The story of Mark Foley has blown up so fast, it’s dizzying (WaPo):
Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned yesterday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page.
This kicked off Thursday with reports about emails, and Foley’s staff was right on top of it. They soothingly explained things away as innocuous and innocent, and Polimom thought, “election-year tempest in a teapot”.
But then, ABC released chat messages and folks, there’s absolutely nothing innocuous or innocent about them. Add Foley’s involvement with Child Safety Legislation and Sex Offender penalties, and we’ve got a red hot scandal going.
Knowing that Adorable Child (AC) might read Polimom’s blog today (it’s the weekend, after all), I’m not going to quote the interchanges between Foley and what may be more than one page. The Blotter’s post (and a number of comments) can be found via memorandum, here.
Given America’s sick political environment just now, though, there are a couple of problematic little issues cropping up. Let’s start here, in the WaPo article:
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.
“Last spring”. More:
Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), who sponsored the page from his district, said he had learned of some of the online exchanges from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, the Associated Press reported. Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because “his parents said they didn’t want me to do anything.”
Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter, AP reported.
“Some months ago”, but it was okay cuz the parents didn’t want to pursue the matter…
It’s not clear to me at the moment whether all these people knew about the chat exchanges, or just the emails… and there’s an exponential difference between them, so this is a distinction worth making. However, there was obviously a problem — and they knew it. From Roll Call, my emphasis:
Ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who resigned Friday after reports of his improper communications with a former male House page were made public, was interviewed about some of those contacts by the chairman of the House Page Board and the then-Clerk of the House last year.
[snip]
At least four Republican House Members, one senior GOP aide and a former top officer of the House were aware of the allegations about Foley that prompted the initial reporting regarding his e-mail contacts with a 16-year-old House page. They include: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Reps. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), as well as a senior aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl.
Which brings me to the damage all this partisanship is doing.
Pedophilia is an equal opportunity illness. It’s one of a number of paraphilia, and I’ve covered this in the past, here. Contrary to what some of the more unhinged are saying, pedophiles do not come in red only, and focusing there demonstrates ignorance and pettiness.
Polimom is, however, extremely worried that the GOP leadership might have tried to skate over this man’s illness in the interests of power-retention. Mark Foley’s seat was not expected to go to a Democrat in November; he was quite secure. If it turns out that the Republicans attempted to protect Foley for the purpose of maintaining numbers in the House of Representatives, then we — as in Americans — have a real problem here.
This needs a thorough investigation, and if it turns out that someone did protect Foley, not only do those folks need to resign, it’s time for a real-live Come to Jesus moment in this country about what we’re doing with this broken two-party system.
We should not be willing to expose our youth for the sake of political games.
Update: As someone who was absolutely appalled by the holier-than-thou attacks on Clinton by the GOP, it’s not difficult to understand why the Democrats and/or liberals are pouncing — hard — on this scandal. (Here, for example.) There’s rather a big difference between consenting adults and a kid who ends a chat session because he needs to go do his homework.
The vast majority of conservative bloggers are united in their condemnation of Foley’s acts, but there’s a fair amount of defensiveness there, too, about the liberal blogosphere’s tone. Do they really not see the problem?
* * * * *
Everybody’s blogging this, of course; among them:
Blue Crab Boulevard
AMERICAblog
Outside the Beltway
Talking Points Memo
Captain’s Quarters
The Moderate Voice
I have read what I thought to be all the released emails. The emails by themselves do not really send off alarms to me. It is with them together that questions come about. For one, why did Foley keep sending emails to the kid if the kid wasn’t responding? That is what I think damages Foley in any defense he may have had about just being friendly. The second point I wonder about is what did the kid know about being around Foley already that he decided not to respond to his emails? The kid willingly gave his email to him, and said that he didn’t think anything wrong with that at the time, so what was it about the emails later that he decided not to respond to them (even the ones before you could argue were starting to get questionable).
It just seems like maybe the kid knew something about Foley and that you have had to have known him to pick up faster on there being something odd about the emails. The chat stuff I totally understand as being beyond question though.
Perhaps if all the other Reps knew was of just these sorts of emails, then that is why there may have been uncertainty about taking some sort of action. It could have just been that if he was your friend, and you wanted to believe him that he was just being friendly, then it would have been difficult to do something harsh to his career if you didn’t have any more clear evidence of wrongdoing.
If all the allegations against Foley are true, what’s the surprise? Evil, or if you’d rather, illness has no political party. This shouldn’t be a political issue, it’s a criminal issue.
If true, he and Clinton belong together. I hope their names are mentioned together in disgust for the rest of their lives. They’re both perverts and sex addicts. Drown the b_stards and be done with it.
I do have a nagging question. If this happened in April and so many people knew about it, why is it coming out just before the mid-term elections? Is political timing the most important issue here or the criminal activity alleged against Foley? If the answer is political-timing, the people behind that are at least as sick as the alleged Foley activity.
(sad)
The first e-mails released were said to be innocuous, but they weren’t. Foley was clear doing some pedophiliac “grooming” of this kid. The later e-mails, released by ABC a couple of days ago are extremely graphic.
http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/02-02-03b.pdf
Foley has long been known to be gay, but until now, the “R”s have covered up his chicken hawk proclivities.
One wonders if the heat will be enough for Charlie Christ to catch fire too.
Frank —
I’m interested in what, exactly, the GOP leadership knew… and when they knew it. It’s pretty convoluted at the moment, but there’s the post-Katrina email to the page in Louisiana (which was the first one I read about and didn’t comment on), and then there’s the avalanche of other information.
If there was a cover-up, I can’t imagine a single reason for such a thing other than political power preservation.
And Foley’s homosexuality isn’t the problem here. Pedophilia spans the sexual-orientation possibilities.
I am, however, appalled that people out there in blogospheric never never land can’t distinguish between consensual sex between adults and the stalking of a 16-year-old.
The initial e-mails released last week seemed so innocuous that I had a very hard time understanding what the fuss was about. It looked, on the surface, like the Dems were really making a nonsense claim. But then he resigned, and I said to my mom Friday night, “There must be something we don’t know yet, because what I saw was not something you resign over.” Now I see the chat transcripts and dang if he’s not a naughty, naughty man.
As for Laz’s query about making political hay about these allegations, I can only say this: Let’s say you’re a reporter. In April, somebody sends you that original e-mail that we saw Friday. You do the right thing & contact Foley’s people, who say, “It’s nothing. Very innocuous, all about keeping in touch for future job recommendations.” You’re a local reporter with no Washington connections to poke further, and anyway your boss tells you not to waste your time chasing something that is so obviously laden with politically charged libel/slander potential. So you ignore it, but it’s always simmering there, waiting for another rumor, another tidbit of e-mail, an online chat transcript…. One day, you finally get a hook, you pull it, and the rest of the slime oozes out.
In fairness, if I were the reporter ‘tipped off’ about the initial e-mails that I saw on Friday, I would have ignored it, too. As for the timing of the final nail in the coffin, whatever made this more than a couple of innocuous e-mails, there’s probably a political motive, but you know, if the Republicans knew about this LAST YEAR, then they could have taken care of the problem back then, all by themselves. But no, they let it continue/fester and now they want to complain that it’s only coming out because of politics? Oh-ho, no you don’t.