rereason

I must confess, I chortled with glee when I first heard about Representative Foley's resignation, and the reasons for it.

"Leaders" in Congress and the talking heads on Fox news blame the democrats and ABC news for Foley's troubles. The democrats are to blame? Those antics make it hard to keep a smile off my lips.

But a more thoughtful response might put Foley into perspective.

Let us note: he did not take bribes from contractors working on Iraqi reconstruction; he did not (as far as we know) take money and favors from the crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff; he did not order troops into battle or start any preventitive wars.

In fact, no body fluids were actually exchanged.

Not that I condone sexual messages from an adult to a minor, far from it. But I'm not going to froth at the mouth over it, either.

On the grand scale of outrages, this hardly registers. My concerns are the increasing concentration of wealth and widening pool of poverty in this nation. I worry about the 8,000 kids in my town who go to bed hungry every night. I worry about friends and acquaintances who, despite having good insurance, cannot afford life-sustaining medicines.

Every single day we waste time focused on this scandal, we are not focused on the men and women fighting and dying in Iraq. Every hour we worry over some instant message to a 16 year-old, is an hour not spent pursuing the billions of dollars being stolen from the United States and Iraq by crooked contractors; each minute of airtime spent castigating the Speaker of the House is a minute spent not working to end the genocide in Darfur.

Foley did wrong; he resigned, he's in treatment and under FBI investigation.

Lets move on to truly important issues.