The blog Stop October Surprises was started a few weeks ago. His mission is to find out who is behind that bogus blog Stop Sex Predators blog that came out of no where and incredibly received the smoking gun that outed Foley.

I am going to “out” the identity of the StopSexPredators blog. Why? Because I hate dirty politics, because our country deserves better. I am sick of these October surprises (aren’t you)? This one is going to cost you, the taxpayer, big time. The FBI doesn’t work for free nor do your Congressmen and their staff. No, it probably won’t change the outcome of the upcoming elections… what moron would change his vote because Foley couldn’t keep away from the youngsters?

StopSexPredators is bullshit. It’s not what it says it is. It was a clever trick, bought by many in the MSM (that’s main stream media), to get the Foley info into the mainstream just in time for the election. How clever? But apparently clever enough since so many were so easily fooled.

The author has been doing some detective work and found a very large connection with the group called Human Rights Campaign:

Send the moron an email using a tracing tool like ReadNotify, wait until the email is read.

This little adventure all started with a simple email sent from an account ‘dcguy191@yahoo.com’. One of the persons behind StopSexPredators, using the email address ’stopsexpredators@gmail.com’, read this email from several network locations. (Don’t think physical location, think network location.)

Others pinned the idiot to the Royal Oaks area of Michigan (again network location), which is true. But I caught said moron reading the email account from the address 64.194.245.126. This address is ‘owned’ by the HRC. Not smart.

And then he did the same thing yesterday:

I sent two emails to stopsexpredators@gmail.com… in the past 24 hours.

The first one was another trace sent under the made up email address “cchapmancc@yahoo.com” and the second one directly from my email account here (gtlx102006@yahoo.com…) with an invitation to read this very blog.

Both were read back to back and a visit to this very blog occurred moments later. Oh, yea, again from the HRC, same IP address as the original.

[...]Visit record to this blog:

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link No referring link
Host Name 64-194-245-126.wcg.net…
IP Address 64.194.245.126
Country United States
Region District Of Columbia
City Washington
ISP Human Rights Campaign
Returning Visits 0
Visit Length 0 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 6.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1024×768
Javascript Enabled

Which is quite interesting. Why you ask? Well, recall the name Brian Smoot, which I blogged about here:

Gateway Pundit is reporting that he has been told who the FoleyGate spy is:

This much was revealed- “There is very strong speculation that Brian Smoot is one the high ranking democrats who knew of the Foley scandal months before the news broke on September 29, 2006.”

He then points us to this Redstate analysis done last week:

Let’s follow this chain of events, which may be coincidental and may not be coincidental:

In August of 2004, Rodney Alexander’s Chief of Staff, Brian Smoot, and five other staffers abruptly quit because Alexander switched to the GOP. National Journal reported on August 13, 2004, that the Chief of Staff “sharply criticized Alexander for switching parties.” The Chief of Staff and five staffers were promptly hired by minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

In November 2005, Alexander is notified by a couple in his district that the couple’s son had gotten emails from Mark Foley that were not really kosher.

In October of 2006, we find that Alexander’s former Chief of Staff is now running the congressional campaign of Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District against Republican Representative Clay Shaw — a district that shares a major media market with Mark Foley’s district.

Tie this together with the information that a tipster just emailed me with. A little factoid that is even more interesting….the Political Director at HRC is one Samantha Smoot.

Is she related to Brian? Is she the one receiving the emails to Stop Sex Predators? Is she the one behind the Stop Sex Predators?

No answers yet but it’s getting a bit more interesting.

UPDATE 10/25/06 2045hrs PST

There appears to be a major update to this story at The American Thinker:

One blog site that has been tracking the SSP site, warns that if HRC doesn’t come clean about its role in this Republican gay outing campaign, it will be exposed on Friday:

Open letter to Joe Solmonese:

It is your responsibility to rid the HRC of the SSP gang. It is important for you to do so; doing nothing is connivance.When I started this pursuit (or stumbled in), I knew nothing of the HRC or its mission. I am now thoroughly aware of how many people rely on the HRC to forward the rights of the LGBT community. Underhanded tactics of a few not only tarnish the organization but also its mission.

If you do not act, I will. Friday is your deadline or I name names.gtl

Update: So who’s calling? The MSM (main stream media), that’s who.

I was told about this post in the comment section this morning but when I visited the site it didn’t have that post up. Clarice visited later and saw that the post had been replaced:

This is what SOS now has on its site:

Today I received a comment on this blog as follows:

Brad Luna said…

“The email exchanges in question between former Congressman Mark Foley and a House page have been in the possession of bloggers and media outlets for some time now. Yesterday, it came to our attention that an HRC employee, hired just last month to work for us in Michigan, was responsible for initially posting these emails on his blog. We investigated the matter, determined that HRC resources had been inappropriately used, and let him go. No one at the Human Rights Campaign, other than this individual, had any knowledge of his activities,” said Brad Luna, Spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

I have emailed Brad asking for confirmation of this statement (and some others things).

Interesting developments. I’m not sure I by the “just hired last month” timeline tho.

I have since tried to get onto Stop October Surprises without success, it gives me a error….unsure what is going on with that.

UPDATE 2300hrs PST

The Stop October Surprises site is back up with this update:

Update: I know who this employee is, and have for some time, but I cannot prove that he has been fired. I will let others go after that for now. There is more to this story… It seems to me that the HRC has more work to do in this matter, and I communicated that message to Brad Luna.

I still don’t believe they hired this guy conveniently after he started the StopSexPredators blog…..just don’t believe it.

UPDATE 10/26/06 2240hrs PST

Word from a tipster that the fired HRC employee and probable StopSexPredators is one Lane Hudson.
UPDATE 10/27/06 1530hrs PST

It appears the blog Fresh Intelligence is trying to steal SOS thunder by releasing the name of the person who was fired by HRC. They did come up with this new information tho:

Susan Horowitz, the publisher of Between the Lines, a gay weekly newspaper in Michigan, said Hudson arrived in Michigan on September 30 and had been attending get-out-the-vote events as recently as yesterday.

[...]Hudson, a onetime staffer to Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and former Democratic South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, is 29.

So Senator Reid has now disclosed that not only did he fail to report the fact that he sold land to a friends LLC in return for an ownership stake in the company, but that he failed to report two other land deals:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that he is amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a Las Vegas land deal that allowed him to collect $1.1 million for property he hadn’t personally owned for three years.

The Nevada Democrat also disclosed that he failed to report two other smaller land deals on those same reports.

Reid acted several days after the Associated Press reported the senator didn’t disclose to Congress that he first sold land to a friend’s company back in 2001 and took an ownership stake in the company. He didn’t collect the seven- figure payout until the company sold the land again in 2004 to others.

Reid portrayed the 2004 sale as a personal sale of land, making no mention of the company’s ownership or its role in the sale.

Reid said his amended ethics reports will list the 2001 sale and the company, called Patrick Lane LLC.

Not only that, it is now known that he used campaign donations to pay for Christmas bonuses for the hotel staff where he resides:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid paid cash for a $750,000 condo at the Ritz-Carlton where he lives. But when it comes to giving the doorman and other support staff Christmas bonuses, he’s been using campaign donations instead of his own money.

Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use.

Questioned about the campaign expenditures by The Associated Press, Reid’s office said Monday his lawyers had approved them but he nonetheless was personally reimbursing his campaign for the $3,300 he had directed to the staff holiday fund at his residence.

In typical Democrat fashion he blames everything on the big bad Republicans:

Reid labeled the AP story as the “latest attempt” by Republicans to affect the election. AP reported last week that it learned of the land deal from a former Reid adviser who had concerns about the way the deal was reported to Congress.

Which I find quite curious. This Senator sat on the Ethics Committee but failed to follow the rules on disclosure back in 2001, how does he explain this? It’s the Republicans fault. Ed Morrissey has more on his lunacy:

Reid’s connection to an attorney involved in a bribery case that directly related to zoning decisions in Clark County, where they both owned property, was a Rovian plot set in motion in 1998. And now Reid’s new disclosures of property in an area where he has taken an intense legislative interest somehow relates to Republicans, when no one even mentioned the parcels in question — because Reid failed to disclose them during his entire time as Senate Minority Leader, while he has castigated Republicans for alleged ethical lapses.

[...]As far as the Christmas bonuses go, it pales in significance to Reid’s land deals and rule breaking on personal finances, but they still have some significance as an indicator of Reid’s indifference to the rules. No one much cared how the money wound up in the hands of the hotel staff, so the “clerical error” explanation makes some sense. In Reid’s organization, the rules don’t apply, and this rule means a lot less to the taxpayers than Reid’s manipulation of federal land deals.

Meanwhile, while doing a search for news articles today about Reid on Lexis-Nexus I found 97 articles. Doing one for Foley, you guessed it, 146 articles. So a story about a man who sent an email asking for a picture from a 16 year old, who sent IM’s of a sexual nature to a 18 year old, AND is over 3 weeks old is STILL being printed more often then a story that is only a few days old about the ethical wrongdoings of a Democrat.

No bias here?

How about the Weldon story.

Federal agents raided the homes of Rep. Curt Weldon’s daughter and one of his closest political supporters yesterday as part of an investigation into whether the veteran Republican congressman used his influence to benefit himself and his daughter’s lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the investigation.The investigation focuses on actions the Pennsylvania congressman took that may have aided clients of the business created by his daughter, Karen Weldon, and longtime Pennsylvania political ally Charles Sexton, according to three of the sources. …

The investigation focuses on Weldon’s support of the Russian-managed Itera International Energy Corp., one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms, while that company paid fees to Solutions North America, the company that Karen Weldon and Sexton operate.

The congressman, for example, intervened on Itera’s behalf when U.S. officials canceled a federal grant to the company. He also encouraged U.S. companies to do business with Itera at a time when its reputation had been sullied by accusations of Russian corruption.

Funny thing about this story, it’s not new. It was reported by none other, CREW, back in 2004, and the story was reported to the House Ethics Committee who have apparently cleared him. But now, a few weeks before an election, there is a FBI raid.

Something smells fishy, enter Ed Morrissey once again:

The Congressman, in an appearance at the University of Pennsylvania last night, claimed that an associate of John Conyers and Chuck Schumer had campaigned for this investigation to be opened by the FBI during the election. Melanie Sloan now heads CREW, the same outfit that had its fingers on the infanous Mark Foley instant messages, and Weldon says she’s leaked the information on the story to the press.

Ok, so whats the back story on this investigation? Weldon’s daughter, Karen Weldon, and Charles Sexton started a lobbying firm called “Solutions North America” and began lobbying for a Russian oil company called Itera. They attempted to lobby for gas and oil contracts inside the USA for the company but were unsuccessful from the time they started working for Itera in 2002 until they ended the business relationship in 2004.

Weldon tried to drum up support for the company by complaining to the Trade and Development Agency and attended the opening of their American headquarters. The allegation is that the only reason his daughters firm got the contract in the first place was because of Weldon’s influence. Kinda funny since the LA Times reported in 2003 that Reid has the same kind of problems:

WASHINGTON — It was the kind of legislation that slips under the radar here.

The name alone made the eyes glaze over: “The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002.” In a welter of technical jargon, it dealt with boundary shifts, land trades and other arcane matters — all in Nevada.

As he introduced it, Nevada’s senior U.S. senator, Democrat Harry Reid, assured colleagues that his bill was a bipartisan measure to protect the environment and help the economy in America’s fastest-growing state.

What Reid did not explain was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms, federal lobbyist reports show.

The Howard Hughes Corp. alone paid $300,000 to the tiny Washington consulting firm of son-in-law Steven Barringer to push a provision allowing the company to acquire 998 acres of federal land ripe for development in the exploding Las Vegas metropolitan area.

Barringer is listed in federal lobbyist reports as one of Hughes’ representatives on the measure that his father-in-law introduced.

Other provisions were intended to benefit a real estate development headed by a senior partner in the Nevada law firm that employs all four of Reid’s sons — by moving the right-of-way for a federal power-transmission line off his property and onto what had been protected federal wilderness.

The governments of three of Nevada’s biggest cities — Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson — also gained from the legislation, which freed up tens of thousands of acres of federal land for development and annexation. All three were represented by Reid’s family members who contacted his staff on their clients’ behalf.

So tell me, when is Senator Reids offices going to get raided?

Be that it may, unless their is evidence to suggest that Weldon received compensation for legislation (nothing of the sort has been introduced) then what we have here is Weldon doing the same thing that Reid did for his family members and a company donating eight grand to his campaign coffers for a photo op.

Clarice Feldman believes its the Clinton war-room behind this recent emergence of a two year old complaint:

The FBI gets a lot of tips on politicians. But it doesn’t act on all of them in a great blaze of publicity, just a few weeks before elections. And not many of them are specifically tipped by the Soros outfit CREW.

Well, Curt Weldon and his daughter are getting the full CREW treatment.

Weldon happens to be one of the few high-level members of Congressional Intelligence Committees to insist on reform in the intelligence bureaucracy, to expose the Clinton Follies in national security, and to play a consistently positive role in limiting post-Soviet proliferation of nukes and scientists.

The Clintonistas have it in for Curt Weldon; which means that the most incompetent collection of foreign policy flunkeys just want to continue their coverups.

Even when Clinton blew up on Wallace a few weeks ago he couldn’t help but mention Weldon’s name:

CLINTON: Of course they do. Of course they do. It’s a big load of hooey. We’ve got nine Iraq war veterans running for House seats, a three-star admiral who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania.

So in the end what we have is a concerted effort by Clinton’s team (which includes the Democrats, the MSM, and CREW) to effect this election with investigations about a gay man having internet sex with an adult and a two year old allegation that was already sent to the House ethics committee. All the while that same team ignores and belittles the ethical lapses of their own people.

Sound about right?

UPDATE

Redstate is reporting that their sources tell them Reid may be a kaput:

Sources tell RedState that disgruntled Democrat staffers are working with a handful of Democrat Senators in preparations to oust Harry Reid after November 7th.

The staffers and senators feel that Reid tied their hands and they were not able to fully capitalize on this election cycle. Feeling that they will not recapture the Senate, but that they will make it very close, the plotting has begun. With the ever aggressive Mitch McConnell in line to become Majority Leader, the staffers and senators think they’ll need someone better able to match wits with McConnell.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Other’s Blogging:

• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Gateway Pundit
• GM’s Corner
• USS Neverdock
• Wizbang
• Big Lizards
• Cheat Seeking Missiles
• The Uncooperative Blogger
• The Conservative Voice
• Hard Starboard
• Hang Right Politics

A new article yesterday on the Foley incident suggests either that the incident in which Foley supposedly was drunk and trying to get into the Pages dormitory was made up or covered up:

U.S. Capitol Police said yesterday that they have no record of an alleged incident in which then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) 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 M. McGaffin said his staff conducted electronic and hand searches of files covering several years but found no record of the alleged incident in which a drunken Foley supposedly was detained outside the pages’ dorm in 2003 or earlier.

“I can’t find anything that was written, in the way of a report, that would establish that that did occur,” McGaffin said in a telephone interview. “Having said that, I don’t know, maybe it occurred and there wasn’t a report generated.”

McGaffin said the search was complicated by the fact that he has received no details on when the alleged incident occurred and exactly what happened. “If, obviously, a crime was committed, a report would have been generated,” he said.

In a separate interview this week, Terrance W. Gainer — who was Capitol Police chief from June 2002 to April of this year — said he recalled no mention of such an incident during his tenure.

His former chief of staff believed the incident took place tho:

Sources familiar with the investigation say that former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who met with the House ethics panel Thursday, told members that he believes the alleged page dormitory incident took place, and that it was a sign that Foley was showing unseemly interest in teenage pages. Fordham has said he asked Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, to intervene with Foley, and that Palmer reported he did so. Palmer has denied Fordham’s account.

In an Oct. 3 letter to House Clerk Karen L. Haas, Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) said a fellow GOP lawmaker had cited “rumors that there was an incident within the last several years when then-Congressman Foley in an intoxicated state was stopped by the Capitol Police from entering the Page Residence Hall.”

Well, if the incident did happen then I guess these two men, meaning Fordham and the head of the Page program Trandahl, did a good job of covering the thing up when they shouldn’t have.

But it certainly is possible this is a concocted event since we have no record by the police nor has anyone at the Dorm come forward to say they had witnessed this event. This could easily be another hit-piece.

As this article has cited, the Democrats had been shopping the emails around for sometime:

But there are indications that Democrats spent months circulating five less insidious Foley e-mails to news organizations before they were finally published by ABC News late last month, which prompted the leaking of the more salacious instant messages. Harper’s Magazine said yesterday that it obtained the five e-mails from a Democratic Party operative, albeit in May, long before the election season.

[...]“Are we saying that a 15-year-old child would’ve sat on e-mails that were XXX-rated for three years and suddenly spring them out right on the eve of an election? That’s just a little bit too suspicious, even for Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend. On the same day, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he “never saw” the e-mails. “What you guys want to do is take your dirty laundry and throw it over the fence and try to blame other people,” he said.

Kinda funny coming from Emanuel, since he is one of the biggest Democratic “pit-bulls” out there. I find it hard to believe that a guy described as:

Banter with a U.S. President is nothing new to Emanuel; he was at Bill Clinton’s side as a political advisor inside the White House for six years and still talks strategy with him at least once a month. Now chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-the operations center for House candidates (Washington nickname: “D-Triple C”)-Emanuel is applying rugged business discipline to the Democratic Party’s historic effort to wrest control of the U.S. House from the Republicans. Last year he recruited dozens of candidates to challenge GOP incumbents. This year he is holding feet to the fire to raise record amounts for the Democrats’ effort.

[...]Former President Clinton told FORTUNE he considers Emanuel “one of the top political minds in Washington,” a strategist who “favors the counterattack over the attack.” Clinton adds: “His politics are rooted in new ideas and old-fashioned values.” Former Bush economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who, as Congressional Budget Office director, worked with Emanuel, calls him the “real deal.” (Like Rostenkowski, Emanuel has a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.)

[...]Conservative Republican Tom Cole, a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma, cited Emanuel’s ferocity in a recent letter to colleagues asking for their support in his own campaign to run the counterpart House GOP operation next term. “He’s dangerous,” says Cole, who calls Emanuel a friend. “He has a closing intensity. When he’s got a political kill in sight, he’s absolutely relentless.”

Knew nothing about this “scandal” when several Democrats were shopping this story around for months. If anything, he is probably pissed the thing was leaked too soon.

Then we have the recent internet investigation which uncovered the fact that two militant gay men were on a mission to destroy Foley, and at the sametime had connections to the software that runs the HillZoo.com… site which is for Congressional Staffers, and the Congressional Club website for Congressional spouses.

Did these IM’s and emails come from there?

Either way you look at this thing, if they had planned on this being a October Surprise, they screwed the pooch badly.

Other’s Blogging:

• The Strata-Sphere

Now this is what you call some internet detective work done by a freeper:

Many of you have written and asked me to let you know what my research into the whole Foleygate has revealed and I think it is time to put it out there and let you folks decide. Whether or not it is later to be discovered as a piece of this Foley Scandal, IT IS STILL EXTREMELY DISTURBING! When several Freepers brought up blogactive.com… the first day the scandal broke, I went there to see what it was all about.

Now the whole thing is quite long with LOTS of links and connections so I will not reprint it here. But this question by the freeper should pique your curouisity:

Here are my questions, regardless of whether this SOFTEC SYSTEMS is involved in this particular scandal. Can they capture info on these Congressional Staffers webpages by being the internet provider, etc.? Who hired them and why? AND WHAT THE HELL IS A FLORIDA GAY PORN KING doing hosting web pages on Capitol Hill? Now I understand this is not a government site, but these Congresscritters are not allowed to have campaign type info on their dot gov sites…they have to go elsewhere. How many folks in Congress are using SOFTEC? How many CONGRESSIONAL WIVES ARE?

Go now! This research begs to get answered.

UPDATE

Here is a simplified version of the investigation and it’s results:

Mike Rogers (gay) is the guy who is “outing” gay Republicans.

Mike Rogers used to work for a company that produced Gayellowpages.com…

Gayellowpages.com… Technical contact is Ferrell Ard (gay) (ferrell@BADPUPPY.COM…)

BADPUPPY.com… is run (owned) by William Pinyon (gay) (aka Bill Pinyon) and Ferrell Ard.

Ferrell Ard and Bill Pinyon also are execs/owners of Softec Systems.

Softec Systems hosts the Politics1 website.

Softec Systems also hosts HillZoo.com… site for Congressional staffers.

Softec Systems also hosts the homepage of The Congressional Club (the official organization for Congressional spouses).

Politics1 is owned/run by Ron Gunzburger (gay), who started that website in 1997.

In 2000 Ron Gunzburger worked at Lobby For Me, Inc.

The admin contact for Lobby For Me’s webiste is Bill Sarpalius.

The technical contact for Lobby For Me’s website is Ferrell Ard at Softec Systems (ferrell@softecsys.net…)

Notice that Ferrell Ard does not use his porno email address for this Hill lobbying gig.

Ron Gunzburger also has his own website (Gunzburger.com…) which uses Softec Systems as its server.

Also, in 2004, Gunzburger worked on the presidential campaign of Howard Dean, who we all know is now head of the DNC.

Not that this matters in the storyline, in June 2006, Gunzburger went to Toronto to marry his longtime “partner,” Dana Buker (also gay, but I didn’t need to tell you that).

Bill Pinyon (gay) and Ferrell Ard (gay) own.run Badpuppy.com…, a multimillion dollar per year gay hardcore porn site.

Bill Pinyon and Ferrell Ard also own/run Softec Systems, which is the server for Politics1.com… (left/liberal), Gunzburger.com…, HillZoo.com… (Congressional Staffers), and the Congressional Club website (for Congressional spouses).

Could the owners/operators of Softec Systems, both openly gay men making megabucks selling hardcore porn on their internet enterprise, BadPuppy.com…, have access to their clients’ (at either site) private information and/or communications?

Getting more interesting by the moment.

So we have Nancy Pelosi sputtering idiotic comments like so:

“We want to know why the Republicans chose to protect Mark Foley’s political career rather than protect the children who were in our charge.”

But no word from her about her Democratic brethren who kept the emails a secret for oh, say, months!

But there are indications that Democrats spent months circulating five less insidious Foley e-mails to news organizations before they were finally published by ABC News late last month, which prompted the leaking of the more salacious instant messages. Harper’s Magazine said yesterday that it obtained the five e-mails from a Democratic Party operative, albeit in May, long before the election season.

Oh my! But what about the children Nancy?

Come on!

Listen, there has been no evidence submitted that Foley EVER had sex with an underage male. Unlike some Democrats in the past, cough Studds cough.

While the fact that he went after 18 year old men is creepy, just as it would be if he was going after 18 year old women, the fact of the matter is that he broke no law, cough Jefferson cough. He did the right thing by resigning immediately, cough Jefferson cough…..sorry, getting a cold I gather.

But all this story boils down to is a 50+ year old gay male having a thing for young MEN.

I’ll say it again, creepy and deserving of losing his job, but this story does not deserve to be highlighted over the fact that a Congressmen is under investigation on actual CRIMINAL charges and was found with bribe money in his freezer:

Agents told a judge the money was part of a $100,000 payment that had been delivered by an informant in the bribery probe, which already has led to guilty pleas by a Kentucky businessman and a former Jefferson aide.

The Justice Department has been investigating Jefferson’s relationship to telecommunications deals in Africa and elsewhere, and the House Ethics Committee launched an investigation of him last week.

So what the flying hell is the big story with this thing? That he’s gay? Are Democrats that desperate that they will go after homosexuals now? Is it the trumped up charge that there was a conspiracy? If so, they will be sorely disappointed judging by the WaPo’s article. I mean if the WaPo, known for being waaaayyyy biased to the left, takes swings at the Democrats then look out.

AJStrata tears into the WaPo article here:

By my count that makes 2 Democrat operatives peddling this story, and not notifying authorities who could take action to protect the Pages. But the WaPo has to admit their source was intent on harming Reps – so why did they not report this fact sooner?

[...]What other evidence do we need other than the admissions by Harpers and the WaPo that they dealt with democrat operatives and used democrat sources bent on impacting the coming elections?

And then he goes to town with his analysis of the emails which appears more and more to be coming back to bite CREW on the ass.

Either way you look at it, if your being honest, this was a concerted effort by Democrats to effect the upcoming election. The MSM is helping all they can by keeping this story front and center. But as the days go by even the most biased reporter can’t help but admit that there was a definate agenda being pushed…..and it wasn’t “protecting the kids”

Other’s Blogging:

• Newsbusters
• Macsmind
• Media Lies
• Ace of Spades HQ
• The Baltimore Reporter

Gateway Pundit is reporting that he has been told who the FoleyGate spy is:

This much was revealed- “There is very strong speculation that Brian Smoot is one the high ranking democrats who knew of the Foley scandal months before the news broke on September 29, 2006.”

He then points us to this Redstate analysis done last week:

Let’s follow this chain of events, which may be coincidental and may not be coincidental:

In August of 2004, Rodney Alexander’s Chief of Staff, Brian Smoot, and five other staffers abruptly quit because Alexander switched to the GOP. National Journal reported on August 13, 2004, that the Chief of Staff “sharply criticized Alexander for switching parties.” The Chief of Staff and five staffers were promptly hired by minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

In November 2005, Alexander is notified by a couple in his district that the couple’s son had gotten emails from Mark Foley that were not really kosher.

In October of 2006, we find that Alexander’s former Chief of Staff is now running the congressional campaign of Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District against Republican Representative Clay Shaw — a district that shares a major media market with Mark Foley’s district.

I do believe the FBI will be knocking on Smoots door sometime soon, as they will be at CREW’s office also:

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 Soros keeps a tight rein on groups that he funds. He and his Shadow Party cannot evade responsibility for CREW’s actions.”

The Shadow Party is a network of private political groups, organized and led by George Soros, which exerts a powerful but hidden influence over the Democratic Party, according to Horowitz.

And The American Spectator reports that this Shadow network of leftist groups was not ready for the Foley story when it first came out. Oh, they knew about it and planned for it, but they wanted to wait a bit before pulling the trigger:

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 country. “Bush’s national security speeches were getting traction beyond the base, gas prices were dropping, economic outlook surveys were positive. We were seeing bad Democratic numbers in Missouri, Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Florida Pennsylvania, even parts of New York,” says the operative. “A month before, we were looking at launching an offensive against Republicans who according to polling barely held a five-seat majority if the election were to be held at the end of August. That was doable for Democrats from September 1 to November 7. But by mid-September, Republicans were back to having held seats for a 15-seat majority. In the Senate, it looked like a wash. We held seats in Florida, Nebraska, picked up seats in Pennsylvania, but that that was about it. They were holding in Missouri and possibly within reach of Maryland and Washington. We were looking at a disaster in the making.”

So how to remedy? “You pull out the bright shiny things that distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about — national security, anti-terrorism — and focus on the ugly: Foley and Iraq.”

Macranger is hearing the same thing from his sources:

Sources today tell me that the ethics committee IS, along with their “who knew what and when”, is looking at whether or not there was any “evidence” witholding on the part of Democrats or of their operatives. Again, Foley’s activities aside, if it comes to light that Democratic operatives, or as it is believed at least one member of the Democratic Leadership had prior knowledge of Foley’s activities, the recoil would destroy democratic “momentum” in the last few weeks of the election. As I was told, “There is a gag order”.

The public hates a coverup, but they specifically detest a dishonest coverup. At this point the evidence is becoming more clear on the left than on the right. We’re all glad Foley was found out and is out of office. But if it turns out that – as it is now appearing – that Democratic operatives knew more than the Republican leadership about Foley but failed to inform them, look out.

The big story in this whole thing isn’t that Foley liked young men (men….not boys) and was gay, it’s the story of this network working behind the scenes to CREATE a scandal. CREW knew that there was no crime involved so they gave the FBI edited versions of emails. They knew the FBI couldn’t act on emails that were edited so when the story broke they could tell the world that they TRIED to get the FBI involved but they wouldn’t do anything.

This allows the media to report that Foley and the GOP was under investigation by the FBI.

Meanwhile the FBI is reporting that they will be talking to a page who received sexual IM’s….of course the media won’t print the pages name because that would mean they would have to admit he was an ADULT:

The FBI is expected to interview a former congressional page Tuesday who may have received suggestive electronic messages from former Florida Rep. Mark Foley, his attorney said.

“They (FBI) will question [the page] concerning his knowledge, if any, about former congressman Mark Foley,” the former page’s attorney Stephen Jones told The Oklahoman. The meeting was to occur in Oklahoma City where the former page has been working on a gubernatorial campaign, Jones said.

The MSM can try to hide this fact but the name of the page has been out there for quite sometime:

FBI special agents will question a former congressional page today in Oklahoma City at an undisclosed location about the recent sex scandal, said Enid attorney Stephen Jones, who is representing the man.

“They (FBI) will question Jordan Edmund concerning his knowledge, if any, about former congressman Mark Foley,” Jones said.

Foley, 52, stepped down recently from his House seat after he was confronted by “ABC News” with sexually explicit electronic messages he had sent teenage male pages. Through his attorney, Foley has said he is gay but denied any sexual contact with minors.

Edmund, who hails from California and was a U.S. House page from September 2001 to June 2002, is believed to have been the target of some of Foley’s salacious messages. He is a campaign aide to Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., who is running against Gov. Brad Henry for the governor’s seat.

Still more spin from our MSM and the Democratic party.

Other’s Blogging:

• The American Thinker
• Mein Blogo Vault
• Newsbusters
• Carol Platt Liebau
• Church and State
• Hot Air
• Wizbang
• Mike’s America

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so I’m not really done with the militant gay attack on the Republican party, otherwise noted as Foleygate. The WaPo has an article which details a second Hastert aide who confirms that his office did indeed try to stop Foley’s behavior prior to this whole scandal:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley’s behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

The staff member’s account buttresses the position of Foley’s onetime chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, who said earlier this week that he had appealed to Palmer in 2003 or earlier to intervene, after Fordham’s own efforts to stop Foley’s behavior had failed. Fordham said Foley and Palmer, one of the most powerful figures in the House of Representatives, met within days to discuss the allegations.

Palmer said this week that the meeting Fordham described “did not happen.” Timothy J. Heaphy, Fordham’s attorney, said yesterday that Fordham is prepared to testify under oath that he had arranged the meeting and that both Foley and Palmer told him the meeting had taken place. Fordham spent more than three hours with the FBI on Thursday, and Heaphy said that on Friday he contacted the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to offer his client’s cooperation.

Of course the paper has to bring the usual falsehoods into the mix with this paragraph:

Hastert maintains that he knew nothing of Foley’s actions until last week, when the story first broke and Foley resigned. His stance contradicts that of House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), both of whom said they had informed Hastert this spring.

Hello! Boehner has made three conflicting statements. First he said he did not inform Hastert:

Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying “That is not true.”

Then he stated he told Hastert:

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.”

And then on Sean Hannity on Oct 2nd he said he couldn’t remember if he did or not, listen to interview here.

Of course the WaPo doesn’t wanna report this, just a plain ole’ “Boehner informed Hastert” statement. Typical.

Hastert has stated that the first meeting with Foley was in Nov, 2005 with Shimkus (head of the Page Board), Trandahl (then House Clerk) and Foley.

Sources close to Fordham say Trandahl repeatedly urged the longtime aide and close family friend to confront Foley about his inappropriate advances on pages. Each time, Foley pledged to no longer socialize with the teenagers, but, weeks later, Trandahl would again alert Fordham about more contacts. Out of frustration, the sources said, Fordham contacted Palmer, hoping that an intervention from such a powerful figure in the House would persuade Foley to stop.

Now, a second House aide familiar with Foley and his actions told The Washington Post yesterday that “Scott Palmer had spoken to Foley prior to November 2005.” The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is now the subject of a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee inquiry.

[...]The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public’s understanding of Foley’s undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

[...]Trandahl’s departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl’s exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.

Trandahl’s departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.

The funny thing is that they leave out this fact until the last sentence of the last paragraph:

Congressional aides point to another factor that links Trandahl to the Foley matter. A member of the board of the national gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Trandahl is openly homosexual and personally close to the now-disgraced former lawmaker, who announced through his lawyer this week that he is gay.

Well I guess since Trandahl is a lifelong Republican AND openly gay he won’t have to worry about this warning from the militant gaymaster Rogers (posted to his blog, Blogactive, today)

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of information…

Hey, Dennis, on Monday I’ll be telling everyone about the high level closeted staffer in your office. …

Beginning Monday, and every weekday thereafter, I will be identifying the name of a closeted senior staffer in Congress with the hopes that those investigating this matter will make sure to include them in their questioning.

Sure sounds like a terrorist to me doesn’t it? Do as I demand or I will execute one every day!

Checking out the comments on his site makes you want to take a bath:

Mike, keep it up. Outing anyone to Hastert will come as no surprise to him because you can’t kid a high school wrestling coach. The fact is that being a closeted, socially conservative Republican means you’re a self-loathing nut. But being a non-gay Republican and welcoming closeted gays into your party means you’re a moral relativist–and that is NOT gonna fly with the Evangelical base. Regardless of where the there came from, and contrary to what Republicans are nervously arguing, there is plenty of there there–and it has nothing to do with being gay and everything to do with being corrupt and deceitful.
Matt | Email | Homepage | 10.07.06 – 12:49 pm

You guys come here trying to intimidate people are silly. These staffers deserve to be outed and if I had the info I would surely post it. These people are traitors and hypocrites. There is no reason to protect them.
Robert | Email | Homepage | 10.07.06 – 1:51 pm

And check out this bit of moral relavitism:

This is the way I see it: each of these gay men, for siding with the Republican anti-gay agenda have contributred to teenagers being beat up at school for being suspected of being gay. Any of these hypocrites worry about those lives they destroyed? No. Each of these gay men who side with the Republican anti-gay agenda contribute to gay teens suicide attempts and suicide completeions. Do they worry about the lives they destroyed then? No. They care about advancing their careers. Each of these gay men who side with the Republican anti-gay agenda contribute to fag bashings every year. Do they care about the lives that are destroyed then? No. They only care about advancing their careers. Each of these gay men who side with the Republican anti-gay agenda contribute to the job, housing and public accomodations discrimination that gays are faced with everyday. Do they care about the lives they destroyed then? No. They only care about advancing their careers then.

Why should anyone care about their lives being destroyed?
Robert | Email | Homepage | 10.07.06 – 2:19 pm

I love this comment because it pretty much details their agenda:

barea what u need to get through ur thick skull is that closetted gay politicians put all of us in danger because their “keep my secret at all cost” posture makes them prime targets to be blackmailed. Don’t u get that? Out gay= good closet gay =bad. Quite simple concept.
anon | Email | Homepage | 10.07.06 – 3:05 pm

Yup, damn those people who wish to keep their sex lives private….Damn them I tell you!

Sigh…

UPDATE

This blog believes he may have found out who the mystery blogger at Stop Sex Predators is:

Confidential sources are telling me that Michael Rogers may actually not run the StopSexPredators.blogspot.com… website directly, but he might know the “mystery blogger”.

Perhaps he is Frederick Clarkson, who is listed on Reunion.com… as living in Clinton Township, MI. Ace of Spades HQ has reported that the “mystery blogger” was traced to the area of Royal Oak, MI.

He appears to have posted with Michael Rogers (Blogactive) here on DailyKos

Article about Child Sex Abuse by Fred Clarkson

Interestingly, the Gay Games media is the Gale Group, located in Farmington Hills, MI – about 15 miles west of Royal Oak, MI.

According to an anonymous source that followed up on the Ace of Spades HQ story, the final two digits to lead to an IP address whose Geolocation is Farmington, MI.

Quite possibly, our “mystery blogger”.

Update: Under the comments on the DailyKos post listed above for Frederick Clarkson, his comment is titled “I can’t resist”.

The most recent title on stopsexpredators.blogspot.com…?

You guessed it – I CAN’T RESIST

Posted by Corvus at 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Other’s Blogging:

• Right Wing Howler
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• The American Thinker
• 186k Per Second
• Riehl World View
• Texas Rainmaker
• The Real Ugly American
• Macsmind
• Seixon
• The Strata-Sphere
• Hot Air
• The Strata-Sphere
• Minnesota Democrats Exposed
• The Strata-Sphere

Read the rest of this entry »

Another day and more bits of information have come out that, when put together, sure do seem to indicate this whole thing was part of a planned coup d’état against Foley and other gay Republicans who were in the closet.

For my other posts on this subject: (earliest to latest)

• The Latest Democratic Hitjob
• Foleygate Has Begun
• Some Serious Crying From The Left & The Right
• The Foley Scandal Redux
• The Foley Scandal, Part One Billion

And now onto the new revelations. Macsmind, The Strata-Sphere, and the commenters at JustOneMinute have done some excellent fact finding and have come up with lots of new stuff. They are all a definate must-read. The first interesting factiod that came out yesterday was that the FBI issued a response to CREW stating they dropped the ball on the emails:

Law enforcement officials said then that the e-mails did not provide enough evidence of a possible crime to warrant a full investigation. In the e-mails, Foley praises the physical attributes of one page and asks another teenager for his picture.

In subsequent days, unidentified Justice and FBI officials told reporters that the e-mails provided by CREW were heavily redacted and that the group refused to provide unedited versions to the FBI. One law enforcement official — speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation — also told The Washington Post the FBI believed that CREW may have received the e-mails as early as April and that the group refused to tell the FBI how they were obtained.

Of course CREW disputes this and brings out the conspiracy charge (we all knew that the lefties cannot stay away from using that term for something at least once a day):

The watchdog group that first provided the FBI with suspicious e-mails from then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said yesterday that FBI and Justice Department officials are attempting to cover up their inaction in the case by making false claims about the group.

And:

CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan disputed that account, saying the FBI was given the teen’s full e-mail address July 21. CREW received the e-mails that day from “a third party who had gotten them from a congressional staffer,” she said.

Oh really? And who is this staffer?

Also, the Justice Department pretty much backs what most of us have said, these emails do not contain anything that would lead us to believe he was wanting to jump the kids bones:

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse declined to comment on that issue but defended the FBI’s handling of the original e-mails: “The e-mails, while inappropriate, did not contain a criminal predicate to allow the FBI to move forward in an investigation.”

Then we have one Robin Katsaros. Who is she? She is writing a book on House Pages. It appears she has been writing this book for sometime according to this exchange on the House Page Alumni Board: (Included in this discussion is the young man who IM’d Foley, Jordon Edmund)

jordanedmund: (Apr 23 2006, 06:34 PM)
Has anyone been in contact with the author? Do we know how it is coming? Was it just given up on?

adlaidemocrat: (Apr 24 2006, 03:43 PM)
Not the faintest clue; I would venture to guess it’s been given up. I was never under the impression that the person had a publisher or any such thing.

jordanedmund: (Apr 24 2006, 03:43 PM )
When I spoke to her, on the phone, a year or so back, sh said she had written a few other books. I would doubt that there was someone who would be willing to publish a book about pages though. The Clerks counsel would probably keep anything from being published anyway. Probably on the grounds that we all signed confidentiality agreements when we started; so, every interview she did with a page would be null. Just my assumption.

adlaidemocrat: (Apr 24 2006, 04:04 PM)
I think the only way something could get published about it is if it were a tell-all memoir (either classy like George Stephanopolous’s “All Too Human” or scandalous like the “Washingtonienne” affair)

chiquita banana: (Apr 25 2006, 12:48 PM )
Kinda off subject, but there are House pages in our Algebra book. lol

washingtonmaiden: (Apr 26 2006, 06:30 PM )
i not sure there could be a tell all about pages. dont get me wrong i loved my job. we were not close to any one, stephanopolous had a very close relationship to a president. im not sure about the rest of you but my best relationship seemed to be the wall.

we are kinda of dull in comparision to the campagin trail. think about how many hours you spent reading. i finished virginia woolf’s orlando in two weeks. that has to be a record for a woolf novel.

my guess is the pubisher thougt it would be boring”

Back in 2004 Robin responded to the same kind of questioning on when her book would come out:

Aug 1 2004, 09:10 AM
Hello all,
Yes, the book is still in progress. Outline is complete. Four of the fifteen chapters are in rough draft form (the chapters with input from previous Pages has not been completed – this part will take the longest since I have to spend so much time interviewing people and I’ve left this part until the end, although I have received some input from a very few people.) I have an agent (my husband is a published author), but no publisher yet. I am also working with a company that let’s you self publish, sort of Print on Demand. And yes, you do get assigned an ISBN and it will be available at all the major book sellers. So I will do that if my agent can not get a publisher interested. Pictures have not been chosen, many more edits to go through. It’s a long process. I’ve had to squeeze it in with my other responsibilities, so it’s taking longer than I thought. But it IS going to happen, at some point in time. Thanks, Robin Katsaros

So we have a lady who is writing a book about Pages. Now you would think most of what they do would be quite boring, unless of course you have some sex scandals going on, right?

Another interesting factoid about her is that her son is a Page, one appointed by none other then Nancy Pelosi:

“CHRISTOPHER KATSAROS is a sophomore at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He grew up in Los Altos Hills, CA–just outside of San Francisco. ***Christopher served his junior year of High School working as a Congressional Page by appointment of Nancy Pelosi, currently the Democratic House Leader***. In addition to politics, Chris also enjoys shopping, artichokes, the sun and summer in general. Next semester, Christopher will be going to Dakar, Senegal, where he will go to school and work for an NGO (as well as doing some work with the Peace Corps).

And he is gay:

Status: Single
Here for: Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends
Orientation: Gay
Body type: 5′ 8″ / Athletic
Ethnicity: White / Caucasian
Zodiac Sign: Pisces
Smoke / Drink: No / Yes
Education: In college

He is the same age as Jordon so we can assume he was in the same Page class as Jordon. Recall that a friend of Jordon’s has said that this was all a prank to get Foley to say some nasty stuff….

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

Here is a thought, these IM’s were said to have been shared with a small group of Pages, was Christopher one of them? Did this then get into the hands of his Mother who is writing this book about Pages. His Mother, Robin, is a moonbat judging from the house parties she did last year: (House Parties)

“Hi. Randi, Ambassador Joe Wilson and Cong John Conyers are all participating in house parties on Saturday to talk about Downing Street and Rovegate. You can find a link to attend or host one of the house parties on therandirhodesshow.com….

More than 200 have already been planned everywhere from Buffalo to San Francisco, Sandpoint, Idaho to Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Here’s the full list of house parties planned so far.

She hosted a party where they bring in the “Impeach Bush” bigwigs, this kinda tells me she is a moonbat.

To summerize, we have a moonbat who is writing a book about Pages, it appears for quite some time. This moonbat has a kid who is gay and was also a page at the same time as Jordon (the IM recipient). The IM’s were apparently a prank to get Foley to do some sextalk and then the IM’s were spread around to a group of other Pages.

Now, this is all circumstantial stuff, but if I were the investigating detective I would start focusing on the Katsaros family for being the source of the IM’s. Doesn’t mean they were part of the planned presskrieg, I blame that on CREW and the militant gays Rogers and Aravosis. But it’s something to go on.

UPDATE

Recall ABC’s first response to the IM question:

We became aware of the IMs only after we reported the first blotter item on the emails between Foley and a former page last Thursday, September 28. As we have reported, the IMs were given to us by former pages who contacted us after reading that first story. As for responding to reader’s questions, we have received tens of thousands of comments on these stories. We would like to respond to every question, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, that is not always possible.

Things that make you go hmmmmm…

UPDATE II

Kinda ironic that Robin’s husband is the owner of an internet security company:

NetsEdge Research provides marketing and strategy research reports and consulting services, specializing in areas related to Internet infrastructure. NetsEdge offerings combine the formidable and unique experience and perspective of the two principals: John Katsaros and Peter Christy.

UPDATE III

Macsmind found some interesting quotes from the Katsaros family:

“”Take those red states and SHOVE IT!” – Robin Katsaros (responding to the miserable social statistics in red states).

“George Bush, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining!” – Chris Katsaros

“They should do a study on how people from the west coast are better than other people…” – Chris Katsaros

“…I mean but at least both east and west coasters can laugh at the people in the middle: They’re poor and not tan.” – Chris Katsaros

“While we were waiting at Planned Parenthood, she filled out a voter registration form and checked the Republican box… It was so sack-religious.” – Chris Katsaros

“Like I said, the Democrats are way more smarter.” – Chris Katsaros

No biases in this family huh?

UPDATE IV

Was one of the three new Pages that came out to ABC this week Chris Katsaros?

The pages served in the classes of 1998, 2000 and 2002. They independently approached ABC News after the Foley resignation through the Brian Ross & the Investigative Team’s tip line on ABCNews.com…. None wanted their names used because of the sensitive nature of the communications.

“I was seventeen years old and just returned to [my home state] when Foley began to e-mail me, asking if I had ever seen my page roommates naked and how big their penises were,” said the page in the 2002 class.

The former page also said Foley told him that if he happened to be in Washington, D.C., he could stay at Foley’s home if he “would engage in oral sex” with Foley.

He would have been from that class so the dates jive.

UPDATE V

Remember a few years ago when some Republican staffers got canned for getting internal Democratic strategy documents? Recall that the furor was over the staffers getting this info and passing it onto the media, not the info contained in the memos…..

Why are we not seeing this about the staffer who handed over Foley’s documents?

Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight — and with what tactics.

Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to filibuster certain judicial nominees.

I think we all know the answer to that.

UPDATE VI 1015hrs PST

Interesting that Jordon Edmund posted 12 minutes after The Blotter first printed about this story isn’t it?

More on Pages in the news, this probably isn’t good press

jordanedmund
post Sep 28 2006, 02:12 PM
Post #1

Group: CLASS0102
Posts: 272
Joined: –
From: Oklahoma City, OK
Member No.: 3

Michelle Malkin

Cheat Seeking Missiles

Political Mavens

A Blog For All

The American Thinker

Minnesota Democrats Exposed

Hot Air

Riehl World View

Darleen’s Place

Wizbang

Say Anything

Point Five

Webloggin

Wake Up America

The Wide Awake Cafe

Iowa Voice

Plus + Ultra

Mary Katherine Ham

Joust The Facts

Read the rest of this entry »

Seems like my blog and many others are becoming Foleyscandal 24/7, but what can you do. You run with a story that can be quite confusing and deal with it.

First things first, Fordham, the former assistant to Foley had an interview with the AP:

In an extended interview in Washington Tuesday, Fordham described in detail helping Foley and his sister after they were confronted last Friday by ABC News with lurid instant messages Foley had apparently sent to teenage boys who were past congressional pages.

The longtime Capitol Hill staffer, his eyes red and speaking softly, said he tried to help Foley deal with questions about e-mails and private messages that exploded in the headlines late last week.

Fordham was Foley’s former chief of staff but has not worked him since 2004. Last Friday, he said he went to Foley’s house to help the lawmaker deal with the page scandal first reported by ABC News.

Fordham said when he learned the graphic sexual content of some of the instant messages, he confronted Foley.

“I said: ‘Are these authentic?’ and he said ‘probably,’ and he confirmed that they were likely his instant messages,” Fordham said.

Fordham said the immediate reaction of his current boss, Reynolds, was to get Foley to leave Congress.

“He told me (Foley) needed to resign,” said Fordham, adding that the National Republican Congressional Committee wrote the first draft of Foley’s resignation letter before it was rewritten on Foley’s official letterhead.

“I was still pretty shell shocked myself,” Fordham said of the day he learned about the messages. “This was someone I had worked for 10 years. I had no inkling that this kind of blatantly reckless – just obscene – behavior was going on behind our backs.”

Hmmmmmm, that’s weird. Didn’t Fordham say the following:

“The fact is, even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges, I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene,” Fordham said.

Sure did. How in the hell does that jive? Answer, it doesn’t.

Then the latest news today is that the emails were supposedly leaked by a longtime Republican:

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.

That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.

But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.

[...]These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley’s improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.

Not so fast. The man who wrote this piece, Alexander Bolton, has an interesting bio:

Prior to joining The Hill in 2000, Alexander Bolton was assistant to David Corn at The Nation magazine and interned at Roll Call. A native of Greenwich, Conn., he received his B.A. degree in philosophy from Princeton University.

Yes, THAT David Corn. The man who promised heads would roll in Bush’s White House regarding the Plame affair and the man that threw out this list of Republican aides who are gay….the same man who said this (via Ace of Spades HQ):

“I have no problem with what gay Republicans do in the privacy of their own bedrooms,” he says. “But when I see a gay wearing an American flag lapel-pin, or a ‘W’ sticker on the back of their cars, I can’t help but be a little bit nauseated. It’s one thing to have these inclinations, it’s another thing entirely to parade them around in public.”

Call me jaded, but I’m a bit suspicious of this Bolton.

But a bigger question in this whole thing, and pretty much the only one that needs answering. Who knew what and when.

The fact that these IM’s are so old and from Foley’s own computer and the fact that Rogers from Blogactive has been saying for over a year that something will come out on Foley prior to mid-terms should give everyone pause.

How is it that ABC, Blogactive, AMERICABlog, and this unheard of new blog Stop Sex Predators, all seemed to be working in unison to get as much publicity out of friendly emails, and then all of a sudden these IM’s appeared? Who got these emails from Foley’s computer? People have said in various blogs that they could have been from the IM recipient but that doesn’t jive with me. They are from 2003. IM programs save archives if you tell them to but for a 18+ year old kid to save these for 3 years just waiting for the day to spring them on Foley is a bit far-fetched.

There is just too much evidence that Rogers (Owner of Blogactive) and Aravosis (Owner of AMERICABlog) were intent on outing Foley. Plenty of posts of them talking about getting even with those Republicans who were closet gays and voting against legislation that Rogers and Aravosis believed in.

In the law enforcement world this is called intent. It was no secret they intended on outing Foley. No the question is did they have the means.

This is Aravosis reponse to the rumors:

Anyway, as you know, I published the Foley emails on my blog last Thursday after ABC News story broke. I had received the emails in July, as I already explained on this blog last Thursday, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to publish allegations of pedophilia/child sex predation, even against a member of the other political party, until I had all the facts (and not being Speaker Hastert, it’s not like I had access to the House GOP leadership, to Foley or the pages to quiz them about the emails). Shortly after I received the emails, I found out that CREW had also received copies of the emails and had immediately passed them to the FBI. I figured that took care of the situation (silly me to trust George Bush’s FBI, they didn’t investigate) and I let the issue go until I saw ABC had published the story last week and that Foley had confirmed to ABC that the emails were real.

Sure thing, he didn’t want to publish emails that asked a kid about his vacation and how he was doing and if he could have a picture. Because ANYONE looking at those would think, pedophile! Puhlease.

One last thing, Michelle Malkin has taken many of us to task for printing the name of this IM recipient, and I agree we need are hands spanked. In the fog of gathering information on what appears to be a generated scandal we forgot about the young man himself, and for that I apologize. I have since taken down the name….

UPDATE

Interesting article written by Michael Gaynor, but no one has been able to gauge the veracity of the info as of yet: (via The Strata-Sphere)

Democrat House Minority Leader and Speaker aspirant Nancy Pelosi and Representative Rahm Emanuel, Chairman of the House’s Democrat Campaign Committee, refused a request by a Republican Congressman to take a polygraph test designed to ascertain whether they knew about now former Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s misconduct (perhaps criminal misconduct) with respect to at least one Congressional page before it became public knowledge.

And AJStrata also found this:

Just as troubling are concerns among some House Democrat staff that there are potential scandals lurking of a similar vein for them. According to another Democrat source, “I’ve been warning my people to stay away from this story because you just don’t know what will come back to bite you.”

Of concern: that House Democrat leadership or Rep. Dale Kildee (Mich.), the Democrat member of the page board, who has served on it since 1985, or his staff have received complaints about Democrat colleagues’ perceived inappropriate communications or contact with pages or former pages, and have not brought those complaints to the board or House management, such as the House Clerk’s office. Kildee has been vocal about the Foley complaints not being brought before the full board prior to the scandal breaking, and the secretive nature of the Republican leadership’s attempts to bring closure to the scandal.

“We all know this kind of scandal isn’t just a Republican problem,” says a Democrat political consultant in Washington. “We don’t want to see what is out there about Democratic House members or former members.”

But other Democrats say more is to come, that talk among Democrats around town is that researchers at CREW and the House Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee have in recent weeks been in contact, and that there are additional stories involving Republicans and questionable ethics behavior to be leaked closer to election time.

No concerted presskrieg here….

UPDATE II

Riehl World View has another factoid about the obscure blog that supposedly started it all. It all boils down to this post at Daily KOS:

I have been reading with interest the various discussions with regard to Congressman Mark Foley. I am a White House Intern and have been in personal contact with Congressman Foley on numerous occasions.

Today I Googled Congressman Foley and came upon this website:

www.stopsexpredators.blogspot.com…

I was just shocked by what I found. I am especially upset by the dismissive attitudes I found on the web from those who know about Congressman Foley’s bad behavior in Washington. I’m sure his conservative base in Florida would not approve of him sending these suggestive and leading emails to underage interns.

Problem is that the post was dated Sept 24th and for a hit to come up on google in the first dozen pages regarding that obscure website is just completely unbelievable.

Entering Congressman Foley in Google produces over 3,000,000 hits given his years in Congress even before recent news. There is not a chance in hell anyone using Google on Sept 24 would have come across that site a mere 12 minutes or so after the post went up. As Radar On Line points out, Google ranks sites on inbound links. At the time of that post SSP had virtually none.

Rogers and Avarosis will have much explaining to do in the days to come.

Also check out AJStrata’s excellent timeline here.

UPDATE III

Wanted to expound on the outing of the IM young man. While I have taken out his name and the link to his MySpace page I do not believe the outing of his name is not noteworthy. The crux of the lefts allegations was that Foley was going after kids. Proving that the evidence so far gathered did not bear this out is not a insignificant point.

Now having said this, the outing should of been to the investigating authorities instead of via the blogosphere.

UPDATE IV

Newsbusters takes a look at the less the hard hitting coverage of the Democrat Mel Reynolds sex scandal, in which there was actual sex involved:

Congressman Mel Reynolds, the Democrat convicted of 12 charges, including sex with 16-year-old Beverly Heard and asking her to take pornographic photographs of a 15-year old, was indicted on August 21, 1994. ABC, the current scourge of congressional teen-sex scandals, reported nothing – until Reynolds was convicted a year later, on August 23, 1995. In fact, on May 13, 1994, ABC featured Reynolds in a “Person of the Week” speaking out in favor of two Chicago ladies fighting child molesters:

Peter Jennings: ” Their local congressman is certainly on their side. He also wants to make child molesting a federal offense.”

Rep. Mel Reynolds (D), Illinois: “These ladies really illustrate how being active in your community can really make a difference.”

Jennings: ” If the law is to change, it will need the support of many more state legislators, which means more mothers will have to get involved.”

ABC’s World News Tonight story on Reynolds being convicted on August 23, 1995, didn’t have any fury about how Democrats could allow this sexual predator in their caucus. For their part, ABC seemed more suffused with sadness than outrage.
And there is that outrage over reading the emails of terrorists….but no outrage involved when it concerns a Republican gay man talking to an over the age of consent young male.

UPDATE V 1315hrs PST

I step away from the puter for a few and all hell breaks loose. First news from Drudge that the IM’s may have been a prank, which I find hard to believe especially since Foley resigned quickly and admitted he is gay:

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the investigation.

The prank scenario only applies to the Edmund IM sessions and does not necessarily apply to any other exchanges between the former congressman and others.

The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones.

Not sure where this is going except a high powered defense attorney has now been employed by the young man. A defense attorney is usually hired when your charged with a crime so this is quite unusual.

What has been going around the blogosphere is this Betsy Newmark exchange during a podcast roundtable with other conservative bloggers: (via Right Wing Howler)

Here are Betsy’s comments:

“Foley is a complete sleaze, he has got a real problem, but let me say, this kid is not an innocent kid. You read those things, he’s leading him on. He’s like a little Lolita. And what I picture, I picture this kid, he’s in his dorm room, or wherever he is, and he has got 3 or 4 friends on and they’re just giggling themselves silly. “Look what I got this Congressman to say.” That’s why he saved these IM messages, so he could send it around to all his friends and they could laugh at this poor, middle-aged Congressman who is so pitiful and has got some real sick problems. It just seems to be the type of thing that teenaged boys would have thought was so funny. This isn’t some kid who is innocently appalled at what he’s getting. He’s leading that guy on.”

What can I say other than, here’s to Betsy, she nailed it right on the nose.
Just when you thought this scandal couldn’t get more complicated.

Now onto the Hastert press briefing:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert defiantly declared Thursday that he’d done nothing wrong relating to the growing Capitol Hill page scandal, and vowed to run again for speaker after the GOP wins back the House in next month’s election.

“I’d like to run and presumably win in this election, and when we do, I expect to run for leader, for speaker,” Hastert said.

The Illinois Republican said he is taking full responsibility for not being more aggressive in the investigation of former Rep. Mark Foley’s inappropriate communications with two underage pages, but said he only heard about Foley’s e-mails and explicit instant messages to one of the pages after it appeared in the press last Friday, Sept. 29.

“Our children need to be protected and we’re going to do everything we can to protect them,” Hastert told reporters gathered outside his district office in Batavia, Ill.

“I only know what I’ve seen in the press and what I’ve heard. The fact is we have turned this whole thing over to the FBI,” he said, adding that the system of protecting pages, “obviously isn’t designed for the electronic age of instant messages.”

Hastert had been expected to name an independent House investigator to look into Foley’s communiqués with pages and the GOP’s handling of it, with former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s name floated as a possible choice. Hastert, however, did not make that announcement.

While I have never come to the defense of Hastert since the Jefferson debacle, I have to agree with him here. There is absolutely no reason for him to step down.

Now the other big news is that Hastert wanted to have Freeh investigate this whole matter, but guess who are shooting this idea down? The Democrats:

Fast-moving developments developing fast: Freeh’s appointment blocked by Dems

Other’s Blogging:

• La Shawn Barber’s Corner
• Hugh Hewitt
• Big Lizards
• California Conservative
• Dean’s World
• Instapundit
• Confederate Yankee
• Sigmund, Carl, & Alfred
• Gateway Pundit
• California Conservative
• Gateway Pundit
• Gateway Pundit
• IMAO
• Michelle Malkin
• The Political Pit Bull
• Outside The Beltway
• Mary Katherine Ham
• Rhymes With Right
• Iowa Voice
• Slobokon’s Site of Schtuff
• Hot Air
• Michelle Malkin
• Macsmind
• Don Surber
• The American Thinker
• The Strata-Sphere
• Polipundit
• The Political Pit Bull
• Sister Toldjah

Read the rest of this entry »

MAJOR UPDATE 1320hrs PST

An excellent job done by Wild Bill at Passionate America in discovering who the IM’s were sent to, one (name removed) who appears to have been 18 at the time of the IM’s (turned 18 on Feb 23rd, 2003):

Congrats to the Democrats, they outed cybersex between two consenting adults!

And one other thing, Wild Bill found this out by doing some detective work when ABC accidently left the IM screenname of Jordon. Did ABC News and Brian Ross do the same kind of investigating? You bet your ass they did, that is their job.

The question is, did they know that the guy on the other line of the IM was an adult at the time of the IM’s and then print a lie that it was with a minor?

END UPDATE

The Democratic party is going full tilt in their attempt to get as much as they can from the Foley incident:

The Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (SDCC), headed by Reid, sent an e-mail with the subject line “Heckuva Job!” to supporters Wednesday. The e-mail contained a photo of President Bush, Foley, and former FEMA director Mike Brown during a visit to Florida following a hurricane. Beneath the photo appears the caption: “It’s Time for a New Direction.”

We are learning, as I reported on last night, that big news may be coming out today about a high ranking Democrat having knowledge of the IM’s for months and that Democrats waited until a simultaneous presskreig could be initiated to release the information. (via Polipundit commentor Mad Cow)

FYI, you may have heard this, but Selena Zito with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (I’m pretty sure that’s right) called in on a local (Birmingham, Alabama) talk radio program this morning. She said a major story might break today that a high ranking Democrat knew about the Foley matter and she hinted there was coordination with ABC, probably through George Stephanopoulos to release the story. (Not taking away from what a disgusting creep Foley is, but considering the reaction by the Dems to the story, this would look pretty bad for them IMO). Zito said she had a few more facts to verify, she does not want to report anything until she’s absolutely certain.

She also said other “outings” would most likely occur before the election and would further hurt the Republicans although she said Democrats would probably be affected as well.

I posted last night about the fact that Dick Morris said on Hannity & Colmes the very same thing, here is the video: (via The Political Pit Bull)

And then we have this by Gateway Pundit:

Radical Gay Rights Activists held on to information about Representative Foley for months and years. These “Rights Activists” knew that representative Foley had relationships with “young men less than half his age.” They did their own investigation on Foley. They even flew in their sources in to be interviewed about the Representative. They shared this information with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They held on to the information for over a year. They wrote about how they would break the story at midterm elections.

Meanwhile we have the first barrage of Democratic ads using this scandal like this one from Patty Wetterling. Her ad states the following:

“It shocks the conscience. Congressional leaders have admitted to covering up the predatory behavior of a congressman who used the internet to molest children.”

Funny thing is that there is no proof of any sex going on AND these teenagers were not children. Yes, sexual discourse with a 16 year is disgusting but come on, there is a big difference between a 16 year old and a 9 year old. Although the age of consent is 16 in DC, whereas the law states a child is 15 and under, it was still wrong and Foley got what he deserved. But to come up with a shock and awe ad where she deliberately misconstrues the message so that people believe this guy was molesting little kids is unforgivable.

Then she goes on to allege that Republican leaders knew about this “molesting” which is anything but the truth. They knew about the friendly email, the same emails that many MSM outfits decided not to report on because they were just “friendly”, not sexual.

Dean Barnett can see where this is heading:

Once again we get an unhindered view of the Democrats’ campaign philosophy: Offer pure bile, unconstrained by any fidelity to available facts. As has so often been the case in recent history, the last days of a campaign season are revealing the true face of the Democratic Party. It ain’t pretty.

All par for the course and we all should not be surprised by this presskreig. Recall when the left went all ga-ga over the Bush DUI story a few days prior to the 2000 election, the story about unguarded ammo in Iraq a few weeks prior to the 2004 election. Rathergate? The thing is that with this “scandal”, as all the rest of their scandals have, this one will come back to bite them in the ass:

Democrat congressional candidate Mike Arcuri, while serving as district attorney of Oneida County, N.Y., has billed taxpayers for several questionable expenses, including a call to a phone-sex hotline, according to records obtained by HumanEvents.

Mr. Arcuri states that the phone-sex number was dialed accidently but could not explain other spending practices:

The questionable expenditures don’t stop there. Among others were a staff member’s call to a New York City strip club in 2000, applications for admission to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 and a gift for the president of a professional association Arcuri belonged to in 2003.

If the Democrats believe they will not get hit by their own sex scandals then they are living in a dream world:

A state senator said he is evaluating whether to continue his bid for a second term after a Charleston television station aired revealing pictures of him last week.

“My family has urged me not to withdraw from the election and I will work with them to make a decision in the immediate future,” State Sen. Randy White, a Webster County Democrat, said in a letter to newspapers in his district.

An apologetic White also wrote that he was “shocked” and “horribly embarrassed” after WCHS-TV aired photos depicting him and at least two other men wearing only body paint.

“The pictures were taken approximately two years ago in private and were stolen from my personal computer,” said White, 51, a married father of three. “I am not sure why they were given to the media, but I must assume for obvious political reasons.”

I guess you reap what you sow.

UPDATE 1050hrs PST

Macranger puts together a good timeline of this scandal:

Through investigation by several bloggers, including yours truly, it is discovered that during the last few years, liberal watchdog group CREW may have had specific knowlede of the IM’s existance, and of Foley’s activities, and might have possibly been in possession corospondence between Rep. Foley and former page(s). Additionally a known “Republican Gay Outer”, Mike Rogers of Blog Active was found to have materially participated in the IM messaging of Foley and admitted to have been on a “campaign” to out Foley since at least as far back as March 2005, and specifically attempted to threaten Foley in January 2006, thus may be guilty of using threat or intimidation to influence a US Congressman’s vote on US legislation.

Yesterday Gateway Pundit uncovered that Mike Rogers had an a “partner” (although not known to be an accomplice at this point) in John Aravios of America’s Blog in a campaign against Foley as well. Gateway Pundit notes that there is no evidence that Aravios actually had specific evidence, but then holding evidence, and having knowledge of someone holding it are still crimes.

World Net Daily picked up on the story here, and puts together nicely what appears at this point to have been an orchestrated effort on the part of several leftwing activists to “pull the trigger” on this story just prior to midterm elections.

Additionally, while Mr. Foley appears by his resigning to have admitted to participating in IMing and emailing former pages, it’s not clear if all the recorded IM’s are authentic. The FBI, which is looking into the matter, as I mentioned here, will use specific forensic analysist to determine if in fact the corospondence discovered so far is in fact valid. Already it has been discovered that several IM’s may have in fact been tampered with.

And now we have a bit more info on the owner of AMERICABlog: (via QandO blog)

Somebody should definitely ask why people who heard about this months ago did not report it:

“I received copies of these emails several months ago, but couldn’t confirm their veracity so I did not report on them.” — John Aravosis, Americablog

Did Aravosis turn this over to the FBI or local law enforcement?
Plus Sweetness & Light has come up with this information from a two year old article about Rogers and Aravosis:

Mike Rogers and John Aravosis, [are] the two men loosely heading an ongoing outing campaign on the Hill. As the date nears for a Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriages in the Constitution, Rogers said the outings have picked up steam — from 13 documented offices to nearly 20 currently on a target list provided by Rogers to the Blade.

In addition to Tolman, Rogers and Aravosis, working in tandem but not together, claimed in the last week to have outed via the Web Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida…

[...]Aravosis said he obtained the latest information about the five-term congressman from Foley’s former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham.

Fordham, who is gay, headed up fund-raising efforts for Foley’s aborted Senate campaign and is now the finance director for one of the remaining GOP primary candidates in that race: Mel Martinez, George W. Bush’s former Housing & Urban Development secretary. Martinez has come out in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Fordham denied ever speaking with Aravosis and told the Blade, “I just don’t discuss Congressman Foley’s personal life with reporters, but I’m not sure what their motive is in outing him, other than to draw attention to themselves. Foley has a good track record with gay issues and opposes the FMA.” …

A question from Gateway Pundit:

QUESTION – Did Fordham have acccess to Foley’s IM account information, screen name and password? Very likely. Could he have passed this information onto Aravosis and Rogers? Very possible. Could some of the IMs been manufactured then by Rogers or Aravosis, those being reported by ABC. Probable.

We know someone logged onto Foley’s IM account yesterday when he was in a treatment center for 20-30 seconds, according to Fox News. Could this have been Rogers or Aravosis?

UPDATE II 1115hrs PST

Fordham has resigned:

The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, according to Republican sources on Capitol Hill.

Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.

“He begged them not to tell the page board,” said one of the Republican sources.

People familiar with Fordham’s side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

They said Fordham had repeatedly warned Hastert’s staff about Foley’s “problem” with pages, but little was done.

UPDATE III 1125hrs PST

Interesting that Rogers site, BlogActive, predicted the outing of Foley for the midterms back in 2005:

I’ve thought hard about what kind of TAKE ACTION would work, but there is really is none right now. Everyone already knows Foley’s a self hating closet case. When we get closer to the mid-term elections, I am sure more will surface.

And this is something I missed earlier from David Corn alleging that there is a list of Republican aides who are gay:

There’s a list going around. Those disseminating it call it “The List.” It’s a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.

On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there’s anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a “network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice.” The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List–drawn up by gay politicos–is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.

I have a copy. I’m not going to publish it. For one, I don’t know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don’t fancy outing people–though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.

What’s interesting about The List–which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications–is that (if it’s acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right’s favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices? After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors. That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation.

It’s becoming clearer by the day that this scandal is a coordinated presskreig by gay activists against closeted gays in the Republican party. That’s it in a nutshell.

Did it work with Mary Cheney?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Allah at Hot Air reminds us that David Corn is the famous Plamegate pusher and:

To be clear: Corn said the list had been drawn up by “gay politicos” without specifying their party, but he also said that House Republicans were angry at the gay staffers. I took that as a suggestion that Republicans were helping to circulate the list in hopes of having these people purged. Maybe — hopefully — I misread.

UPDATE IV 1135hrs PST

Fordham has issued a statement:

I have resigned today from Congressman Tom Reynolds’ office. It is clear the Democrats are intent on making me a political issue in my boss’s race, and I will not let them do so.

I want to clarify a few things: When I sought to help Congressman Foley and his family when his shocking secrets were being revealed, I did so as a friend of my former boss, not as Congressman Reynolds’ Chief of Staff. I reached out to the Foley family, as any good friend would, because I was worried about their emotional well-being.

At the same time, I want it to be perfectly clear that I never attempted to prevent any inquiries or investigation of Foley’s conduct by House officials or any other authorities.

Like so many, I feel betrayed by Mark Foley’s indefensible behavior. Again, I will not allow the Democrats to make me a political issue in my boss’s race, and I will fully cooperate with the ongoing investigation.”

Sounds to me like Fordham has a bit of information he wants to spill, and I doubt the Democrats will be happy.

UPDATE V 1215hrs PST

More on Fordham:

Kirk Fordham was chief of staff for Foley for about 10 years then apparently resigned that job “rather suddenly.” For the last couple of years he’s been on the staff of another Republican from New York. Fordham was outed as gay by one of the folks and organizations that definitely is involved in the whole Foley IM mess some time ago. He has been open about his homosexuality since. I don’t know if the outing is why he left Foley’s staff. Others are saying that he’s been involved with the activists that held the IMs and they infer from that that he may be their source.

He’s apparently being forced out now, however, because he tried to intervene with ABC to get them to not publish the contents of the IMs, suggesting that Foley would give them an exclusive interview following his resignation in exchange. ABC turned him down. Speculation would be that he either was trying to protect Foley in some way, or trying to cover up the contents. That might be important if he had faked any of the IMs, as releasing the contents would let at least Foley know that someone else wrote the offending IMs (if that is, in fact, what’s going on… I think).

UPDATE VI 1345hrs PST

Rep. Alexander who had earlier said that Hastert knew about the emails is backing off:

Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., the congressman who sponsored the page at the heart of the recent Capitol Hill sex scandal furor and initially said Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., “knew about the e-mails that we knew about,” including one in which Foley asked the page to send his picture, has now backed off that comment, saying he discussed the e-mails with Hastert’s aides, not the speaker himself.

“I guess that’s a poor choice of words that I made there,” Alexander told AP.

How special.

Other’s Blogging:

• Wizbang
• Newsbusters
• Sister Toldjah
• A Blog For All
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Outside The Beltway
• Iowa Voice
• Cold Fury
• Lifelike Pundits
• Darleen’s Place
• The Real Ugly American
• The Jawa Report
• The Strata-Sphere
• Wizbang
• The Strata-Sphere
• Ace of Spades HQ
• Riehl World View
• Squiggler
• The Strata-Sphere
• The Jawa Report
• Instapundit
• Wizbang

New post started here

See my earlier posts here and here for additional info.

Now this is some serious crying from the Washington Times:

The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress.

Disgrace for every Republican member of Congress? Oh come on, puhlease. Stop the hysteria. Because ONE Republican turned out to be gay and had a thing for teenage men does not mean you can throw a blanket over the whole party. If that was the case then the blanket could have been thrown over the Democrats many times over since Studds and all the way up to Jefferson.

Red flags emerged in late 2005, perhaps even earlier, in suggestive and wholly inappropriate e-mail messages to underage congressional pages.

I’m sorry, unless they are hiding further emails which we have not seen, the one email that we have seen was not suggestive, nor was it inappropriate. Asking how he was doing and then asking for a picture is none of those things.

Now the IM’s are a different story, but no one inside the Republican party had seen them before this scandal broke.

His aberrant, predatory — and possibly criminal — behavior was an open secret among the pages who were his prey.

Funny, a few pages have come out and said that acted strange while others have come out and denied this fact.

But another page, who asked not to be named told The Palm Beach Post, “The program in no official capacity warned us about it,” and he said that Loraditch had posted an explanation for his comments to ABC on the college social network, Facebook.com….

[...]The other page said most pages are angry at Loraditch’s comments and that the page program did its best to ensure the safety of pages, with strict rules and curfews.

Open secret it was not. But why let facts get in the way when you can screech like a little girl as the Times has done:

The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never happened.

Wrong once again. The evidence they had was a friendly email to a 16 year old kid who felt uncomfortable about them. This was NOT strong evidence and relieving a member of Congress based on those emails would have been foolish….never would have happened on either side of the aisle.

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the House Page Board, said he learned about the Foley e-mail messages “in late 2005.” Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the leader of the Republican majority, said he was informed of the e-mail messages earlier this year. On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hastert insisted that he learned of the most flagrant instant-message exchange from 2003 only last Friday, when it was reported by ABC News. This is irrelevant. The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator

This editorial writer has officially become unhinged. The fact that no one inside the Republican party had seen the IM’s until Friday is irrelevant? Give me a break. The original email was NOT enough evidence to prove anything other then Foley being nice to pages, which was common knowledge it appears.

The question I have is why is it that CREW, and the owner of Blogactive, had this evidence, the IM’s that is, and not tell a soul inside Congress about it for months, maybe even years? Where is the call for the investigation about these two organizations and their obvious lack of worry for the kids?

Mark Levin is on the same page as I am:

Meanwhile, the Democrats hang tough, through thick and thin. They slobber all over Bill Clinton, who actually had sex with a 19-year-old intern and abused his office and women left and right. William Jefferson, a Class-A crook, remains in office with no effort by his party to expel him because in a close election, Nancy Pelosi needs him. West Virginia’s Alan Mollohan has become wealthy in office, apparently helping to funnel money to his favorite causes. Sen. Bob Menendez apparently rented property to a nonprofit agency which he helped to receive federal funds. Cynthia McKinney assaulted a police officer, and she wasn’t expelled. (The voters fired her.) John Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam scandal, yet is now touted as the future House Democrat leader. And the media’s favorite Republican, John McCain, was caught up in the Keating Five scandal. We have leakers, womanizers, boozers, and anti-Semites in Congress, not to mention Ted Kennedy. And I could go on and on.

Oh yes, I hear we conservatives are better than the liberals, and that we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. But throwing Republican leaders overboard to prove the point without sufficient information is no standard at all. It may make pundits more comfortable and may attract praise from unlikely circles, but it doesn’t make us better than liberals. In fact, it doesn’t make us better people, period. What we need is information. Most of us only learned about the Foley communications last Friday. Demanding Hastert’s head tonight, as I said in an earlier post, is irresponsible. Among other things, we need to know who was aware of these three-year-old instant messages, only to make them public at a time of enormous help to the House Democrats. Clearly Foley wasn’t the only one exploiting these teenagers.

As is Bookworm:

Foley’s conduct does not make for a pretty story, but it’s not the story we first believed. Foley looks like a creep and a predator, but not a criminal. The Republican leadership, on the facts I’ve described above, doesn’t looked as if it had facts sufficient to make a reasonable person act. To my partisan mind, the only ones who look really bad are the Soros groups, which sat on emails they now contend show a crime against children, and the Democrats, generally, who have suddenly started calling a large group of their constitutents “perverts.” In other words, this is not really a sex scandal; it’s just politics as usual.

I have been a little bit miffed with the rights reaction to this whole thing from day one. As soon as it was learned the emails and IM’s were to young men many on the right just threw Foley overboard without any hard information. I mean at least wait a few days to see where all this information leads us. Recall the Plame hysteria when it first came out…..Steve Hadley actually RETRACTED the 16 words in the Bush speech when those words were actually true. Instead of heading off the controversy from the beginning our party lent credence to the “scandal”…..Deja Vu?

Carol Platt Liebau is also telling the Right to remain calm, for god’s sakes:

The Democrats are trying to play the same game with Foley as they do with Iraq . . . refusing to recognize that decisions can be made only with the imperfect information that people have at the time. Once all the facts are revealed, Dems like to second guess, but that’s the prerogative only of those who don’t really have to be responsible for anything.

Republicans need to remain calm. Make it clear that we are united in our absolute distaste and repugnance at Foley’s behavior, wait for the facts to come out, and then proceed accordingly.

The timing of this thing stinks to high heaven (see my post here to get the lowdown on the timing) and if the Democrats were indeed only looking out for the children then they would also want to find out who knew what and when…..

UPDATE

Mark Levin makes another valid point, if Foley’s proclivities were a well known secret then why didn’t ANY member of Congress blow the whistle, Dem or Rep?

If Foley’s behavior was an “open secret,” then why didn’t ANY member of Congress raise a loud stink about it? Just because they didn’t hold the title “Speaker” doesn’t mean they couldn’t have acted or spoken out. The point is illogical to me. (And if it was an “open secret,” it seems that precious little information was provided to the Speaker by anyone.) If, for example, it’s an “open secret” that a member of Congress actually molested a page, it’s not solely the Speaker’s responsibility to address it. And if it’s an “open secret,” I assume Nancy Pelosi knew about it. So, I suppose we should damn the entire House. Yes, the Speaker runs the place, or tries to, but every member has a duty to report unethical or criminal activity should they become aware of it.

UPDATE II

The House Majority Leader has issued a response to the hysterical crying from the Times:

Dear Letter to the Editor:

I disagree with the editorial board of the Washington Times (”Resign, Mr. Speaker,” Oct. 3, 2006). We are all outraged about Mark Foley’s abhorrent and reprehensible conduct. He preyed on children entrusted to our care and he disgraced our institution.

Mr. Foley lied to his fellow members, he lied to the Clerk of the House, and I believe everyone wishes they knew more and knew it earlier so we would have caught Mr. Foley’s lies and deceit. Those of us in the Republican leadership have done our best to provide an accurate chronology of our recollections and conversations with Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) regarding Mr. Foley, but one thing is certain: no one in the leadership, including Speaker Hastert, had any knowledge of the warped and sexually explicit instant messages that were revealed by ABC News last Friday. Had Speaker Hastert or anyone else in our leadership known about Mr. Foley’s despicable conduct, I’m confident the Speaker would have moved to expel Mr. Foley immediately and turn him over to the appropriate authorities.

Our congressional pages and their parents deserve a fair and full investigation by the Justice Department, and I’m confident they will get one. We also need to know why these messages surfaced only last week, on the final day of legislative business before the November elections. If this evidence was withheld for political purposes, one can only speculate as to how many additional children may have been endangered before this information was finally revealed.

UPDATE III 1710hrs PST

Been out most of the afternoon so I missed the update from ABC about the new IM’s. Nothing too surprising here based on the other IM’s we saw, cybersex, talk of alcohol to someone under 21, and other assorted deviant activity.

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.

Yes, we all know and agree Foley was a perv….he needed to resign, as he did immediately, unlike Studds, unlike Reynolds. But for the Democrats to come out and say that based on the emails in which nothing sexual was discussed Hastert should of started an investigation is just plain ludicrous. Hindsight is always 20/20 but come on. Knowing what they knew then, mainly that a few emails were sent that made a page uncomfortable but nothing sexual was said nor discussed who in the world would have started an investigation? Not a Dem nor a Rep would have.

Now if anyone knew of these IM’s that would be a different matter but there has not been any claim nor evidence suggesting this.

Democratic hitjob prior to the election.

UPDATE IV 2030hrs PST

Dick Morris stated on Fox News about an hour ago that a respected reporter told him that she has proof that a senior democrat member of congress knew about the IMs months ago.

Trying to get video as I type….

What will this do to Pelosi’s shrill cries of “protecting the children”?

UPDATE V 2045hrs PST

Right Wing News has found that a entry that initially described the Stubbs affair as so:

“On July 20, 1983, Gerry was censured for having an affair 10 years earlier with a male page. He…turned his back] as the charges against him were read. The anti-gay crew had worked hard to demonize him (as they would [[Barney Frank]] several years later over allegations of a male prostitute having clients in Frank’s apartment). Gerry held a press conference with the page and admitted to a relationship. They each firmly stated that what had gone on in their bedroom was their business, and absolutely no one else’s.”

Has now been edited to take out any reference to the “anti-gay crew”

That’s right, folks. According to the people at the Daily Kos before the Foley scandal, criticizing a Congressman for having sex with a 17 year old page was nothing but the, “anti-gay crew (working) hard to demonize him.”

Now today, the very same liberals who have that morally bankrupt view are insisting that people like Dennis Hastert resign for not figuring out sooner, with no hard evidence whatsoever, that Foley was another Studds.

No hypocrisy here.

Other’s Blogging:

• Wizbang
• Rightwinged
• Confederate Yankee
• Macsmind
• GOPBloggers
• Riehl World View
• Ankle Biting Pundits
• Don Surber
• Capitol Briefs
• Rightwing Nuthouse
• Newsbusters
• Redstate
• The Strata-Sphere
• Right Wing News
• Hot Air
• Save The GOP
• The Real Ugly American
• The Absurd Report
• IMAO
• A Blog For All
• Cold Fury
• Gothamist
• The American Mind
• Sigmund, Carl, & Alfred
• JustOneMinute
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Gateway Pundit
• Wizbang

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve closed out this post and begun a new one here.

Tom Maguire from JustOneMinute, Rick Moran from Rightwing Nuthouse, and Clarice Feldman from The American Thinker have been doing some wonderful research on the suspicious way in which this story took fire. In my earlier post I delved into the fact that the liberal group CREW had a big hand in getting the IM’s out. Now Rick has done some research on the website that supposedly broke the story:

Stop Sex Predators came on line in late July with one post announcing its intention to “serve as a clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned parents and citizens.”

The next blog post wasn’t until August 17th where the writer listed in a rather desultory manner some more notable sex predators. After that, two posts on August 26.

[...]The fourth and last post for the entire month of August was a cut and paste from Wikpedia of the Gary Condit affair. More “political predators” on a site dedicated to sex predators in general? Why?

Then in September there were two more posts until Sept 21st where Foley is mentioned for the first time.

I have been away for a while, so please accept my apologies for the lack of blog posts. BUT….while I was away, the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received! I can hardly believe it! I’m posting each one below. It’s proof that the Congressional Corruption of the past is alive and well today. It’s up to us to expose it and stop this predatory harassment! Please promote the blog and email any further information to stopsexpredators@gmail.com… . Together we will make a difference!

Rick asks the same thing any of us would. How in the world did someone “notice” this blog with all of 6 posts and only started in July? How far down in google do you think this blog would be? Waaaaaay down.

Why would anyone notice this blog? It has posted nothing original in its short existence. The rare postings means that it has not built up any audience whatsoever. The first Technorati reference to the blog is from two days ago. Even a Google search doesn’t show it on the first 10 pages when searching for “Stop Sex Predators.”

And yet, 3 separate people who had contact with Congressman Foley somehow found this website independent of one another and supposedly sent emails to the owner of this site to complain about Foley’s inappropriate behavior.

Possible? Yes. Probable? I’ll let you decide.

I hearby declare shananigans…..get your broomsticks fellas.

That’s not all of it, apparently some commentors to JustOneMinute believe they know who the owner of the blog is, one Jason Leopold:

Clarice informs me that an old friend might be behind the Stop Sex Predators blog:

One of the JOM (Just One Minute) posters who’s been paying attention thinks Jason Leopold is the owner of stopsexpredators. The only place we can find a link to the story is another site (from the desk of patrick J fitzgerald which we also think is Leopold) Leopold you may recall was writing all those crazy stories for Truthout including the one that Rove was indicted and the indictment would be unsealed in 24 hours.

Highly speculative, but it fits. Leopold would have been able to make CREW aware of the emails published on the blog. Here’s ABC News on the genesis of the story:

Yesterday, we asked the congressman about some much tamer e-mails from one page, and he said he was just being overly friendly. After we posted that story online, we began to hear from a number of other pages who sent these much more explicit, instant messages. When the congressman realized we had them, he resigned.

Instant messages not emails. As ABC makes clear, there are two different stories. The question is, how many sources?
Anyone have a feeling this is going to come back to bite the Democrats once more?

UPDATE

Guess what Brian Ross just posted, that Foley was known to be gay and the staff there told the pages to ignore his friendly behavior.

A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.

Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk’s office.

Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told “don’t get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff.”

[...]Loraditch says that some of the pages who “interacted” with Foley were hesitant to report his behavior because “members of Congress, they’ve got the power.” Many of the pages were hoping for careers in politics and feared Foley might seek retribution.

Where in the world are the Democrats going to end up on this? Will they now come out against gays? Do they know that apparently in DC the age of consent is 16? Using your power to gain sexual favors (which there is no evidence that sex ever occurred with these pages) is horrible and he should have resigned, as he did.

Unlike a certain Democrat…cough Clinton cough.

UPDATE II

Ray Robison notices the difference in reporting by our MSM outfits when it comes to a Republican.

UPDATE III 2050hrs PST

An important update here. Just Barking Mad has found that at least one of the emails in question have been altered by someone.

Just Barking Mad found this email on that blog Stop Sex Predators:

All fine and dandy. But check out the release from CREW, from page 5 of their release:

Same exact email based on the narrative but a different subject line….

Like I said, FoleyGate has begun.

UPDATE IV 2105hrs PST

Checking on this alteration thing and it appears that the PDF from CREW is a forwarded message from the kid with him cutting and pasting text and omitting the header information. The only one with header information is the first one on Page 4.

But this doesn’t explain how the emails looked as they did on the Stop Sex Predators blog. Did he cut and paste the header from Page 4 of the PDF and made the other emails look like that one?

Smells fishy in Wonderland Alice.

UPDATE V 2240hrs pst

Apparently Wild Bill from Smoke Signals Blog has discovered who the IM’s were sent to and is asking for a response. From the IM’s it appears the interaction was not against his will so I doubt we will find out anything new if he does respond but alas, it’s worth a try.

UPDATE VI 2245hrs PST

This NYT’s article gives another side of Mr. Foley huh?

In the hierarchy of Congress, the high school students who serve as Congressional pages fall somewhere near the bottom, seemingly invisible as they scurry through the hallways of the Capitol ferrying messages to powerful lawmakers who often fail to give them a second glance.

In that rarefied world, Representative Mark Foley, the silver-haired Republican from Florida, stood out.

He took pains to befriend the 16- and 17-year-old aides, several former pages said in interviews on Sunday. He chatted with them on the House floor, they said, sent handwritten notes and urged them to keep in touch when they left Washington for their hometowns.

In 2002, he even stood up on the floor of the House, his eyes welling with tears, and commended the young men and women for their year of service. In his speech, Mr. Foley mentioned several of the high school students by name, describing a handwritten note to celebrate one young man’s graduation and a lunch with another at Morton’s steak house.

Now I’m sure at this point many of you are saying, “well, he was so nice because he wanted to get in bed with them”

But if he was gay how do you explain female pages giving the same stories?

Ashley Gallo, a 21-year-old former page who is now a senior at Western Michigan University, said on Sunday that many of her friends had viewed Mr. Foley as one of the few lawmakers who made a real effort to reach out to young people.

“You didn’t have a lot of interaction with the members because most of them treated you like a kid, but he was pretty friendly,” said Ms. Gallo, who served as a page in 2001. “He would talk to people,” she said.

“He would say, ‘Here’s my e-mail address if you want to keep in touch.’ I don’t think anyone thought anything of it. They saw him as a mentor or a reference.”

The article goes on to detail other male pages who never experienced inappropiate contact from Mr. Foley.

The sound your hearing is the sound of a scandal slowly coming to a stop and going in reverse.

UPDATE VII 2300hrs PST

You know I’m at a loss to explain this other NYT’s article in which they go into any possible laws Foley may have broken. The writer explains that emails and IM’s involve no contact so they can be difficult to prosecute but:

In the absence of physical contact, said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, some prosecutors reviewing e-mail messages like Mr. Foley’s “could say, ‘This is really gross, I need to take a shower,’ but not charge” the sender with a crime.

But Professor Berman added, “There are cases in which people have done stuff that is not significantly worse and have had the book thrown at them.”

Earlier this year, for instance, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 200-year sentence for a former Phoenix high school teacher convicted of possessing child pornography. The teacher, Morton R. Berger, was not charged with transmitting pornography or with having unlawful contact with minors.

WTF! Ok now, emailing and IM’ing someone over the age of 16 (age of consent in DC) about sex is one thing but to compare it to child pornography is outrageous. Yes, what Mr. Foley did was morally wrong in my book but the teacher the Times compares him to, Mr. Morton Berger, possessed the following:

Specifically, he was charged with possession of 20 photographs depicting, among other things, children being raped by adults, children engaging in sexual acts with other children, and children in sexual acts with animals.

More:

Morton R. Berger, who was a history teacher at Cortez High School, was arrested four years ago based on his possession of photographs, computer video files and computer photo files of children, all younger than 15, in sex acts. Prosecutors dismissed 15 counts but got convictions on the remaining 20.

A bit different then sending consensual emails with someone over the age of consent don’t you think? It appears the Times does not agree….big surprise there.

UPDATE VIII 2315hrs PST

Wild Bill has posted a copy of each one of the disputed emails with the differences pointed out:

First the one from CREW:

And now the one from SSP:

You know it almost looks like the author of SSP was read the email, maybe over the phone, and tried to produce something that looked like a faxed copy. Thing is he forgot all the little stuff.

UPDATE IX 2358hrs PST

Ok, last update for the night..gonna hit the sack. But I just had to highlight this statement from the executive director of CREW:

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said today, “It is horrifying to learn that some members of Congress were more concerned with covering up a potentially embarrassing situation than with protecting the teenage pages.” Sloan continued, “the American people, and particularly the parents of other pages, have a right to know if congressional leaders put politics above the safety of children.”

More horrifying is that this organization apparently knew of these allegations and emails over the whole summer but choose the end of September to start the presskreig…..putting all these kids at risk so they could come up with their October Surprise.

How special.

UPDATE X 10/2/06 1430hrs PST

Since I have been unable to post updates due to server problems what with the huge amount of traffic from LGF it seems I have missed quite a bit.

Macranger has found that the owner of BlogActive.net… and the owner of SSP may be one in the same:

They’re may be a possibilty that the one who runs Blog Active.com…, and the one who runs Stop Sex Predators may be one in the same. That may be Mike Rogers, the infamous Gay Republican Outer.

Via Rogers site:

“Well the good news is that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is finally getting it. I called their Director of Communications, Bill Burton, to let him know that the Foley thing (and another case) were coming down the pike. While Burton promised to have someone email or return my call and didn’t, I am glad he followed up on my call and was ready on Friday to come out of the gate running.

The bad new is they are still not paying enough attention… There are others within reach… If the Democrats would only fight half as hard as the Republicans”

Rogers is miffed that the DCCC has been deleting his posts. No wonder as even they sense a major backfire if it get’s out that this was all a “Gay Republican Outing” that netted more than it bargained for.

Rogers seemingly isn’t ashamed to take the credit, per a post he made at the DCCC before it was deleted:

“Very exciting.

I am glad my work on this is finally coming to fruition. I spoke with Bill Burton at the DCCC about this and I’m so glad you guys were able to jump in on the heels of my work.

Obviously we didn’t have a chance of winning this seat, so this is great.

Good Job!

Mike Rogers
Blogactive.com…

Posted by: Mike Rogers | September 29, 2006 09:55 PM

Note Rogers warns about another case coming “down the pike”. Of course these revelations migh just sideline that severely.

Fact is that Rogers admits to being in possession of the IM’s BEFORE they were posted on the web via his own comments on his site:

“As people know, it’s not always possible for me to disclose my role in some of the activities.

I can say this. I had the emails before they were on the net. Additionally, I had the additional emails, written by the page to a friend. The story was being written by a number of outlets and I provided additional information to reporters involved in the breaking of this story.

Was the central figure in reporting on Foley’s latest scandal? Never said I was. Was my work on the case important to helping make sure it came out before the election? Yes.

Did I have any idea that the GOP leadership was engaged in a cover-up? Nope. Do I love the fact that they are trying to spin this as ‘naughty emails?’ Yup. because it shows how out of tought they are about queer closet cases.”

Similarly there is a promise of that “down the pike” story:

“While the Foley scandal is great news for the Dems in Nov. John, when will we see the much touted outing of the Mystery Senator? This would be a great time to do it.. Give the Repubs the old one two punch!”

This of course refers to Rogers prior blackmailing of an unnamed Republican Senator back in January. In any case I imagine that as the “agenda” is exposed, the Democrats most likely will seen as the losers in the exchange, a fact the DCCC is already acknowledging.
Do I have to keep saying this? This “scandal” WILL come back to bite the Democrats in the ass.

The fact that emails were altered is small fry compared to the fact that a known lefty operative appears to have had these emails and IM’s for quite some time and didn’t release them until now….putting how many kids at risk? For what?

A October Surprise.

UPDATE XI 1500hrs PST

Gateway Pundit has found some more proof that this was a concerted hitjob by a militant gay group to take away that Republican seat:

Now… Get this posting at Blog Active back on March 4, 2005:

Click to enlarge

Here are the threats and plans to destroy Mark Foley printed at a Leftist-haters blog back in March of 2005:

Birds of a Feather
Two haters, one picture:
Gay-bashing straight man John Ashcroft and Gay-bashing gay man Mark Foley

This is United States Congressman Mark Foley
He voted this week for a law to allow hate groups to fire gay and lesbian people at will
The law he is supporting will overrule ANY local laws on the matter.
MARK FOLEY IS GAY
MARK FOLEY WILL BE EXPOSED FOR THE HYPOCRITE HE IS THROUGH A MAIL AND INTERNET CAMPAIGN THAT WILL REACH INTO EVERY HOME IN HIS DISTRICT.

THIS MAN IS A DANGER

TO GAY MEN AND LESBIANS

DO NOT SLEEP WITH THIS MAN
IF HE CRUISES YOU IN THE BATHROOMS OF CONGRESS,IGNORE HIM!
IF HE HITS ON YOU AT THE NEXT REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONIGNORE HIM!

THE NATION MUST BE WARNED ABOUT THIS
ABOMINATION IN THE GAY COMMUNITY

Please to support our educational and advertising campaign against this right wing hypocrite, click here and join the battle for true lesbian and gay liberation.

**COMING MONDAY ON BLOGACTIVE:** The entire Mark Foley story…Read about my recorded discussions with staff members and former staff members of Rep. Mark Foley…Read about how Mark Foley hit on men less than half his age at the Republican convention…Read about how Mark Foley voted to remove protections from those same young gay men and lesbians and anyone else violating a local discrimination law!!!

And back in 2004 there were open threats in the Washington Blade by Rogers targeting Foley:

20 offices said targeted
Not likely, say Mike Rogers and John Aravosis, the two men loosely heading an ongoing outing campaign on the Hill. As the date nears for a Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriages in the Constitution, Rogers said the outings have picked up steam — from 13 documented offices to nearly 20 currently on a target list provided by Rogers to the Blade.

In addition to Tolman, Rogers and Aravosis, working in tandem but not together, claimed in the last week to have outed via the Web Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida.

While Tolman confirmed he is gay, the Mikulski’s office refused to comment on speculation she is a lesbian, something Aravosis implied last week on his site.

A spokesperson for Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) also declined to comment after Aravosis specifically asserted that Foley is gay on his Web site last week.

Both members of Congress have long been the subject of rumors about their sexual orientation.
Foley abused his position and may have been involved in criminal activity.

Democrats knew this for over a year.

With 6 weeks before the November elections, they broke the dam loose!
UPDATE XII 1630hrs PST

Sean Hannity had a great interview earlier today with John Boehner, and Newt Gingrich. Here is a 15 minute .mp3 of both interviews.

UPDATE XII 1710hrs PST

Now this is how to summerize this story:

What R leadership knew: “How was your vacation, send me a pic”

What D leadership knew: “I’d drive a thousand miles for a hot young stud like you”

So who was allowing “abuse” ???

That scandal train is slowly squeaking backwards….

UPDATE XIII 10/3/06 0900hrs PST

The blog that started it all, the suspicious Stop Sex Predators has now cleared its site of all comments…I wonder why that could be?

Other’s Blogging:

• Tigerhawk
• Ray Robison
• Stop The ACLU
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• The Coalition Of The Swilling
• Lifelike Pundits
• 186k Per Second
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Gateway Pundit
• Say Anything
• Hot Air
• Stop The ACLU
• Sister Toldjah
• QT Monster’s Place
• The Strata-Sphere
• Michelle Malkin
• Say Anything
• Rightwinged
• Bookworm Room
• Ace of Spades HQ
• Suitably Flip
• Wizbang
• The Unalienable Right
• The Political Pit Bull
• Talk Wisdom
• La Shawn Barber’s Corner
• Chez Diva

I figured I would wait a day or two to start posting on this FoleyGate mess because I knew when there is a screaming netroot there is usually much more behind it then what first meets the eye. This case appears to be no exception.

Was Foley a perv? Most definately so. But the speed with which the Democrats came out swinging at the Republican leadership, accusing them of knowing about the sexually explicit emails long ago, gave me pause. Not because I believed them, but because this has been their modus operendi for every “scandal” for the past 6 years. Every single Democratic hitjob has begun like this and almost every single “scandal” has been proven to be nothing more then netroots stomping their feet shrilling crying “but those big bad evil Republicans just have to be wrong!”

Take for example these writers stomping away:

Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

The rub is that the Republican leadership was notified of an email exchange in which he asks the page how he is holding up after Katrina and then asks for a picture. While creepy this would not sound alarms nationwide that a pervert was on the loose.

Aides to the speaker and other Congressional Republican leaders said that the messages brought to their attention — described as “over friendly” — were much less explicit than others that came to light after ABC News disclosed the first e-mail correspondence. In those messages, Mr. Foley asked about the well-being of the boy, a Monroe, La., resident, after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph.

He wrote: “How are you weathering the hurricane. . .are you safe. . .send me a pic of you as well.”…

“No one in the speaker’s office was made aware of the sexually explicit text messages which press reports suggest had been directed to another individual until they were revealed in the press and on the Internet this week,” the statement from Mr. Hastert’s office said.

They were not notified of the sexually explicit one.

So this paragraph in the Washington Post now appears to be true:

It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy.

But we are finding this out ONLY after two days of whining from the left. Hot Air found this interesting timeline:

As for what actions Hastert took, the Times fills in the blanks. FYI, “Alexander” is Rep. Rodney Alexander, the Congressman the Louisiana page worked for.

Mr. Alexander called the boy’s parents, who, he said Saturday, told him they did not want to pursue the matter but wanted Mr. Foley to stop.

Mr. Alexander’s office also contacted staff members in Mr. Hastert’s office for guidance on what to do and. According to the speaker’s account, his aides put Mr. Alexander’s staff in contact with the clerk of the House, who oversees the page program. The clerk, who at the time was Jeff Trandahl, referred the matter to Representative John Shimkus, the Illinois Republican who is the chairman of the House Page Board, in late 2005, a spokesman for Mr. Shimkus said.

Mr. Trandahl and Mr. Shimkus confronted Mr. Foley, who insisted he was simply acting as a mentor to the former page, officials said. He assured them nothing inappropriate had occurred.

“They asked Foley about the email,” the speaker’s statement said. “Congressman Shimkus and the clerk made it clear that to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and at the request of the parents, Congressman Foley was to immediately cease any communication with the young man.”

But you know what may be much more interesting to come out of this? The fact that a MSM outfit knew of these emails and sat on them: (via Rightwing Nuthouse)

My good friend and fellow American Thinker contributor Clarice Feldman left a comment that deserves to be elevated for greater readability. It is, something of an eye popper:

Reportedly the St Pete Times had the same information in August 2005 and wrote nothing about it either, apparently because the emails do not constitute illegal conduct, they are just creepy, and the boy’s parents did not wish to pursue this.

The far more damaging IM messages were released by CREW , the same “public interest” group which is representing the Wilson/Plames in their laughable suit against Cheney, et al.

When did they get the IM’s? Why did they wait until now to release them? Is there any indication the Republicans who looked into THIS MATTER had any knowledge of their(the IM’s) existence.

Pardon an old lady’s suspicions. I’ve seen this dance too many times before.

I read this morning that a Monroe, LA newspaper also had the story and didn’t run with it because there appeared to be no impropriety.
All along we have been led to believe that the Republican leadership knew of the disgusting IM’s but it now appears they knew of the much earlier email in which there was nothing sexually explicit.

What will the excuse be for some MSM outfits if they knew of the sick perverted exchanges and held onto them for an October Surprise?

Oh, and the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. We don’t make excuses for our bad politicians? I have not read one rightwing blog say, even once, that this guy just made a mistake..etc etc. No, we are all calling for his head on platter. I would be fine with this guys head on a platter, but to accuse the whole Republican party is simply another hitjob.

Remind me where the lefties were on Jefferson’s watch?

Remind me where they were on Gus Savage’s watch?

Known throughout his five congressional terms chiefly for his bombast, Democrat Gus Savage of Chicago is in a peck of trouble. He has been accused by a woman Peace Corps volunteer of engaging in sexual misconduct.

On a junket to Zaire last March, Savage found himself in the company of the 28-year-old volunteer, who was assigned to brief him on Peace Corps activities. She says that during a two-hour tour of the night spots of Kinshasa, Zaire’s capital city, Savage fondled her in his chauffeur-driven car and asked for sex. “He kept saying, ‘That’s the way the world works,’ ” she told the Washington Post. The woman says she escaped Savage’s advances when an embassy worker intervened. The next day U.S. Ambassador William Harrop rebuked Savage, and soon afterward the volunteer was sent back to the U.S. for counseling.

Savage, 63, reacted to the charges by calling the accusations racist. When a woman reporter approached him for comment, he growled, “Stay the f— out of my face!” Now in his face is the probability of an investigation by the House ethics committee.

Or Mel Reynolds watch?

He picked cotton as a child. He couldn’t read until he was 9. He also became a Rhodes scholar and was elected to Congress. But it was a convicted Mel Reynolds who emerged from Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building Thursday, sentenced to five years in prison for having sex with an underage girl and then covering it up.
Andrea Zapp

“He let his own personal needs for sexual gratification get in the way of being a law-abiding normal citizen and he has simply refused to accept his own conduct,” said Cook County Prosecutor Andrea Zopp. That conduct involved both phone sex and, a jury found, numerous liaisons with then-16-year-old Beverly Heard.

“You blew it,” said Judge Fred Suria, referring to Reynolds’ promising congressional career. “I think of all those things you could have done for education, for those kids who will join gangs because you weren’t there to help. You threw it away.”

Foley, Reynolds, Savage, Jefferson….they all deserve their fate.

UPDATE 10/1/06 0900hrs PST

Clarice Feldman has a post up at The American Thinker with lots of new information:

In July a blog appeared, designed it said to trace sex predators. Few posts were made in that month or the following month. All recounted years old stories. Then on September 18, the blog printed the fairly innocuous email exchange between Congressman Foley and an unnamed page.In this correspondence initiated by the former page, Foley asks the former page how he is after Katrina (the boy lived in Louisiana) and asked for a photo. Thus began the latest political kerfuffle which swirls through the final five weeks of the campaign. How likely is it that this site with virtually no readership , few posts and hardly any history or posts of interest suddenly receives this bombshell?

[...]Let’s track back what else we know of this story. Sometime last year a former page contacted the St. Petersburg Times with an exchange of emails between himself and Congressman Foley. In the words of the editor, they never ran the story. (The following has been realeased by the office of the Speaker of the House, but does not yet appear online at the time of this writing.)

In November of last year, we were given copies of an email exchange Foley had with a former page from Louisiana. Other news organizations later got them, too. The conversation in those emails was friendly chit-chat. Foley asked the boy about how he had come through Hurricane Katrina and about the boy’s upcoming birthday. In one of those emails, Foley casually asked theteen to send him a “pic” of himself. Also among those emails was the page’s exchange with a congressional staffer in the office of Rep. Alexander, who had been the teen’s sponsor in the page program. The teen shared his exchange he’d had with Foley and asked the staffer if she thought Foley was out of bounds.

There was nothing overtly sexual in the emails, but we assigned two reporters to find out more. We found the Louisiana page and talked with him.He told us Foley’s request for a photo made him uncomfortable so he never responded, but both he and his parents made clear we could not use his name if we wrote a story. We also found another page who was willing to go on the record, but his experience with Foley was different. He said Foley did send a few emails but never said anything in them that he found inappropriate. We tried to find other pages but had no luck. We spoke with Rep. Alexander, who said the boy’s family didn’t want it pursued, and Foley, who insisted he was merely trying to be friendly and never wanted to make the page uncomfortable.

So, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn’t go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today’s paper, our policy is that we don’t make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn’t meet our standard for publication. Evidently, other news organizations felt the same way.

Since that time, we revisited the question more than once, but never learned anything that changed our position. [b]The Louisiana boy’s emails broke into the open last weekend, when a blogger got copies and posted them online. Later that week, on Thursday, a news blog at the website of ABC News followed suit, with the addition of one new fact: Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney, was on the record about the Louisiana boy’s emails and was calling for an investigation. That’s when we wrote our first story,for Friday’s papers.

After ABC News broke the story on its website, someone contacted ABC and provided a detailed email exchange between Foley and at least one other page that was far different from what we had seen before. This was overtly sexual, not something Foley could dismiss as misinterpreted friendliness. That’s what drove Foley to resign on Friday.

First time I have heard about this blogger and this fact just muddies the water even more. A brand new blog with only a couple posts and no readership suddenly received a copy of the non-sexual email? Come on….

Clarice then prints Hasterts statement from last night:

In the fall of 2005 Tim Kennedy, a staff assistant in the Speaker’s Office, received a telephone call from Congressman Rodney Alexander’s Chief of Staff who indicated that he had an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House page. He did not reveal the specific text of the email but expressed that he and Congressman Alexander were concerned about it.

Tim Kennedy immediately discussed the matter with his supervisor, Mike Stokke, Speaker Hastert’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Stokke directed Kennedy to ask Ted Van Der Meid, the Speaker’s in house Counsel, who the proper person was for Congressman Alexander to report a problem related to a former page.Ted Van Der Meid told Kennedy it was the Clerk of the House who should be notified as the responsible House Officer for the page program. Later thatday Stokke met with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. Once again the specific content of the email was not discussed. Stokke called the Clerk and asked him to come to the Speaker’s Office so that he could put him together with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. The Clerk and Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff then went to the Clerk’s Office to discuss the matter.

The Clerk asked to see the text of the email. Congressman Alexander’s office declined citing the fact that the family wished to maintain as much privacy as possible and simply wanted the contact to stop. The Clerk asked if the email exchange was of a sexual nature and was assured it was not. Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff characterized the email exchange as over-friendly.

The Clerk then contacted Congressman Shimkus, the Chairman of the Page Board to request an immediate meeting. It appears he also notified Van Der Meid that he had received the complaint and was taking action. This is entirely consistent with what he would normally expect to occur as he was the Speaker’s Office liaison with the Clerk’s Office.

The Clerk and Congressman Shimkus met and then immediately met with Foley to discuss the matter. They asked Foley about the email. Congressman Shimkus and the Clerk made it clear that to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and at the request of the parents, Congressman Foley was to immediately cease any communication with the young man.

The Clerk recalls that later that day he encountered Van Der Meid on the House floor and reported to him that he and Shimkus personally had spoken to Foley and had taken corrective action.

Mindful of the sensitivity to the parent’s wishes to protect their child’s privacy and believing that they had promptly reported what they knew to the proper authorities Kennedy, Van Der Meid and Stokke did not discuss the matter with others in the Speaker’s Office.

Congressman Tom Reynolds in a statement issued today indicates that many months later, in the spring of 2006, he was approached by Congressman Alexander who mentioned the Foley issue from the previous fall. During a meeting with the Speaker he says he noted the issue which had been raised by Alexander and told the Speaker that an investigation was conducted by the Clerk of the House and Shimkus. While the Speaker does not explicitly recall this conversation, he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynold’s recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution.

No one in the Speaker’s Office was made aware of the sexually explicit text messages which press reports suggest had been directed to another individual until they were revealed in the press and on the internet this week. In fact, no one was ever made aware of any sexually explicit email or text messages at any time.

None of this should be surprising to you. As I suggested last night, the choreographed “outrage” and venom coming from the left on this story the last day or two should give anyone pause.

Now Clarice is putting the pieces of the puzzle together and it’s looking quite suspicious:

Brian Ross of ABC ran the story, beginning with the same “overly friendly” but not sexually suggestive email exchange and adding a series of instant messages dating to 2003 previously unseen by anyone in Congress between Foley and anonymous recipients said to be former pages. The Republican leaders, seeing the more damning correspondence, sought and got Foley’s resignation.

As soon as the ABC story ran, and organization called C.R.E.W., which said it had the original exchange which Hastert had heard of and the St Peterburg paper had seen, put them on their website .They said they’d earlier conveyed them to the FBI, were releasing them because of the ABC story, and asked for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Republican leadership.It is abundantly clear to me that C.R.E.W. and ABC communicated and may have coordinated the release of this story.

Who is C.R.E.W.?

Here’s what The Hill wrote:

One target of Republican criticism is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group that last year assisted former Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas) in drafting an ethics complaint against DeLay, which resulted in an admonishment of DeLay from the ethics committee. At last week’s press conference, Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said that DeLay should step down as majority leader.

From 1995 to 1998, CREW’s Sloan served as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Before that, Sloan served as the nominations counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.).

According to GOP research, Mark Penn, who had been a pollster for President Clinton, and Daniel Berger, a major Democratic donor, are on CREW’s board. Spokeswoman Naomi Seligman declined several requests to reveal the membership of CREW’s board, although she confirmed that Penn and Berger are members. Last year, Berger made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group that was dedicated to defeating Bush in the presidential election, according to politicalmoneyline.com…, a website that tracks fundraising.

CREW declined to respond to the RNC talking points or House GOP research.

C.R.E.W. is one of four “public interest” organizations which the RNC has long identifed as major donors of George Soros richly-funded Open Society Institute. It is backing the risible Wilson/Plame civil suit against Cheney and others.

Clarice then goes on to detail Brian Ross’s background, which is obviously quite leftist.

Too many coincidences for me. You have an innocent sounding email getting a little attention on a new blog, then a day or two before the sexual IM’s appear Brian Ross writes a article about the innocent email. Then the obviously biased hitteam CREW suddenly finds old IM’s with sexual content on them. Hell, ABC hasn’t even revealed who received these IM’s yet….but Hastert and the Republican leadership knew all this a year ago.

These are two different incidents. The email recipient never responded back and his parents asked for anonymity, and just asked for the emails to stop. The sexual IM’s are a completely different incident to someone other then the email recipient, and at completely different times. Just because the Republican leadership knew about the email exchange does not mean they knew about the sexual IM’s…..not according to the left of course.

Come on. This has all the markings of another Plamegate, TexANG, and other assorted hitjobs prior to an election. None of them have worked well for the Democrats because their stories fall apart.

This one is no different.

UPDATE II 1430hrs PST

Mike from Mike’s America left a comment on this post with some very important points so I am going to reprint his comment in it’s entirety:

You left out the episode where Congressman Gerry Studds (DEMOCRAT-MA) actually DID have sex with a 17 year old male page and was merely “censured” by tne House, not forced to resign.

Once again we see the double standard in play.

It was right that Foley be forced to resign. It should have happened as soon as the full extant of his behavior came to light. The timing of this disclosure has “DEMOCRAT HIT JOB” smeared all over it.

Foley has never been accused of actually engaging in the act is rightfully forced to resign, but Democrats who HAVE gone all the way are censured?

Does this remind anyone else of Bill Clinton’s “private life?” Even though he used his office for a sexual affair with an intern, not to mention all those disgusting phone calls he made to Monica, and abused the power of his office to cover it up, he was never asked by Democrats to resign.

I find it laughable that all the lefty hysterics like those at AmericaBlog are calling for the resignation of the entire House GOP leadership over this episode.

First of all, they’ve called for the resignation, impeachment and prosecution of just about every GOP leader from Bush on down.

And nearly every one of them have done their utomost to shield elected Democrats from the same accountability they now fervently demand of Republicans.

Is Congressman William Jefferson (DEMOCRAT-Louisiana) who was videotaped accepting $100,000 cash later found in his freezer still a member of Congress? Enough said!

All very valid points. Foley never engaged in the actual act with this page, but a Democrat did. Not only did that Democrat not resign on his own, he was only censored by his fellow Congressmen.

Is this the very definition of hyprocrisy or what?

Other’s Blogging:

• Hang Right Politics
• Rightlinx
• SoCalPundit
• Amy Proctor
• Cold Fury
• Captain’s Quarters
• Conservative Musings
• JustOneMinute
• Alabama Liberation Front
• Stop The ACLU
• Bitsblog
• The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
• Hyscience
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• Say Anything
• Rightwing Howler
• WuzzaDem
• Joust The Facts
• Rhymes With Right
• Rightwing Nuthouse
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Patterico’s Pontifications
• A Blog For All

Read the rest of this entry »