Angry in the Great White North

From The Blotter on Thursday:

The Democratic opponent of Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) is calling for an investigation into allegations that a 16-year-old male who had worked as a congressional page alerted Capitol Hill staffers after an e-mail exchange with Congressman Foley that the young man said "freaked me out."

Rep. Foley's office says the e-mails were entirely appropriate and that their release is part of an "ugly smear campaign" by his opponent.

Things went south for the representative on Friday:

Florida Rep. Mark Foley's resignation came just hours after ABC News questioned the congressman about a series of sexually explicit instant messages involving congressional pages, high school students who are under 18 years of age.

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

That a congressman who worked on legislation to protect children turned out to be an exploiter of children is a lesson for all of us. Recently I wrote on how the police have let us down in the past when given the chance to nail pedophiles. There have been plenty of high profile cases of teachers taking advantage of the children in their charge. Case after case of Catholic priests.

The fact is that we hope we haven't made a mistake in the people we elect, select, or hire to protect our children. As parents, we need to be as suspicious of them as we are of the stranger on the street. We can't know what darkness lies in their hearts, and no background check or interview process can reveal it unless the person has been caught before. No political membership, no profession, no religious belief, no economic status, no grouping of people can say there is no way a monster can be lurking in their midst.

When our children go out into the world, as were these young congressional pages, we hope that the community as a whole will keep an eye on them. For the most part, it does. But the Internet is a different kind of community. Everyone is a ghost. No one can be sure of who else is in the virtual room. With that anonymity comes boldness. Boldness like Foley's.

We are not the last line of defense for our children, we are the only line of defence. While they are at home, we have to do all we can to protect them. But we might as well unlock the door and leave the windows open, a ladder conveniently leaning up against the house, if we don't keep an eye on the computer. Foley and people like him use the Internet both as a means of entry and a way of staying hidden. So keep the computer in the hall or a common room. Set time limits on its use. Learn how to enable logging features and use them.

The technology to do it is improving all the time.

Your kids will hate you for it. Good. A parent who is not hated by their kids at least twice a week is not doing his or her job.

And no kid needs a text-capable cell phone. Maybe these pages needed them as part of their duties. If so, I hope the people who run the page program are required to review just how to better manage the communications to keep the Foleys of the world from doing this again.

And if they don't take action, then parents will have to. Because when all is said and done, we can't trust anyone. We can't afford to.

Michelle Malkin talks about parental vigilance.