Posted on 10/02/2006 5:41:31 PM PDT by paltz
Since these communications appear to have existed for three years, there should be an investigation into the extent that there are persons who knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the appropriate authorities. This is in Hastert's letter to the justice department. It is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now. Hastert just went out there and said we -- the Republicans -- we did not have these instant messages. We did not know about these instant messages, but somebody did. Who are they? And how did those instant messages end up getting to ABC? Who had these instant messages? Now, again, I had a weekend at a friend's house, a bunch of people around all day and night Saturday discussing this, and I said, "There's so much of this that smells to me."
Aside from what Foley did -- nobody is defending Foley -- the thing that struck me, the similar thing that struck me was, members of Congress have had the National Intelligence Estimate since April. They've known what was in it. All of a sudden one sentence from it gets leaked last Sunday to the New York Times. Voila! We think we've got a brand-new discovery, something that's been covered up. But some diligent whistleblower has finally released it to the New York Times, and nothing was further from the truth. It was known, and it was held in abeyance, and it was used in a dishonest, misleading way in the election cycle, by the media, the New York Times, and whoever it is that fed it to them. Now, this Foley business.
Obviously there are people who have known this. The page knew it. How did the page, who did he talk to? Who did the page talk to and then who did that person then talk to, and who started rubbing their hands together and salivating, and how long ago? You know, Foley is from a safe seat. Foley's reelection was guaranteed. But now, it is assumed the Democrats are going to take the seat, because Foley has resigned and it's said that he needs to get some serious help for alcoholism. Now, you know what Foley could have done. Foley could have said -- as was recently done in Washington, by the way. Foley could have said that what he was doing was mixing some pills while he was consuming his adult beverage, and when he was sending these instant messages to the page he actually thought that he was on his way to vote. But he didn't do that.
Now, it was only last week, maybe two weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story on the glory and the salvation and the wonderfulness of four, what is it, months of sobriety by Patrick Kennedy and how Washington has come together to discover its common humanity to help a fallen comrade regain his sense of balance and put his life back together. Really? Is that what this episode shows? Don't think this episode shows that at all. Now, Hastert -- and he was pretty firm, he was pretty (for him) animated. He made it plain: We didn't have these IMs. We didn't know about these IMs. These instant messages, which are far more explicit than the e-mails that ABC originally released. But he says somebody did. Somebody had 'em, and somebody knew this was going on, and what about all this for-the-children stuff?
Where was the concern for the kid, the pages here, who actually got caught up in all this? It doesn't seem to be that there was any concern. This was seen purely as a political opportunity by the Democrats to take down a sitting member of the House of Representatives as the time became right. Now, the question arises, will this backfire? Republicans seem to be playing this in the correct way on both ends. They've condemned Foley. They say he has no place here. We don't tolerate this, and they're not saying -- unlike Democrats. Democrats do. I am telling you again, Democrats do not find what Foley did with the page repugnant at all.
Democrats celebrate human weakness. Democrats celebrate it; they coddle it. They believe in the imperfection of all of us. They believe that the human is imperfect, and they think they own the compassion issue by embracing all of this imperfection out there, and then they turn their guns on the Republicans who they say are intolerant, when they condemn lawlessness, when they condemn people who engage in things that are wrong, as opposed to right. The very fact that Republicans even discuss the concepts of right and wrong makes them judgmental and rigid and intolerant, racist, sexist, bigot homophobes is the cliché, and so they're taking this and saying, "See? We're the compassionate ones."
It's all smoke and mirrors, but nobody is going to convince me -- and I'm not even talking about how horrible it was that Foley did it. They're trying to say, "Look at how rotten Republicans are." But they're not condemning it. They've defended it. A caller just said, Gerry Studds did more than engage in an exchange of words with the page. He actually went out there and had a little whoopee and the House censured him, and he got reelected from his district. Twice, I think. Barney Frank and so on. You can't convince me the Democrats find any of this behavior repugnant.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have the audio sound bite from Denny Hastert about a half hour ago. He said this about the instant message exchanges from Mark Foley to a page.
HASTERT: Anyone who had knowledge of these instant messages should have turned them over to authorities immediately so that kids could be protected. I repeat again, the Republican leaders of the House did not have them. We have all said so and on the record. But someone did have them.
RUSH: That's right.
HASTERT: And the ethics committee, the justice department, the news media, and anyone who can should help us find out.
RUSH: News media. Ha-ha.
HASTERT: Yesterday I sent a letter to the attorney general requesting that he investigate to what extent any federal laws were violated by Congressman Foley and also to find out who might have known about the sexually explicit instant messages. I was pleased to read in the newspaper this morning that the FBI has begun to investigate.
RUSH: All right. All right. So now we know that Hastert didn't know about the instant messages, but somebody did -- and since their strategic release, remember, the release of these instant messages was not to protect this kid, not to protect the page or any other page. The release of all this was not to clean up Washington. The release of all this was not to make sure that some predator pedophile was running around loose; got caught and sent out of town. That was not the purpose of this. This was a strategic release to help the Democrats during the election. So I, El Rushbo, America's real anchorman, want to know when the Democrats knew about the instant messages. They may have known about this before Hastert and the Republicans. It would appear so. So the question is, when did Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats know about the instant messages? That needs to be the question that needs to be asked. All these jerks out there suggesting that Hastert and everybody else resign are missing the point. The real question here is who had these instant messages, for how long, and who coordinated their release in a strategic way with Brian Ross at ABC?
END TRANSCRIPT
The poster is full of something, it's more than just gas though.
See post #119.
I'm in no way trying to excuse Foley, but I'm beginning to ask myself these same questions because there is too much "evidence" popping up. In the past, I've been told to never take an IM log as proof of anything because they can be so easily faked. Are we even sure that these are all true logs?
I think it's clear that Foley is guilty of showing too much interest in some pages, but as disgusted as I am with him, I would be even more disgusted and outraged if people are lying and faking evidence to put more nails in his coffin.
Was the page FROM San Diego and Foley went to see him there when he was a page? How could a young page travel to San Diego on his own to meet up with Foley there? or are we speaking about someone who was several years beyond "page age" when he met up with Foley? I'm doubting the authenticity of the IMs, but that's just me.
The "page" that the IMs were written to is probably 19 or 20 by now, maybe older.
Thanks for the clarification, btw. :)
If the IM's were false, Foley would not have resigned. The emails he fought, but when the IM's came out he immediately resigned. He could say that they were false if in fact they were false, but he has not. I don't see why this is an issue. The issue is whether the House leadership knew about the IMs- all evidence points to no, they only knew about the E-Mails.
Guess I'm hoping for a smoking gun full of blanks. Foley is totally guilty and that's that...
I haven't a clue but I'm sure more and more will be revealed in the days ahead.
This is NOT good, but what's even worse, is that someone had this stuff and sat on it for years; only to release it now.
Hugh Hewitt pointed out, and maybe it's already posted, that whoever held the IM's should be prosecuted for conspiracy, since failure to report is participation in the crime.
And keep things on the thread; DON'T us FREEPmail for what it is not supposed to be for!
Hewitt is correct and I hope the FBI is breathing down the neck/s of that person/people, as we type.
What pisses me off though is when peole pop off without all the facts.............
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/fly-story-p1.php
Is there a chance these IM's are fake or created for ill purpose and not by Foley.
Well said.
Yes.
No argument there. In fact, that part seems to be already handled.
The part remaining is to thoroughly investigate the sources and timing of the info release. The 'rats and MSM need to be nailed, if there are also guilty in this. Note that others have pointed out that the ABC reporter/journalist involved in this "investigation" seems to have been involved in the GM pickup rocket motor explosion staged by SeeBS.
bttt
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