Posted on 10/10/2006 11:43:13 AM PDT by TexKat
WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday he'll dismiss anyone on his staff found to have covered up concerns about ex-Rep. Mark Foley's approaches to former pages.
Hastert said he huddled with his staff members last week and he believes they acted appropriately in handling information on Foley's conduct. But he also issued them a stern warning: "If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs."
The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee is investigating any potential violations of standards of conduct.
Timeline pushed back Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Kolbe said Tuesday he passed along a complaint about inappropriate e-mails from Foley to Foley's office and the clerk of the House but took no further action when learning of the incident.
A former page sponsored by Kolbe contacted the Arizona Republican's office in 2000 or 2001, well before House leaders say they first learned of inappropriate messages sent by Foley.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
There are articles on the net stating how good of a cook Hasterts roommate (Palmer) is.
Rush Limbaugh just said the same thing about what a mistake it is to keep the Foley noise alive. So maybe if you want to id the flamer here you should go look in the mirror.
...you can always tell it's election time....people lose their SPINES!!!!!!!
Doogle
yawn...
My uncle is a chef with enough skill to be the lead in a four-star restaurant; his wife good enough for a three-star. His mother is an even better cook.
None of them are grossly corpulent.
I think Hastert's increasing physical size has immense symbolic value, he's like the personification of government spending and the thoroughness with which the DC culture corrupts anyone who touches it.
MOIS, a Flamer?..........
Yeah, I know, don't bother you with the facts. YOU are a supra genius who has all the answers. So how many elections have YOU won Mr Genius?
Hastert was at a campaign stop. How could he not answer the question?
I was just making a PUN. Why are you flaming me? I'll strike you with my feather boa! Flap! Flap!.........so there.......
I am very pleased Hastert stayed. Liberals can go pound sand.
Boy let not worry about the real issues lets spend all our time having hysterics over minor nonsense instead
Are the hearings going to be televised? Hope they don't preempt my stories.
The Al-Qaeda "leadership" has to fire up their base, too. Rhetoric and hot air for the dumb masses..........
...you can always tell it's election time....people lose their SPINES!!!!!!!
Nope, just Republicans.
Enough already with this Foley crap. The only ones interested are the drive-by media. It's time for the PUBS to go on offense ie, national security, gas prices, judges, partial birth abortion, taxes,winning the war on terror, etc. This election is far from over.
Ooops, I forgot -- that only applies to bill clinton.
ABC's Foley scoop shows Web tips change media game
14:44 ET, Tue 10 Oct 2006
By Michele Gershberg
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anonymous tips sent over the Web helped ABC break the story of disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley's graphic messages to teenage aides, proving a new model for news gathering as TV outlets embrace the Internet.
ABCNews.com was the first major news outlet to report the story that Foley, a Republican, sent inappropriate e-mails to a Congressional page. But the news ballooned into a larger scandal when other pages who knew of more sexually explicit messages sent tips to the station's Web site; Foley promptly resigned when confronted with the material.
"There is a place for true citizen journalists to write in with tips we should pursue anonymously," ABC News President David Westin told Reuters. "There are more stories out there that can be covered and perhaps deserve to be covered than any organization has the resources to cover."
Media experts said the practice of collecting anonymous tips online defines a new era for reaping information, not unlike the way media used eyewitness photos snapped at the scene of the London bus and train bombings in July 2005.
"This marks one of those watershed periods where you can use the Internet to cast an enormous net for people who may have information," said Robert Thompson, professor of media at Syracuse University.
The immediate risk of such news gathering is being able to authenticate sources and material initially gained online. For that, there is no substitute for traditional journalistic practice to avert a hoax.
"The pre-Internet ethics of how you check out that information has got to prevail," Thompson said.
Broadcasters like ABC, NBC and CBS are investing heavily in online operations as U.S. audiences turn to the Internet for updates through the day, putting those traditional networks in closer competition with free sites for cable channels, newspapers, radio stations and emerging media such as blogs.
As the Web levels that playing field, an old-fashioned scoop on a news story can provide a competitive edge, even if the methods for obtaining one are made possible by so-called new media. ABC rivals like CBS Corp. and cable channel CNN also solicit anonymous e-mail tips from Web readers.
ALL THE NEWS FIT FOR THE WEB
ABC News reported 8 million Web site page views after the Foley scandal broke over one week ago, more than double its daily average a year earlier.
The story also helped its nightly World News broadcast eke out a rare first-place tie last week with NBC's Nightly News in the battle for viewers aged 25 to 54. ABC scored its highest ratings for that audience in more than six months, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Brian Ross, the lead ABC investigative reporter on the Foley story, said his team first got word of the sexually explicit messages not from the young men involved, but from fellow Congressional pages who knew of the instant message exchanges and contacted the ABC Web site.
Ross contacted Foley's office for comment after authenticating the messages. Within an hour, the reporter was notified that Foley would resign. ABC published the announcement and messages together on the Internet.
In the recent past, such sources could well have been turned away at a news organization's switchboard, Ross said.
"People may have known things but they wouldn't have known how to communicate it and pick up the phone," he said. "The sting of it was Mark Foley. If he had challenged the (messages') authenticity we probably would never have run them."
ABC News online was already leading rival broadcast television stations on the Internet with about 8 million visitors per month, according to August data provided by Internet tracking firm comScore Networks.
CBS's Internet site was reported by comScore to have 7.5 million visitors that month, though both stations' Web sites trail those operated by dedicated Web operator Yahoo Inc. , with nearly 34 million visitors, cable channels MSNBC and CNN, and that of the New York Times .
Television networks are beefing up their Web sites by adding footage that won't fit into the typical half-hour broadcast. Popular TV anchors also help distinguish channels from rivals on the World Wide Web crowd.
ABC produces a daily Webcast of top news stories with its television anchor Charles Gibson while CBS streams its nightly program with counterpart Katie Couric on the Web. NBC's lead, Brian Williams, writes a daily blog.
The networks can also use the Web to tackle material that may not be appropriate for a family-friendly TV audience.
"It's useful to have the Internet because there are things you can't put on the air or don't want to put on the air and yet if people are curious enough to know, they can go find out more," said ABC's Gibson.
In the Foley case, ABC posted lewd excerpts of his instant message exchanges with former pages online, though network executives say they excised the most graphic examples.
ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co., NBC is controlled by General Electric Co. and CNN is part of Time Warner Inc. . (Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles)
http://elections.us.reuters.com/top/news/usnN09263970.html?src=101006_1522_TOPSTORY_gop_drops_in_polls
K.A. Paul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kilari Anand Paul is an Indian-born Christian fundamentalist leader of a doomsday sect based in the U.S. city of Houston, Texas. He is the leader of the oddly named cult "Global Peace Initiative and Gospel to the Unreached Millions". He has been reported to be a spiritual adviser to controversial figures such as Charles Taylor of Liberia.
June 8, 2006 the Houston Press ran an expose on K.A. Paul, claiming among other things, that a large part of his ministry's income is spent on jet fuel for his 747 aircraft rather than on charity. Interestingly the article also mentions K.A. Paul arranging for goons to assault him at gatherings, to gain media sympathy in the west and host of other activities of questionable nature.
------ K.A. Paul trying to talk Hastert into resigning????
just like he did to Charles Taylor and look what his advice got him. Someone should send K.A. out to San Fran Nan to try to work his magic on her.
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