Posted on 10/07/2006 10:23:43 PM PDT by Prospero
Soon, with hints before the coming Congressional election and mounting gale force in the weeks following after November 7, the real and full story will inevitably surface about former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) and the nature of his relationships with House Pages, former House Pages, the outers and the outed.
His resignation and disappearance into the modern confessional of Rehab would lead everyone to assume that this story is all wrapped up with a ribbon, with definitive “timelines” appearing to show, with no shifting of shadow, that the present Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives is, at the very minimum, guilty of setting aside the welfare of children in their care for the sake of desperate political expediency.
But so much about this story fails the “smell test” I’m already convinced that much of what we are being told amounts to a fraud being perpetrated on the American voter. It’s even possible Mark Foley is a co-conspirator, choosing his own plan of escape and revenge in cooperation with Democrat racketeers who’ve been planning this admittedly brilliant deceitful plan for more than a year.
As with the Mapes-Rather superscript forgeries of 2004, there is clear test of the power of Old Media pitted against the combined investigatory power of hundreds of thousands of Internet detectives in a spin battle ultimately lost by the “Pajama Brigade” and leading to the disgrace and fall of Dan Rather. This time, however, a patient Internet brigade of progressive Democrats has patiently weaved together the spin a far more sordid tale and passed the ball on to the Old Media, before disappearing into the universe of dead links and erased servers.
The Pajama Brigade on FreeRepublic that utterly astounded CBS with its almost instantaneous destruction of validity of forged documents both Mapes and Rather wanted so badly to believe is, this time, instead, rattled and confused. Like following the trail of a Clinton Banking scandal ten years after the fact, the snippets of information about sources and the technical quality of electronic documents and the nasty and unspeakable nature of a story involving “children” makes pattern recognition hard to undertake.
There’s been enough weirdness about the story for some activists to cry “foul,” but the political expediency at this hour making it necessary for Speaker Hastert and other Republicans to make apologies and the quick denial of “conspiracy” as “fiction” by ABC and others seeking “justice” has combined to make would-be midnight Internet investigators hesitate. Still, in all, they have uncovered bits here and personalities and trails there, enough to convince me of an elaborate dirty trick.
Along with a lot of other people, I was once a House Page. It was a profound experience, thirty years ago, when my classmates and me were high and mighty and off the leash, both inside the Chamber and in our unsupervised apartments, admittedly at a time when the drinking age was eighteen and social awareness of predatory adults was not nearly so keen as today.
Abuses and real criminal behavior were uncovered from time before and since I was a Page almost two decades ago, and along with criminal penalties for a handful of adults and former pages and cloakroom attendants came badly needed reforms that saved the Page program from elimination. Former roommates from my time as a Page have had their own children go through the program in recent years, and the new system that included a badly needed dorm and adults accountable for misbehavior has apparently worked quite well since that time. Whether the advent of instant and ephemeral chat rooms and consumer Email or a laxity in responsible adult behavior has left cracks in the system, one has only to examine the electronic fog around any given American high school in the early 21st Century to make a fair comparison.
Suffice it to say, like all the others who are peeking behind the curtain to reluctantly examine the Saga of Mark Foley, I not buying.
With capitol page “alumni” websites and cited Internet bulletin boards suddenly disappearing or the cited “messages” come from former pages on convenient college sabbaticals in Africa, or the ones strangely “lawyering up” or at least one page involved who was formally under the patronage of Nancy Pelosi or the pedigree and bonafides of the interest group “exposing” this story to ABC or the book deal or the atmosphere of a well-played private sting or the sexual McCarthyism of those now threatening to “out” gay Republicans, claiming like Tailgunner Joe to have a “list” or whether anyone remembers forgotten connections between Foley and Jack Abramoff still under a microscope or whether the same electronic documents unveiled by ABC and that same “interest group” have differing dates, redactions, and headers, there is plenty of reason to suspect more than just the “timing” of the Foley Affair as suspect.
Whether or not there was a conspiracy to trash the good name of Denny Hastert, if true, the perpetrators have clearly learned a lot from the Mapes-Rather affair. If true, they’ve based their actions on electronic media this time, as easy to cut and paste and delete as can be conceived. They’ve laid down a far more sophisticated subterfuge than Mapes in ’04, and a far more sophisticated challenge and prepared play designed not challenge the conservative activists to uncover before time runs out, but a brilliant play designed to skunk the Pajama Brigade outright, and subsequently defeating their methods and morale when the truth finally gets woven together a month or so before Speaker Pelosi accepts the gavel from then-former Speaker Hastert.
Freepers, you are being played, with the truth sacrificed and you not only have to hold your nose to pick the only alternative available to the Moonbat Caucus taking over the nation’s purse strings. You are now being laughed at, and challenged to pull the threads together in one place, instead of the scattered responses to the postings of the stories the MSM is drip, drip, dripping out, thereby setting the terms for the discussion.
I have kept my emphasis on Foley's behavior and put politics aside because I believe every parent needs to see what went on in the Beltway and immunize their children against predatory authority figures--male and female, Republican and Democrat alike. I have been arguing that it was a mistake to rush to put the p.r. emphasis on attacking the Dems and the lib activists right now over a full accounting of Foley's predation. I hope the GOP will listen now.
Should she go to DU as well? This is a losing issue for us, and fighting it this way only prolongs the pain.
I meant who leaked this close to the elections. Not that the FBI will finish before the elections.
One thing more scary than a terrorist is a pedophile. The word pedophile was used over and over again this weekend by journalists and the talking heads. They have likely been sandbagging this.
I hope you are correct.
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