Congressman Resigns: Sent Letters to 16 Yr Old

DC_DEEP

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mindseye said:
If you can call me a "sheeple", I get to call you an ostrich. Take your head out of the sand for a moment: Dredging up Monica Lewinsky is a pathetic and desperate comparison. Foley's predation was known to several members of the House leadership, including Denny Hastert -- there was a concerted effort for almost a year to protect Foley at the expense of the pages he worked with.
Mindseye, love, you missed my point entirely. You were most certainly NOT one of the sheeple to whom I referred, nor are you one of the ostriches. In my post, I was trying to point out the stupidity of people who excuse Foley's behavior, while villainizing Clinton for his behavior. Regardless of gender, a middle-aged man having sex with a 20-something is his own business. A middle-aged man soliciting (over a long period of time) sex with a 16-year old is something else entirely.

You and I agree on this one.
 

DC_DEEP

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Lex said:
The GOP's INACTION is what concerns me even more than Foley's advances. As we have discussed here ad nauseum, attraction often can not be as controlled as we would like. That being said, for members of the Congress to know that he had these attractions, was following them in electronic format (at least), and do nothing knowing that he was around several pages all the time is inexcusable.
That's the whole point of the article to which I referred, Lex. The GOP wanted/wants this swept under the rug, since it concerns one of their own. Do you think Hastert would have lied about his foreknowledge had the offender been a democrat? Not a chance in hell. The dearth of ethics of the entire Congress in general, and the GOP in particular, are frightening and disgusting.
 

DC_DEEP

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invisibleman said:
<...>
Maybe Congressional pages' age requirement should be 20 years old.
Now, that would be a good start, wouldn't it? These scandals have been going on for many years. The first one I remember was when I was in high school, way back in the dim and distant mid-1970s. We even joked back then, "Why did the Library of Congress stop allowing Congressmen to check out books? Because they always bend the pages over."
 

mindseye

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DC_DEEP said:
In my post, I was trying to point out the stupidity of people who excuse Foley's behavior, while villainizing Clinton for his behavior.

Boy, I missed that, and stepped in it. Thanks for clearing it up.
 

DC_DEEP

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mindseye said:
Boy, I missed that, and stepped in it. Thanks for clearing it up.
Not a problem, friend. Just remember, I'm always going to be the one who is ranting about ethics in government. While I take "both" parties to task, I'm often accused by the GOP-backers of partisan attacks. I have redundantly repeated, over and over, that I despise partisan politics, and I reject all supporting arguments that a two-party system makes our government better. It does not. It simply gives an excuse for unethical politicians to garner support from one side or another while they engage in basically the same unethical behavior. Time for a change, don't you think?
 

rob_just_rob

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Lex said:
This just keeps snowballing.

Foley Checks into Rehab for Alcoholism

I hate the timing of this. Let's not pretend that you were hounding underage boys because your are an alcoholic and an emotional wreck. UGH.

Co-morbidity statistics notwithstanding.

Foley's Fall From Grace (from Time.com)

Oh, but this is typical. He'll go into rehab, find god, and come back more hypocritical than ever. And the fundamentalists will love him.

I suspect this'll follow the Bush blueprint... e.g. spend your youth driving drunk, ducking the Vietnam war and experimenting with cocaine... then "recover"... and all is forgiven. (Caution: forgiveness only applies to Republicans. If you're a Democrat, you're screwed forever, even if you didn't inhale)
 

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rob_just_rob said:
Oh, but this is typical. He'll go into rehab, find god, and come back more hypocritical than ever. And the fundamentalists will love him.

I suspect this'll follow the Bush blueprint... e.g. spend your youth driving drunk, ducking the Vietnam war and experimenting with cocaine... then "recover"... and all is forgiven. (Caution: forgiveness only applies to Republicans. If you're a Democrat, you're screwed forever, even if you didn't inhale)

I would like GWB to call Foley a Flip-Flopper the way he called Kerry.


That is all.
 

joyboytoy79

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Lex said:
This just keeps snowballing.

Foley Checks into Rehab for Alcoholism

I hate the timing of this. Let's not pretend that you were hounding underage boys because your are an alcoholic and an emotional wreck. UGH.

Co-morbidity statistics notwithstanding.

Foley's Fall From Grace (from Time.com)

This is begining to remind me a bit of another scandal in the Republican party. Does the name Bob Ney ring any bells?

I can see a new trend: Get caught doing something illegal or unethical and blame it on alcohol. Pretty soon there will be a new push for prohibition!
 

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joyboytoy79 said:
This is begining to remind me a bit of another scandal in the Republican party. Does the name Bob Ney ring any bells?
Funny you should mention that, for a couple of reasons. I've posted about Ney several times, as has Madame Zora, one of his (reluctant) constituents. As I was reading the last few posts here, I kept thinking "I've read these before, but how is that possible if they were only posted minutes ago?" You jogged my memory, yes, the exact same posts, only with "Ney" changed to "Foley."
joyboytoy79 said:
I can see a new trend: Get caught doing something illegal or unethical and blame it on alcohol. Pretty soon there will be a new push for prohibition!
I suspect you are at least partly correct with this. All the fundies will start in with the "demon rum" speechifying. Well, all except Ann Coulter. She will be blaming the indiscretions of Ney and Foley on "those damned commie liberal democrats."
 

joyboytoy79

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DC_DEEP said:
... Well, all except Ann Coulter. She will be blaming the indiscretions of Ney and Foley on "those damned commie liberal democrats."

Yes, but Annie will refrain from calling names while she is making such accusations.

PS. I despise this woman about all other people i've ever had the disfortune of hearing about. I can think of nobody else more repugnant!
 

rawbone8

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Curiouser and curiouser. We all know how loyalty is earned.
Follow the money, folks.

This from Salon.com

Follow the (Foley) money

As the New York Daily News reported over the weekend, GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds' personal PAC wrote a $5,000 check to Mark Foley's campaign in May 2006 -- which is to say, after Reynolds learned of the creepy e-mails Foley had sent to a 16-year-old House page. In July 2006, Foley more than returned the favor by writing a $100,000 check to the National Republican Campaign Committee, where Reynolds serves as chairman.
Who else has been at the receiving end of Foley's largess? In the summer of 2005 -- at about the same time he was writing the e-mail messages in question -- Foley sent substantial checks to two members of Congress: one for $1,000 to Bob Ney and another for $2,000 to George Allen.
 

rawbone8

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Of course a partisan site like Salon couldn't resist this observation on the value of scandal as a distraction.

from Salon.com:
Did the White House hide a 9/11 warning from the 9/11 Commission?

We're not saying that Karl Rove orchestrated the revelations about Rep. Mark Foley, but we suspect that he's not all that unhappy about them: If the media remains focused on the sordid details of Foley's IM exchanges with underage pages, maybe the public won't take much notice of the closer-to-home news contained in Bob Woodward's "State of Denial."


Among many other things, Woodward says that former CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, arranged a meeting with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, to "shake Rice" into pushing the president to take action on warnings of an impending terrorist attack. Black tells Woodward that he and Tenet made the seriousness of the situation as plain as they possibly could: "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head." Woodward says Black and Tenet left the meeting with the strong feeling that Rice wasn't taking them seriously and had brushed off their concerns.
 

joyboytoy79

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rawbone8 said:
Curiouser and curiouser. We all know how loyalty is earned.
Follow the money, folks.

This from Salon.com

Follow the (Foley) money

As the New York Daily News reported over the weekend, GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds' personal PAC wrote a $5,000 check to Mark Foley's campaign in May 2006 -- which is to say, after Reynolds learned of the creepy e-mails Foley had sent to a 16-year-old House page. In July 2006, Foley more than returned the favor by writing a $100,000 check to the National Republican Campaign Committee, where Reynolds serves as chairman.
Who else has been at the receiving end of Foley's largess? In the summer of 2005 -- at about the same time he was writing the e-mail messages in question -- Foley sent substantial checks to two members of Congress: one for $1,000 to Bob Ney and another for $2,000 to George Allen.

Bob Ney, eh? Well would you look at that!?!? Corruption seems to run rampant these days, and it doesn't seem that he culprits are satisfied at stoping with just one corrupt way under their belts. No, no. They must attempt to aquire ever form of corruption possible!
 

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And no big surprise to me that George Allen would be involved in all this sliminess. Virginia is not now, nor has it been for decades, safe from its elected officials. I just never seem to get over being so puzzled that the sheeple will continue to elect guys like this, and you only hear an occasional "bleat" when they are caught up in such blatant, egregious corruption.

I still say that the sheeple condone this type of behavior simply to support two-party politics.
 

D_Sheffield Thongbynder

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I can't help wondering as I read through this thread if it has now become a sine qua non of the government, the military, and the Catholic Church first to allow corruption to flourish, then to cover it up when it's exposed. That men will err doesn't bother me nearly as much as the subsequent cover-ups. Watching the Abramoff investigatory panel depose a lifeguard (or bouncer -- can't remember which) who was named the head of a think tank in exchange for hockey tickets, I remember thinking when McCain lauded the young man for being honest if not just a bid stupid, it's so unusual for anyone to own up to bad behavior these days, regardless of the the amount of evidence, that it was almost surreal in that setting.
 

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Is it shallow of me to admit that I'm not just appalled by Foley's indiscretion, but also at his atrocious spelling and punctuation?
 

DC_DEEP

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mindseye said:
Is it shallow of me to admit that I'm not just appalled by Foley's indiscretion, but also at his atrocious spelling and punctuation?
Um, no, um, that is NOT shallow - that's expecting the guys who run the country to exhibit a modicum of intelligence.

Oh fuck. Right. Too much to ask for, and snobby at that, right?