On Dec. 8, the House ethics committee released a 90-page report on its two-month investigation into allegations of sexual conduct toward underage House pages by former Rep. Mark A. Foley, R-Fla. The report documents much finger-pointing over who ought to have intervened as Foley demonstrated a suspicious avidity about the daily lives of the congressional pages, but it concluded that no ethical violations occurred. Foley resigned before the committe began the inquiry, and did not participate.
The chief interest of the report, as far as Hot Documents is concerned, is that it provides, unexpurgated, many more e-mail and instant-message exchanges between Foley and ex-pages than had previously come to light. If it bothers you, for instance, that ABC News (and, in turn, Slate, which reprinted some of its documents) lowered a curtain of decency over a portion of one IM exchange in which “Foley and the teen both appear to describe having sexual orgasms,” then click here and scroll down to pages 38-39.
After awhile, the IM exchanges have a certain sameness, as Foley lures various high schoolers into discussing what type of underwear they wear, what size their penises are, and how often they masturbate, while the high schoolers try in vain to change the subject to school projects, Republican politics, or current or past girlfriends. The IM reprinted below and on the following four pages is a little different in that this ex-page explicitly warns Foley that he is not yet 18 and therefore that Foley could be getting himself into serious trouble.
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