I don't know how much more of this I can take.

If they're not preying on children, they're hiding behind them.

AFTERSNARK: I hope there's absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that surrounding himself with youngsters was an unspeakably sleazy way for Reynolds to get the reporters to self-censor themselves and not get into the really graphic detail of this whole affair. One reporter even made that point painfully clear:

Congressman, do you mind asking the children to leave the room so we can have a frank discussion of this, because it's an adult topic. It just doesn't seem appropriate to me.

Now, I have no idea what happened after that video stopped but I'd like to think that some reporter had the brass to say something like, "OK, if that's the way you want it. I'd like you to comment on this particular IM, in which Congressman Foley told a 16-year-old page that he'd like to stroke him, then wrap his warm, inviting lips around that big package of man meat ...".

You get the idea. It would have been howlingly funny if someone had called Reynolds on his bluff and traumatized some of those kids for life. Maybe those parents wouldn't be quite so accommodating to be used as cheap props the next time.