The two that lead are from people who support the Republicans (one says Democrats are hypocrites, because of their reaction during the Monica Lewinsky incident, but the difference with Monica is that she wasn't a 16 year old) while the other two are critical of the GOP.
And the Daily Show made a good point - why did the ABC News re-enactment of Foley at the computer have someone only using one hand to type?
Photograph outside of Mark Foley's Congressional office by Lauren Victoria Burke/AP
