Update III (3:13 p.m.): Were Foleygate IM messages part of a prank??? Regardless, nobody forced Foley to write them…
Update II: Thanks for the bone, Mr. Speaker.
One of my “blog children” has this to say about the scandal: “I’ve been purposely maintaining silence on the Mark Foley debacle until it started to die down a little. To be blunt, I’m sick of hearing about it, and I’m sure everyone else is too. As a result, I’m not going to link to any outside material, and this post is the last I’ll have to say about it.”
Update: Welcome to the Internet, A Tutorial for Reporters
In other news: Oooooooh…
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The blogosphere can be a fun and heady place. It can also be backbiting and libelous terrain. However humble were blogging’s beginnings, the medium has morphed into a powerful display of citizen journalism, capturing the essence of free speech.
The blogosphere is like a massive organism, a global publication teeming with millions of “pajama” reporters breaking stories and connecting people. It’s no wonder legacy media organizations like ABC News added blogs to their online offerings. Under the old model, they couldn’t keep up.
Thanks to cable television, the world is in a 24-hour news cycle rhythm, and the old days of morning and evening news cycles are over. We’re news junkies, and we want our news on demand. If we can’t find it, we now have the power to make it ourselves. With a low entry threshold and open source software (Blogger.com) and fast and relatively cheap tools and connections (computers; digital cameras; digital recorders; broadband), so-called citizen journalists have sprung up everywhere.
The blogosphere is still unruly, but that will change. Bloggers — and anyone else who publishes information — are held accountable for their words. Some are being sued for defamation. And losing. With power comes responsibility.
Because people can go after whatever story they want and pursue whatever angle they wish, that’s exactly what they do. Some conservative bloggers are keeping the focus on “our yard,” while others are going after the media and the Democrats. I frankly don’t care what part Democrats played in all this. Mark Foley is a predator, and it doesn’t matter who exposed him or that a “fake blog” was set up for that purpose. Foley’s perversion — and Republican House leaders’ complicity in sweeping it under the rug so they could hold on to House seats — are the only things I care about.
Pictured above are Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives (flash of integrity?); John Boehner, House Majority Leader; Tom Reynolds, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; and John Shimkus, House Page Board chair. Each of these men hold leadership positions, and each knew about Foley. ALL FOUR SHOULD RESIGN.
For details on who know what and when, see Mr. Speaker, You Must Resign.
Some bloggers are busily gathering information on the man behind a homosexual outing blog. It’s exciting, in a sometimes perverse way, to dig and expose the shenanigans of the other side. But I wish more conservative bloggers would concentrate on holding House leaders accountable and less on what leftist bloggers knew.
Well, it turns out that Democrats may not have been behind this after all. The Hill reports that a Republican aide passed on the e-mails to a member of the media.
Other developments:
- Someone’s alleged that Foley showed up drunk outside the page dorm.
- Foley’s former chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who recently resigned as Tom Reynolds’s chief of staff, says he warned Republican House leaders about Foley in 2003.
- Apparently, there’s some sort of “gay list” of Republicans floating around.
Those are the major revelations. More to come, I’m sure.
Addendum: A blogger, who I won’t link to, publicized the name of one of the pages. (Why???)The page has hired a lawyer. Will he sue the blogger for invasion of privacy? As I said, power and responsibility…
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Bloggers: JustOneMinute, Macsmind, Strata-Sphere (and here), Wizbang, Hot Air, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Riehl World View…
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This call for Republican leadership to run lemming-like over the cliff is premature and without sufficient facts to entice me to cheer them on.
The issue is two-fold: the guarantee of safety for the pages and the confused state of how to approach issues involving homosexuality.
Lets take the given that “everyone” knew that Foley is gay. Does that call for automatic suspicion of predatory actions and a desire for sex with minors? Should he have been notified that his sexual predilections put him in great jeopardy?
There is no law against trolling. Also, there is no reason why the page program should be careful to keep gays or those conflicted about being gay from being in the program.
Is there clear evidence that the Republican leadership knew the content of the e-mails and instant messages Foley sent and decided not to act on it? If not, all the hype is still in the gossip phase.
As a father of a son and a daughter, if either one was subjected to pressure for sex by a male congressman, I would have been apoplectic. However, both of my kids would have called me ASAP to talk about their perceptions of what was going on.
Pages are not urchins who win a contest at Wal-Mart. They get where they are through a lot of complicated political gyrations. I am not blaming the victim, but if a sixteen year old boy is being hit on by a fifty something male, he is likely to be angry and repulsed……..unless……..
There are plenty of resources in place for a page take his/her problems to. They remain open to former pages, as well.
Before we line up the leadership for the last cigarette, we just plain need more facts.
So, lemme’ see if I got this straight…
An un-named GOPer gives information to another GOPer, to create a GOP faux scandal, to blame on the Democrats?
That’s a bit too convoluted, for ME.
Regardless of how ‘icky’ Foley’s behavior is, I haven’t seen anyone exactly name the crime is allegedly committed.
I have problems with MY Party’s belief that it has to immediately ‘to run lemming-like over the cliff’, as heliotrope stated, everytime some Democrat operative starts playing a game of gotcha. There seems to be a number of holes in the story and quite a few things that make one say hmmmmmm. Sort of like the Delay-gate, Lott-gate, etc fiascos.
Personally, I find the ‘outing’ of individuals, particularly those not in the public domain, very very disturbing. Keyboard ‘gangstas’ pat themselves on the back as they press send with nary a thought for the chaos that they cause in a person’s life after the entry is posted. For those in the public domain, I am also troubled when individuals go after a person’s family or publish sensitive personal information like addresses or names of children. When Michelle Malkin’s address was exposed I was appalled. I am no fan of hers by any stretch of the imagination but that simply was unacceptable (I didn’t agree with her publishing sensitive information either, BTW).
I am waiting on the day when someone is injured or killed as a result of publishing private information on a blog. The day IS coming.
Did Foley ever act on any of these Emails/IM’s?
If he didn’t, all we’re doing here is going crazy about someone talking dirty.
And buried in all the main stream media bleating and distortion, is the nugget that – currently – the only fact that all will agree to, is that the GOP leadership only knew about the “overly friendly” email, not the dirty IM’s. The DNC/MSM is constantly floating rumors about “more to come”, but that’s what they are at the moment – rumors.
That said, why exactly is the right side of the political spectrum allowing itself to be stampeded into destroying the GOP House leadership? I take it as a given that the main stream media is simply an arm of the DNC and therefore not to be trusted; whose “advice” should be “listened to”, before doing the very opposite.
Lashawn,
Does this mean the Demo’s and MSM now agree with the Boy Scouts that having Homo’s around young boys is dangeous? Humm
So now gay bashing is OK if Demo’s do it? Humm
And a fake, but acurate blog is ok if Demo’s do it? Humm
I smell a rat, I think we’ve been set up and we’ve taken the bait.
I think we need to take a deep breath and look at the BIG picture. The Speaker’s Job is not to baby sit 435 congressmen.
What would the MSM say if The Speaker had asked for Foley’s resignation earlier? He’s a gay basher? What if the Speaker refused to release the emails that he might or might not have seen to protect the kids, but still asked for Foley’s resignation. Gay basher!
This is why the “Gay” lifestyle is so dangerous. Every little pretty boy is bait for most of these lustful bums and they admit it.
Let’s Chill out for a while. I think there is more here than we know about yet. Not time to push the captian overboard just cause he ran into a thunder storm.
That should be 434 congressmen, I think the Speaker can look after himself.
So:
A Republican Congresscritter exchanged explicit IMs with a Congressional page who was of consenting age (16.) We now hear calls for blanket resignations of anyone who might have known, coming (coincidentally) four weeks before mid-terms.
Meanwhile, The Lying Bastard, having perjured himself (a felony) not only escaped criminal prosecution and removal from office – we’ve been consistently told that “it’s none of our business.”
Nothing to see here, citizen.
Move along.
There’s one Standard, for us Pius Democrats, and there’s another Standard for you Repulsive, Reprehensible, Repugnant Rethuglicans.
Is that concept too hard for you to grasp?
m’heh
>>The Speaker’s Job is not to baby sit 435 congressmen.>>
I’d like to know what exactly the Speaker could do about this even if he knew everything early on? Obviously, end any positions of note that Foley had, but other than that? He’s an elected representative – even if they threw him in jail, wouldn’t he _still_ be the elected representative? If (heaven forbid!) his constitutents returned him to office in the next election, what options do the Party leaders have? I’m thinking Barney Frank here….(is that his name? That sleaze from Massachusetts…) who had an actual affair with an underage page, was told to resign, and is still there sitting on various committees.
The snide comment that all Foley had to do to make this go away was to change parties has more than a little truth, it seems.
I am surprised by the call for Hastert’s resignation in the absence of definitive information that he knew, or should have known, about Foley’s correspondence. I can see that a responsible adult would not have investigated, if they knew a few questionable emails had been sent. Telling Foley to stop should have been sufficient. None of the reasonable alarms that I would expect were sounded for years, which it too bad, since it allowed Foley to continue to “harrass”, and possibly do more.
If Hastert knowingly put pages at risk, and sought to cover this up, then he should be gone. I trust that conservatives would rally behind that.
But there have been representatives who have done more than Foley, who did not resign, and were not forced out. Guess what party they claimed?
To anyone (#3 franksalterego) who thinks someone is unreasonable to think this timing is too good for Democrats to be coincidental, wow. October surprises sometimes occur naturally. But for something that has been known about by some people for some time, the timing appears to be more than fortuitous. It might not have been, and some evidence is leaning that way, but the jury is still out…
Michael Giles:
Did Foley ever act on any of these Emails/IM’s?
If he didn’t, all we’re doing here is going crazy about someone talking dirty.
It’s that kind of rationalization which hurts the GOP, and fortunately, not all conservatives are behaving this way (hat tip to LSB). In fact, most aren’t.
But let me give you a brief ethical lesson, Michael. A grown man “talking dirty” to a minor is wrong. Plain wrong. Period.
Especially when he an advisor and mentor to that minor.
Double especially when he is an elected representative of the American people.
Triple double especially when he purports to be concerned about the safety and exploitation of children from Internet predators.
There’s a lot of gray area in the Foleygate matter (i.e., “What did Hastert know and when did he know it?”), and reasonable people can differ and speculate.
But the immorality of Foley’s actions simply are not open to debate. Crimes don’t have to be committed in order for there to be a serious ethical breach. And this is one such example.
But if you still doubt me, then please allow me to talk that way to your underage child. And we’ll see if you think there’s nothing wrong.
“This is why the “Gay†lifestyle is so dangerous. Every little pretty boy is bait for most of these lustful bums and they admit it.”
Right. It’s the gayness that makes people pedophiles.
That’s why you never hear about straight male predators hitting on young underage women. Those Dateline shows just contain a bunch of paid actors.
If you go back to the text messages (groan)…you can see that age was a factor.
He was specifically seeking out underage youths.
Whether the actual youths were, or were not, underage doesn’t matter.
He was attempting to seek out, and solicit, minors…which (in my world) is a crime.
Ok, I guess we are really going to split hairs on this one, and the technicality of actual age becomes more important than…
A 50 something Government Official, under the color of authority….specifically seeking, and intending to meet, underage minors.
If you go after underage minors…you are still guilty, no matter the age of the respondants….as far as I’m concerned.
Kman,
I never meant to imply that there are not real pedophiles out there. But, gay men admit to liking young bucks, this is like old guys liking young chicks, except that when the old guy has a young chick, he gets arrested for statutory rape. Young boys are to embrassed to go to the police, and they do not risk getting pregnant so they are easy prey. The gays call these guys “chicken hawks” I think or to be unkind, former Catholic priests. Sorry, that was rude.
You know something? Nobody can make me “say” anything I don’t want to. Nobody can make me send a vile text message that I don’t want to.
I don’t believe that he was entrapped. I don’t believe in the idea of entrapment to begin with.
You can’t entrap someone with an honest conscience. He was very quick to resign, because he knew the jig was up.
Whatever games were being played, pranks—which aren’t very nice……a bad individual was rooted out, and needs to face consequences.
This whole thing doesn’t just go away because bloggers play games.
Someone had intended to do bad, and they were caught.
And I’m grateful, no matter what no matter how it was done…..one less predator, the safety of our children, and that’s all that matters.
Let the spin begin!
Lashawn,
Check out latest Drudge headline. There is MORE to this story, and I still smell a rat. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Fake Blog, fake outrage, this has been planned for a while. An “October” suprise the Demo’s are so famous for? I am thinking so. We’ll see.
Keep dancing to the kman’s song, LaShawn.
“Check out latest Drudge headline. ”
Kemp, even before I saw your comment, I was wondering what Drudge was smoking or drinking. While Drudge was alwasy good at finding tabloid subjects for his tabloid website, the times I heard him speak, he can only spout the extreme right-wing Republican line – Drudge had a couple of exclusives today such as:
CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE CHATS WERE PAGE ‘PRANK GONE AWRY’
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.
According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments
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At least Foley himself did not blame the victim(s)and only some likely unauthorized fringe “Republican†loyalists blame the victim.
And it was not ONE young man, but many young men that Foley got into trouble with. Like they all set Foley up? I’ll believe that when I believe rich white boys like to gang rape $100 whores.
LaShawn, I cut and pasted from Drudge Report – but I failed to take out the page’s name. I am not sure it matters since Drudge put his name all over the web, but you might want to black out his name. Sorry about that.
“Nothing happens in a vacuum.”
Sometimes people do the right thing. It appears that in addition to whatever Democrats were out to frame Foley, his own chief of staff tried to do something about it – To bad he is the only Republican besides Foley to lose his job.
From the Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1006/p02s01-uspo.html
Why did Reynolds’s chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, just resign?
Mr. Fordham, who had been Foley’s chief of staff for 10 years, until 2004, quit Wednesday over a dispute with Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer. Fordham says he had brought concerns about Foley’s behavior to Mr. Palmer before 2004. Palmer denies the allegation. Fordham told reporters he resigned so he would not become a political liability to Reynolds, who is in a tough reelection battle. Fordham has pledged to cooperate with the FBI investigation.
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If you don’t beleive the Christian Science Monitor, one can read Fordham’s own words online.
The vast majority of gay men have no interest in having sex with underage men, just as the vast majority of straight men have no interest in hvaing sex with under age women. There are some, of course, on both sides, but that just means that you need to protect the pages from the predators on both sides. Let us not forget that Gary Condit was dating all the young female interns when Chandra Levy ended up dead.
Frankly, I’d be more scared of a hetero that dates women who end up dead, than a gay man who just engages in cybersex with men.
“But if you still doubt me, then please allow me to talk that way to your underage child. And we’ll see if you think there’s nothing wrong.”
This is what is wrong about this. “your underage child” sounds like this are 10 year olds. They are NOT. At the least they are 16 year olds and are at the AGE OF CONSENT in DC. They are NOT CHILDREN. It is not pedophila.
Was Foley bad wrong imoral? YES!
Should he have resigned as he did. *&(()(*& Yes!!
Until the IMs came out was there ANYTHING that ANYBODY could have reasonibly done? NO! There just wasn’t enough there to do anything but tell Foley to stop the emails. Which was done.
If the Leadership knew about the IMs. They should be toast.
If the leadership didn’t know about the IMs. What else could they reasonably have done? There really isn’t anything in the emails.
If people knew about the IMs and kept silent until October for political reasons they should pay a heavy price. They knowingly covered up the scandal so that they could break it at the best time FOR THEM. And all their talk about protecting Pages is a bunch of BS. They care nothing a the Pages. They only care about their political agenda.
People get off your high horse. The people that are being talked are ALL over the AGE of CONSENT. Was it impropper? YES! Should not have been done! BUT there is an AGE of CONSENT for a reason!!.
In Houston a man married a girl of 13. The courts approved it because it was alright in his CULTURE and the parents approved. I think he should be horse wipped but the courts OKed it. Right. ()*)(^)^ NO!!!
Above age of consent means NO pedophila. What part of that don’t you understand.
And I don’t agree with it but it is the LAW. It can be sick, dirty, etc. but it ain’t pedophila.
For almost every street-thug murderer, there is usually a judge or judges who gave the thug a second or third or fourth chance. I really can’t blame the judges since if we put every juvenile delinquent in jail for life, half of us would be in jail – and 99+% of juvenile delinquents don’t graduate to murder.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the Republican Leaders for not throwing the book at Foley years ago, hoping he would get his act together. But unlike impartial judges, the Republican leaders did seem to have self-interest in avoiding scandal.
But some of these republican conspiracy theries that the pages set Foley up, are as wishful thinking as Bush blew up the World Trade Towers. And as every teacher knows, it does not matter if a cute girl or boy comes on to you – say no. And half a dozen cute girls or boys came on to you and you are not responsible, give me a break.
Randy,
They caught Levy’s murderer and he had nothing to do with Condit, another MSM mistake never corrected. As one can tell by your post.
True, but nonetheless, Condit was dating young female interns, often for just a few months, and then would dump them for a fresh crop. Hardly the model of proper behavior.
“They caught Levy’s murderer”
The last I heard, they arrested someone else for similar crimes, who they think may be the murderer, but no one has been convicted. Sort of just died down in MSM, as most cold cases do.
I believe Chandra Levy was slightly older and in grad school. Still sleezy, but on a slezzy scale, not as slezzy as high school students or undergraduates. Also, I don’t think she was working as an intern for congress.
While it’s unlikely that the congressman had anything to do with the murder, he caught hell, publicly insulted on TV by the DC police on TV, for not cooperating with a murder investigation and being more interested in covering his own reputation.
Both situations would be rather petty, except to the people involved of course, and I am sympathetic to the argument of why is the national election decided over a few perverts. But since the Republicans attacked Clinton, I guess they can’t use this argument.
And I really did not care much about this until some radical “Republicans†developed some conspiracy theories blaming Foley’s victims and George Soros of course.
Randy,
You are right, but if we put every DC person who ran around in jail or in the WAPO we’d have no one to vote. Politics attracts the wanders both male and female. I’ve been there. You would not beleive the women who want to bed you down for a little attention. It takes a very strong person to refuse the free goodies. I did. Others I know didn’t, I still wonder how I did. Faith I guess, but, good god it is a candy store, girls from everywhere. Oh, sorry too much knowledge.
UNK, I am pretty sure the guy they got has been ID for Levy, at any rate, Condit had NOTHING to do with it, but as you see most folks never heard that and Condit is still a murderer.
Clinton was attacked for LIEING and a little sex which he never admitted to until the DNA made him. The DISBARRED asshole got a BJ in the Oval Office, come on, that and raping Anita is enough to want me to barf everytime I see him.
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