Reply #22: Actually, I have more sympathy for your position than you think.

[woo me with science]

I agree that 17-year-olds are not children and that there is no magic line between 17 years, 11 months and 18 years of age. I am annoyed by posts that refer to 17-year-olds as "children," because they clearly are not.

However, I am very concerned about a few things. First, the subordinate relationship of a page to a Congressman--and related to this, the high ethical standard to which we should hold our elected representatives. People send their teens to serve as Congressional pages, and they should not have to worry about some 50-something year-old Congressman hitting on them. It is scummy behavior and should not be tolerated.

It is the hypocrisy that galls me. If hitting on a Congressional page is wrong, it should be wrong for EVERY Congressman. It makes me sick to see people leap to the defense of a Democrat who does it, just because he is a Democrat. I don't for a second believe that you would be making these arguments in defense of Studds, if he were a Republican.

Consistency matters. Ethics matter. The way things stand right now, we have emails and IM's implicating Foley, but still no direct evidence of any sexual contact. People are ready to ride Foley out and yet can DEFEND a Democratic Congressman who actually took a page to bed. That is why I kept trying to get you to state the Democratic position. What should the Democratic position be? Do you realize how silly that sounds...that having sex with ONE underage page might be okay to stay in Congress? That will not play in middle America, and, frankly, it doesn't play with me, either. It looks hypocritical, because it is.