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?
Look how many of those are on FR! "I'm going to vote for Hillary and teach that dirty GOP a lesson!" How many times have we heard that?
In 2001, Private First Class Gomer Pyle received an honorary promotion to Lance Corporal from the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones.
Rats resign???? They will never resign; they have no shame!
We are the ones who resign when it's the honorable thing to do!!!
If parents didnt' want to make this public, it seems they didn't care if others were exploited. That is not a good place to be, IMHO.
what you really mean is......you don't care about the truth.
ABC's been Buckheaded!
Check Google's cache of the website. If there is no cache, then it was probably backdated.
My dial up rarely lets me visit Little Green Footballs. IMHO, it's one of the very best places to visit.....after FR of course.
Dont' get me wrong. I think of the two, Gomer was a real war hero.
One of the more egregious offenses by Jefferson was the diverting of a helicopter from rescuing stranded residents so he could get his cash out of his freezer.
You should have noticed the dates:
Creation date: 04 Oct 2006 19:24:48
Expiration date: 04 Oct 2007 19:24:48
This is bogus.
Possible, but it could have been renewed on that date.
Don`t forget that the Republicans ,(rightly so), have been warning the voters about who will run the House if the Rats should win. Now, throw as much mud at Hastert and maybe San Fran Nancy doesn`t look so bad. Those that what to blame Denny for Foley should realize that they are helping the Rats big time.
Who is responsible for Foley's behavior? Well, last I checked Foley is. Not anyone else.....Foley. Maybe the republican leadership got too lax.....but we ARE fighting a war on terror.....email and IM stupidity that likely was stupid but not illegal or a damaging as actual sex with a page would not have been a high priority of mine.
"Possible, but it could have been renewed on that date."
No. The site only started in July.
You have the wrong site name/url.
It's: stopsexpredators.blogspot.com
And they have their Whois masked:
Whois.Net
http://www.whois.net/whois.cgi2?d=stopsexpredators.blogspot.com
You signed up today just to post that bit of obvious disinformation?
What "sources" are you even talking about?
Pelosi believes this Foley sex scandal will get her elected Speaker of the House.
Thanks. I just plugged in the name as left by another freeper.
here is a bit of BIO on FORDHAM I stumbled across:
Kirk Fordham, U.S., Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-NY
Personal: Born April 4, 1967, in Rochester, N.Y., single, no children
Education: University of Maryland, College Park, B.A. Government and Politics, 1989
Career: Legislative assistant and legislative director, U.S. Rep. Jim Inhofe, R-OK (1989-91)
PAC director and legislative analyst, Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers (1991-92)
Deputy chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Jim Inhofe (1992-94)
Campaign manager, Mark Foley for Congress (March 1994-December 1994)
Chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL (1995-2004)
Finance director, Mel Martinez for U.S. Senate (January 2004-January 2005)
National Field Director, DCI Group, Public Affairs (2005)
Chief of staff, Rep. Tom Reynolds, Chairman, National Republican Congressional Committee (2005-present)
http://www.cantorforcongress.com/news/2006/june/chiefs_of_staff.htm
(last entry at bottom of page)
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