HA ha...
and the RATS take another one in the...
Posted on 10/26/2006 5:16:51 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, has fired an employee who admitted to the first publication on a Web site of Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s e-mails to a former male page.
The e-mails and later disclosures of sexually explicit computer messages from the Florida Republican to other male pages sparked a campaign-season scandal that threatens the GOP's majority in Congress.
"He inappropriately used Human Rights Campaign resources. He was fired," organization Vice President David Smith said of the employee. "The Human Rights Campaign believes in being very aboveboard in our political activity."
Smith refused to identify the employee by name, citing privacy concerns, but said he was a junior staff member who worked as a coordinator in Michigan.
The Web site in question first published on Sept. 24 Foley's e-mails to a former page from Louisiana. ABC News reported its own account of the e-mails on its Web site four days later.
Foley resigned Sept. 29 after ABC questioned him about a different set of sexually explicit computer instant messages the network says it received from a different page.
Though several news outlets possessed the more ambiguous e-mails to the Louisiana page for nearly a year before the Web site put them online, the blogger was first to put them in the public arena.
What followed was a fierce round of finger-pointing among congressional Republicans regarding who knew about Foley's behavior and what they did — or did not — do about it. As the House ethics committee and the FBI opened probes into the matter, Democrats accused Republicans all the way up to Speaker Dennis Hastert of failing to vigorously confront the issue because they wanted to keep Foley's seat in GOP hands.
Republicans, in turn, have accused Democrats and their supporters of peddling the story to news outlets.
The Human Rights Campaign, a solid supporter of Democratic candidates, first learned last Monday that its employee had written e-mails regarding the site on a computer owned by the group, Smith said.
He said the employee told a supervisor that the author of a rival blog was about to expose his role in the disclosure and his affiliation with the HRC. The employee was fired two days later, Smith said.
The fired blogger did not return e-mails seeking comment Thursday. In his last post, Oct. 19, he castigated Hastert for blaming the scandal on Democrats.
"That's just an attempt at escaping responsibility," the blogger wrote in that entry. "What does it matter who actually posted those first e-mails?"
It mattered to a computer-savvy West Coast blogger who suspected that the person behind the Web site stopsexpredators.blogspot.com was a Democrat. The second blogger early this month used tracer programs to find out that stopsexpredators was writing from a Human Rights Campaign computer in Michigan.
Forming his own blog, stopoctobersurprises, the second man threatened in e-mails to expose the first blogger's affiliation unless he identified himself.
When the stopsexpredators author did not respond, the West Coast blogger posted a message to let him know his location had been found out.
On Sunday night, Smith said, the stopsexpredators blogger told his HRC supervisor that he was about to be identified by the stopoctobersurprises rival. The supervisor told Smith early Tuesday, who then fired the employee.
The West Coast blogger, reached by telephone Thursday, refused to provide his name or to comment on the record. He identifies himself on his own blog as a fiscal conservative but social liberal who votes Republican most of the time and doesn't care what consenting adults do in private.
___
On the Net:
Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org
Ya like how they protect the guy's identity, as if it should not be relevant to the news story.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean bad for the liberals directly but rather bad for The Human Rights Campaign and their agenda. For example, Foley has really thrown into doubt the "homosexual adult in contact with youth is OK" (aka homo scoutmasters are just fine) gambit. That may not be a specific plank in THRC's platform but illustrative of the unintended consequences of outting Foley.
I'd say there were long-term consequences for the libs if one of their component groups was harmed, but where would the G&L crowd go, to the republicans?
So Republican accusations of a coordinated attack were correct.
I think we need a thorough Congressional investigation, a 2 year long one that releases its findings in mid-October 2008. :-)
He was fired for releasing it too early.
Sounds like a plan to me! :)
You might be interested in this...
What detective work at FloppingAces!
No wonder Pelosi refuses to testify under oath.
Post that to Hannity and Michelle Malkin :-)
Cheers!
In fairness, I can think of a substantial number of straight people who are said to have been "in contact with youth."
This makes sense. "Fire" the guy who established a website that appeared suspiciously like a place to expose Foley. I used to work in the media, so I know how serious it means to be fired. I was once fired on a newspaper for pretty much trumped-up reasons and within two hours I had calls from two other papers offering me work. I would guess anyone willing to fall on the sword in order to "get" a Republican will be handsomely lavished with more employment by a similarly liberal organization.
You noticed that, too? You could have made a bucket of ice cream in the warmth of their indignation.
Guy was fired for technical incompetence. He got caught.
Scum, all of them. The HRC, home of the gay werewolf Mau-Mau seminar poster, "very aboveboard" in all their dealings with the public? LOL!
Freeper Mia T has argued that there's a Clinton dimension here -- that Slick and Hillary were taking on water as a result of the Chris Wallace/WoT interview and needed to change the subject, fast.
If that's right, "some Dim" will turn out to be Hildebeast.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.