The ABC News report"The Sexually Explicit Internet Messages That Led to Fla. Rep. Foley's Resignation" has damning instant messages, says there are more "too graphic to be broadcast," and that Foley could go to jail "under some of the same laws he helped to enact."
But that's not the worst of it. The worst is this:
One former page tells ABC News that his class was warned about Foley by people involved in the program.In other words, Foley's behavior was part of a pattern that was known to House authorities. How high up?
AP is reporting that House leadership knew:
The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen's parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, "We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem," a reference to the House's Republican leaders.In short, this is not an individual scandal. It is an institutional scandal of the GOP-controlled House. Foley almost certainly violated the law, and Dennis Hastert and his lieutenants covered it up. This is now the issue fo the 2006 midterm elections--if only the Democrats realize it.
AMERICAblog has some questions that deserve answers:
Does House Republican leader Denny Hastert have a soft spot for child sex offenders?What we have here is yet another exmaple of the lawlessness and irresponsibility of one-party GOP government.Seems so. Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert has some serious explaining to do, after today's revelations that they knew about ex-Congressman Mark Foley's sexscapades a good year ago, and did nothing.
Whether or not the kid's parents were fine with letting it go, which the story says is the case, why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert permit Foley to remain in the House GOP leadership for almost a year after they knew he was having sex talk with minors online, minors he met on the job?
Why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert leave Foley as the co-chair of the House body in charge of child sex offenses for a good year after they knew?
Why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert permit Foley to stay in the House at all, where he would be around other pages every day all day long?
And just as importantly, why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert let Foley lie publicly yesterday about the emails, claiming they were innocent, and simply a dirty attack from the Democrats, when the House leadership knew the real story?
And finally, we find out that the FBI was contacted two months about this story. Was there any follow-up from the Bush FBI? Or did they just let this potential case of child sex offense go by the wayside because it involved a friend of Bush?
We've seen it with the Abramoff scandal, the scope of which is still far from being known.
We've seen it with the mutliple frauds surrounding the selling of the Iraq war, the scope of which is still far from being known.
We've seen it with massive fraud involved in the "reconstruction" of Iraq, the scope of which is still far from being known.
We've seen it with collapse of FEMA, both pre- and post-Katrina, the scope of which is still far from being known.
And we've seen it with Bush's torture and detention programs, which violate not just the Constitution, but the Magna Charta, the scope of which is still far from being known.
They've been able to spin each and every one of their scandals, one way or another. But none of those scandals cuts as close to home as this one: cyberstalking a teenager.
And Dennis Hastert covered it up.
Frankly, Hastert should go to jail. He's an accomplice after the fact, at the very least. In all probability, he facilitated an ongoing pattern of illegal activity. There's no doubt whatsoever that if Tom Foley had ignored similar illegal behavior by a Democratic Congressmember on his watch, Newt Gingrich would have demanded his resignation and an FBI investigation.
We should ask for nothing less.
You may be able to spin torture. But cyberstalking teenage kids is a whole lot harder to tie a bow around.
Thus endeth the long and foolish charade of Conservative/GOP moral superiority.
They hide liars. They hide torturers. They hide sexual predators. They are scum of the earth.
THIS is the nationalization of the 2006 mid-terms. And much, much more.
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