Posted on 09/30/2006 3:06:00 PM PDT by wjersey
Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said he told Speaker Dennis Hastert after learning a fellow GOP lawmaker sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.
Reynolds, R-N.Y., was told months ago about e-mails sent by Rep. Mark Foley and is now defending himself from Democratic accusations that he did too little. Foley, R-Fla., resigned Friday after ABC News questioned him about the e-mails to a former congressional page and about sexually suggestive instant messages to other pages. The boy who received the e-mails was 16 in summer 2005 when he worked in Congress as a page. After the boy returned to his Louisiana home, the congressman e-mailed him, and the teenager thought the messages were inappropriate, particularly one in which Foley asked the teen to send a picture of himself.
The teen's family contacted their congressman, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who then discussed it with Reynolds sometime this spring.
"Rodney Alexander brought to my attention the existence of e-mails between Mark Foley and a former page of Mr. Alexander's," Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a written statement Saturday.
"Despite the fact that I had not seen the e-mails in question, and Mr. Alexander told me that the parents didn't want the matter pursued, I told the speaker of the conversation Mr. Alexander had with me," Reynolds said.
Reynolds added that Alexander also discussed it with the clerk of the House, and the congressman who oversees the page program, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.
Shimkus has said he learned about the e-mail exchange in late 2005 and took immediate action to investigate.
Shimkus said Foley told him it was an innocent exchange. Shimkus said he warned Foley not to have any more contact with the teenager and to respect other pages.
Democrats charged Reynolds did far too little and said more digging should be done.
"Congressman Reynolds' inaction in the face of such a serious situation is very troubling, and raises important questions about whether there was an attempt to cover up criminal activity involving a minor to keep it from coming to light before election day," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney.
New York Democrats hoping to unseat Reynolds blasted the congressman, saying they call into question the Republican's values.
"Mr. Reynolds knew about these allegedly inappropriate emails from a fellow congressman to a minor for months and didn't lift a finger," said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the state Democrats.
Exactly Read what I posted above--you are being played by Soros' C.R.E.W.--the same folks who brought down DeLay and are wohttp://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:Y_nZNbYDtsIJ:www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/032305/soros.html+C.R.E.W.+Soros&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2rking with Wilson and Plame.
I understand that ... and the boy Studds was doing was 17 at the time and they both claimed they were *consenting adults.* My point is that Lewinsky was not of an age on par with a 50+ man with the kind of power and influence of the president of the United States -- there is very little difference to these situations, both older, powerful men preying on weaker people. Monica is/was hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer, I think we can all agree to that one.
Some people deserve to be thrown under the bus, especially pedophiles and their protectors.
A 16 year old boy is legally a "child" and ML was legally an "adult". I believe in the rule of law but law is based on morality and the same personal morals were lacking in Foley and Clinton.
Otherwise they don't discriminate.
A little more life experience, though, and you'll discover heterosexual males are much more likely to be able to resist sexual urges than are homosexual males.
As a "lawdude" you ought to know there are age requirements as to where the crime was committed to be met first. And the charging of such is up the prosecutorial agency in Wash DC or whereever the crime took place and then a judge has to agree.
That may be true, but it is irrelevant, if the incident(s) happened in DC.
I did not see such a conditional attached to the DC age of concent.
If Foley originated some of the emails/contacts in FL, then the FL conditionals would apply to those instances.
Studds is remembered chiefly for his role in the Congressional page sex scandal in 1983, when he and Representative Dan Crane were censured by the House of Representatives for separate sexual relationships with a minor – in Studds's case, a 1973 relationship with a 17-year-old male congressional page.
During the course of the House Ethics Committee's investigation, Studds publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, a disclosure that, according to a Washington Post article, "apparently was not news to many of his constituents." Studds stated in an address to the House, "It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official and gay."
As the House read their censure of him, Studds turned his back and ignored them. Later, at a press conference with the former page standing beside him, the two stated that what had happened between them was nobody's business but their own.
Studds was re-elected five more terms after the censure. He fought for many issues, including environmental and maritime issues, gay marriage, AIDS funding, and civil rights, particularly for homosexuals. In 1995 the Republican-controlled Congress abolished the House Merchant Marine and Fishing Committee, of which he had been chairman.
Since retiring from Congress in 1997, Studds has been a lobbyist for the fishing industry. His husband is Dean T. Hara.
Clinton lied under oath about sexual harassment in the Paula Jones case. Big diff bet that and this.
What about Jim Kolbe? I thought that he was openly out there.
This is the Arizona guy who was so soft on illegals. Do you think it might have been possible he was taking sexual advantage of the trade in human beings?
No.
There is absolutely no excuse for anyone in the Republican Leadership to have sat on this, if indeed they did. I'll reserve judgement on Dennis Hastert, until I hear some more facts. I'm not willing to take anyone in the Media's word for anything about this.
Lets just hope that this doesn't spread any further, and that there isn't anyone else involved.
RINO's are democrats that love to cross-dress.
I didn't know he was gay. Maybe there's something you don't know about him too.
You haven't been keeping count -- you leave out Jim Kolbe from AZ and Steve Gunderson from Wisconsin.
Instead of resigning, Foley should have just switched parties and became a Democrat. The media and Democrat party would have rushed to his defense.
And neither was Foley having "SEX" with them, Bill and Barney WERE. Not only that, Bill Clinton USED a SUBORDINATE EMPLOYEE to engage in oral sex with his penis at the White House, WHICH IS A FEDERAL CRIME BECAUSE IT WAS COMMITED ON FEDERAL PROPERTY, DURING BUSINESS HOURS, UNDER THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, IN THE ORAL OFFICE.
What exactly doesn't look good for Hastert? I don't think that "inappropriate emails" are particularly damning. So far, I haven't seen anything worse than inappropriate. What was Hastert supposed to do about it?
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