Posted on 10/03/2006 1:28:59 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, has resigned abruptly from the House on the revelation by ABC News of “sexual” instant messages to underage male pages. The Democrats in Congress and in the media are trying to hang this albatross around the necks of Republican leaders, and Republicans generally.
There is incompetent reporting, either accidental or deliberate, on this story. Foley sent e-mails to some pages that were not overtly sexual. Almost the entire press has failed to report the differences between e-mails and instant messages. Since most reporters use both methods of communications or can easily get information about them, there’s no excuse for this fault.
E-mails are automatically recorded in the process of being sent. They do NOT go directly from the sender to the receiver. They are saved on servers on computers other than those of the sender and receiver. A competent computer guru can find, recover, and report on contents of e-mails.
Instant messages (IM’s) are quite different. They can only be sent when the sender and recipient are on-line simultaneously. They go directly from sender to receiver. They are NOT recorded anywhere, unless either the sender and/or receiver sets up his “cache,” or temporary local memory, to do that.
The nasty IM’s that have come to light now, and sealed Foley’s fate, were sent more than year ago. Someone, most likely the pages who received them, must have recorded these, and through the blogosphere, made them available to the press. There is no factual support for the insinuation that Speaker Dennis Hastert, or anyone else in Congress except Foley, knew anything about these IM’s before ABC broke this story.
I stop at this point to make clear my opinion of all adults – male or female – who pray on children – male or female. Such alleged “grownups” are monsters who do not belong in Congress, do not belong in public, and do belong in the seventh circle of Hell. That said, the rest of this is about the consequences of the Foley resignation.
Democrats are attempting to portray this as a “moral failure” of the Republican Party and therefore a reason for all voters to vote for them. The Democrat who was running against Foley and is now running against state Rep. Joe Negron (the new Republican nominee), is already running TV ads on that. Let’s examine the record to see whether that claim has any legitimacy.
Gerry Studds (remember him? he was in all the papers) was a Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts. He was not accused of inappropriate communications. He was found to have had sexual relations with a page. By an overwhelming vote, he was censured by the House in 1983. After that, he was reelected repeatedly, with the full support of the Democrat Party.
Barney Frank (he was in all the papers) was a Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts. In 1989 he was found to have kept a male prostitute in his Capitol Hill apartment and to have done legislative favors for him. Frank was strongly censured by the House. He has been repeatedly reelected and is still in the House, with the full support of the Democrat Party.
Wait a minute, you say, Frank had nothing to do with underage boys. Well, in my years in District Court in Baltimore City, I saw more than a few prostitutes and pimps. Since their activities are already illegal, they don’t seek proof of the age of the prostitutes. They provide what the customer wants, male or female, of whatever age.
Then there’s Ted Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts. Admittedly, his known sexual peccadillo was with an adult female. In 1969 he left Mary Jo Kopechne alive in his sunken car. She drowned while he left the scene to set up his alibi. Kennedy has been repeatedly reelected with the full support of the Democrat Party.
Last but not least, there is William Jefferson Clinton. Surely you’ve heard of him? He had sex in his office with a female subordinate. The manager of your local McDonalds would be fired on the spot if he had sex with a female fry cook at work. Clinton still enjoys the full support of the Democrat Party.
I repeat, I make no brief for Rep. Foley’s conduct. I am delighted that he is out of Congress immediately. However, the Democrat response is not to dump the Member. Instead, it is to wait while the Member hunkers down, and then to support him for reelection. Democrats do worse than what Foley did. They do not resign, nor does their Party ask them to resign.
For the Democrats to seek to make Foley a partisan issue in the 2006 election is the height of hypocrisy. Men who cannot control their own zippers are unfit to be in leadership positions in the federal government. All of them. Republican, Democrat, or independent. No exceptions.
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About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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"who pray on children " pray sb prey
I listened to a radio host today, whose guest is the Speaker of the House. The host believes the reason why the Speaker did not act sooner, was because of political correctness. It appears, if the Speaker would have said something like: "A member of Congress, who is a homosexual, had contact with underage teens", it would label the Speaker a homophobe.
From my understanding, a homophobe is someone who has a phobia about homosexuals. You need a physician to declare one suffers from a 'phobia'. No doctors note, no phobia.
What Foley did was the standard "modus operandi" of homosexuals. If only America would rise up against this moral decay.
I am reminded of that old saying, "Your sins will find you out".
I think you just flunked reading comprehension. Surely by now, you have read that the emails were investigated, found not to be sexual, and a request was made by the boy's family to drop the investigation. You failed miserably, to use your own words.
The GOP knew that the guy was gay and a little creepy, but the voters elected him anyway. You have to remember that Foley worked to stop abuse, and voted that way. Sure maybe the leadership should have taken a closer look at him, but that is hindsight.
Everyone knew that Foley was gay and was asking young male pages for pictures and buying them gifts. What else did they need to know. Hastert should have taken him behind closed doors and told him to resign or be publicly disgraced.
A gay man buying a 16 year old boy gifts and asking him for photos is a sexual advance. They kid sent the messages to a member of Congress and called them sick. He obviously thought they were sexual.
I didn't read anything about any gifts that were bought. Foley asked the guy what he wanted, but he didn't give him anything, as far as I know. The kid and his parents, requested that the investigation be dropped and after following the proper channels, the investigation was dropped.
I didn't read anything about any gifts that were bought. Foley asked the guy what he wanted, but he didn't give him anything, as far as I know. The kid and his parents, requested that the investigation be dropped and after following the proper channels, the investigation was dropped, but not before someone had a talk with Foley and told him to cut it out.
Look, the guy is undoubtedly a creep, and may have done worse things than we know about, but Hastert had no knowledge of any thing that would
I still have not found text of the actual e-mails he sent, have the actual word for word writings come out? If so, can you point me to a link to read them????
"I think you just flunked reading comprehension. Surely by now, you have read that the emails were investigated, found not to be sexual, and a request was made by the boy's family to drop the investigation. You failed miserably, to use your own words."
I agree. The emails were found according to the FBI not to be criminal. The emails in question were all that Speaker Hastert had at the time and he did the appropriate thing which was to tell Foley to knock it off. Not only that but even the NY Times and several other liberal publications knew about the emails and found them not to be newsworthy.
With all the information, the numerous threads, I'm amazed that you still don't get it. The republican leadership didn't "sit" on the emails. The republican leadership never SAW the emails. The parents shared them with their representative and asked that they not be shared with anyone else. They emails were not criminal or sexual in nature so, figuring that the parents actually knew what's best for their child, (what a concept) the representative shared the information (not the emails) with those responsible for overseeing the page program and then shared it with Denny Hastert (again, the information, NOT the emails). Foley was called on the carpet and evidently the email exchange stopped. Now what is it that the republican leadership should've done? Asked Foley to resign on the basis of 2nd or third hand information about unseen emails? Hire a hacker to break into Folely's and/or the kid's computer(s) to see if they could find any evidence of a crime that was never committed? Remember, this isn't the same young man who Foley was IMing, they had no idea any of that was going on.
Should we, as a society, start investigating all men who we THINK (based on a smile, a phrase, an email) are acting inappropriately and thus "probably" committing some kind of crime...sounds like a feminist wet dream to me. Hindsight is 20/20. I bet even someone such as yourself has looked back on certain situations in your life and wondered why you didn't see something that in hindsight was so obvious. In this particular case it wouldn't just be Foley's privacy that was violated but the family's who SPECIFICALLY asked this remain private. I trust the parents to know what's best for their child...or should we adopt Hillary's point of view and let the whole village decide what's right for our family?
Cindie
This just gets more and more ridiculous by the minute. How do you KNOW the leadership "never really" asked him what was going on? Were you at the meeting where he was questioned and told to stop emailing pages? It'd be refreshing if you'd just think about what people are telling you instead of just regurgitating the same nonsense over and over again. I expect this kind of stuff from the left but I would hope conservatives would be able to think critically.
How did "everyone" know he was asking male pages for pictures and buying them gifts? Only the boy, Foley and their representative saw the emails. While Foley did ask what he wanted for his birthday there was never any indication he bought the kid anything. Hastert should've asked him to resign because of emails that asked for a picture and what he wanted for his birthday? That's absurd! We're dealing with reality here, not dem talking points.
And everyone should know Mark Foley was a homoxexual Democrat in Florida who was suddenly joining the Republican party - with the support of his "former democratic supporters" to run for Congress?
I smell a sting.
If you think the feigned "outrage" we're seeing over Foley is bad, just realize that it would pale in comparison to the relentless sh!t the media would dump on Hastert after the scenario you suggested was spun by the Democrats as a homophobic outing of a fine Congressman.
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