Posted on 10/04/2006 2:56:10 PM PDT by blogblogginaway
ABCNews.com brought Mark Foley's boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn't the first website to flog the story. That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle. In other words, a blog whose sole raison d'etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.
If its time/date stamps are to be trusted (like most free blogware, Blogger allows its users to backdate posts), the pervert-outing anony-site was set up on July 28 as a "clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned citizens."
One early post, headlined The Sickening Six, naming and shaming the "kinds of sick people who hunt minors for their own sick purposes," is basically an amalgam of plagiarized entries from Crimelibrary, Wikipedia, and Answers.com. (Click here, here, and here, for examples.)
After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, "the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!" and posted four emails purportedly from "interns" outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys.
(Of course, if these emails are legit, it means the "interns" somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.)
One "intern" wrote:
"...I came to Washington because I care about the future of America. I wanted to be around good and decent men like President George Bush. Instead, I feel like a piece of meat. The worst part of it for me is there appear to be plenty of my fellow interns who don't mind Foley's particular 'path to power.'"
Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!", claiming they'd been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which promptly dismissed them as fakes. ABC, of course, took them more seriously.
Whoever promoted the story on DailyKos did so only 12 minutes after the fateful post went live at 11:06 a.m.:
Six minutes later, the same person, again writing under the handle WHinternNOW posted the following:
Back on Sept. 5, however, that very same WHinternNOW posted a suspiciously more informed-sounding take on the congressman:
Whoever is behind the blog hasn't responded to emails from Radar or any other outlets, and seems to have lost interest in the site.
"I'm thrilled that so many folks are looking at this simple blog...." the author wrote on October 2, the last day the site was updated. "If you have any ideas that I should post, please let me know. I'm happy to pass along information about the current situation, but would much prefer to keep marching toward the large goal or stopping sex predators. I don't think we'll see it in the Congress anytime soon, so let's focus our energy elsewhere."
What, leaving the party so soon?
Thanks SuziQ. You post #118 is right on.
Yes, it's the D's fault, not Foley's.
It's unbelievable how many on FR are defending this guy.
Wise up Sparky. Show me ONE post that I've made regarding Foley in which I have defended him.
NObody is defending Foley because what he did WAS disgusting, however what the 'Rats appear to have done is damn near EQUALLY disgusting because they chose to sit on that information about Foley until it was the most advantageous time to blow the whistle.
"leaving minors at risk"
Yes, I have been especially disgusted with this aspect. Whoever knew about any of this garbage from Foley .. thought it was more important to save the stuff to hit the repubs with during an election time than it was to make sure the young pages were safe.
I find this as much or more reprehensible than what Foley did.
However, my local talk radio guy, Roger Hedgecock, interviewed one of the parents of a current page, and he was very confident in what the repubs did and how they handled the issue .. and he considered the pages safe.
Also .. what's not being said is that the contacts with one Page happened AFTER HE LEFT THE PAGE PROGRAM.
I am sure there are some Democrats who think it's rather funny that a Republican is resigning under circumstances for which they practice on a daily basis. These are sick demented people with no morals whatsoever.
I agree. The double standard is very evident.
MSM is more than willing to spread the lies, - they even volunteered to make up new ones.
NObody is defending Foley because what he did WAS disgusting, however what the 'Rats appear to have done is damn near EQUALLY disgusting because they chose to sit on that information about Foley until it was the most advantageous time to blow the whistle.
Damn near equally disgusting?
You RNC hacks are sick.
You don't get it do you "Penner"?
If someone knows of the behavior of somebody like Foley, and sits on the information, and indeed USES that information for their own partisan purposes, that makes them every bit as offensive as Foley.
And once again, nobody is defending Foley, and you failed to cite any post of mine in which I did anything close to it. Like most sleeper-trolls, you make accusations (i.e., that I'm "defending" Foley) and when you're called on to back them up, you can't do it.
I'm surprised you've survived this long without hearing the sound of the Viking Kitties approaching.
(sniff, is that Ozone in the air?)
Surely possible. Also, Hasterts Ch of Staff Palmer is listed as 55 y/o, "single", no children. He may well be in the faggot side of this, and have been the "senior staff" to whom Fordham "reported" to re: Foley. If Palmer "happens to be gay", he might well have minimized/diverted whatever he learned from Fordham and other sources, hoping it would just blow over.
Perhaps the FBI will pry the mask off.
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