"Overly friendly"

MSNBC just wants to keep a light tone, you know, it really is just a horse race when you come down to it and, ya know, a joke.

MIAMI - The state that gave the world butterfly ballots and the hanging chad is headed for a new battle over whether and how voters should be told that disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley has dropped out of the Florida congressional race.

Foley, a six-term Republican congressman, resigned his office and checked into an alcohol rehab center last week after copies of his overly friendly messages to teen-age male congressional pages set off a scandal that could threaten his party’s majority in Congress.

Overly friendly messages, eh?

Um, no. (I won't quote any of the passages as this is a family blog).

And I know the latest right wing trope is to harp on about liberal hypocricy -- "But you support gay marriage! What's the diff?" The Editors explain as only they can.

The second objection is that lusting after 16-year-olds can’t be pedophilia, because pedophilia is gross, and some 16-year-olds are teh hott. Now, it is entirely true that some 16-year-olds are hot, and this truth - like so many things in this world - is both completely true and completely gross. Whatever 16-year-olds look like on the outside, they are children, and they don’t need your gross old man hands rubbing up all over them. While it’s probably inevitable that at some point in your life you are going to find someone under the legal age attractive, it’s not really the sort of interest you should cultivate. I don’t have time to really walk you through the many reasons why that is - nor do I have time to explain why you shouldn’t go down on your grandmother - but just take my word that these are both sound pieces of advice offered with your best interest at heart.

For the final objection, we turn to Pfc. Pantload:

These kids were older than the legal age of consent to marry in most states — does that mean these states are carrying laws on the books countenancing child brides and, by extension, pedophilia?

The funny thing is that you would think the left — particularly the gay left — would be a bit more interested in not having 16 and 17 year old teenagers classified as young children for legal/sexual/political purposes.

The funny thing is that Jonah has confused the age of consent to marry with the age of sexual consent. This is funny because, thanks in large part to people like Rep. Foley, there is no place in the country in which Foley could legally marry one of his 16 or 17-year-old boyfriends. You would think that the right - particularly the anti-gay-marriage right - would be a bit more interested in keeping this distinction intact.

I know it's pointless to try to explain to Spawn of Lucianne the difference between two adults wanting in some way to codify their relationship and a Congressman engaging in IM-sex, while the object of his lust's mother hovers outside the door, wondering what Junior could possibly be doing on the computer all night.

Pointless because Democrats are, we have all been conditioned to understand, the party of depravity, while the Repugnants who approve of torture and man/boy IM sex are the Family Values party.