Posted on 10/02/2006 7:27:43 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
Yesterday I outlined the peculiar and suspicious genesis of the Foley matter which is the Dem-Media’s scandal of the day.
Now Speaker Hastert has asked for an investigation by the Department of Justice, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is asking for a House Ethics Committee investigation to find out what the Republican House leadership knew and when they knew it. (Not very original is it?)
She’s insisting the Republican leadership be placed under oath, and suggesting that by failing to act earlier they endangered children.
I think there should be an investigation, but the subject of it should not be the Republican leadership which—like the newspaper which had the comparatively mild emails between Foley and a former page — could not investigate further because the parents of the 16 year old who had initiated the correspondence wanted to protect his privacy. These emails, which led to a warning to pages to keep a certain distance from Foley, were of a far different character than the explicit IM messages, which were only revealed to the House leadership after appearing in the press.
Once the House leadership was appraised of the incriminating messages, Foley was in effect cashiered out.
The important matter requiring investigation is how a recently-created anonymous blogger got the email correspondence which the boy’s parents had insisted be kept quiet. And how the blog site, which had virtually no posts and no traffic suddenly caught the attention of Foley’s opponent who immediately asked for an investigation.
How it is that ABC ran with a story based on this blog when a year earlier even the BDS-afflicted Daily Kos rejected as improbable the story that Foley was a predatory troller of interns.
Is it at all believable that overnight after ABC broadcast and published the innocuous email correspondence it was suddenly sent years-old, salacious Instant Messages purportedly between Foley and men (ages and identities not disclosed)? Why were these IM messages ready to be sent off and published at a moment’s notice?
Is it believable that Brian Ross, who has written so many stories that didn’t hold up—including his insistent claim that Speaker Hastert was under DoJ investigation in the face of vehement denials from both Hastert and the DoJ—would write a fair account of the incident?
Is it believable that Soros’ C.R.E.W. did not share the email correspondence it had with ABC, and time the release of them and the announcement that they had forwarded them to the FBI for investigation, to coincide with the ABC story? The IM’s carried the far more salacious content, and their provenance is still murky. When and how did C.R.E.W. come into possession of the IM’s, and when did they contact the FBI?
The timing of the two-step release is critical to the political efficaciousness of the operation. The public is being led to conflate the different sets of correspondence (mildly inappropriate emails versus salacious IM messages), leading most people to believe the sexually explicit stuff was what Hastert had seen.
All that the House leadership saw was “overly friendly” emails. No smoking gun, but cause for concern. Had the leadership done more at the time, it might well have been accused of launching a witch hunt on the flimsy basis of too-friendly emails. This is perfect bait for Democrats anxious to portray Republicans as prudes obsessed with homosexuality and willing to launch attacks on anyone even remotely suspected of deviating from their uptight norms. Imagine the Saturday Night Live skits.
Keep in mind that Democrat Rep. Gerry Studds was re-elected five times to the House after acknowledging a sexual relationship with a male page who was a minor, receiving a censure from the House (not expulsion, as was demanded by Newt Gingrich, but voted down by the Democrat majority). The Democrats did not demand his resignation for conduct far more serious than the emails seen by the GOP leadership, and even the salacious IM’s.
Note that this 2-step pattern of conflation is similar to what we saw in the Plame case, where Joseph Wilson was interviewed as an anonymous source for 2 stories which made very sensational charges. He then wrote a far more muted Op Ed for the New York Times. The result was that everyone read the three pieces together, lending weight and audience to the sensationalism of the anonymously-sourced material, and allowing Wilson later to deny what had only appeared under cover of anonymity.
Can you conceive of why the leadership would have deliberately sat on something scandalous like the IM messages in 2005, knowing it could break in the following election year? I can’t. But unless you pay very close attention to press reports, that is the impression you get from the media coverage.
On the other hand, given all the circumstances I can easily see that people who are power hungry could have come into possession of salacious correspondence which might affect the Republican leadership’s decision not to act against a member on the basis of all they had—simply “overly friendly” correspondence—and hold it to make it public five weeks prior to the election. If this scenario is true, we have a most amateurishly implausible route, via an anonymous blog, taken to launder the information chain, and hide the fact that it was they, not their opponents, who cared not at all for the welfare of the pages and interns on the Hill.
Think that’s harsh?
Consider this helpful summary from Gateway Pundit when deciding which party has demonstrated a greater concern for protecting the young people who work in the Capitol:
Representative Foley did not have sex with the minor, did not have sex with the young man in the Oval office, did not put him in a high level security position he was not qualified to handle after a major terrorist attack on the country, was not married at the time, did not run a prostitution ring from his apartment, did not turn his back on Congress when he was accused of having sex with a minor, did not run and get re-elected several times in a democratic stronghold after this news broke, Representative Foley no longer sits in Congress, and the page did not disappear and end up dead after an ongoing relationship with Representative Foley…
For those concerned “quite rightly” about the mud slinging that has begun and will continue for the weeks leading up to the election, I have a very good suggestion:
Stop listening to the news. It’s going to be all trash. The Democrats know that you will not vote for a party with no program and no probity if you think about it, so they and their media enablers will be running round the clock smoke and mirror sideshows to distract you from thinking rationally.
Or you can ignore me, and fall for such dubious smears. In which case you can count on every election for the rest of your life getting sleazier and sleazier until only a handful of diehards will bother to vote. Oh, and if you stay home from the polls this time, Nancy Pelosi will be third in line of succession to the Presidency.
Clarice Feldman is an attorney in Washington, DC and a frequent contributor to American Thinker.
The Democrats are going to be in a world of hurt when their calls to protect children boomerang on them because they had the details of a crime and stayed silent, leaving children exposed and abused, to maximize their votes on this issue.
A world of hurt...
She didn't mean Foley was set up!! It was Hastert and the Republicans in the House who were set up!
You got that right. And besides here is a little tidbit lest we all forget, Alexander was a RAT who switched to the GOP and many of his staff got mad and left. Would not surprise me if Foley was set up and being a gay pervert, fell into the trap.
The people of his district knew he was gay, but they kept re electing him so it was up to them to fire him. However, going after young pages is not cool at all. Foley should suffer any consequences that the law allows.
I worked for a gay man who liked to hire young, good looking boys so he could be seen with them. Real sick stuff.
I know everyone is giving some fancy explanation regarding the Instant Messages, but couldn't someone do a bunch of screen shots and save them to Word, or to Paint and then to a file. I think they save the messages in the archives, or set their computer to do so. Wonder if Foley thought he had the feature turned off and someone changed the setting on him.
Of course, they'd have to plan to save the shots ahead of time... I swear they sound made-up.
Glad I was never into IMing. FR is bad enough. ;)
Well, you could probably start with this guy (for one). And I'm sure he's managed to get inside help from his 'boyfriends' working in the White House.
http://www.pageonenewsmedia.com/docs/bio.html
It's all a coordinated plan, apparently.
___
I want the names of whoever played this dirty trick. Because that is also a part of this debacle.
If they had access to his (Foley's) computer even through emails, they could have planted a key logger that would record his every move and word typed.
Of course, one would 'think' that people in government, even the gay ones, would be bright enough to do regular computer checks to protect against that sort of thing. Guess not.
Denial has nothing to do with. If both political parties resort to these tactics then nothing will get done that is for the good of the country. If the Dems play these game then the GOP will surely get around to if also. I am sure that some Dems have some secrets just as bad as Foleys. What do you expect the leadership to do given that what they appear to have seen was at worst was distasteful but not illegal. You cannot force a congressman out on some questionable communications. If that is the case then many would have to quit the house. Heck a certain member of the Senate is a murderer and he still has his seat. I fear that the way this is being handled will only lead to tit for tat war that will get very nasty and not serve the cause of justice or the country.
Are those done through bots or what? Isn't that illegal? Afterall he wasn't a terror suspect.
Thanks, for clearing that up. I don't have a tv, so I get all my information on the internet, not always in the right order. I find it really amazing that anyone would have kept a record of those conversations for three years, without an ulterior motive. It's no wonder that Hastert was calling for an investigation into whoever saved and reported those IMs.
Then why would he resign after ABC read him the IMs? You aren't really thinking this through. If they're fake you get out there and deny that you did any of this. The e-mails were tame enough that he could have stayed in office if that's all that happened.
Papers Knew of Foley E-Mail but Did Not Publish Stories
snip
Brian Ross of ABC News said he learned about the e-mail messages in August but was too busy with Hurricane Katrina and the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue them immediately. None of the organizations seemed to anticipate how big the story would become.
“I never thought it would lead to his resignation,” Mr. Ross said.
When The St. Petersburg Times received its first tip on the e-mail messages in late 2005, the editors decided it was “friendly chit-chat,” with nothing overtly sexual, but nonetheless assigned two reporters to find out more, according to an editor’s note.
The reporters tracked down the teenager, but he refused to let them use his name in a story. They found a second page who had corresponded with Mr. Foley and was willing to let them use his name but said he did not have a problem with the messages, undercutting the premise.
snip
Mr. Ross said he was surprised by how quickly the congressman’s office confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail messages, first when ABC reported them on Sept. 28, and again a day later when confronted with much more explicit exchanges.
Mr. Ross dismissed suggestions by some Republicans that the news was disseminated as part of a smear campaign against Mr. Foley.
“I hate to give up sources, but to the extent that I know the political parties of any of the people who helped us, it would be the same party,” Mr. Ross said, referring to Republicans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/washington/03media.html
See post above...
.
This is an editorial from the WSJ that expresses everything that I have been stating, so much better than I have been doing.
____________________________________________________
Paging Mr. Hastert
Could a gay Congressman be quarantined?
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
Florida Republican Mark Foley's sexually explicit emails to a Congressional page certainly warranted his resignation from the House, and they may well merit prosecution. But this being five weeks from an election, the GOP House leadership is also being assailed for not having come down more strongly on a gay Congressman for showing a more than friendly interest in underage boys. That's a different issue altogether.
At least this seems to be the essence of the Democratic and media charge against Speaker Dennis Hastert, who admits his office was told months ago about a friendly, non-explicit 2005 email exchange between Mr. Foley and another page. In that exchange, Mr. Foley had asked the teenager "how old are you now" and requested "an email pic."
In our admittedly traditional view, this was odd and suspect behavior, especially because Mr. Foley was well known as a homosexual even if he declined to publicly acknowledge it. And Mr. Hastert was informed that fellow Illinois Republican John Shimkus--who oversees the page program as part of a six-member board--spoke privately with Mr. Foley, who explained that the email was innocent.
What next was Mr. Hastert supposed to do with an elected Congressman? Assume that Mr. Foley was a potential sexual predator and bar him from having any private communication with pages? Refer him to the Ethics Committee? In retrospect, barring contact with pages would have been wise.
But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?
Mr. Foley's explicit emails--which were sent to a former page who had returned home--clearly crossed the line into "vile and repulsive," as Mr. Hastert put it yesterday. And the Floridian has now resigned in disgrace and is being criminally investigated. This is harsher treatment than was meted out in the past to some Members of Congress who crossed another line and actually had sexual relations with underage pages. Democrat Gerry Studds of Massachusetts was censured in 1983 for seducing a male teenage page, but remained in the House for another 13 years and retired, according to the Boston Globe, with a rich pension.
Mr. Foley lied to many people over the years, most notably to himself. It's one of those human mysteries that someone so prominent, and so active as a spokesman against sexual predators, would send emails that he knew would destroy his career if they became public. That kind of psychoanalysis is above our pay grade.
Yes, Mr. Hastert and his staff should have done more to quarantine Mr. Foley from male pages after the first email came to light. But if that's the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant.
No, he did the tame emails, it's the explicit ones that are in some doubt. There is no doubt about the tame emails. It's just weird to have three year old IMs appear out of no where. I am in no way defending Foley, just Hastert.
Friday, March 04, 2005
I have seen the enemy...
Birds of a Feather
Two haters, one picture:
Gay-bashing straight man John Ashcroft and Gay-bashing gay man Mark Foley
This is United States Congressman Mark Foley
He voted this week for a law to allow hate groups to fire gay and lesbian people at will
The law he is supporting will overrule ANY local laws on the matter.
MARK FOLEY IS GAY
MARK FOLEY WILL BE EXPOSED FOR THE HYPOCRITE HE IS THROUGH A MAIL AND INTERNET CAMPAIGN THAT WILL REACH INTO EVERY HOME IN HIS DISTRICT.
THIS MAN IS A DANGER
TO GAY MEN AND LESBIANS
DO NOT SLEEP WITH THIS MAN
IF HE CRUISES YOU IN THE BATHROOMS OF CONGRESS,
IGNORE HIM!
IF HE HITS ON YOU AT THE NEXT REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
IGNORE HIM!
THE NATION MUST BE WARNED ABOUT THIS
ABOMINATION IN THE GAY COMMUNITY
Please to support our educational and advertising campaign against this right wing hypocrite, click here and join the battle for true lesbian and gay liberation.
COMING MONDAY ON BLOGACTIVE: The entire Mark Foley story...Read about my recorded discussions with staff members and former staff members of Rep. Mark Foley...Read about how Mark Foley hit on men less than half his age at the Republican convention...Read about how Mark Foley voted to remove protections from those same young gay men and lesbians and anyone else violating a local discrimination law!!!
http://www.blogactive.com/2005/03/i-have-seen-enemy.html
Yes, I understand that. What I'm saying is that Brian Ross of ABC News called Foley on Friday and read him the IMs. Without hesitation he resigned. Why would he resign after hearing the IMs unless he recognized them and remembered sending them?
If he didn't do the IMs he should have denied it on the phone to the ABC reporter instead of resigning an hour later. In this case, resignation is not the action of an innocent man.
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