It’s interesting that IF he had actually had physical sexual contact with one of the 17-year-old pages (in DC), it would probably not have been illegal. The AoC in DC is 16. However, because of the Adam Walsh Act, which Foley himself authored and got passed, the emails and IMs were themselves a federal crime.
Now, there are ethical considerations about Congressmen having relations with pages here, none of them good for Foley. But if he had actually been sleeping with them, and limited it to that rather than emailing and IMing them, he’d probably be home free on the legal front.
Even the date is different; the one I quoted was dated the 29th, and this one is dated the 30th. Same URL, though.
But you can still find the original by Googling the stuff in brackets here: {“national center for missing and exploited children” foley}, and clicking on “Cached” after the entry, “Statement on the Resignation of Congressman Mark Foley” which at least for now is at the top of the list.
I hate to burst your bubble on this one, but the story started breaking on Thursday, and Foley’s resignation (and the content of the icky IMs) seems to have been in play in plenty of time to make the Friday evening news.
When using a Friday evening news release to try to bury an unpleasant story as painlessly as possible, the object is to release the story too late for the early-evening TV news and drive-time radio news, so that the play the story gets is pretty much limited to the late-night TV news on Friday and the Saturday morning papers, both of which have comparatively small audiences.
As I was saying in Great Debates, checking into rehab allows you both to say, “I’m taking responsibility for my actions,” and “It wasn’t me, it was the demon rum!” It’s a weird modern form of penance that seems de rigueur for public officials caught in scandal.
If every alcoholic on Capitol Hill checked into rehab, would there be anyone left?
Is he even an alcoholic? His issue isn’t drink, it’s young men.
Where is the GOP outrage that occurred with Monica? That’s all I ever heard-“she’s so young; he’s the President; the power imbalance etc”
I hear Dems saying that-I don’t hear GOPers saying that. Guess whoever upthread was right: IOKIYAR.
Nice.
I swear, I try to keep an independent spirit, but I have yet to see a Rep in the past 8 years who doesn’t creep me out on some level.
I hope the so called liberal media runs with this-hard and fast and long. Doubt it, though.
Seriously; I’m guessing he likes his cocktails virgin.
That’s not fair, I don’t think. The GOP outrage is certainly present here; the leadership has condemned him in very strong language. The issue isn’t over whether they’re showing outrage. The issue is over whether they’re showing it now for political purposes–did they cover this up as long as they could?
How can these guys be so stupid. I mean, really… do they think stuff isn’t going to get out? It just seems beyond belief, and yet it happens over and over again.
I’m not sure what you mean. Would you like a personal phone call from the House Republican leadership expressing their outrage? I mean, it is in the papers, and I don’t see any Republicans dismissing the charges.
Not really. It seems to be a reasonable accomodation when the rules allow for a candidate to be added to the list after the ballots have been printed. There might be a problem if absentee ballots have already been received, but I’m not sure they would be. I haven’t even gotten my absentee ballot yet, although I live CA, not FL.
Surely if they can rig the machines to switch votes after they are cast they could program them to accept a new candidate’s name after he has replaced another.
Why is reasonable to assume that if someone intended to vote for Republican A, they would also vote for Republican B? Is it also reasonable to you to omit candidates names altogether, and simply ask voters to vote for their party affiliation?
I am not too concerned about being “fair”-when has the GOP been fair to any Dem candidate/rep in the past 10 years? Remember when Hillary had to apologize for not baking cookies? The GOP is better at haranguing people about casual remarks, bad behavior etc. There is no “fair” about it. Hey, I’m all for decency of character and not kicking folks when they’re down, but this case is different. We’re talking about a guy who is either in such deep denial he might as well be in Egypt or one of the most callous hypocrites in DC (which is saying something). He sponsored legislation all the while doing what he was legislating against! The mind boggles.
By GOP I meant more man on the street, not the paid schills that spout party line BS. Which goes back to my agreement with IOKIYAR. I probably need to get out more, but I have not heard word one about this from people around town, which tells me that it hasn’t gotten the attention of Average Joe and Jane, yet.
It makes me wonder if the GOP doesn’t fear scandal more than the content of the scandal itself. Sort of like the dread people have a there being a scene in public. So, they don’t look at the thing itself-the abuse of power, the predatory aspects of it etc-they just want it to go away. It’s “ok” because he resigned immediately and went into treatment (how do you dry out a pedophile*? force him to AARP videos until his eyes bleed?). Is it so simple as “we can’t show moral weakness”, so get Foley off the public stage ASAP? Are they really that black and white?
In many (most?) jurisdictions, a part of the nomination process for a candidate is the naming of his “Vacancy Committee” – those charged with the duty of naming who will replace him if he is for some reason unable to run/accept the nomination/etc. If you read the fine print on a nomination petition, you’ll likely find that not only are you signing for John Bruce Forthright to be the Republicrat nominee for the 5th District Congressional seat, but also, if he should be struck by lightning while campaigning, for the three men who nominated him, Messrs. Backroom, Stringpuller, and Bosshawg, to name the person who will replace him on the ballot.
The alcohol rehab thing is ridiculous. That’s what you do when you get pulled over for drunk driving. But drunk inappropriately having cyber-sex with teenaged prior pages of yours? The alcohol simply lowered his inhibitions to the point where he got caught. It didn’t make him a whatever-phile.
Well, to look at this thing as humanely as common decency allows, the idea that Foley may have been self-medicating in codependent quantities isn’t all that far-fetched. The guy was a closeted pedo- or ephebophile or whatever he is deeply involved in child protection legislation. Unless Foley was utterly without a conscience and sense of irony, I imagine this arrangement would have left him deeply conflicted, even tormented. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it drove him to drink, and then it was perhaps the drink that also disinhibited him enough to write some of those incredibly unwise emails and IMs. His coping mechanism maybe was his undoing.
Just imagine if it were Barney Frank. Sean would shreik himself hoarse, if his bitch Colmes made even the mildest demurral, he would leap across the table and tear out his throat with his teeth!