Just when you think Florida can't get any more surreal –

first Katherine Harris & her India-sourced blog comments, now a local congressman, Republican Mark Foley, resigns when a series of sexually suggestive instant messages he's sent to a 16-year old congressional page becomes public. It is ironic – and not in the Alannis Morissette sense – that Foley made much of his name as vociferous co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. (Our Governor's social services department, as well, has a bit of a problem with missing children – but that's another story.)

Word has it that Foley's seat is pretty much up for grabs now and ripe for the picking by his Democratic challenger, but the 16th is such a grotesquely gerrymandered district – it looks a bit like a semi-melted Giocometti sculpture, stretching from northern Palm Beach County to the Gulf Coast – that I'm not placing any bets on what'll happen five weeks hence.

One quote of Foley's that you'll hear a lot of over the next few days: “We track library books better than we do sexual predators."