I bet someone wishes he just said the N-word…

In perhaps my favorite GOP pre-election scandal of the day, it seems that Florida Congressman Mark Foley is in trouble because of a series of alarmingly too-familiar e-mails he sent to a 16-year-old former page (yes, it was a male page, but the pedophile overtones are a lot more scandalous than the gay ones).

"I am in North Carolina," Foley wrote in one e-mail, "and it was 100 in New Orleans ...wow that's really hot...well do you miss DC...It's raining here but 68 degrees so who can argue...did you have fun at your conference...what do you want for your birthday coming up...what stuff do you like to do."

Eww…can't this dude get a MySpace page like all the other weirdos trolling for high school ass?

Sure, Foley's campaign is calling the story "a political attack and an attempt at the worst kind of character assassination", and they may very well prove to be correct. However, there is a bit of perverted ironic justice to the recent turn of events:

…if it turns out that there's anything to the allegations about Foley, the congressman has certainly provided his critics with plenty of hoisting-on-his-own-petard material. In remarks delivered on Internet Safety Day in 2004, Foley warned that the Internet "provides a new medium for pedophiles to reach out to our most vulnerable citizens -- America's children." And in an interview with National Public Radio back in 2002, Foley, who co-chairs the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, complained that the Supreme Court had "sided with pedophiles over children" when it struck down a child pornography law. "I'm not a prude," Foley said in the NPR interview. "I have no problem with adult pornography. People are entitled to read it, watch it, see it in their homes or in public accommodations. Where I have to draw the line is using children for the excitement of those more mature people who should know the difference and know better."

Seriously, where's the Capitol Hill SVU team when you need it? And why is Jim McGreevey applying for a job in Foley's office?