Posted on 10/01/2006 3:45:10 PM PDT by MSM Hater
Edited on 10/01/2006 4:03:57 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., requested Sunday that the Justice Department conduct an investigation into former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s electronic messages to teenage boys — a lurid scandal that has put House Republicans in political peril.
"As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley's conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated federal law," Hastert wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
First, I'm not indignant about the maybe dirty tricks. That's politics. (That said, Hastert is right to have this looked into, for the following reasons: someone may have known that laws were being broken and did nothing about it purely for the sake of politics.)
Secondly, IF Republicans knew that a Rat was breaking the law by sexually soliciting children, and they did nothing in order to keep that info under wraps for purely political purposes, yes, I definitely would be very, very ticked at the Republicans.
There is no excuse for someone---much less an individual in a public office such as in Congress---to let these perverse contacts with children continue just b/c they want to control the timing of bringing the perp down. That goes for either party.
I only hope that your exquisite analogies light up the blogosphere and, from there, make it to talk radio and the LSM.
Excellent.
Well, Miss Marple, I have had the exact same deja-vu through all this. It is *so* 2004.
While I hope Foley gets everything the law can throw at him, I also hope the timing of the IM allegations, which apparently was controlled by the Sorosbots, backfires on the Rats big-time.
I would love it if Jeb Bush became the write-in candidate for Foley's district. Another Bush in Washington, any way, shape or form, would have their panties in a wad.
Be careful here: there is a big distinction between the emails, which are wierd, but not sexual in nature, and the IMs, which are officially gross.
The emails were known about much, much earlier. The IMs were only revealed recently.
Is someone putting this all together on a blog or something so all the research is easily accessible by the outside world?
How much you wanna bet the "other congressmen" include Rats as well?
No, the investigation is not into what Foley did only, it is into WHO had the info, WHEN they had it and WHY the crucial evidence of a crime---the IMs, not the emails---were not released/revealed until AFTER the date by which the Republican Party could replace Foley on the ballot.
IOW, Hastert is alleging, if subtly, that someone (probably the Rats) allowed children to be continued to be solicited sexually just because they (probably the Rats) wanted to control the TIMING for destroying Foley's career at a time which did maximum political damage to his party as well.
"Is someone putting this all together on a blog or something so all the research is easily accessible by the outside world?"
There are quite a few bloggers working on this..most of them have links.
Here is a good place to start: (Thanks to AliVeritas)
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/09/mark_foley_thre.html
Here's the links from Foleygate/Altered Images
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/foleygate-altered-images-whats-going.html
Wild Bill
http://passionateamerica.blogspot.com/2006/10/foleygate-mark-foley-emails-altered.html
Barking Mad
http://justbarkingmad.com/?p=1154
RedState reports that these news organizations knew about the Foley emails in 2005:
We have ascertained that the list of media organizations that knew of this information as early as November of 2005 include:
Washington Post
Roll Call
ABC News
St. Petersburg Times
Palm Beach Post
It's starting to look like the only ones who didn't know about the extent of the scandal were Republicans. Is this just democrat desperation? (http://matwellworld.blogspot.com/2006/09/democrats-are-getting-desperate-and.html)
http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2006/what_did_they_know_and_when_did_they_know_it
Does anyone else smell something fishy?
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/10/i_smell_a_rat.html
How did ABC get all of that followup information before the story broke? How long were they holding on to this information? How many democrats knew about this but, rather than protecting the Congressional pages from a suspected predator by reporting the information, sat on it until election time? What was the collaboration between the democrats and the media, this time?
http://www.rathergate.com/
We also know that there are different Congressional pages involved here. One is the page who worked in Representative Alexander's office (http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/sixteenyearold_.html). Another page exchanged instant messages in 2003 with Foley and these messages are just now being reported (http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/02-02-03b.pdf).
Flopping Aces has much more.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2006/10/01/foleygate-has-begun/
Ray Robison compares and contrasts coverage of democrat vs. republican scandal.
http://rayrobison.typepad.com/ray_robison/2006/10/compare_and_con.html
American Thinker asks the questions.
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=6256
Pajamas has a roundup of reaction.
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/2006/10/foley_scandal_snowballs.php#comments
HAVE FUN....LOL
WOW. Thank you.
And thanks to the blogosphere for all the good work.
Haster is very late on this. He should have requested an investigation within a few hours of Foley's resignation.
Can someone tell me what crime has been committed here ?
Me too. Could go into a long post but what crime on the books. U.S., some other jurisdiction??? Yes bad actor but what crime????
Right, right after they ask Rumsfeld to resign. Again.
Yawn.
RIDICULOUS. I hope Hastert and Republicans ignore this stupidity.
Federal officials familiar with the very early assessment of the Mark Foley e-mails say that at this point, there's no clear indication that federal laws were violated.
The law that might be involved is the prohibition on "enticement," which makes it a crime to use any interstate means of communication to entice minors to engage in any sexual act. But it as a relatively high threshold for prosecution -- the communication must explicitly propose a sexual act. The initial assessment, and it's a very early read, is that none of the e-mails that have been made public meet that test.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15103356/
There was another thread just on the Washington TImes calling for this, but it was pulled. If they are calling from anything they are calling him to resign his speakership, not from congress. None-the-less, I think the TImes is jumping the gun on this.
Hastert, who did not take questions from reporters, called on any person who was aware of the 2003 instant messages to speak to law enforcement authorities. He said no Republican leader in Congress was aware of those exchanges until Friday, when ABC News reported it had questioned Foley about them.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15103356/
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