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Rep. Mark Foley, IM Jockey

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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Saturday, Sept. 30, 2006, at 9:38 PM ET

Rep. Mark Foley, R.-Fla, resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after certain instant messages he exchanged with underage congressional pages and former pages came to light. (Congressional pages are always high school juniors, and must be 16 or older.) Foley was chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children. "For too long our nation has tracked library books better than it has sex offenders," Foley declaimed when the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which he helped write, passed in July. "That day is coming to an end."

ABC News, which broke the story, has posted a sample of the IMs that prompted Foley's hasty decision to vacate his office. It is a 2003 exchange with a former page who was then still a minor. The IM appears below and on the following eight pages. Warning: It is moderately raunchy. (For a less explicit example of Rep. Foley's e-mail correspondence, click here.) Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that Rep. Foley doesn't know how to spell "bulge."

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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Saturday, Sept. 30, 2006, at 9:38 PM ET
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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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