Foley resigns, effective immediately

From the AP:

Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., resigned from Congress on Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.

"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.

The two-sentence statement did not refer to the e-mails and gave no reason for Foley's abrupt decision to abandon a flourishing career in Congress.

Foley, 52, had been a shoo-in for a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days.

His resignation comes less than six weeks before the elections and further complicates the political landscape for Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress. Democrats need to win a net of 15 Republican seats to regain the power they lost in 1994.

Florida Republicans planned to meet as soon as Monday to name a replacement in Foley's district, which President Bush won with 55 percent in 2004 and is now in play for November.

If it's all the same to you, I'm not going to dwell on this particular race's prospects right now. This event is horrible, regardless of the outcome of this House seat's race. Anyway, continuing:

Campaign aides had previously acknowledged that the Republican congressman e-mailed the former Capitol page five times, but had said there was nothing inappropriate about the exchange. The page was 16 at the time of the e-mail correspondence.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he had asked the chairman of the House's page board, Rep. John Shimkus (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

He said Foley submitted the letter of resignation to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and submitted a copy to him. A House clerk read Foley's resignation on the House floor.

"He's done the right thing," Hastert said. Asked if the chain of events was disturbing, he said, "None of us are very happy about it."

That may a candidate for "quote of the day" here. Well, DUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH! "None of us are very happy about it"? Anyway...:

The e-mails were posted Friday on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's Web site after ABC News reported their existence. The group asked the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate the exchange Foley had with the boy, who served as a page for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to protect the teenagers who come to Congress to learn about the legislative process," the group wrote, adding that the committee, "must investigate any allegation that a page has been subjected to sexual advances by members of the House."

In 2003, Foley faced questions about his sexual orientation as he prepared to run for Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record)'s seat. At a news conference in May of that year, he said he would not comment on rumors he was gay. He later decided not to seek the Senate seat to care for his parents.

I don't think this has anything to do with whether or not Foley is gay. Yes, I know that the leftist hypocrites who proudly state their pro-gay credentials were screaming "Foley is queer!" back in '03, as if being gay is OK only if one is a Democrat. However, leftist hypocrisy notwithstanding, we're not talking about consenting adults here, are we?

Foley is innocent until proven guilty, and I recognize that. However, preliminary indications don't look very flattering. Drudge is reporting that an exchange went like this:

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

In another bizarre bit of cruel irony, he was chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.

Just as it was wrong for darling-of-the-left Scott Ritter to try on two occasions to pick up teenie girls, it is equally wrong for Foley to be attempting horizontal encounters with teenage boys. The gender of the victim is irrelevant, but the age is most certainly relevant. I certainly hope the boy and his family haven't been scarred by this incident. If they have been, who could blame them?

I've seen comments across the leftisphere that have been predictable: Foley is a perv, he's gonna be fresh meat in the pen, etc. Hey, I don't disagree with any of that, nor do I take offense to it. However, it's pretty telling that the comments I've seen thus far from the 'bats have not been in any way related to the victims here. In other words, they're having too much fun rejoicing in Foley's self-inflicted misery that they haven't stopped to consider that his misery necessarily means that someone has been victimized. Then again, why ruin a good hoedown with such a buzzkiller like THAT, right?