Iowa's Attorney General has an outbreak of sane:

Concerned that Iowa laws could bring overly harsh penalties for teenagers who send explicit electronic images, commonly called "sexting," the Iowa Attorney General's office will ask lawmakers to give prosecutors another option. Under the state's current laws, a teenager engaged in sexting could face an aggravated misdemeanor or a felony charge typically meant for child pornography cases.

The proposal would give prosecutors the option of charging teenagers with a simple misdemeanor if they disseminated sexually explicit material to another teen.

Here's an idea: Iowa—all states—ought to make "simple misdemeanor" the only charge that can be brought against a sexting teenager. Otherwise overzealous, sex-negative, sex-panicking prosecutors are going to continue to bring child porn charges against teenagers for the "crime" of using their own camera phones and their own bodies to do what all teenagers have always done: flirt with each other. Unless we're prepared to bring charges against every other teenager in the United States, sooner or later we're going to have to decriminalize teen sexting. Right now twenty percent of American teenagers admit to sending sexually explicit images to their boyfriends, girlfriends, crushes, etc. As most teenagers are aware that sexting is illegal and that some of their peers have been arrested and prosecuted for the "crime" of sending another teenager a skanky picture, I'm guessing the real figure is much, much higher.

Sexting isn't the problem. The sex panic about teen sexuality—the latest in a long, long series—is the problem. The culture is sick. The teenagers are fine.