Mark Kirk: “last night Michael Macalindong of Fox Lake, Illinois, was charged by Federal authorities with luring a 15-year-old minor…”

“last night Michael Macalindong of Fox Lake, Illinois, was charged by Federal authorities with luring a 15-year-old minor to his home. This happens too often in America. What is new is that Macalindong used a social networking site, Facebook.com, to attack a minor child. Congress can do something about this. Sexual predators now use MySpace.com and Facebook.com to attack not dozens of children but thousands. In the last Congress, we overwhelmingly passed the Deleting Online Predators Act by a vote of 400-15, but this act stalled in the Senate. The House should now take up this bill again, now with over five dozen cosponsors, to protect children. The danger posed by predators online in Facebook and MySpace have turned those sites into a virtual hunting ground. This was not part of my childhood, but it is now part of growing up in America. Our laws are falling behind the cyberthreat to kids, and Congress should pass the Deleting Online Predators Act.”