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Former Rep. Mark Foley is trying to master the art of the comeback. Three years after the former Florida congressman resigned amid disclosures that he was sending lurid text messages to teenage, male pages on Capitol Hill, a scandal in which Foley was never charged with a crime, he is taking a step back into public life -- this time as a radio personality. "Foley on Politics" debuts Tuesday night on Seaview AM 960 in North Palm Beach. "We certainly looked at every aspect and every angle, and we thought the information aspect of what he brings to the table,...

“Outrage” is the talk of the Tribeca film festival. The documentary by filmmaker Kirby Dick claims that several politicians who vote “anti-gay” on political issues are actually gay themselves, and have had verifiable trysts with men. The documentary contains interviews with men who claim to have had sex with these “anti-gay” politicians. Of course, many liberal media outlets are trying to keep the identities of the politicians “outed” by Outrage a secret. Some claim that sexuality (even for politicians) is a personal issue that should not be made public without consent under any circumstances. That is sheer nonsense. In the...

As Obama passes his first 100 days in office, I find myself sad that we liberals have less and less to complain about. Guantanamo Bay is closing, good health care policy is in the works, and I no longer have nightmares about McCain invading my living room on top of an elephant as if he were a Carthaginian emperor. Nonetheless, liberals in 2009 still have more things to complain about than Holden Caulfield would, holding a broken Miley Cyrus record. One such complaint is homosexuality in America. This week's "gay controversy" surrounded Miss California and her Twitter-quarrel with Perez Hilton....

There have been so many scandals since October, 2006, the month that I launched this blog, that I just about forgot who Mark Foley was. I got an excited phone call yesterday from two friends, TV producer Richard Ayoub and talent manager Dolores Cantu, who were having lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Sitting the next table over was Foley, who resigned just before the midterms after the revelation that he sent inappropriate e-mail messages to a congressional page. Ayounb and Cantu didn't know immediately recognize him until he told them he had once been in Congress. The jist of...

Two years ago, ABC’s Brian Ross broke wide open the scandal of Republican Rep. Mark Foley sending sexual Internet messages to Congressional pages. Foley resigned quickly, but that didn’t dampen the story. We reported "On the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs, from the story’s emergence on Friday night, September 29, through Wednesday morning, October 11, the Big Three networks have aired 152 stories." On October 11's Good Morning America, news anchor Christopher Cuomo spoke insistently: "Less than a month before the elections and the Mark Foley scandal just keeps growing." Reporter Jake Tapper added: "This is...

On Monday, NewsBusters wondered how much coverage the sex scandal involving Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fl.) -- the Democrat Congressman who in 2006 won the seat previously held by the disgraced Mark Foley -- would get. Early indications suggest that as far as the television news outlets are concerned, the answer is "not much." In fact, though all three broadcast network evening news programs covered the Foley sex scandal when it was first revealed on September 29, 2006, not one of them felt that the man who replaced him admitting to having an affair with a former campaign staffer was at...

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee. Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said. A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair...

Two years after Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s career imploded in a sex scandal, his successor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, faces allegations that he agreed to pay $121,000 to a former mistress who worked on his congressional and campaign staffs and was threatening to sue him. The allegations were first reported here by ABC News. Mahoney responded late this afternoon by calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation. Congress is in recess until after the Nov. 4 election. “I was notified this afternoon about a story that ran on ABC News‚ website reporting allegations about a former employee. While...

For the second consecutive election year, West Palm Beach has produced a potentially devastating congressional sex scandal – but this one involves a Democrat. ABC News reported Monday that Rep. Tim Mahoney — the Florida Democrat who replaced disgraced Republican Mark Foley in 2006 — paid $121,000 to a staffer with whom he had an affair. The news gives Republicans a desperately needed new line of attack just three weeks before Election Day. Mahoney, 52, paid former staffer Patricia Allen $61,000 — plus $60,000 in legal fees — after she threatened to sue him for sexual harassment and intimidation, the...

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) is finding himself in an October sex scandal, about two years after his GOP predecessor Mark Foley was forced to step down in the wake of his own personal indiscretions. ABC News is reporting that Mahoney agreed to pay a $121,000 settlement to a former mistress who worked on his Congressional and campaign staff since his 2006 campaign. The story also reveals that Mahoney promised her a job at the consulting firm that handles his campaign’s media production. Some of the juicy bits excerpted from the ABC story

Rep. Tim Mahoney paid $121,000 to a former mistress who worked on his staff and sued him after he threatened her job when she tried to end the relationship, former and current staff aides told ABC News on Monday. Mahoney, D-Fla., won his congressional seat in 2006 after Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican, was forced to resign in the wake of a scandal involving a congressional page. According to ABC News, Mahoney, who is married, started an affair with Patricia Allen while campaigning against Foley on a morality platform. Allen came on to his staff after he won the election...

Congressman's $121,000 Payoff to Alleged Mistress Tim Mahoney Elected to Remove 'Ethical Cloud' of His Disgraced Predecessor, Mark Foley By EMMA SCHWARTZ, RHONDA SCHWARTZ, and VIC WALTER Oct. 13, 2008— West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee. Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen,...

Nearly two years after a Florida congressman abruptly resigned over sexually explicit messages he sent to a teenage House page, law enforcement authorities here have concluded there is “insufficient evidence” to charge him with breaking Florida laws. Commissioner Gerald Bailey of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who was asked in September 2006 to look into the conduct of the congressman, Representative Mark Foley, Republican of West Palm Beach, said Friday that investigators were hampered by Mr. Foley’s refusal and that of Congress to grant them access to Congressional computer files. The department was investigating whether Mr. Foley violated Florida’s...

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Department of Law Enforcement Friday blamed federal justice officials, a U.S. House speaker and even Mark Foley himself for its failure to press charges against the disgraced former congressman involving the use of computers to solicit sex from minors. And even if FDLE had found grounds to charge Foley, the state did not launch the investigation until six months after the three-year statute of limitations had passed. "I am of course relieved ... the determination has been made that there is no probable cause to believe that I committed any crime," Foley said in a statement...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley isn't expected to face charges after a lengthy investigation into his lurid messages to underage congressional pages, two federal law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Teenaged congressional pages performed oral sex in front of their colleagues for weeks before they were caught and expelled from the program, according to a new report in Roll Call newspaper. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has pledged to reform the page program, which brings dozens of 15- and 16-year-old students to live and study in Washington, D.C., while working as aides in congressional offices. "As a mother and a grandmother, nothing is more important to me than the safety and security of our House pages," Pelosi said in a statement. The page program has been reportedly reformed at least...

So much for reform of the House page program in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal. House teenage pages are so wild and unsupervised that two GOP members of Congress have resigned from the House Page Board, protesting that they were not informed of two pages caught shoplifting and two others busted for engaging in public oral sex. One of the members who resigned, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida, tells the Sleuth that she felt "very, very uncomfortable" both as a mother and a grandmother continuing to serve on a board she feels is inadequately supervised.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2006 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes: 1. Jack Abramoff, Former Lobbyist – 2. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) 3. Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) 4. Former Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) 5. Former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) 6. Rep. Denny Hastert (R-IL) 7. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) 8. Rep. William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson (D-LA) 9. Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) 10. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) 6 Dishonorable Mentions: 1. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) 2....

Nancy Pelosi, like Santa Claus, has a big mouth. Hers is more inviting, but just as likely as Santa's to make promises she can't keep. Mzz Pelosi promises that the Democrats will deliver the squeaky cleaniest Congress anyone has lately seen. Her House will be straight and neat and you can even leave your valuables lying about. But someone will have to keep an eye on the delegation from Louisiana, where public servants are always on the lookout for "opportunities," as in the famous declaration of a former governor who, on his way to prison, explained what happened: "I seen...

If ever a news story bolstered Rush Limbaugh's low opinion of the "drive-by media," it is the tawdry saga of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. When the story about Foley's e-mails to former House pages first broke, cable news was All Foley/All the Time. The chattering classes -- this columnist included were outraged at the GOP leadership's inexcusable failure to protect vulnerable House pages from Foley. Many pundits didn't need proof, so happy were they to embrace Nancy Pelosi's charge that there had been a "cover-up of Mark Foley's outrageous behavior." When the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct...

A Democrat community leader who would "offer a homily during worship services" and facilitated his congregation's "opening our doors to all people regardless of sexual orientation" has been given a slap on the hand after pleading guilty to extensive child pornography offenses involving children as young as six. Authorities say Andrew Douglas Reed, 53, who reported for an abbreviated jail term just a few weeks ago, had pleaded guilty to a page-long list of counts of 2nd-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. Court records in the Asheville, N.C., case said he admitted that he would "record, develop and duplicate material...

Sex and the Stupid Republicans By DOUGLAS OLSON "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." — Gov. Edwin Edwards (D-La.) For the third time in two years, a Republican candidate has dropped out of a pending election because of a "sex scandal" that involves no sex at all! Not only has Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) quit in panic and fled to the relative safety of an alcohol-rehab program, but the GOP seems determined to sacrifice Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and its own chances of retaining...

Pop star Moby, known for his political statements as well as his music, says he'd do everything he could to make his future child homosexual should the singer ever have a family. He's also blasting conservatives Tom DeLay, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich as "amoral/immoral" right wingers. In an interview with Planet Out, a publication geared toward homosexuals, the musician, who is not "gay," was lamenting so-called homophobia in society when he suggested his future child should be raised to be a homosexual. "As a matter of fact, I was talking to my friend Laura, who sings on...

Mark Foley and James Webb -- A Study in Hypocrisy and Media Bias Written by Doc Farmer Tuesday, October 31, 2006 ChronWatch.com I'm sure all of you know the name Mark Foley by now. He is -- or, more accurately, was -- the Congressman for the 16th district in Florida, who sent some very sexual Instant Messages (NOT e-Mails, okay?) to a congressional Page. There's been some question as to whether the Page was 16 or 18 when those IMs were being sent, but it doesn't matter to me quite frankly. Foley was wrong, he violated the trust of his...

TALLAHASSEE - Elections supervisors in eight counties can post signs at polling places that say a vote for the disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is really a vote for his Republican replacement, as long as they name the Democrat, too, the 1st District Court of Appeal said Friday. Despite Foley's resignation nearly a month ago amid accusations that he sent lurid e-mails to congressional pages, his name is stuck on the ballot. While more than 11,000 voters in the 16th Congressional District have already cast votes without signs during early voting, the signs will go up and stay up,...

SHARONVILLE, Ohio -- If Republicans still have an ace up their sleeve in this fall campaign, it's people like Phil Burress. Mr. Burress, a thrice-married, self-described former pornography addict, is president of Citizens for Community Values, a statewide network of politically active Christian conservatives. His work here in 2004 helped turn out evangelical voters who put President Bush over the top in Ohio -- the state that made the difference between victory and defeat. This time around, Mr. Burress isn't nearly so happy with the president and his party. In fact, he can hardly say enough about how fed up...

(AgapePress) - The executive director of an organization that offers support to members and to the families of members of the "ex-gay" community -- former homosexuals and those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction -- has a unique perspective on the Mark Foley scandal. While reproaches and recriminations abound in the media, she says someone needs to offer the disgraced former Congressman and others like him a message of hope and truth. Regina Griggs of the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, says it is not enough for the public discourse to ignore Foley's homosexuality or to...

Radar has learned that the anony-blogger behind StopSexPredators—the bogus blog that first posted the Mark Foley e-mails and got the ball rolling on PageGate—is a former Democratic Senate staffer named Lane Hudson.

In the wake of the scandal surrounding former Congressman Mark Foley, what will Republican voters do? I believe they will hold their noses and go to the polls to re-elect a Republican Senate and Republican House of Representatives. They will comfort themselves with the thought that between now and 2008, they can cleanse their party. We will soon know. Tempus fugit. An article in The New York Times last week made this same point, stating, “As word of Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit e-mail messages to former pages spread last week, Republican strategists worried—and Democrats hoped—that the sordid nature of...

Not content with their hypocrisy on the Mark Foley situation (considering their responses to the Gerry Studds, Barney Frank and Bill Clinton escapades), the Democrats in Florida have launched a campaign to keep voters in the dark on November 7. Since the ballots are already printed with Foley’s name, a vote for Foley goes to the Republican substitute, Joe Negron.

"Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley will reveal to the Archdiocese of Miami the name of the Roman Catholic clergyman he says abused him as a teenager, Foley's civil attorney said Tuesday." ""It's going to be very clear in the coming days that it is a fact as opposed to any possible allegations that it was a fantasy or something made up for political purposes," attorney Gerald Richman said."

'On the nose" is a Hollywood expression. It refers to a scene or a piece of dialogue that is too obvious or too good to be true. Hollywood would have said the whole Mark Foley sex scandal is on the nose. Let's start with the fact that this confessed gay stalker of teenage congressional pages was co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. All over Hollywood, fingers would go to the tip of the nose: Can't we make it Armed Services? No, we cannot. To change anything at all about the Foley matter would be to trifle with...

October 17, 2006 -- THE death over the weekend of former Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress, is a stark reminder of how much all those howls of Democratic outrage over the Mark Foley scandal ring so hollow. The Massachusetts Democrat is being hailed by national political leaders, including Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, as a "role model" who "gave a lot of people courage" by coming out of the closet. Yet Studds openly declared his homosexuality only after an investigation revealed he'd had a sexual relationship with a male teenage congressional page and propositioned two...

Gerry E. Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress and a longtime proponent of environmental protection, New England fishermen and human rights, died Oct. 14 at Boston Medical Center, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog. He was 69. Mr. Studds lost consciousness because of a blood clot in his lung Oct. 3. He later regained consciousness and seemed to be improving, but his condition worsened Friday because of a second clot, according to Dean Hara, who married Mr. Studds in 2004 shortly after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. A 12-term congressman from Massachusetts, Mr....

U.S. Capitol Police said yesterday that they have no record of an alleged incident in which then-Rep. Mark Foley supposedly tried to enter a Capitol Hill dormitory for teenage pages. The purported nighttime incident has been cited by lawmakers and a key witness in the scandal that involves Foley's interactions with congressional pages and the House's handling of the matter. Unlike sexually graphic electronic messages that Foley sent to teenage boys, evidence of the alleged dorm incident has proved elusive. Yesterday, acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin said his staff conducted electronic and hand searches of files covering several years...

Many people think that if they mind their own business and keep their mouths shut they can avoid trouble. That's not always true, however, as Republican members of Congress are learning the hard way. Sometimes doing nothing is just flat wrong. The Bible shows multiple examples of people who failed to act, but were accountable for their failures. Take, for example, the priest and the Levite mentioned in the parable of the Good Samaritan who avoided the man who had been robbed and beaten by walking on the opposite side of the road. Was this not a sin? In the...

The always pertinent and to-the-point Sweetness & Light, has brought to our attention the case of David Scondras, an ex-City Councilor from Boston, who was arrested in an Internet sex sting early yesterday morning, when he went to meet a "15-year-old boy" with whom he had spoken "online." Scondras' first problem (well, second. . .eh, third. . .or. . .) - his most immediate problem was that the boy was actually a Lawrence, Massachusetts police officer:According to CBS-4 in Boston, this is what happened: Fmr. Boston Councilor Busted In Internet Sex StingOct 10, 2006 12:13 pm US/Eastern(CBS4) BOSTON Former Boston...

With the Democrats' full-throated moralizing of late, I'm almost tempted to vote for them — although perhaps "full-throated" is the wrong phrase to use with regard to Democrats and sex scandals. The sudden emergence of the Swift Butt Veterans for Truth demonstrates that the Democrats would prefer to talk about anything other than national security. Unfortunately for them, the psychotic Kim Jong Il seems to be setting off nukes, raising the embarrassing issue of the Clinton administration's 1994 "peace" deal with North Korea. At least with former Rep. Mark Foley, you could say the Democrats' hypocritical grandstanding was just politics....

It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the true scandal concerning a certain homosexual congressman's dirty instant messages and emails to teenage pages is just beginning to be heard. The Democrats, now wringing their hands, crying for the children and scaring us all with visions of pedophiles roaming the halls of congress, in fact not only knew the content of the various Foley e-mails and instant messages long before the Republican leadership of the house did, but did absolutely nothing about it for a very long time. The crocodile tears have been shown to be just that. There was absolutely...

I have watched, and I have waited. I have kept my eyes and ears open but still cannot seem to find the missing piece of the story. No one has yet asked the most obvious question about the Mark Foley scandal: How did Karl Rove pull this off? What Rove may have done -- tricking a Republican congressman into a series of sexually explicit internet exchanges with a teenage boy, recording and saving that exchange, then leaking it to the media immediately prior to the November elections -- is despicable. It is beyond words. Actually, that is precisely what it...

A leftist group with strong ties to the Democratic Party and to radical billionaire George Soros may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice in the Foley case. FBI investigators have accused the group CREW of concealing evidence of Rep. Mark Foley’s sexual misconduct over a period of several months. George Soros’ Open Society Institute contributed $100,000 to CREW in January 2006. “CREW is little more than a front for George Soros’ Shadow Party,” charges David Horowitz. “CREW has been withholding this evidence for months, apparently in order to release it just before the election. It is well known that...

One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren't quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle. According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot." So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the...

Posted by Tim Graham on October 9, 2006 - 08:48. In case you thought the Foley story was wrapping up on Friday, be warned that both Time and Newsweek weren't buying that. They wanted a chance to build its place in history/Republican infamy. Both covers are quite transparently partisan for the politically sensitive time of the season. Time has a huge black and white picture of an elephant's butt, with the words: "What a mess...Why a tawdry Washington sex scandal may spell the end of the Republican revolution". Time has been rooting for the end of the Republican revolution since...

It is now a month away from the mid-term elections and we might as well not hold them. I mean the MSM has already declared the Democrats to be the overwhelming winners. Not a doubt about it. The reason is that Mark Foley is gay. That's it. The Democrats will win FOR SURE in November because Mark Foley is gay. See, according the Democrat and MSM hopes, the "fundies" as they are called will stay home and not vote because Mark Foley is gay thus giving the victory to the Democrats. To ensure they stay home, Lawrence O'Donnell and...

Posted by Noel Sheppard on October 8, 2006 - 13:25. Conceivably one of the finest examples of hypocrisy and liberal media bias I’ve witnessed since this blog was created occurred on Sunday’s “The Chris Matthews Show.” The first subject for the panel – which consisted of Norah O’Donnell, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Sullivan, and Maureen Dowd – was – drum roll please – Mark Foley. As one would expect, there was tremendous disgust for Foley’s behavior, and the panel enunciated ties to Republican corruption and competence. Yet, when the discussion moved to Sen. Hillary Clinton running for president in 2008, and...

In times past, no public figure would want to be associated with dirty political tricks. Nowadays, however, Lawrence O'Donnell is enthusiastically flaunting the fact that the Democrats have stooped to the sleazy tactic of outing gays as a campaign tactic. The McLaughlin Group panelist and former producer of The West Wing has no qualms about his party engaging in sleaze as he pointed out in his October 5 Blog in The Huffington Post: The LA Times has outed Kirk Fordham today. He will not be the last closeted gay Republican outed by this scandal. So is this outing of Republican...

The truth about 'gay' pedophiliahttp://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52330 http://tinyurl.com/n6tcp Posted: October 7, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Olivia St. John Liberals are experts at framing debates in their favor. Since the Foley fiasco hit the news, the emphasis has been on evils lurking within the Republican Party. Incredibly, political editor Brian E. Crowley of the Palm Beach Post opined, "Rumors that Foley is gay have swirled around him for years. … But on Friday, whether Foley was a homosexual or a heterosexual no longer seemed to matter." Really? Why would that be considered inconsequential? Could it be because the Democrat Party embraces legalizing...

(CNN) -- The head of the Republican House campaign committee apologized Saturday for not catching Rep. Mark Foley in alleged lies about his Internet exchanges with teen pages. Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-New York, issued the apology in a TV commercial aired in his Buffalo-area district. He also reiterated his assertion that he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, about Foley's behavior in the spring. "I trusted that others had investigated. Looking back, more should have been done, and for that, I'm sorry," Reynolds said. "I was told about odd but not explicit e-mails between Mark Foley and a page," he...

Oct. 7, 2006 — House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff met with disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley to discuss the time and attention Foley was giving House pages years before the speaker's office admits becoming aware of the issue, a current House staffer told ABC News. The staffer, who asked not be identified because of the ongoing FBI and House Ethics Committee investigations, told ABC News of learning in November 2005 about an earlier meeting between Hastert Chief of Staff Scott Palmer and Foley, R-Fla. November 2005 was around the time Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., head of the...

Hopefully, I can finish writing this column today before it is OTBE. That's slang for the phrase "Over Taken By Events" On Wednesday, I had cranked out a piece for Sunday on two topics: Reaction to the Amish school murders and the nasty Mark Foley flap that has gripped the halls of power. The first part expressed outrage because members of the Westboro Baptist Church had announced they planned to protest at the funerals of the Amish girls killed Monday in Lancaster County, PA. In case you don't remember them, they're the bunch out of Kansas that pickets the funerals...