Maf54: is your little guy limp … or growing
(Page's screen name withheld): eh growing
Maf54: so you got a stiff one now
(Page): not that fast …
Maf54: i am hard as a rock … so tell me when your reaches rock …
Maf54: get a ruler and measure it for me
(Page): ive already told you that
Maf54: tell me again
(Page): 7 and 1/2
Maf54: ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Maf54: beautiful
— Florida Congressman Mark Foley (screen name Maf54) I.M.'ing a teen male congressional page in 2003, the second set of e-mails detailed on abcnews.com.
"Our kids are precious. Their lives are vulnerable. The predators are winning as we speak…"
— Foley, urging Democrats to support sexual predator legislation on "The O'Reilly Factor" on May 2.
"There was nothing overtly sexual in the [2005] emails, … [s]o, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn't go on the record about how those emails made him feel. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn't meet our standard for publication."
— Scott Montgomery, government editor for the St. Petersburg Times, answering questions on its Buzz blog about why the newspaper didn't write a story after obtaining less explicit e-mails last year.
"Many other people have now read the emails and found them 'overtly sexual.' Obviously, the boy did. The Times simply blew off the story."
— Michael Hussey, author of the “Pushing Rope” blog.
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2006.
