While Congressman John Shimkus has finally admitted to having seen “excerpts” of disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley’s e-mails to a young page, we don’t yet know exactly what he knew.

If we can assume (and that’s a pretty safe bet) that the e-mail exchanges posted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are what Shimkus saw, then Shimkus has some more explaining to do.

The former page forwarded the e-mails to a friend, and as most of you are already aware, in his introduction he calls Foley “sick, sick, sick, sick, sick…”

But there’s something else in that intro as well.

I talked to another page that was here during the school year and first part of the summer. Kerianna (her name) said that there was a congressman that did hit on the pages. She didn’t know his name.

If Shimkus saw that, then as chairman of the page board is it really all that unreasonable to suggest that he should have made more inquiries? You would think he would have at least contacted “Kerianna” to see what she knew, and maybe asked around a little, instead of just giving Foley a verbal warning to stay away from the page.

The e-mail exchange can be downloaded here [pdf file].

As always, you can comment all you want, but they won’t be visibile to everyone else until Monday morning.