The Bogus Blog Behind Foley's Fall

radaronline ^ | oct 4, 2006 | Christopher Tennant

[blogblogginaway]

ABCNews.com brought Mark Foley's boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn't the first website to flog the story. That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle. In other words, a blog whose sole raison d'etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.

If its time/date stamps are to be trusted (like most free blogware, Blogger allows its users to backdate posts), the pervert-outing anony-site was set up on July 28 as a "clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned citizens."

One early post, headlined The Sickening Six, naming and shaming the "kinds of sick people who hunt minors for their own sick purposes," is basically an amalgam of plagiarized entries from Crimelibrary, Wikipedia, and Answers.com. (Click here, here, and here, for examples.)

After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, "the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!" and posted four emails purportedly from "interns" outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys.

(Of course, if these emails are legit, it means the "interns" somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.)

One "intern" wrote:

"...I came to Washington because I care about the future of America. I wanted to be around good and decent men like President George Bush. Instead, I feel like a piece of meat. The worst part of it for me is there appear to be plenty of my fellow interns who don't mind Foley's particular 'path to power.'"

Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!", claiming they'd been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which promptly dismissed them as fakes. ABC, of course, took them more seriously.

Whoever promoted the story on DailyKos did so only 12 minutes after the fateful post went live at 11:06 a.m.:

Six minutes later, the same person, again writing under the handle WHinternNOW posted the following:

Back on Sept. 5, however, that very same WHinternNOW posted a suspiciously more informed-sounding take on the congressman:

Whoever is behind the blog hasn't responded to emails from Radar or any other outlets, and seems to have lost interest in the site.

"I'm thrilled that so many folks are looking at this simple blog...." the author wrote on October 2, the last day the site was updated. "If you have any ideas that I should post, please let me know. I'm happy to pass along information about the current situation, but would much prefer to keep marching toward the large goal or stopping sex predators. I don't think we'll see it in the Congress anytime soon, so let's focus our energy elsewhere."

What, leaving the party so soon?

[eeevil conservative]

yeah- and they act guilty when caught instead of indignant! like the Libs do- LOL!

[floriduh voter]

Look at that dem Jefferson? who put thousands of dollars in a freezer. He hasn't resigned although Nancy Pelosi demanded that he do so. Why don't they finish investigating that guy first? One bad boy at a time.

[eeevil conservative]

WOULD BE NICE, eh?

[Erasmus]

Methinks the dems and fellow travellers have these things lined up like depth charges on the poop deck, ready to let go, one by one, at what they judge to be the right time.

[floriduh voter]

Charlie Crist FL gop for guv keeps going to New York to get more cash for his race against dem Jim Davis. What are the chances that Tom Reynolds (R) has run into Crist in NY? And, further, Kirk Fordham is of Greek heritage as is Crist. If Crist's not careful, the dems are gonna pounce on him.

googled: "Congressman Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff, Kirk Fordham (KF resigned).

I'm not voting for Crist. No way.

[floriduh voter]

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/mark-foley/mark-foley-the-other-victims-204745.php

Here's everybody's who has to watch their p's and q's due to the Foley instant messaging spree.

[saganite]

What? No link? To your own thread?! Damn, now I gotta go look it up.

[plain talk]

Right. The real scandal is who knew about the IMs and did nothing. People are going hysterical about this deal and we don't even know if Foley will charged with a crime. The only "crime" we know of so far is sending dirty IMs which is immoral and sleazy but are people prosecuted for that alone? The feds usually don't bust people for that unless they follow through and meet up with a federal agent posing as a child. There's no evidence I've heard of Foley having sex with a minor. But no one is focusing on what is the real crime that has been committed. I doubt this would be a big deal if it were a dem.

[sageb1]

Visit AboutUs.org for more information about stopsexpredators.com

AboutUs: stopsexpredators.com

Registration Service Provided By: http://www.powerpipe.com

Contact: 625domains@powerpipe.com

Domain name: stopsexpredators.com

Registrant Contact:

Casino Magnet

Andrew S. (windyeleven@gmail.com)

1.1111

Fax: 1.111111

8214 SE 170th

Portland, OR 97060

US

Administrative Contact:

Casino Magnet

Andrew S. (windyeleven@gmail.com)

1.1111

Fax: 1.111111

8214 SE 170th

Portland, OR 97060

US

Technical Contact:

Casino Magnet

Andrew S. (windyeleven@gmail.com)

1.1111

Fax: 1.111111

8214 SE 170th

Portland, OR 97060 US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:

dns1.name-services.com

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Creation date: 04 Oct 2006 19:24:48

Expiration date: 04 Oct 2007 19:24:48 =-=-=-=

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[TASMANIANRED]

One of the "kids" was 18 in February.. The IM text is from April...Legal adult.

[Eva]

Wow, the rabid gay activist who is behind all this had an open letter on his on his blog, threatening Republican Senators with the exposure, one in particular who voted against Alito and was in what the blogger called a fake marriage. Posters said that could only be Chaffee. How sad.

[TASMANIANRED]

Don't count on it...

Remember Rather Gate...

[Tennessee_Bob]

All men are pervs.....

Sounds like you have issues.

[mkjessup]

Foley's a perv and Hastert knew it. Hastert must go. Who cares who told on who?

That sort of one-dimensional thinking is unworthy of a Freeper.

[floriduh voter]

The guy who resigned from Tom Reynolds is apparently out of the closet - Kirk Fordham.

"All of this reminds me of a letter I wrote last year to Mel's then-campaign finance director, Kirk Fordham. Kirk is an out gay man who, for one reason or..."

There's even a list of gays in congress, etc. I won't be posting that url.

[meyer]

Foley's behavior was bizarre and reprehensible.

Yep, or at least it appears that way. And he was immediately relieved of his duties. Fired, more or less. End of story, but the Dems are trying to dip their stereotyping brush into the Foley inkwell so that they can paint the entire Republican leadership with it.

[meyer]

No, he wants the Senate to investigate the House. Unbelievable!

that would be like the tail investigating the dog. Or something like that. Obviously, the view from the tail isn't going to be good.

The Senate isn't capable of investigating the case of a stolen paperclip, let alone anything more significant (and this really isn't THAT significant).

[floriduh voter]

Well, there you have it. Kirk Fordham, is gay and he just resigned from the office of Tom Reynolds (R) NY. Reynolds was protecting Foley, who no matter the age of the teens, was up to no good.

Fordham used to work for Senator Mel Martinez, FL (R) who endorsed Charlie Crist. Every day is gay pride day in Florida.

[mkjessup]

What makes you believe that the RATS that were sitting on this will soon be revealed?

Because I believe the FBI is going to leave no stone unturned in their investigation, and I don't think they're going to be dragging their feet. The blog in question may indeed be bogus, but unless the writer of that blog was far more talented than his writing ability so far as disguising his online origin (i.e., IP address), I think we're going to be in for some high quality entertainment before this is all over. I could be wrong about this, but I have a funny feeling about how this is playing out.

[bobsunshine]

Here is some investigation over the last few days:

From MacRanger:
They’re may be a possibilty that the one who runs Blog Active.com, and the one who runs Stop Sex Predators may be one in the same. That may be Mike Rogers, the infamous Gay Republican Outer.

From Flopping Aces:

Written by Mike Rogers (March, 2005):
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!!!

Summary from MacRanger:

Through investigation by several bloggers, including yours truly, it is discovered that during the last few years, liberal watchdog group CREW may have had specific knowledge of the IM’s existence, and of Foley’s activities, and might have possibly been in possession correspondence between Rep. Foley and former page(s). Additionally a known “Republican Gay Outer”, Mike Rogers of Blog Active was found to have materially participated in the IM messaging of Foley and admitted to have been on a “campaign” to out Foley since at least as far back as March 2005, and specifically attempted to threaten Foley in January 2006, thus may be guilty of using threat or intimidation to influence a US Congressman’s vote on US legislation.

Yesterday Gateway Pundit uncovered that Mike Rogers had an a “partner” (although not known to be an accomplice at this point) in John Aravios of America’s Blog in a campaign against Foley as well. Gateway Pundit notes that there is no evidence that Aravios actually had specific evidence, but then holding evidence, and having knowledge of someone holding it are still crimes.

Summary from Gateway Pundit (see for links for items in quotes) and more updates: Gateway Pundit

Radical Gay Rights Activists held on to information about Representative Foley for months and years. These "Rights Activists" knew that representative Foley had relationships with "young men less than half his age." They did their own investigation on Foley. They even flew in their sources in "to be interviewed" about the Representative. They "shared this information" with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They "held on to the information" for over a year. They wrote about how they would break the "story at midterm elections".