What great timing for Foley to be exposed as a dirty old man who toys with boy pages.

Well, hell, sex sells, doesn't it?

Habeas Corpus, however, is so, so "Latin"-sounding.  It's so difficult for folks to wrap their minds around latin stuff.  Hey, it's been around 900 years--must be old and out of date, dontcha think?  Time to get rid of that decrepit old leftover from the Magna Carta, anyway.

I just find it very interesting that the Foley scandal broke at the same time that Congress and the Senate voted for the Terrorist Suspect Detainee Act.  (Don't you feel safe, now that the president can decide who is a terrorist suspect and officially have that person detained in secret and hold him/her without trial?  Hey!  You might be labeled a "terrorist suspect"!  You might be imprisoned in secret and held without trial!  But, don't you worry.  I'm sure you're just fine--You haven't done anything wrong that might make someone think you're a terrorist, so you're safe.  Right?  Right?)

So, anyway, the mainstream press is all over the Foley story.  The latest story I found on it was 8 minutes old; there were 21,000+ stories in Google's news search--like I said, sex sells.  The number of stories on the detainee act?  1,630.

Analysis I've read indicates that some of the Democrats who voted for the act did so because they're up for re-election, and they feared being tarred with the "easy on terrorism" brush.  Um.  Great.  Score one for marketing, -100 for the Constitution.

Yeah, I'm a mom.  Yeah, I don't want congresscritters toying with my dotter if she decides to become a junior wonkette.  Yeah, I think Foley is a sad, sad mixed up man--otherwise, why would he be one of the driving forces behind the internet child protection laws?

But I feel like there's a certain amount of misdirected energy at play here.

Technorati: Mark Foley, Terrorist Suspect Detainee Act, habeas corpus