What the Definition of "Is" Is.

Ah, how Mark Foley must be longing for the good old days when he was solidly accepted into the Radical Right Wing pack, howling for Bill Clinton's.....(ahm, how do I get myself in these situations?) .....head. His Politcial Head, I mean...during the impeachment hearings.

The hypocrisy is unreal, of course, but Slate Magazine has an interesting article today-- in our fear of cybersex predators, like sicko Republican Mark Foley, will we go to far in making laws governing internet contact?

Check this out:

What do you do with snakes like Foley? Some states pursue them into cyberspace and outlaw dirty messages. Georgia, for instance, forbids any "Internet contact" with minors involving "explicit verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexually explicit nudity" or even of "sexual excitement." Actually, the recipient doesn't have to be a minor. He can be anyone "believed Â… to be a child residing in this state." You can charge Foley under this law even if he never goes to Georgia or writes to anyone there. All you have to do is meet him in a chat room, pose as an Atlanta teenager, and wait for him to say something gross.

If a pervert won't act on his words, you can criminalize the words. If he won't utter them, you can prosecute him for writing them. If he won't come to your state, you can go get him. If he has no victim, you can invent one. This is no joke. In almost every state, laws specify that you can be convicted of an Internet sex offense against a child even if you contact no child and commit no physical crime. In fact, the most recently analyzed data, published by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, suggest that more people are arrested for using the Internet to solicit cops posing as kids than for using it to initiate relationships with real kids. The unnatural has been surpassed by the artificial.