Drudge has a world exclusive, as most readers already know.

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal... Developing...

They have to get up a lot earlier in the morning to pull this sort of thing off these days. The MSM may be dumb but we aren't.

Present state of play——the Dems and CREW are implicated; ABC's Brian Ross has his own Rathergate, the FBI and Ethics Committee are going to find out which Dems were involved and CREW will probably lose their tax exempt status. The Dems have shown themselves to be perfectly willing to use homophobia to win when they have no saleable platform or issues; the Republican base is charged up and once again Soros turned his gold into Dem dross.

Foley will become a living example of the Dems' willingness to smear a homosexual for gain and will write a book, go on Oprah and make a mint. He will be this year's wronged victim. Mark my words
 
A fit ending to a sordid smear.

See also What is CREW?
 
Clarice Feldman   10 05 06

Update:

Blogger Betsy Newmark predicted that the IM's would be found to be a a prank with teenagers leading Foley on.

When I did the GOPUSA podcast on Tuesday evening with Lorie Byrd, John Hawkins, and Ed Morrissey, I ventured a guess about the circumstances of the dirty IM conversations that Mark Foley had participated in. I said that, based on my experience teaching teenagers, that the dialogue really seemed to be to sound like a kid sitting around with his buddies having a good ol' giggle about leading on the perverted Congressman. I'd been talking with a couple of other teachers about this whole scandal and we'd all agreed that that was what it sounded like to us. The kid was definitely leading Foley on. It just had the ring of a kid playing a prank that he could share with other kids and laugh at. Thanks to John Hawkins for transcribing my comment.

"Foley is a complete sleaze, he has got a real problem, but let me say, this kid is not an innocent kid. You read those things, he's leading him on. He's like a little Lolita. And what I picture, I picture this kid, he's in his dorm room, or wherever he is, and he has got 3 or 4 friends on and they're just giggling themselves silly. "Look what I got this Congressman to say." That's why he saved these IM messages, so he could send it around to all his friends and they could laugh at this poor, middle—aged Congressman who is so pitiful and has got some real sick problems. It just seems to be the type of thing that teenaged boys would have thought was so funny. This isn't some kid who is innocently appalled at what he's getting. He's leading that guy on."