You Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard

I'm going to weigh in on the Foley scandal with a time line prepared by Clarice Feldman at The American Thinker. I'm not going to go through the whole time line. You can read it at The American Thinker. The final paragraph of the article however deserves repeating.

ABC has not disclosed the names of the recipients of the instant messages which were sexually explicit, years old, and not seen by anyone else. We do not know how anyone but the recipients could have retrieved them. We do not even know if they are authentic. None of the recipients has come forward and identified himself. What we do know is that reputable media and the Republican leadership acted appropriately on the initial innocuous correspondence and could not proceed further in view of the parents’ demand that their son’s privacy be respected only to find months later just before the election that same correpondence showing up on an unlikely blog site and then almost simultaneously on ABC and on C.R.E.W.’s site. As for the demand that a special prosecutor be appointed, maybe Patrick Fitzgerald can be appointed. Then he can fail to ask ABC or C.R.E.W. how they got the correspondence, ignore their political motivations, conflate their partisanship with “whistleblowing”, not look for the sources of the later sexually explicit emails, and nab Hastert for forgetting when he went to the bathroom on the day he heard about the emails.

There are 34 days to go until election. And we have yet to see Rove's October surprise. Get out your popcorn.

Update: 04 Oct '06 2232z

Commenter AMac at Winds of Change has a very interesting addition to the timeline.

Update: 05 Oct '06 0401z

Passionate American says that at least some of the IMs belonged to a former page who now works for Republican Congressman Istook. H/T LGF

Note: I got Istook's party wrong. Corrected.

Update: 05 Oct '06 0956z

Just One Minute says Foleys reputation for chasing young boys was known by Republicans and Democrats since '95. What did they know and when did they know it is getting deeper.

H/T Instapundit