GOP Candy
October 3rd 2006 11:41 pm
It is rather shocking how rotten to the core the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives is. You can read about it by Googling about the Mark Foley scandal, and I’ve already mentioned it besides.
Basically all of the House GOP leaders not named Hastert are trying to pin the blame on Rep. Hastert. Rep. Hastert, on the other hand, is blaming the Congressional pages (and Democrats, of course, who hadn’t even been informed about the emails) for leaking the IMs (guess the pages got the GOP back for covering it up, eh?)
For some reason most of the normal Republican crusaders for children’s safety are strangely silent on the issue, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. What a bunch of spineless weasels, they don’t even want to hold the House leadership accountable for not investigating the first email because they’re so scared that the Democrats will take control of the House this year.
Erm… of course they’re silent on the issue? Why wouldn’t they be? Are you that fucking ignorant of politics? You don’t support a party (republicans or democrats) because you think they’re upstanding citizens, you support them because they’re most likely to implement laws that you agree with. This has ALWAYS been true for both parties. Supporters are not going to turn on the party as a whole unless aspects of the whole party change. (For example, if the republican party were to try to legalize, or even defend, what Foley did)
From everything that’s been seen so far, Hastert isn’t actually responsible for anything. There’s a fair chance we’ll find out differently. But at the moment, the calls for his resignation are pure ugly politics. You can’t investigate a representative for being “too friendly.” They’re too independent and too powerful to risk that. As the FBI found out recently, it’s risky even when you have large quantities of evidence and a search warrant. If none of the boys could actually say anything more damning than “friendly” to Hastert… frankly, he couldn’t do anything. With that said, however, I suspect we’ll find out much worse over the next few days. (the election is coming up, after all)
For a reference regarding Hastert: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/04/MNGI9LHSVO1.DTL Particularly the line “None of those interviewed said they had received a sexual or suggestive overture from him during their time on Capitol Hill.” So far, we only have evidence that he did inappropriate things after they were no longer pages (which is beyond Hastert’s control).
The media sat on this story for months, but it’s the Republicans’ fault for not being on top of it. The Democrat leadership knew of this the same time the Republicans did, but the Republicans’ fault for not asking for an investigateion. Foley resigned within hours of the story breakage, but it’s the Republicans’ fault for not kicking him out of the party.
Here’s a big fat cluestick: blame Foley!
> You can read about it by Googling about the Mark Foley scandal
C’mon, you could at least take a few extra seconds to provide at least one link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley_scandal
Whoo! Lots to reply to:
Yaki:
That’s a horribly cynical view to take. I mean, you could argue that technically Foley has broke only the law that he wrote, since the age of consent in D.C. is 16 in Washington. But would you still elect Foley to Congress because he may vote your way on the issues? If so then I’m not surprised at the corruption in the GOP, because it’s coming from the base of the GOP.
The “Party” hasn’t. A few of their more outspoken voices have tried to defend his actions, which has left me incredulous. Matt Drudge for example, says it’s the kids’ fault.
Here is a whole listing of various defenses. You can even watch the video clips in question and see with your own unbelieving eyes.
Also cool is Rep. Reynolds barricading himself with children *during* a press conference, that way he couldn’t be asked any serious, adult questions, so that he could “advocate for children”.
ABC News confirms that the sources used in reporting the pages scandal are, if policitally motivated at all, Republican.
Bill O’Reilly, trusted savior of the children, doesn’t seem too concerned by this, either.
So maybe the GOP proper isn’t trying to defend this, but enough GOP Representatives and talking heads are that I’m simply disgusted by it. If the GOP is really serious about protecting children then they should be following their own Bay Buchanan’s advice.
I’ll admit I do find it distressing that apparently at least two Republican Representatives had heard about Foley being intoxicated and then trying to get into the Page dormitory. Nothing happened after that either.
A former Republican page says that people knew as far back as 1995.
And you know what? It’s not just Foley that has me *really* pissed with the Republicans, it’s stuff like them trying to lie about the fact that they were strenuously warned an Al Qaeda attack was coming in the summer of 2001.
Yaki: You also say that based on the available evidence, that calls for Hastert to resign are premature. All I can say is that you need to expand your news-gathering skills, because just knowing the emails should have been enough for red flags to be raised.
People keep acting like since no one tripped on a smoking gun, that the leadership is somehow absolved of responsibility, when it’s simply untrue. The emails should have been enough to start an investigation, even a purely private investigation (to avoid accusations of “gay bashing”). If they didn’t fish out any evidence, then fine, maybe the Page was being over-dramatic when he said “sick sick sick sick sick”. But at least they would have exercised due diligence.
But THEY DIDN’T. They interviewed Foley alone (they didn’t interview a single page), and told him not to do it again when Foley denied wrongdoing. If the emails were just over-friendly, why force Foley to stop? And why stop the investigation with the alleged predator? It makes no sense, and the fact that so many Republicans seem to think it’s OK is just one more reason I feel the Party as a whole is corrupt.
Falstaff:
If by media you mean Fox News and a few newspapers, then you’re correct. I wish either Fox or one of the newspapers had brought it up earlier, because then the media would be able to focus on what a complete failure the Administration’s policies in Iraq are, and all of the lies told to the American public revealed in Woodward’s latest book.
The Democrats (thanks for saying Democrat leadership btw, makes your point seem real intelligent and reasoned out, ASS) didn’t know a thing about this. I suspect they had to have heard rumors about it on the House floor but when the emails were revealed, the sole Democrat on the Page Board was kept out of the loop, as was one of other the Republicans on the Page Board.
Finally, the media shouldn’t have to dig for corruption for the Republicans. It was have been sooo much easier for the Republicans if they had done their internal investigation and simply forced Foley to retire if the IMs were found. It would go over so much better even now if they had investigated, even if they couldn’t find anything. It’s called covering your ass.
Sometimes I think the far-right is so funny. It’s like you guys really think the country is going to go down the tubes if a Democrat is ever elected to high office or has control of Congress, yet look how bad things are now with your brand of Republican? God I wish we’d have some real Goldwater conservatives run for office again, he and Reagan were much better than the hollow shell of a conservative Republican Party we have today.
Hell, Bush Sr. was much better. He correctly predicted the outcome of the Iraq War in 1998.
> But would you still elect Foley to Congress because he may vote your way on the issues?
Since this was obviously in response to your criticism of Fox news not criticizing the house leadership… I’m surprised you couldn’t tell I was talking about the Republican house leadership, not Foley. But I believe you’re just proving one of my earlier points.
> (matt drudge comments, rest of the media)
Hmm… well… I read past the link you gave… all the way to the actual IMs. Can you honestly say that kid was completely innocent (at least in the first one)? I was unaware of the whole “age of consent” thing until you pointed out this article as well… which actually complicates things quite a bit for your criticism of Hastert. (you can’t subject a House member to investigation because of legal activity you disapprove of… or else certain anti-gay lawmakers would always be doing investigations) Drudge’s comment holds for me too: Foley is not the type of person I want in that position of power. But if he hadn’t resigned, I’m not sure what could have been done to him (with the evidence so far). Think about this… with the age of consent at 16, what would you have done if Foley had been completely open about all of this? (Consider if he ran as an open homosexual)
>So maybe the GOP proper isn’t trying to defend
>this, but enough GOP Representatives and
>talking heads are that I’m simply disgusted by it.
Err… make up your mind. Are we talking about the GOP? or conservative media pundits? Reynolds defending himself by avoiding serious questions doesn’t even come close to defending Foley… where the hell did you get that impression?
> If the emails were just over-friendly, why force Foley to stop?
This whole fight right now is about image… put the pieces together. Aside from the obvious fact that they might assume something more serious was going on that they didn’t know about (which still might be true).
>And why stop the investigation with the alleged predator?
Uhmm… okay… I’ll just let that one stand on its own. I think you just frankly stated how much of a witchhunt you’re on.
I know you’re mad about Iraq… but lets try to keep some sanity while we’re ranting. Perhaps I am cynical, but it’s probably just because I’ve actually worked in government. (at one point, as a page) There really aren’t many differences between dems and republicans in a “personal behavior” sort of way. The only major differences are in terms of power block alignments. IE, if a democrat had been caught at this, the republicans would have already raised the age of consent in DC… the dems will probably do it when they sense the story is ready to blow over.
Replying to Yaki’s latest:
Does it matter? I don’t even know what all was going on in the page’s head at the time. He could have been trying to play along enough to not get in trouble with Foley. He could have thought they were doing something less serious. But even if the page was as into as you’re reading, it is still very suspicious at the very least for a 52 (?) year old man to be doing this with a 16 year old page. So suspicious, in fact, that Foley himself made it illegal with his child predator safety law. And that’s just counting that one page. There were apparently quite a few others who were disturbed by Foley.
But this is besides the point. When I criticize Hastert and the rest of the House GOP leadership for this, it’s based entirely off of the contents of the email that the knew about. They should have exercised some form of due diligence, whether that meant an internal investigation, requesting an FBI investigation, telling the two Representatives on the page board who were never informed, or simply asking around.
I work in the Navy, on the nuclear side. If something, however innocuous were to occur, and we tried to hide evidence of it, we would be absolutely FRIED when the higher ups or Naval Reactors found out, and rightfully so. When you’re in a position with that much power, you have extra responsibilities that go with it. When you run a Party on a platform of values, then damn it, you should be spotless in enforcing those values and investigating deviations from it. What I’m not sure you’re seeing, Yaki, is that I’m way past Foley, my problem is with the failure to act, and then the subsequent cover-up.
I’m sorry, but that’s just complete bunk. Maybe you can’t bring an indictment or even a formal FBI investigation, but you can certainly do at least an informal (but documented) investigation, especially when the activity (however legal) points to possible illegal conduct.
And that whole theory that you can’t investigate a homosexual for possible predatory actions is, well, complete bunk. ;-) Especially coming from the Republican Party, where many of them are abhorrently homophobic. Not to mention it would mean that people were treating gay people different from straight people. If a man can be investigated for sending sexual IMs to a 16-year-old girl, then he can be investigated for sending those same IMs to a 16-year-old boy, period. Anything else is unequal treatment.
John Walsh (the man behind America’s Most Wanted, whose name was on the Foley bill) agrees, incidentally.
Well I’m sorry that I didn’t separate out the various categories of people I’m upset at more clearly.
I’m upset at:
(Emphasis is mine). DING! We have a winner. I’m proud of you, you thought of it yourself, Yaki. In fact, I believe that’s exactly what happened. They suspected that Foley might have been doing something worse. Instead of investigating to remove all doubt in their minds, they tried to hush it up and prevent a future outbreak. This is where the House GOP leadership failed. They suspected, and they didn’t clarify that Foley was indeed not a predator.
Again with a Navy term, there is Operational Risk Management. If you have a decision to make, you need to assess what the results may be, and what effect the results could have. e.g. if we’re navigating in a channel, we go to great lengths to avoid other ships, because the alternative (a collision) is disastrous.
So let’s pretend we’re the House GOP leadership, and we hear from a Rep. from Louisiana that one of his pages received an email from Rep. Foley that he (the page) was very flustered over. We read the email and it merely appears “over-friendly”. Where do we go from here?
We can:
The problem is that the House GOP leadership chose option 1.1. They did practically nothing, the only exception being that they asked Foley (and of course, Foley denied being a predator) and then, perhaps to assuage their nerves over knowing the disaster that awaited them if they were wrong, told him to stop sending emails to pages. They failed horribly at risk management.
Apparently I need to elucidate. I’m not saying why stop the investigation with Foley (as opposed to asking every Congressman or something), I’m saying that the investigation should have included at the very least interviewing the page in question, and even checking email records for Foley.
The beautiful part is that they probably would have found nothing. All the activity was from Foley’s AOL account, and unless they are using Carnivore-esque technology in Congress, they would probably have never noticed, at least not without getting warrants and/or Foley’s permission. But they would have done due diligence.
If I made an argument that was not sane and well thought-out, I would appreciate you rebutting it instead of insulting my mental foundation. ;-)
You’re not the only one who works in government, either. So let me clarify a few more things:
If something like this happened, and you replaced all the Republicans with their Democrat counterpart, I would want their asses fried too. I know it would hurt at election day, and would probably guarantee another Republican majority, but that’s the price that those guilty would have to pay. It’s the only way. You do the crime, you do the time, as they say.
You’re correct when you say that they are more alike than people realize, which is why I never could understand the absolute paranoia about a Democratic-controlled Congress or White House. We did just fine with Clinton, and there’s no way that enough left-wing stuff would get through the Congress and the White House to be a problem. In fact, America is probably guaranteed to be better off when Congress and the White House are not simultaneously in the same Party’s hands, whether they be Democratic or Republican. A moderate government would do well to promote cohesion and stability (just look at all the extreme partisanship we’ve seen over the last couple of years of one Party rule).
But in the end, the one Party rule has taken way too many of our civil liberties and American blood for not only no good reason, but often just to make things worse off than they were before.
>When I criticize Hastert and the rest of the House GOP leadership for this, it’s based entirely off of the contents of the email that the knew about
Uhmm… bullshit. That particular email isn’t that bad. If Foley was able to explain it away as “I’m like a Mentor,” you’re not talking about anything that would violate an internet predator law. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-100206foley,0,6469598.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines
They had concerns likely because the boy was bothered by it.
Regarding your work with the Navy… I’m familiar with the type. My father was actually an inspector for a year or so while getting his PhD… and “FRIED” several people. Congress is, fortunately, not the same situation. A number of congressmen have standing indictments and criminal histories. Usually it’s nothing too terrible, but a few are genuinely surprising.
>Maybe you can’t bring an indictment or even a formal FBI investigation, but you can certainly do at least an informal (but documented) investigation, especially when the activity (however legal) points to possible illegal conduct.
To quote you further, “I’m sorry, but that’s just complete bunk.” If we’re only talking about an email where he bragged he was in good shape and said the boy was as well, that wouldn’t really justify any investigation. Perhaps there was more than we knew (always possible), but everything we’ve seen so far wouldn’t have even justified talking to Foley except for the boy’s complaint.
>And finally, Hastert et al. I think it’s telling that the stories between Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, etc. have changed so often. If they were telling the truth it wouldn’t be this hard to synchronize stories.
Links please… I know they said they didn’t know anything at first, but you apparently have never worked in washington if you think they couldn’t have forgotten a one-off meeting with a rep, acting on a complaint from a third party’s district.
> They suspected, and they didn’t clarify that Foley was indeed not a predator.
Cute… I said “might”. You’re always right when it comes to getting inside of other people’s heads, right? Particularly those you vehemently disagree with.
The Navy follows a strict chain of command, everyone knows who is above and below them. This is nothing like the shifting alliances and image-setting that goes on in Washington.
You act as if one boys complaint (of an email that contains nothing sexual) justifies an investigation of pedophilia. Keep in mind the way this went. The boy complained to Alexander’s office. They contacted Hastert’s office. They talked to Hastert. Hastert talked to the head of the pages, and they talked to Foley.
The reason I say they may have thought something worse was up has nothing to do with the complaint. They talked to Foley because of the rumors among the pages (”as far back as 1995 pages would warn each other”). That’s also the reason that I suspect there is more going on here. Those kids are usually pretty smart. Should an investigation have been launched? Possibly. But consider that you’re trusting rumors among a bunch of 16 year olds to launch an investigation. An investigation of pedophilia against a congressman cannot be both discrete and legal, it simply can’t happen.
>”If Foley is not a predator, then we have wasted our time, probably irritated Foley, but no one’s hurt”
Holy shit! I can’t believe I read that. As a thought experiment: let’s investigate thiago to make sure he didn’t insert KDE’s GPL’d code into proprietary parts of trolltech’s projects while working for them, based on some random commiter on IRC who claims that it’s true. After all, if we negotiate out a bit of the code from TT, trust it’s the right code, do a match up and see that there is no match, no hard feelings, right?
You’re talking about accusing a man of pedophilia. You HAVE to have more than “friendly” to go on. You can’t seize another congressman’s correspondence without accusing them of a crime.
>If I made an argument that was not sane and well thought-out, I would appreciate you rebutting it instead of insulting my mental foundation
Perhaps “sane” was overreaching… let’s try to stay “focused” then.
>You do the crime, you do the time, as they say.
The debate is essentially over whether there was an actual cover-up or not. Based on everything we have so far, it was (at worst) a bad judgment call.
I bring up the “it’s legal” stuff mostly out of my own exasperation with the whole situation. If I’m reading the laws correctly on this, technically Foley would be legally allowed to have sex with the interns while they’re in washington*, but no cybersex after they leave.
Yaki:
The fact that Foley was able to explain it away is actually part of the problem. See this article (also at the LA Times): “Abuse Experts See E-Mail as Red Flag“.
Quoting:
Also:
Yaki:
Well we’ve had quite the bloodletting in the GOP this year due to criminal (or merely unethical) activity, and it seems it won’t stop at 4. And if there are Congressman with indictments or criminal histories, then they should be gone, period, whether they are Republican or Democratic.
No, it’s waaaay better than a one-off conversation. It’s all over (parts) of the Internet, I’ve actually got like 14 tabs open right now trying to look it up for you. Instead I’ll direct you to one of the more source-citing blogs out there. I know there’s lots of mean stuff said about Republicans so just close your eyes and click the links. ;-)
Starting at: September 29th. You’ll have to keep going up to get from least recent to most recent.
Then: Go here when you’re finished with September. Again, keep scrolling up.
Have you not been keeping up with this? Foley’s attraction to young boys has apparently been an open secret among the House floor (perhaps another reason the Democrat on the Page Board was not informed). If that wasn’t reason enough, Foley was co-Chair of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. If there’s anyone that needs to be investigated after those emails, it’s Foley
Not only that, but pages have been coming forward for days now about Foley, many of whom say that the House GOP leadership were informed. The emails were another data point on an already extensive trendline, not an isolated incident out of the blue.
I’ve just discussed this. They had way more to go on.
Nope. Foley’s law makes using the Internet for any kind of sexual communication or solicitation for sex from a minor illegal. ‘Minor’ in that law is anyone under 18. Ironically if Foley hadn’t gotten the law passed then he may not have broke any laws, depending on how careful he was.
As much fun as it is to debate a political issue on one of the most obscure blogs on the Internet, I need to be getting back to coding (and reading bash.org), so ta ta.
And please, don’t come back debating points on this until you’ve really read up on this. I’m not asking you to delve into Daily Kos or Wonkette per se, but instead read the sources that they cite from. Because I get the impression I’m debating someone who’s not seen updated news on the Foley matter for a few days.
It’s good that these abuse experts are psychics… yes it’s a red flag if you have the benefit of hindsight. If you don’t, and the emails are just interpreted as “non-sexual, but harassing”, you don’t have a “red flag” of anything.
The so-called contradictions in that blog are pretty easy to explain if you actually read the quotes. You’re talking about an email thread, and different people saw different sections of it. Really the blog was quite enlightening, as the blogger routinely stages questions he’s answered in the previous entry. It demonstrates just how much of a witchhunt some people here are on. The only really damaging statements on there are original inventions of him or his readers. (Look at any of the “What seems to really be going on here is suggested by reader…”) Come on… that’s the best you’ve got?
I particularly love how that blog brings up things that were known several days earlier, and implies that they’re either breaking news, or contradictions of earlier statements.
I could go into great detail exploding most of that blog, but this is the wrong place for it.
>Nope. Foley’s law…
For crying out loud… read what I wrote. Or if you only read things slanted the other way, read the Oct 1st 2:28pm post on that blog you linked to (second link) that says the EXACT SAME THING.
By “really read up on this”, I assume you mean read your own blog list and come to the same unsubstantiated conclusions you did. I have read up on this, and frankly there’s no substantial new news. Lies about whether a third party asked a question or not are not, frankly, relevent to Hastert’s responsibilities. Staffers that are jettisoned as scapegoats are likewise going to hit first.
From a political angle on this, the republican leadership is waiting for the press to focus on one particular person (looks like Hastert), so the collateral damage isn’t too great. At that point they’ll sacrifice him to kill the story. Over the past decade or so, both parties have learned that you have to take a beating for a few days or even weeks, or else you’ll lose more people than you otherwise would have. Guilt and innocence don’t actually matter in washington, it’s all about image.