Posted on 10/05/2006 3:43:17 PM PDT by kristinn
06:17 PM EDT on Thursday, October 5, 2006
While the FBI is busy contacting former House pages to see if they got illicit e-mails from Congressman Mark Foley or anyone else, WHAS11 News has learned that a former page from Kentucky has said yes, Foley contacted him.
According to Congressman Ron Lewis, the former page is now a soldier in Iraq. But five years ago, he was a teenage page in the U.S. House who was the subject of some kind of questionable contact from Congressman Mark Foley.
Lewis’s chief of staff got a satellite phone call from Iraq Tuesday afternoon from a man who wouldn't identify himself. But he did say he was a soldier from Kentucky’s Second Congressional District who wanted to give Lewis a heads up.
“To let us know that he had been approached by Mark Foley in 2001 and that he is speaking to the proper authorities, to a JAG officer who will then pass that on to the FBI,” says Lewis.
Congressman Lewis’s office is the only local one we've found that's gotten a call from any of their former pages, alleging misconduct by Foley, a man Lewis describes this way: “He was a creepy guy.”
Louisville Congresswoman Anne Northup says if she'd gotten a complaint from one of her pages, the Foley case would have been handled differently.
“If anyone had ever told me there was a problem, I gotta tell you, I feel like my hair would have been on fire,” she says. “I would’ve gone to the leadership and wanted to know all the way through to the end what was going on.”
Both Northup and Lewis say they won't call for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign because of the controversy, but they might in the future.
“There’s not one member of leadership that I wouldn’t be wanting to throw overboard if they had access to e-mails… Even if they had staff that didn’t bring that to their attention,” says Northup.
Congresswoman Northup says she's only sponsored a few teenage pages from Louisville since 1996 and that none have complained or contacted her office since the Foley scandal unfolded last week.
Both Northup and Ron Lewis are planning to send letters to former pages, telling them to call a tip line set up for pages to call with information about Foley.
See my reply #18 and check out the links. They explain a lot.
ROFL
A Lewis staffer got a phone call from some guy saying he was a soldier and had been approached by Foley. Didn't identify himself. Sounds reasonable. Oh my......
Northup was to be a vulnerable district. Looks like she's being proactive to save that seat for the GOP.
People, none of this matters since Foley resigned. It is all strictly and only about victory. You can do investigations all you want just as effectively after victory as now.
So stay focused.
Did any of these pages tell this dirty old man to go jump in the lake and stop contacting them?
The story is or should be, have US representitives personal behavior made them ripe candidates for Black mail? That is the question NO ONE is talking about and it's effect on the democratic process!
No; every one that I have seen says that they didn't report him or try to disuade him because 'you know, we wanted to have a political future.'
Honorable, huh? Our future leaders.
He's resigned, it's a non-story and I bet the guy can even drive a car.
At this point, it does seem that it has been used by both sides as some kind of prostitution ring. One of the perks of being in office, take your pick of pages. Reminds me of the UN and their taking advantage of children.
Now use your common sense, if a drunk Congressman showed up at the pages' dorm, don't you think it would be big news especially in the Wash Post, especially if he made a public spectacle.
I'm not defending foley, but use your common sense and not liberal MSM innuendo.
As for what their parents are thinking by sending them to be Congressional Pages, it is probably as follows. They are probably thinking that it is an excellent opportunity for their politically interested youngster to actually get a view of the way government actually works that is afforded few people. They are probably thinking that someone so clearly in the public eye wouldn't be so stupid as to jeopardize their position by doing something so stupid as stalking their child. They are probably thinking that the House would closely chaperone the minors that they have invited to work for them. After all, they try to micromanage the lives of 300 million people on a daily basis.
As much as Republicans wish the story would just go away, it is a valid point of inquiry to find out whether or not: 1.) Congress had sufficient safety protocols in place to deal with such a situation, 2.) if so, whether and how those protocols were violated by Rep. Foley, 3.) if the allegations are true that House leaders had been informed of irregularities in Foley's interactions with underage pages and 4.) if they had been informed what were the reasons that substantive action was not taken for months to address the situation.
If this situation had involved a middle school or high school teacher that was sending salacious IMs to his minor pupils and if it had been further alleged that this behavior was an open secret among the principals and administrators, the calls on our side for prison time for such negligence would be reaching high decibel levels by now.
It may well be that the timing of the story is politically motivated. Guess what? Politics has been, is and always will be a dirty game. The timing of the story does not diminish what should be valid concerns among both Democrats and Republicans regarding the administration of the Page program. If an investigation shows that the House leadership was not properly informed and so could not have acted, then that's wonderful. If it shows negligence then a price does indeed have to be paid. Either staffers or members of leadership were derelict in their responsibility and the fact that they have an "R" after their name wouldn't make that dereliction any less repugnant.
As for the effect on the midterm elections, it will probably be minimal in either direction. Conservative voters will vote based on whether their Congresscritter advances the conservative agenda. They won't tar the whole bunch for the actions of one. What will hurt them is the attempt to try and portray all aspects of this as a political stunt. It is undeniable that part of it are politically motivated. It doesn't change the underlying assertions however.
Speaker Hastert's response to this has been, as usual, rather clumsy. He probably took the first constructive step today by announcing an investigation. He should make several points consistently clear: first, (which he HAS done) is that Foley is predator scum; second, that because he's predator scum, (who, by the way hasn't denied the validity of any of the charges and who almost certainly resigned so quickly because as with other sexual predators what we know at present probably represents the tip of the iceberg) the leadership moved to quickly remove; third, that while the House leaders knew of some questionable but hardly actionable emails, the IM content was totally unknown to them; and that 4), unlike the Democrats, the Republican leadership of the House is committed to finding out what, if anything is wrong in their procedures regarding the Page program and to fixing anything that they find wrong so that the chances of it happening again will be greatly reduced.
My husband was approached by Foley in 1975 when we on vacation in Palm Beach. My nephew was too and he saw the Loch Ness Monster.
LOL!
That's what bothers me. If you don't tell them to get lost, you are leading them on. Didn't the parents teach them to just say no? They were teens, what political future could he hinder? By the time they were old enough to run for anything, he would be long gone, and it seems they were saving IMs to prevent any retaliation against them. And I doubt he would have any influence to bar them anyway. Something just isn't right about this. Can't put my finger on it though. However, I am glad that Foley is gone.
That Foley story's just not at all credible, and if the Dims try to push it it'll really make them look like they're just inventing stuff. But I bet they'll try and push it anyway. Hell, by the time they're done, every page who ever worked in DC while Foley was there will have been hit on by him.
BJ Clinton said he never had sex with Lewinski, yet;
This is a sex scandal.
/Got it.
I'm sure Brian Ross is already trying to find your phone number.
I don't believe every rumor I hear in a news cycle like this.
President Clinton wasn't a pol, then? Those who tried to cross him about his trolling took some punishments from his loyal followers.
He wrote the law against sexual predation re minors. He knew what he could do, when he could do it , and trolled until the pages were of legal age.
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