<p>Strick, oh, I understand it all right. I also know that the Party of Family Values had information on the PFV perv in 2001, and decided to put Clueless Party pages at risk, while informing PFV ones of the danger. That is far, far more inexcusable than anything Hastert and company have or haven’t done in the past year.</p>
<p>Rock on, GLA.</p>
<p>No, Strick, this isn’t about one member of Congress. Having bad judgement about sexual matters isn’t a partisan matter, though the Republicans have been happy enough to try to impeach a President about lying about doing the Monica. (I’m still furious with Clinton for not being able to keep his zipper up when so much was at stake. A secondary issue is his deplorable taste in a tart like Monica, but I digress.) </p>
<p>What’s an issue is the party sanctimonious hypocrisy, the one that attempts to wrap itself in “family values” as if Democrats had none, getting nailed on this. The cosmic irony of Foley being in charge of a subcommittee responsible for abused children is delicious.</p>
<p>What’s an issue is Foley’s former chief of staff trying to bargain with ABC to keep the IM’s out of the media if they got an exclusive on the resignation: coverup.</p>
<p>What’s an issue is Hastert, Boehner, and Reynolds not even being able to get their stories straight…funny, but if you tell the truth you don’t have to keep issuing retractions and amendments to your remarks.</p>
<p>What’s an issue is Shimkus not telling the other two members, including the only Democrat, of the board that oversees the pages, aboutthe problem when first informed but going to Reynolds and thus treating it as a political matter.</p>
<p>What’s an issue is willful sticking-of-heads-in-the-sand (better than one of their most common usual options) by the Republican leadership, hoping it would go away. </p>
<p>What’s an issue is Reynolds urging Foley to run for re-election despite knowing about the problem.</p>
<p>The Good News for You Guys: Foley has driven the story about the 485 contacts between Abramoff and the Bush White House completely off the air and out of the newspapers. </p>
<p>The GOP operating principles remain true: dissemble, divert, destroy. Except, man, they’ve got a lousy position to play from on this one. Even some of the most reliably gullible fools are having trouble swallowing on this one.</p>
<p>Regarding the Foley matter, here’s Paul Weyrich, head of the conservative “think tank” Free Congress Foundation, weighing in this afternoon on NPR’s “All Things Considered”: </p>
<p>“Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex.”</p>
<p>I guess that makes them indistinguishable from heterosexuals.</p>
<p>DRJ4, yeah it doesn’t pass the smell test, and its on the House leadershp side that stinks</p>
<p>Do you think they had any culpability AT ALL in this mess? anything? or did they handle it right, by not even reading the emails in question…no wait, now we hear Hastert knew what was in the emails, and this info is from another republcan</p>
<p>if only they could get their stories straight</p>
<p>and btw, the ABC reporter says republican staffers alerted him to the emails…</p>
<p>Was Reynolds the guy who had a room full of moms with babies at a press conference yesterday? The reporters asked to have the children leave the room so they could ask questions on Foley and Reynolds involvement. He refused the request. Who says we can’t learn from the terrorists? ;)</p>
<p>So now we’re back to 2004:</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_go_co/congress_pages_48;_ylt=Aq3K676wAmWzrFvq0_BPLRiGbToC;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_go_co/congress_pages_48;_ylt=Aq3K676wAmWzrFvq0_BPLRiGbToC;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl</a></p>
<p>“I also know that the Party of Family Values had information on the PFV perv in 2001, and decided to put Clueless Party pages at risk, while informing PFV ones of the danger. That is far, far more inexcusable than anything Hastert and company have or haven’t done in the past year.”</p>
<p>Sorry, mini, read my post on the previous page. It seems that the page (the person) who talked about what happened in 2001 has issued a clarification and never intended to give the impression that there was any formal warning. Read it to see what I mean. Since that’s the only hint that House leaders might have known anything as early as 2001 that I’m aware of, it’s time to back off on that accusation a few years. Fair enough?</p>
<p>TheDad, how is that different from the party that demands equal rights for gays, gleefully benefiting from this subliminal gay bashing? How would you expect Hasert, et al to react to these charges which are phased in the form of “are you still beating your wife?” How can they react reasonably to the barrages of misinformation and inuendo like what I discuss with mini in the previous paragraph. How can the party that insists it alone protects
Americans from injustice so visable treat the House leadership as guilty before any evidence but trial by rumor is heard?</p>
<p>You’re over the top on this one. The October Surprise’s tactics and how its being tried in the news cycle show that there’s precious little difference between what you’re describing and what’s happening here.</p>
<p>No “formal” warning…only informal ones.</p>
<p>“Warning: Your boss is a perv. Don’t tell your Democratic friends. Thank you.”
– The Management</p>
<p>Apparently, Fordham could have hung out the sign in 2004. So could have Reynolds. So could have Hastert.</p>
<p>I fully understand why they didn’t. I don’t expect the Party of the Clueless would have acted any differently if they’d had the opportunity.</p>
<p>They didn’t.</p>
<p>Now it’s time for a spanking.</p>
<p>Maybe Carl Rove put Foley up to it, to divert attention away from a drowning president and a disasterous war…</p>
<p>“No ‘formal’ warning…only informal ones.”</p>
<p>Or you could go with what was actually said.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Mini, I’d like to say how much I enjoy your posts. I know this is a serious subject, but sometimes your turn of a phrase absolutely cracks me up. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.</p>
<p>Strick11; we’ve discussed before the relative credibility of statements made by a person which might tend to be against their self-interest, and statements made which tend to bail them out of trouble. The former page who was quoted by ABC has not actually denied having told ABC what it reported. What he has stated since then is that he’s gotten a lot of flak for it, and then “clarified” what he “meant” to say. I don’t think it’s unfair of Mini to take the guy at his (original) word (although I’m not sure either version is necessarily absolutely correct.) It is clear that democrat pages were not notified of anything about Foley, but then, he may have restricted his “attention” to the pages on his side of the aisle.</p>
<p>With that, I’m back on the soapbox again: This isn’t about homosexuality. This is about pedophilia. The subliminal gay-bashing is in your mind, not ours. Just because you can’t keep yourself from equating homosexuals with pedophiles doesn’t mean that insisting on vigilance against the latter means attacking the former. We get this, even if you don’t.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - A senior congressional aide said Wednesday that he alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office in 2004 about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) with teenage pages — the earliest known alert to the GOP leadership. </p>
<p>Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had “more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene.”</p>
<p>The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.</p>
<p>Fordham resigned Wednesday as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y.</p>
<p>Fordham spoke to the AP after ABC News quoted unidentified GOP sources as insinuating that he had intervened on behalf of Foley, his former boss, to prevent an inquiry into Foley’s conduct.</p>
<p>“This is categorically false,” Fordham said. “At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries into Foley’s actions or behavior.”</p>
<p>The longtime Capitol Hill aide said he would fully disclose to the FBI and the House ethics committee “any and all meetings and phone calls” regarding Foley’s behavior that he had with senior staffers in the House leadership."</p>
<p>Thing is, Hastert is known for having a VERY good and efficient staff. I’m looking forward to the interviews. And I sure hope Denny doesn’t resign. I LOVE that pic with Mr. Sleaze, Denny, Foley and the Mullah Omar lover, doing the political happy dance! Put that in an ad with the $20 mil for the “Victory Party” now that the insurgency is in its final throes.</p>
<p>Strick:
If the principal at your childs school was told to ‘watch out for teacher Mr. X, he’s a bit odd or flakey’ what would you take that to mean?</p>
<p>If my child was told that at school, her first question would be, “In what way?”</p>
<p>Yeah, that is what I would have hoped for Alexander, Hastert, et al to have asked</p>
<p>They probably didn’t want to know. (There are certain things representatives of the PFV SHOULDN’T know.) More probably, they already did. </p>
<p>Love to interview those staffers…</p>
<p>It’s a cosmic-level funny to have the official gay-bashing party say that this scandal is all about gay-bashing.</p>
<p>Funny - I didn’t know Hastert was gay. (That might explain “it”.)</p>