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.
If the Reps had taken more severe action against Foley based solely on the innocuous early emails, Foley's denial and his promise to cease such correspondence, you can bet the left would be accusing the Reps of targetting Foley because he was homosexual.
It can take various forms. Just over a decade ago the Washington Post sent an homosexual reporter down to the Boy Scout National Jamboree to ask a group of Boy Scouts what they thought about sex and homosexual sex.
The children he querried were all minors.
The Washington Post ran the whole article.
I and others sent letters to the Board of Directors of the Washington Post demanding to know why they'd hired a General Manager for their paper who thought it was acceptable for his editors and writers to querry minors whose parents had not approved questions about homosexual sex? It was noted that we were certain they, the Board members would come up with some sort of explanation once charges were filed against the offending reporter, and his editor boss should either set foot in Virginia, and, "oh, by the way, that big enormous printing plant you people own over there in Springfield Virginia, there's a civil suit in this for you too, and we'll take your plant".
Their Board acted quickly to fire the reporter and censure his boss.
Foley has commited a similar crime. Going beyond that we have Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson involved in this one, and that special interest lawfirm with which they're involved had information that crimes had been commited against a child and they kept it quiet.
I can only imagine the civil suit someone could cook up to take George Soros and his stooges to court and ruin them.
Oh, yes I can imagine it.
Someone commit an act of barritry ~ those parents gotta' be told they can get rich!
I'm no fan of Barney Frank, but it's a matter of age here... it was a 16 year old kid for crying out loud. I believe that the prostitution ring involved adults.
Oh yeah, if true, Hastert should go.
Yeah, Gary Studds had inappropriate contact with a male under 18.
You'll have to ask Nancy Pelosi.
Yes.
POST #181
you are right. the fact is the repubs do face a double standard no matter how infuriating it is. that said if they knew about foley in 05 they have only themselves to blame.
Proper action was taken. End of story. But with L'Affair de Plame kaput, the Media arm of the DNC will look to replace it by blowing this into a full-blown "scandal". If the GOP has any further dirt about Barney Fag, or any gay RAT congressmen or women, now is the time to release it.
A 16 year old who initiated and maintained the correspondence.
You just want to be suckered into blaming Hastert for a lefty dirty trick, don't you?
THANK YOU!
I am actually proud of the "double standard." Wish it weren't so, but glad to be on the side of right.
They're Democrats.
Nobody expects them to have any moral standards.
FYI, Tammy Baldwin (D) from Wisconsin is also a lesbian.
How does someone not a party to an IM communication get a copy of it? Who gave it to CREW and when?
http://www.macsmind.com/wordpress/
At the same time NRA2BFree assures us that Barney Frank is NOT INVOLVED with a child.
That's a totally different issue, and none of us know that for a fact. We could surmise that maybe he's not involved with a child since no one has said anything about it ~ and certainly he's public enough person there are those who keep a close eye on him (the Congress seeming to have a high percentage of homosexuals who do, in fact, engage in cruising for sex with minors). All we can really say about Barney, unlike Mr. Frank, is that Barney hasn't been caught!
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