I might as well make this clear at the outset. If I’ve learned anything over the last two days about lefty commenters who visit The House it is that their attention span and reading comprehension skills leave much to be desired. Therefore, I will write about the issues that we can all agree on right up front so that I don’t get idiots accusing me of supporting Foley or abetting a cover up by the GOP House leadership simply because they don’t take the time or make the minimal effort to actually read what I write.
This is what we know and what we can extrapolate from the facts:
- Foley is a pervert. And I cannot believe that these raunchy IM’s published so far is the limit of his perversion. Not only am I sure that there are more victims out there but that I think it possible that he has had physical contact with pages of an inappropriate nature. I base this on the fact that he showed an inordinate amount of interest in the pages throughout his career which would give him the opportunity and that the IM’s demonstrate the desire for such contact. I understand that the age of consent in Washington D.C. is 16 so it is probable that no laws were broken. But that doesn’t mitigate against the horrific violation of trust if such acts occurred.
- The House GOP leadership – indeed probably many on both sides of the aisle – knew of Foley’s predilections and did nothing about it. Are you trying to tell me that if Republican House pages were warned about Foley 5 years ago that at least some Democratic Pages weren’t also aware? That’s laughable. I’m sure the FBI will have some interesting conversations with former pages that will reveal not only that the Democratic pages had heard the rumors about Foley also but that they had dutifully passed them on to Democratic staffers.
- Foley’s sick behavior through the years was suspected, never proven. For that reason, when the email exchange with the ex-Page took place last year, the House leadership dropped the ball by not carrying out some kind of an investigation. Would that have revealed the existence of the IM’s and perhaps other things? Maybe not. But any such investigation would have ruined his career and left the leadership wide open to attacks by the left that they were persecuting a gay man. In effect, it was a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation which makes the smug charges by Democrats today – some of whom may have known about Foley as well – ring a little hollow. Nevertheless, to out a potential sexual predator in their midst should have overrode any other concerns.
- There will be a torrent of revelations over the coming weeks as the FBI investigation reveals all the seamy details as well as the extent of knowledge by both Democrats and Republicans about Foley’s perversion. Look also for an investigation in just how those emails and IM’s came into the possession of the mainstream media.
And it is on that front that I will address the remainder of this post. Because like it or not, this has become a political story. And certainly a large part of the politics of it is the growing realization that this story has been an electoral black bag operation, that it may have been planned for months, and that it was timed to explode for maximum political effect.
THE STRANGE GOINGS ON AT STOPSEXPREDATORS
Yesterday, I gave a detailed analysis of the blog that started the whole affair by publishing the emails of a former page from Congressman Foley last Sunday.
Since then several amazing things have come to light. First, and least importantly, the formatting of the email from Foley to the former page sent last year is different on the SSP website than those displayed on the CREW website.
First noticed by Barking Mad who left a link in my comments about it, a full analysis by Just One Minute commenter JM Hanes shows the discrepancy to be interesting :
The Foley messages themselves occupy the next 5 pages, which is where it gets interesting. It looks like the first message (which would logically be e-mail 1), in which Foley verifies the email address, is the only one which has actually been forwarded in its entirety. The remaining messages appear to have been pasted into separate emails of their own (hence the subject lines listing e-mail 2, etc), and not forwarded. I.E. they contain the putative text alone, without any headers attached.(See the whole comment for links to the emails found on the SSP site and a pdf filed of the CREW version of the emails)It appears that the STOP blog took the header from the first message (p. 4), cropped out the redundant [Maf54@aol.com] in the “From” line, and eliminated the “To” line altogether—and then spliced it onto each of the other individual texts.
In other words, there’s no way of knowing whether the incriminating text provided to the recipient in the CREW pdf represents actual emails at all. It could have come from anywhere. It’s also possible that the young man didn’t want to pass on the emails in their entirety, opting instead to extract and paste in relevant material alone. One might wonder who was determining what might or might not be relevant—as well as wondering precisely who the redeacted recipient of this collection on Aug. 31, 2005 might have been.In any case, the only email which includes the Foley header is completely innocuous, and if you click on the individual emails at STOP, you’ll notice that, oddly enough, the jpeg titles include “cropped.”
What makes this little more than an historical curiosity is the fact that reporters for several news organizations – including the St. Petersburg Times – confirmed the authenticity of the emails with the former page himself thus making any effort to cast aspersions on this or that version of them moot.
The authenticity of the IM’s may be a different story. But the emails that were reported to the House leadership last year have been authenticated so that any attempt to debunk them is doomed to failure.
But that’s not the only thing about the SSP website that is curious. The entire website has vanished as of today. All 8 posts (as Tom McGuire sardonically remarked of the site “which started in July and brought down the Congressional leadership with its sixth, seventh and eighth posts.”) are gone along with the emails and all the archives. The domain name “stopsexpredators.blogspot.com” seems to have been taken over either by a strawman or someone who is genuinely concerned about stopping sexual predators.
Of one thing we can be absolutely certain; Stop Sexual Predators had nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of fighting child pedophiles and everything to do with publicizing the emails from Congressman Foley to the former page. There can be no other explanation for its disappearance. Why would it close up shop just when it had scored a great coup that advanced its reason for being?
This means, of course, that at least as far as the publicizing of the emails, this was a clandestine Democratic/leftist effort to at the very least, raise questions about Foley’s behavior. And given what happened less than 24 hours after the emails were brought to the attention of Brian Ross at ABC News – the revelatory and raunchy IM’s being given to ABC news – a genuine dot connecting exercise can be undertaken to link both events. While not a certainty, it is compelling evidence that whoever published the emails on the SSP blog was either aware of the incriminating IM’s or had both in their possession.
NOTE: The link above is to the site “Stop Sexual Predators” not Stop Sex Predators. I apologize for the mixup. Someone sent me an incorrect link.
Obviously, that weakens the case that SSP was definitely set up to dump the emails onto the blogosphere. However, I find it strange that the person in charge of the website has not posted anything else since aknowledging his coup with the emails. Mission accomplished, perhaps?
THE KOS CONNECTION
Almost a month ago, a “two comment wonder” at Daily Kos known as WHInternnow revealed that it was an “open secret” that Foley liked the young interns and pages on the Hill and at the White House. Blog PI picks up the story:
They are probably also the same person: On Sept. 24, WHInternNow posted a dKos diary about the SSP posts almost as soon as the scans went up, but claimed to have innocently stumbled upon them via Google. Yeah, right.And earlier this last week, before ABC’s Brian Ross obtained the more-damning Foley IMs and took the story national, Wonkette’s Alex Pareene took notice of SSP’s e-mails, and was uncharacteristically constrained in deeming the e-mails false…
One immediately wonders where Wonkette would have gotten a hold of the emails (or at least directed to the incredibly obscure SSP website). Even though they believed them to be fakes, given the enormous readership of the blog, it is likely that this is what triggered MSM interest in the story.
THE STRANGE GENESIS OF THE RAUNCHY IM’S
Questions about the IM’s authenticity are already arising as a result of the altering of the emails. However, the WaPo story seems to indicate that it was common knowledge among pages that Foley sent raunchy IM’s:
Also yesterday, a former House page said that at a 2003 page reunion, he saw sexually suggestive e-mails Foley had sent to another former page. Patrick McDonald, 21, now a senior at Ohio State University, said he eventually learned of “three or four” pages from his 2001-2002 class who were sent such messages.
At the very least, this would seem to indicate that even if the IM’s are fakes, others will testify that they received such raunchy IM’s from Foley. This is probably why he resigned from office.
But how do you “save” an IM? I’m sure there’s a way to do it but it can’t be easy. A better question would be why hang on to the IM’s for 4 or 5 years? My guess would be that such personal messages from a person of such power could have come in handy if questions ever arose about a relationship with Foley. Not blackmail but protection.
If the IM’s were in the possession of the left wing Public Interest Group CREW who then handed them over to ABC News, a legitimate question can be raised about how long they had those IM’s and why they didn’t notify the FBI sooner. If they had them for months (and since the SSP website went up in July we can assume as much) then CREW should be severely criticized for holding back information that placed young lives at risk. In the end – if they did indeed hold on to the IM’s for months – CREW can be singled out for the harshest criticism for the preferment of political gain at the expense of the safety of the pages.
How much of a story will this black bag operation be? Since it was done partly in the cause of ridding the Congress of a pervert, one perhaps cannot condemn it completely. However, it does demonstrate a nauseating cynicism on the part of the left when it comes to electoral politics and makes the hypocritical charges of “cover-up” resonate all the more with those who are disgusted by such tactics.
9:25 am
Start with the premise it’s much easier to forge and spoof emails and IMs than it is to forge Texas Air National Guard documents … That’s why there are trusted computers and trusted OSes with all the attendant security checks, ACLs, and physical access controls. How else can you tell who was actually sitting at the terminal typing when the text was generated.
The problem with emails and IMs is that without the complete header information you have nothing but someone typing on a piece of paper. You need originals. Then you need to check if the headers are correct and not spoofs, a time consuming demanding process. But then it only tells you what computers were used not whose hands were on the computers. You cannot assume anything about who actually typed the email or IMs. I remain suspicious that any of the facts disclosed so far would hold up to that scrutiny.
Obviously Foley was up to something bad with pages, so he left, but the who knew what when is quite a different matter. without facts, and original copies with complete headers, we have nothing of value, just one huge pointless argument.
Smells like a dirty trick to me, to sack Hastert, just like the left did with Newt.
9:44 am
Rick, I can still see the Stop Sex Predators site. The URL you’ve given is stopsexualpredators.blogspot.com.
I think you’ve got the wrong website.
10:00 am
“extrapolate from the facts”??
isn’t that like guessing?
it’s funny how all your extrapolating causes dems grief.
while we’re “extrapolating” how about as the republican leadership knew about it, so must have george bush and ken mehlman and karl rove. what did they do about it?
10:47 am
Most IM programs, such as AIM, have some sort of feature to save a chat in a word or text document. The other way is to copy and paste the contents of the chat.
And peter’s comment shows that it doesn’t matter how much you stipulate. Give the left an inch, and they won’t even acknowledge the gift.
10:53 am
The question that must be asked now is how can the GOP Congressional leadership be expected to protect us from al-Qaeda when it can’t even protect teenage pages from Republican Congressmen?
10:57 am
Thank you for an excellent report up front on the scandal aspects. However, your attempts to beige-wash the political aspects of the affair by raising doubts about message authenticity, how Democrats knew about it also, and pointing out the “political” nature of some accusations is disingenuous at best. (Yes, I read and understood your up-front disclaimers that you don’t support child sexual predation, and I have read you long enough to know your revulsion of such behavior is genuine and heartfelt, but we are discussing the political aspects now. I am neither left-wing or slow.) The right always pulls the “Democrats are just playing politics” card when the shit hits the fan. Of course politicians play politics, ALL politicians play politics. Its part of the the job! Stop saying it like it was an unex8pected crime of some kind. This is equal to be astounded, just astounded, I say, that lawyers use the law or surgeons use scalpels.
The congressman immediately resigned and went into rehab, the 21st Century style of admission of guilt. As for the Democrats culpability, when the dog lives under your porch, its your job to keep him under control, not your neighbors, even if the neighbor hears that the dog bites on occasion.
11:09 am
“when the dog lives under your porch, its your job to keep him under control, not your neighbors, even if the neighbor hears that the dog bites on occasion.”
So, pedophiles should only be turned in by members of his own political persuasion? If you know about a murderer or a thief, do you not have to turn him in because he’s not of your political party? Nonsense. If CREW or anyone knew of this months ago they should have turned him IMMEDIATELY, not wait until a time they would gain the most politically.
11:21 am
I liked your theories better when you were linking to the wrong website. Classic. And as for what CREW had, why don’t you just read their website:
“As a former prosecutor who handled sex crimes in the District of Columbia, the emails set off alarm bells. Grown men simply do not send emails requesting photographs to teenagers over whom they have had some degree of authority,†Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW wrote today.
It appears only now, at the instigation of the House of Representatives leadership’s request, that the FBI has begun a preliminary investigation into former Rep. Foley’s conduct. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting an investigation into Rep. Foley’s actions as well as who knew about Rep. Foley’s conduct, when they knew it and why they did not forward that information to law enforcement authorities.
Sloan stated today, “Since the FBI has known about Rep. Foley’s emails since July, the question arises: Did the administration help to cover up Rep. Foley’s conduct and leave a potential sexual predator on the loose? Was the administration more concerned with protecting a powerful ally in Congress than with protecting children?â€
Doesn’t sound like they had the IM’s. And why are they a left-wing group? Are responsibility and ethics a liberal bias? They’re probably you biggest ally in trying to bring down Murtha, “soul and conscience of the military.”
11:22 am
Yahoo IM:
Start IM
Messenger->Preferences
Check: Yes, save all of my messages
Doh!
Who’s Michael Rogers? This is Michael Rogers:
As many of you know, Rogers is the host and agent of a widely publicized “outing campaign” at BlogActive.com targeting closeted gay Republicans.
By the short hairs
I know not everyone can have an understanding of how the basic technology of the internet works. But let me assure you a grade schooler could set up the system necessary to watch dozens of sites for any mention of a particular phrase or name and receive an alert via Text Message or Pager.
Hell, it’s what I used to do for a living in 2000 before the dot com crash.
Simply put, “Mr. Rodgers” has a bunch of filters running on 10, 100, 1000 websites, blogs, news sites looking for any scrap of info on a list of closted Republican gays and the minute he finds something out go the alerts.
Then, as oon as the story broke the kids, who know enough to save their IM’s come forward and kaboom.
As for setting up a website to publicize something, registration of a site takes 10 minutes or less and with today’s tools, just about as long to put some content up.
I’ve built sites around breaking stories and had them running in a matter of hours.
It. Is. Not. Hard.
Just like the NSA scoops up communications for their ends, so are some progressives doing the same. All legal too.
So sorry to bust the conspiracy bubble, but Mr. Rodgers did what I have been urging our side to do for years, just for this type of situation.
How do I know monitoring like this works?
Well lets just say there was this young man who spend all his time recording talk radio programs, almost obessesively, until one day he heard G. Gordon Liddy threaten ATF agents with being shot in the head. Three phone calls later to CBS, NBC, and ABC Liddy is in the soup.
Score.
11:33 am
Okay, Rick Moran owes CREW (citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington) an apology. He has been advancing the idea that CREW is a “leftist” organization that sat on emails or documents that would incriminate Foley in the current scandal for political reasons.
CREW has posted today an article that proves that is just false. Here is an excerpt from CREW’s post:
“On July 21, 2006 CREW received a set of emails, allegedly from Rep. Foley to a former House page, which it sent to the FBI later that day. The emails, posted at http://www.citizensforethics.org, asked the page, who had recently left the Hill, his age, how school was going and what he wanted for his birthday. Rep. Foley also requested the boy’s photograph.
“As a former prosecutor who handled sex crimes in the District of Columbia, the emails set off alarm bells. Grown men simply do not send emails requesting photographs to teenagers over whom they have had some degree of authority,†Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW wrote today.”
We’re waiting for your response Rick.
11:51 am
I understand that the age of consent in Washington D.C. is 16 so it is probable that no laws were broken. But that doesn’t mitigate against the horrific violation of trust if such acts occurred.
Maybe so, but DC is a very small place. Did Foley or any of his victims live/work/call/email/visit Maryland or Virginia? Any page parties at the Foley residence? Was there any transportation of any victims across any state line? You can’t even circle the DC Beltway without crossing the VA and MD state lines.
Are the pages paid for their work? If so they are employees and Foley’s actions constitute sexual workplace harassment. One page said they were afraid to complain for fear of being retaliated against so there are classic lawsuits here – from Foley through the House Leadership.
So many laws were broken Foley will never get out of prison.
12:03 pm
“when the dog lives under your porch, its your job to keep him under control, not your neighbors, even if the neighbor hears that the dog bites on occasion.â€
So, pedophiles should only be turned in by members of his own political persuasion? If you know about a murderer or a thief, do you not have to turn him in because he’s not of your political party? Nonsense. If CREW or anyone knew of this months ago they should have turned him IMMEDIATELY, not wait until a time they would gain the most politically.
Sorry, CT. The Republicans are in control of the House and therefore are the management. They carry the greater burden to deal with personnel problems. As I stated in my original comment, I was discussing the political aspects, not the legal or moral. Legally and ethically, anyone with knowledge of a crime needs to speak up. But management always carries the greater responsibility.
12:04 pm
FBI in the soup?
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
12:05 pm
But how do you “save†an IM?
Using AOL IM (AIM), one merely goes under File>Save to, you know, Save the Instant Message. Not too hard.
12:35 pm
SteveAudio is correct — it’s trivial to save IMs. If you’ve turned on logging, as many highschoolers do by default, every IM you send or receive is saved automatically, with usernames and timestamps intact. The pages wouldn’t have needed to choose to save the IMs; they may have been saved with no specific action on their part.
12:38 pm
I see we are still hung up on the whole “sexual predator” thing. Strictly speaking, Foley is not a sexual predator. (Based on what we know so far.) It is entirely legal for a 50yr old to have an affair with a 16yr old in many parts of the country, including DC. That seems to make many people uncomfortable, but a proper response would be to raise the age of consent.
Let’s propose doing that and see how long it takes for the left to object.
12:44 pm
But how do you “save†an IM? I’m sure there’s a way to do it but it can’t be easy. A better question would be why hang on to the IM’s for 4 or 5 years?
Just to clarify my earlier post — if you turn on logging when you first install AIM (it may be on by default; I honestly don’t know, as I use Adium), AIM will then save every message you send or receieve until you turn logging off. It’s not a question of choosing to “hang on to” these particular IMs; AIM will do it automatically, without you thinking about it.
1:19 pm
It’s nice to see that Rick Moran has at least so-far today curtailed his foul-mouthed name-calling on the people (i.e., “trolls” like me) whose posts he disagrees with—the evidence of a nerve being strummed, I suppose.
But sad to see him resort again to the most wishful of thinking, as he contorts logic to absolve the GOP, to wit: “I’m sure the FBI will have some interesting conversations with former pages that will reveal not only that the Democratic pages had heard the rumors about Foley also but that they had dutifully passed them on to Democratic staffers.”
(Yeah, and he also hoped CREW was holding onto these emails… but alas it turns out CREW turned them over to the FBI the same day they received them way back in July—- CREW is non-partisan, btw, but it’s just that there are SO many GOP scandals these days, they only SEEM partisan.)
But I’m not one to begrudge you a little illogical “hope” to keep the apoplexy at bay, Rick. Whatever gets you through this latest GOP-only scandal, I guess.
1:26 pm
Black Helicopters: GOP PredatorGate
Tom McGuire, never too reality based in my opinion, is selling black helicopters on GOP Predatorgate: Color me skeptical. Maybe the blog author was an unwitting catspaw, but I would want some assurance that this was not simply a successful…
1:26 pm
Jon Sandor:
Thanks for clarifying. So we all need to quit calling Bill Clinton a sexual predator, correct? Didn’t think so. It also appears that D.C. law move the prosecution bar to 18 if the actor has significant ties to the victim of a sexual crime (authority over, for one?).
I do agree with you that 16 is too young for an age of consent, and additionally, more emphasis needs to be placed on the age disparity between a minor and their sex partner in prosecuting sex crimes. A 16 year old with an 18 year old is quite different that a 16 year old with a 50 year old.
1:37 pm
Your comment was deleted for being completely non germane to the post. The word “Bush” appears nowhere in the post nor does any defense of any Administration policies.
And if you had half a brain and bothered to read a couple of posts on this blog, you’d know that the idea that I am a Bush apologist is laughably ignorant.
1:54 pm
ed
Sure, we should “quit” calling Clinton a sexual predator. Since nobody is doing it, it will be easy to quit.
Foley had no “authority” over the pages. You may as well say that as Congressman he had “authority” over anyone in the US, and that therefore any sexual relationship he had wth any American was improper.
The facts and the law are against you, as evidenced by this kind of grasping at straws. Congressman Stubbes (D) actually engaged in a sexual relationship with a seventeen year old page. Remind me, please, what charges he was brought up on?
There is an argument to be made that this SHOULD be illegal. But it is not illegal at present, and all this hyperventilating about “sexual predators” and “underage children” and “minors” is either confused or malicious.
2:33 pm
The rest of the world hates America for its freedoms.
Right!
Thanks for the present Mark!
2:44 pm
So, any more comment about CREW, RIck?
2:45 pm
Well, its good to see that the left still can’t tell the difference between the e-mails and the IMs.
Too bad that behavior is rampant in the Big Room as well. I guess that’s one way to drag it out until the election.
3:00 pm
So now it’s a bipartisan issue? LMAO!
Only in America can the controlling party, in all branches, intimate with a straight face that the minority party is culpable in not attempting to expell a member of the dominate party for his perversions.
This begs two questions for me:
(1) Are we to believe that the GOP controlled house would have supported such an investigation without resistance or cries of the minority party playnig politics?
(2) Do you really think that a 50 something year old man ( of the opposite party ) nuturing sexual fantasies about teen boys would draw a defense from the left? under the cover of “gay rights” – Just stop – We have the Log Cabin Republicans for that.
This is a leap, and i apologize for saying as much but i think this is a horrible attempt at explaining the inaction of the GOP party leadership on this issue.
It is really over the top to suggest that the GOP leadership used that as part of the political calculus on why they did not agressively investigate Foley.
even more distressing is if they did use that as a part of the calculus, let him continue to have the chance to abuse his postion so he can flirt with teen boys rather than give the dems some ammo?
3:00 pm
A black bag operation?!
You have officially jumped the shark.
3:03 pm
ABC and CREW File Simultaneously – How So?
3:57 pm
I missed the point on the Foley affair
I wrote yesterday that I didn’t think that there was more to the Mark Foley affair than Mark Foley’s behavior. After learning more about the story, I realize that I was wrong and that involve in this story is a
4:02 pm
Sure some Democrats exploited this and timed it to effect the elections. However, the Democrats would never have had the chance had the Republicans not dropped the ball (repeatedly).
Welcome to the NFL, Rep. Foley.
4:05 pm
To ensure we’re all on the same page (har), Moran opens with a bitchslap against the liberal “idiots” who accused him of defending Foley yesterday.
To refresh:
Yesterday he wrote:
While by any stretch the contact with the page was inappropriate, it hardly rises to the level of “perversionâ€.
and
Another perfectly logical explanation is that the emails were, in fact, innocent sounding attempts to inquire as to the youth’s well being and the parents were satisfied with the Congressman’s explanation. But why let common sense or common decency for that matter spoil a good smear campaign?
Today, Moran writes: “Foley is a perv. And I cannot believe that these raunchy IM’s published so far is the limit of his perversion. Not only am I sure that there are more victims out there but that I think it possible that he has had physical contact with pages of an inappropriate nature.”
Night and Day? Nooooooo.
The reason you’re an idiot is because you take what I wrote completely out of context to make an invalid point. Your inability to differentiate between the emails and the IM’s makes you a troll, hence your banning.
5:05 pm
I can honestly say that this Foley scandal, and the ensuing efforts to contain and deflect the damage that has been done to the Republicans, and to actually make this all about supposed Democratic conspiracies, is far and away one of the funniest/most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. Let’s assume for the sake of “argument” that this is all an elaborate conspiracy involving forged e-mails and IMs, Nancy Pelosi, CREW, ABC, numerous congressional pages all from different parts of the country, and lets not forget Congressman Foley himself, all collaborating to entrap and damage the Republican party before the crucial mid-term election. Does ANYONE on the right or left believe that the democrats are coordinated or smart enough to pull this off? I wish the democrats were that smart or ruthless, if you do think so, I’d love to hear it.
Let’s go through some of the excuses I’ve read so far: Clinton had an affair in the oval office, Barney Frank is gay, democrats are gay in general, some other democrat did something similar over 20 years ago, Foley didn’t actually have sex with any of these kids, the kids were egging him on, anyone have any other gems? Anything to forget the fact that Hastert had been warned by Tom Reynolds months ago about Foley sending e-mails to teenage boys in which he requested photos of the boy and were described as “sick” by the teenager in question (hey they were just “overly-friendly” right?) In addition Rodney Alexander of LA, confirmed that he told Hastert about this as early as 2005. We also have Shimkus investigating these claims in 2005 as well, and neglecting to inform his democratic counterpart. He has also stated that he warned Foley to stop “stalking” male pages, then dropped the matter. Just forget that both Hastert and Boehner have publically changed their positions on what they knew about the e-mails and when.
All this sophistry is pretty much the same, anything to avoid dealing with what actually happened. After years of hypocritical moral and ethical posturing on the right, something like this comes along and blows up in their face, and they reveal their true character: that of a frightened and petulant child, willing to say and do anything that will absolve them of responsibility for their actions. There are some on the right who have been quite sober about this and are just as sickened by this mendacity as everyone else, then there are others like the proprieter of this site that will “speculate” and “elaborate” to no end, as long as the conclusion is that its all the media’s or one of the Clinton’s fault or something equally cretinous. Perhaps he can drop by again and call me some names or question my reading skills, and further confirm what we all know.
5:30 pm
This reminds me of the blog I went on that was liberal and blogged a difference of opinion and the comments I got back where vile, just as these are, do YALL HAVE TO USE THE F WORD SO MUCH AND OTHER CUSS WORDS TO GET YOUR POINTS ACROSS.
You all sound like larry johnson responding when he gets mad.
Get it a rest with the vile stuff guys.
5:51 pm
Bitch deleted my comment!
...bitch.
5:52 pm
No profanity, please.
You want to drop F bombs, go shit on a liberal blog.
7:13 pm
Can these people be any more disgusting???
Drudge… Kids egging pervert on. Tony Snow… Just naughty emails! Hassert…. Eh, I dont remember the specifics, it was probably given to me with some other stuff… Oh well…. At least one conservative icon got it right. You know we…
7:41 pm
The problem here isn’t whether people think Foley needs help and punishment(he does) Thats already been stipulated
.
The problem is taking one mans problems, serious problems and not bothering to wait for the official investigation to be complete before throwing around accusations at the whole republican party.
But of course, how can the left wingers wait for the FBI to conclude the investigation, that might not give them the political buzz before election time.
So by all means lets paint all republicans with the same brush by simple virtue of being on the other side of the aisle.
THATS sickening.
8:04 pm
Yep, I’m a liberal, Rick, but I want to give you an hypothesis to chew on.
When I see all this going down—at the perfect time for the election, and targeted perfectly (Since George Bush isn’t up for re-election but the House is)—I don’t smell Democrats.
I smell CIA.
Remember when the CIA asked for prosecution on Plame’s outing, and nothing happened?
Suddenly BAM! Rush Limbaugh exposed as a drug addict. (by the National Enquirer, no less—which leads to the question why did the Enquirer receive anthrax in the mail?)
And suddenly there’s an investigation.
I see the same pattern here.
Think about it….
8:49 pm
Susan, I agree that we should not generalize to all Republicans from this incident. There are a lot of good, moral Republicans in the world. However, there’s nothing wrong with wanting the American people to get the full story before the election, so they can make an informed decision when they vote. Whatever your affiliation, isn’t it better to get the truth out before the people make their choices? Everyone, left and right, should be united on recommending a swift, thorough investigation.
8:52 pm
Edwin Edwards and all that.
OK, I know that there is some speculation, based on some hard evidence, that the exposure of Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s shenanigans, or more precisely the timing of the exposure, was a black bag job by Democrat operatives and posibly partisan media ou…
12:27 am
Ahhh – the site is up and running, the emails are there.
5:14 am
Tonight on 60 Minutes: Woodward’s State o’ Denial
tick tick tick Tonight on 60 Minutes…
6:13 am
All the comments from Stop Sex Predators have DISAPPEARED! Interesting, huh?
9:37 am
Re comment #43:
Last night (2230 EST, Monday 10/2) the site was still fully enabled. A series of comments were posted claiming to know the identity and motives of the SSP blogger. A commenter demanded that SSP reveal his/her identity within 24 hours or be ‘outed’ by the commenter.
This morning, (Tuesday 10/2) comment feature is gone, all comments are deleted. On a day when new information is swirling, SSP is silent – not a single new post.
Gee, SSP - what gives?
10:13 am
As a former Senate page (in the nineties), I can tell you that it’s pretty unlikely that pages from both sides of the aisle would have been “warned” about Foley. Republican pages have pretty much no interaction with Democrat congressmen, and vice versa. So the whole theory that Democrat pages, and therefore staffers, would have been warned, is pretty much baloney in my book. (And full disclosure: I was a Republican page.)
10:28 am
OK, I am struggling (and failing) to envision a scenario in which Democratic staffers find out about Foley but keep it quiet.
They were waiting for a more opportune moment, you say? Yeah, right – and risk being accused of complicity in this when it finally came out by keeping quiet about it in the meantime…?
These really salacious IMs were from 2003, right? So, if these had been discovered by Dems in time for the 2004 elections, do you figure they would have kept quiet about it?
Basically, do you really see this as the kind of issue in which the timing of the disclosure makes that big a difference in its effect, or do you figure this would be the kind of bomb the Democrats could drop any old time they found out about it, with similar effect? Yeah – I thought so…
10:46 am
I wasn’t clear enough when I suggested Dems “knew” about Foley.
His gayness was evidently an open secret – that nutcase Rodgers had been trying to out him since 2003 – and even though no pages were specifically “warned” about Foley (the page who was interviewed on ABC is backtracking furiously from that characterization) everyone knew of his interest in the page program.
http://passionateamerica.blogspot.com/2006/10/matthew-loraditch-sends-his-statement.html
On top of all that, Capitol Hill is one of the most gossipy places on earth – party labels aside. What I am reasonably sure of is that both Republicans and Democrats had their suspicions about him – and Republicans are to blame for not investigating the email incident more thoroughly although it is not at all clear that the raunchy IM’s would have been revealed if they did.
And please spare me – CREW got the emails 7/21 and turned them over to the FBI (who, like the several other newspapers who looked at them didn’t feel there was anything bad about them). The website that first published the emails (“Stop Sex Predators) had their first post on 7/28. In early September a diarist at Kos tried to interest people in the emails by linking to SSP - that didn’t work. Someone then sent the information to Wonkette’s site last week – she also linked.
Do you see a pattern here? Someone was trying to out the emails by using unwitting liberal blogs. It is probable that ABC News was made aware of the emails via Wonkette – although that’s a guess I think it safe to assume someone at ABC News scans Wonkette and other big blogs (right and left) on a daily basis.
The IM’s origin are still a mystery. Can’t wait for the FBI to get to the bottom of that one. The point being not to absolve Republicans of anything but to call Democrats on their brazen hypocrisy on this issue – something you and the rest of the left won’t do which is why I’m doing it.
1:01 pm
Spare ME, guy – this is apparently Abramoff, Part Deux to you – you are furiously spinning this to attempt to involve Democrats in any convoluted way possible, even if only by irresponsible, unsupported assertion.
Hey, when all you have is a hammer…
And don’t give me any crap about when CREW first got these, or some such – you were referring to the probable gossipping among the pages themselves and to staffers, which if it occurred (not saying it didn’t) OBVIOUSLY predated any third parties/blogs/MSM cluing in.
Pitiful.
This episode was not a put-up, not a set-up, not a sting, not entrapment. This was your basic unforced error.
If you know otherwise, then put up. Otherwise shut up.
1:10 pm
The idea that this entire incident wasn’t “managed” as a political ploy is laughable.
And who’s spinning anything except Democrats trying to smear the entire Republican party.
That website with the emails was as fake as a three dollar bill and was established solely for that purpose. Yeah right…3 different ex pages and interns who got hit on by Foley just happened to find this website that came into being a week after CREW got a hold of the emails and that nobody ever heard of. Santa Claus is coming to town if you believe that.
The whole thing stinks of politics – which makes the Democrats caterwalling about “the kids” so hypocritical as to make me want to vomit.
Foley was a Republican disaster waiting to happen. Unforced in that respect, yes. But the outing was as carefully stage managed as any campaign event you’re likely to see.
Grow up and smell the coffee. This is how the game is played on both sides. If you can’t take it, go back and play with your X-box.
2:17 pm
From Jon Sandor:
“ed
Sure, we should “quit†calling Clinton a sexual predator. Since nobody is doing it, it will be easy to quit.
Foley had no “authority†over the pages. You may as well say that as Congressman he had “authority†over anyone in the US, and that therefore any sexual relationship he had wth any American was improper.
The facts and the law are against you, as evidenced by this kind of grasping at straws. Congressman Stubbes (D) actually engaged in a sexual relationship with a seventeen year old page. Remind me, please, what charges he was brought up on?
There is an argument to be made that this SHOULD be illegal. But it is not illegal at present, and all this hyperventilating about “sexual predators†and “underage children†and “minors†is either confused or malicious.”
The only people I’ve seen work this hard to defend sexual predators are sexual predators. Got something you want to get off your chest, Jonny boy?
2:26 pm
If you think you’re being set up and you are saddled with a guy like Foley, the only way to combat that is to take the initiative and break the story on your own, and frame the dialogue – that way you control the timing – the “management,” if you will.
You get to really be the party of family values, too – in more than the bumper-sticker sense. The raw fact is that instead of taking the appropriate action, the GOP thought they could hold this one until after the elections, if not forever – and they lost the ability to frame the issue and the moral high ground.
The Dems had this handed to them because the GOP tried to play the hand they were dealt the best way they could – not by anything else. So, now the Dems are bad and cynical because they supposedly took what they were given and played the hand THEY were dealt to THEIR best advantage?
You have to be a sucker to get sucker-punched, pal.
The fact that the GOP sat on dynamite even knowing the risk they were taking tells me is that they do not think there is ANY margin at all come election day.
2:35 pm
fordson, NOBODY, knows if the GOP sat on dynamite any more than the dems sat on it and waited till now to release it, sure has come at a convenient time hasn’t it?
3:21 pm
Drewsmom, do you have ANY reason at all to believe that the Democrats knew about this before the GOP did?
The GOP had ample opportunity to ENSURE that this came out almost a year ago, and was blown over by now. They chose not to do that, because they thought they could bury it until after the election – and they didn’t give a damn that this guy was going after kids in the meantime – or rather, they considered those pages collateral damage in the culture wars.
They had to destroy the village to save it…
7:09 pm
Have you taken a look at that Sex Predators site lately?
9:12 pm
If Foley is innocent, why did he resign?
What difference does it make who released the information, anyway, when it’s obvious that the pages were being told by someone that knew the guy was a pervert over TEN YEARS AGO.
What did Newt Gingrich know about this, anyway?
12:29 pm
Hello, i love rightwingnuthouse.com! Let me in, please
12:04 pm
Ultracet medication….
Extracting acetaninophen from ultracet. Is ultracet addictive. Difference between percocet and ultracet. Ultracet. Ultracet medication….