Foley Checks Into Clinic for Alcoholism

Former Rep. Mark Foley, under FBI investigation for e-mail exchanges with teenage congressional pages, has checked himself into rehabilitation facility for alcoholism treatment and accepts responsibility for his actions, his attorney acknowledged Monday.

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The whole story is a great puzzle. When it started to hit the fan on Friday, I thought it was no big deal, as his staff asserted. That initial e-mail just didn't look all that weird. But then he abruptly resigned, and I said to my mom Friday night, "I can't imagine a situation where you would resign if there were no smoking gun...."

Since then we have seen the smoking gun (his IMs to at least one kid are just sick) and also reports that the Republican leadership was aware that Foley might be a chicken-hawk, and now we see that the poor guy has checked himself into alcohol rehab.

This whole alcohol rehab thing makes me madder than a wet hen (to continue the poultry theme). Seems like if you are famous and you do something stupid, somehow you think you can check into rehab & *poof* all your problem disappear. Worse yet, seems like they often *do* disappear.

I am aware of a situation in which a person has been accused of having arranged to meet an underage girl (who turned out to be an undercover cop). Cops aver that the person was planning to have illicit sex with a minor; the person avers that he was going to try to talk the girl out of doing what was discussed in the IMs or e-mails or whatever it was. The facts are in there somewhere, but that's not my point. Regardless of guilt or innocense here, this person is IN PRISON. Locked up. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Ex-Rep. Foley, on the other hand, is in 'rehab,' and I'm guessing he did not select a nasty, gray lock-down rehab with stale meatloaf and a scary cellmate. OK, I haven't seen any active solicitation of a young person (I was too sickened by the first page of the IMs to keep reading), so maybe it's not an offense of the same level as in the other story noted above. However, as a Congressman, I'd suggest that Mr. Foley should be held to a much higher standard than some average Joe who never went out on the campaign trail & said out one side of his face that pedophiles are scary, dangerous people while out the other side he was typing to a 16-year-old boy about being 'horny.'

I am inclined to suggest that we pull his slimy, scary, skanky, weird self out of rehab and let him have access to the same rehab/counseling/medical treatments that everybody else in his situation has access to behind bars.

And shame on anybody who knew about this and did nothing -- double shame on them if they are now complaining that somebody would dare make this into 'a political issue.' You had all the time in the world to avoid having it become any issue other than one for the criminal court system, and you did nothing. Shame on YOU!