On Friday, Republican Congressman Mark Foley (Florida) resigned — He had been caught sending obscene email messages and IMs to an underaged male Congressional Page.
Examples:
Foley: “what are ya wearing?”
Boy: “Tshirts and shorts.”
Foley:“love to slip them off of you.”
and
Foley: “good so your getting horny”
Boy: ” lol…a bit “
Foley: “did you spank it this weekend yourself”
In the emails, it shows that Foley tried to meet with the boy, rather than just send IMs.
In a depressing bit of irony, Mark Foley was the Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus.
The story here, that of a holier-than-thou conservative revealed as a pedophile, is quickly being shunted off-stage by the much more sensational Amish school shooting. Convenient, that.
However — the fact that a pedophile was given a Chairmanship for a program to protect children ISN’T the actual story here.
Here’s what is being buried:
The Republicans knew about this since last year. Hell, Matthew Loraditch, president of the Page Alumni Association says that pages were warned specifically to be careful with Foley five years ago.
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — although he later contact the Post and said he could “not remember whether he talked to Hastert.”
The Republican leadership KNEW. Don’t forget that, and tell everyone who talks with you about this story. They knew, and they covered it up. Here’s a timeline of events going back to 2001.
Even now, the Republicans are blocking efforts to investigate the situation. Makes you wonder what else is out there. What is so bad that they don’t want anyone looking further into it?
When asked about this on CNN, White House Spokesman Tony Snow downplayed the situation as “simply naughty emails.”
Simply naughty emails.
I have a child who worked as a legislative page. Conservative or Liberal, parents of this country should be screaming for heads to roll. They knew about this guy, and did nothing? WHAT THE FUCK?
Spin this, NeoCon asshats. Try to make this seem like anything other than the most disgusting example of purely political ass-covering.