The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

I agree with that. The opening line in today's San Francisco Chronicle article today was (approximately) "the last thing the Republican Party needs right now is a homosexual pedophilia scandal."

My first thought was "is the homosexual part really all that relevant?" Would it be less of a problem if it had been a heterosexual pedophila scandal. I'll leave to others to argue whether sexual interest in 16/17 year olds is really pedophilia (I know clinicly it isn't, but most people don't use the word clinicly).

I also caught The Daily Show last night and while it was pretty funny, I thought it was also unfair in its deregarding of Studds as a relevant precedent (where a 37 year old Rep actually had sex with a page and ultimately nobody really that it that big a deal).

Having now seen some of the explicit stuff I was also surprised to learn that the boy seemed to be at least somewhat participating in the banter (not that this makes it any more appropriate).