Not one of the best-written diaries ever, but I think I get my point across. The people who gave money to Mark Foley should now demand that he donate his campaign money to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Hastert did not dispute the claims of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), and his office confirmed that some of Hastert's top aides knew last year that Foley had been ordered to cease contact with the boy and to treat all pages respectfully.

And Hastert's Majority Leader decides to let the truth be known:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post on Friday that he had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert, who appeared to know already of the concerns.

Well, maybe not:

Hours later, Boehner contacted The Post to say he could not be sure he had spoken with Hastert.

No, they're the hypocritical, corrupt, sexual predator-enabling Republican Party.  Please make the correction; I'm serious.

Pedophiles are adults who are sexually attracted to and pursue sex with prepubescent children.

The age of consent in DC and many states is 16, in recognition that 16-year-olds are not children.

What Mark Foley did was sexual harassment and sexual predation. He's abused his power with young people in a wholly inappropriate, wrong, possibly criminal way, and his behavior was allowed to continue and covered up by the Republican leadership.

But he's not a pedophile.

I'd love to be able to call this guy a pedophile, because it's such a terribly negative term and he clearly deserves quite a bit of scorn, but it's just not accurate. He's a sexual predator, but he's not a pedophile.

Plus, how could you say someone's a pedophile for preying on a 17yo over the internet, but not a pedophile if they prey on that same child elsewhere? It just doesn't work. Pedophile isn't a legal term, it's a psychiatric one; and Foley isn't a pedophile (for all we know).

Just my opinion...

Everyone's focused on Hastert, and certainly he needs to leave his post, if accountability means anything. But that weasel Shimkus has to leave the page board and be censured; he didn't even fulfil the minimum responsibility of letting his two colleagues on the board know.

Boehner's changed his story so many times it's almost getting funny.

And Reynolds, who I like to think of as "their Rahm Emanuel", is going to have a tough time sealing himself off.  Immediately, when the emails were made public, his chief of staff Kirk Fordham (Foley's former c.o.s. for ten years) took a leave from Reynolds' office to "counsel" Foley. His mission was to 1)persuade Foley to resign,  2)hustle him off to rehab where the press couldn't get at him, and 3)try to make a deal with ABC to prevent the IMs from coming out. 

Now, today, although Reynolds said nothing in the intervening days and made no complaint about Fordham's departure, he claims he didn't authorize Fordham's leave of absence.  Riiiight.  The head of the NRCC, in a tough reelection fight himself, sits quietly by while his chief of staff goes off to a former boss's aid, and he wants us to believe he didn't authorize Fordham's actions?  Reynolds knew about those IMs and saw what was coming.

The American people have a right to feel confident that their Congressional leaders are committed not just to the best interest of the nation as a whole, but also to the safety of the young people who every year travel to Washington to work on Capitol Hill. The allegations against Congressman Foley are repugnant, but equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives knew there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a Congressional seat this election year.

Under laws that Congressman Foley helped write, soliciting sex from a minor online is a federal crime. The American people expect and deserve a full accounting for this despicable episode. The alleged crimes here are far outside the scope of any Congressional Committee, and the Attorney General should open a full-scale investigation immediately. We have a responsibility to the long-term safety of every child who will work in Congress that must not be sacrificed to the short-term interest of any one political Party.

From Aravosis:

Mr. Foley, who served on the House Ways and Means Committee, was a prolific fund-raiser. His campaign account had a balance of $2.7 million at the end of August, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Carl Forti, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Sunday that the committee would gladly accept Mr. Foley’s money or a portion of it to devote to House races. Mr. Foley already gave $100,000 to the committee in July, campaign records show, as part of the party’s Battleground Program, to which members are asked to contribute.

“The money is in the control of Mr. Foley,” Mr. Forti said. “Whatever he decides to do with it is up to him.”

Unless the Dems capture the House, this will never be investigated properly.

  1) “Reynolds’s personal PAC, TOMPAC, wrote Foley a check for $5,000 on May 10, 2006.”

  2) “On July 27, 2006, the [National Republican Congressional Committee], which Reynolds chairs, accepted an unusually large contribution of $100,000 from Foley. Hard to imagine something of that size just slipping past the chairman.”

Given that, by then, Reynolds already knew about Foley's follies, #1 smells, to me, like he was telling Foley "we'll take care of it for you". And, #2, is Foley's way of saying "I'm grateful".

I don't think Allen knew anything about Folley and his antics; if he had, the payola would have been much bigger. The $2000 dntion suggests just an everyday "I'll scrub your back, if you'll srcub mine" between Senators of the same party.

The consensus of Washington insiders is that the Foley scandal is merely the "tip of the iceberg" and when all the facts become known there will be a political tsunami that could wash away as many as 60 to 70 incumbent Republicans in the House. There is also evidence that the scandal may soon spill over into the ranks of the Republicans in the Senate (particularly the Senate office of embattled Virginia Senator George Allen).

George, what else have you been hiding?

God, please give us a divided government again.  This one party system doesn't work.

I can't see at this point that this harms Allen very much, other than calls for him to give away Foley's donation to him. It's all the rage, you know; Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Virgil Goode......etc.

If not allen foley  hastert et al making Bush look good,
It would be others...............In fact, the hit parade will continue.

In a bad year, the losers should discourage voters

at the mason festival sat.  i told Tom O'Donoghue that his best chance election day would be a blizzard. He agreed!!!!

http://talkleft.com/...

Highly recommended