Looks like the D's are picking up another R seat

According to all the Intel agencies...NOTHING but make it worse. Texas = Ostrich

How will the Dems make us safer? For starters, they will listen to the intelligence agencies and military, instead of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. And that more than works for me.
 
At least this sheds light on why the story wasn't printed in the St. Petersburg Times last year, but it's interesting that apparently the paper was investigating him then?

In reply to:
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OrangeAristotle, correction, read the thread title.

This was about the Democrats taking a seat away from the Republicans. The original post had nothing to do with pedophiles, ephebophiles or such. Foley's resigned, justice will (hopefully) run its course.

And let's see who the best candidate is, as well as learn more about "who knew what and when they knew it".
 
Aristotle,

That rule that the posters ahead of you talk about Foley's name being on the ballot was apparently due to legislation promoted by Foley himself. Live by the sword, die by it.

I'm more conservative than republican, and there are mistakes being made on the GOP side, but you're correct...I haven't seen anything that gives me confidence that today's democrats (note I said "today's"...that could change and I honestly hope it does) can do any better than GWB and in fact I fear they would do far worse.

I don't want to gamble with American lives.
 
Texas, You'll have to excuse me but I edited my post. I didn't expect a response so quickly.

Mostly, I'm laughing that Tech is beating A&M again (so far). This dialogue is all just fun. Not that it's not important, but ultimately we all just live our own lives as we see fit.
 
Oh God, unfortunately but to no surprise for a child predator, there is always more than one. Reported on NBC news In reply to:
 
Let's see...do I have this right? The press did a story a year ago, but dropped it, didn't find much. So it is the press' fault.
A Congressman likes to play knight templar of the Moral Majority by day, but hit on underage boys at night, so this is the fault of the opposing political party. The Congressman's party knew about this at least one year ago, but did not want anything to stand in their way of winning elections and claiming they were the true representatives of religion, morals, and ethics...did I get this right?
Texas=Karl Rove. Win at all costs, subvert the dialog to a strawman issue, obfuscate, change the subject, nothing to look at here, move along voters, and it don't matter anyways, because Clinton got a blowjob.
 
BunnyBooBoo,
It really doesn't matter that I said long ago on this thread that justice should take its course on former Rep. Foley, but...some are starting to ask questions about media outlets who were "investigating" him. If they knew about his behavior way in advance (maybe in advance of the House leadership) they are complicit in it if they held back this information in order to play politics with it:

Your team is going to HAVE to win elections with ideas, not scandal revelations:

In reply to:
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Texas,

Give up. You can not try to blame the media while giving the Republicans a free pass on this, especially since they seemed to know about this at about the same time as the press.

I am happy to state that I have a huge problem with the fact that this was not a scandal a year ago, when this first became known by 1) The Republican Leadership and 2) the press.

Why you would choose to defend one of those groups, who has shown a complete and utter willingness to act like weasels since before either of us were born, while trying to place the blame on the other is comlpetely beyond my comprehension. BOTH groups were complicit in this and both groups deserve our wrath. You vote your conscience at the voting booth to take care of the first group and you vote with your pocket book with the other. I'll be voting against both groups, how about you?
 
I think we all know right and wrong here. And hopefully we all think wrong should be punished. Is there really anything to debate? It seems kind of pointless to debate what facts should be assumed.
 
The fact that he's a pervert doesn't bother me nearly as much as thinking someone that stupid could be a U.S. Congressman. Same feeling I had during the Lewinsky business, but that moron had the nuclear football.
mad.gif
 
Outside of the normal criminal/sexual conduct on display, the issue here is the inherent power that a Congressman weilds in ordinary situations amongs adults being manifold 10 times again when dealing with children.

And that power provided the means and basis of the predation.

Thing is, the only relationship that stood a chance to challenge Foley's predation apparently chose not to wield it's own power to protect the powerless, instead applying a utilitarian calculus and concluding that it was a greater good to keep the seat (and, hence, power) than it was to exercise protection of the dispossessed.

That's some ****** up thinking.
 
"Fifty years from now, when historians write about the social problem of sexual predators in early 21st Century America, they will put a photo of Cardinal Bernard Law next to a photo of Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

These are men who had the chance to protect our children, but chose to protect a predator instead.

They did more than just fail as leaders--they endangered our families." -J. Feldman
 
This whole thing pisses me off and disappoints me more than I can explain. My hands are literally shaking as I type this. I was a House Page in 1985-1986, a couple of years after the previous page scandal had come to light. In its aftermath several reforms to the system were made. I am listing them to show that there was almost certainly a cover-up by the House leadership in this.

1. whereas previously pages could be anywhere from 14-18, since 1984 they could only be juniors in highschool
2. The number of pages was restricted to 60 house pages, 40 senate pages
3. previously pages were responsible for finding their own housing, now there is a page dorm on The Hill that is shared by both the House and Senate pages with RAs that are grad students at various universities in D.C. that live in the dorm and keep an eye on things, and a full time government employee that is the head of the page dorm and also lives in the dorm
4. 2 pages per dorm room, 4 per suite (each suite is two dorm rooms sharing a bathroom)
5. now there is a curfew (9pm during the week, midnight on weekends)
6. capitol police man a checkpoint and metal detector at the entrance, entrance is restricted to pages, parents visiting, RAs, the counselor from the school, members of the House and Senate Page Boards, and the Page managers (one that manages the House R pages and one that manages the House D pages, also one of each from the Senate page program)
7. all pages attend the page school in the Library of Congress in the morning before session (5:15 a.m - 9:45 a.m.)
8. everything is overseen by the Page Board (in my day, although the Ds were in the majority, it was an equal number of Ds and Rs, 2 of each, plus the Door Keeper whose office the pages actually are employed by. Now I heard it is 3 Rs and 1 D plus the Door Keeper. Not positive about the makeup of the Senate page board)
9. each page is required to keep a journal and meet with a guidance counselor that is attached to the school and is not a political appointee, to talk about their experiences and talk about any problems they might be having (most of us were away from home for the first time, many from small towns, some from very wealthy families, others from very poor ones, a few that are related to a congressman or whose family is a big donor or friends with the Congressman)

Obviously, it has been 20 years so my recollections may not be exact anymore, or it is possible that some things have changed over that time. However, if it is anything like when I was there, it is hard for me to believe that something like this was not known to be going on by the members of the Page Board.

Think back to when you were a freshman in college living in the dorm, or perhaps if you attended a boarding school. Kids this age living together in their first big adventure in life talk about everything. You and your suitemates sit up late at night quaffing a couple of beers you managed to sneak into the dorm and eating a pizza while shooting the bull. You talk about the hot female page you have eyes on, or the hot 18 year old intern in Congressman so-and-sos office that you think you might have a shot at, and really anything and everything that is out of the norm. To a 16 year old living on Capitol Hill and rubbing shoulders with important people every day, living with a bunch of other 16 year olds that are a true cross-section of the US and by and large all pretty smart, you talk about everything. There are no secrets among the pages, everybody always knew pretty much everything about everyone else, and the RAs picked up on most everything, too. I guarantee that if Foley did this with more than one page, the system knew about it, and if he only did it with one page, the system still probably knew about it.

With all of that said, I am absolutely disgusted that nothing was done. If the Page Board suspected anything like this was happening, the chairman would most likely talk with his leadership, in this case probably the Speaker himself, because after the earlier page scandal the institution is quite paranoid and sensitive. The speaker would have the authority to investigate including having the suspected Congressman's office computers and email accounts scrutinized for sure, and probably his personal ones, as well. If he wanted to get to the bottom of it, the Speaker most certainly could. If he suspected but could not prove wrong doing, he could still take informal disciplinary actions such as with holding or rescinding committee assignments. In this case Foley was, and remained, chairman of the committee that dealt with issues on behalf of missing and exploited children. The irony. The injustice.

Sorry for the rambling and long windedness. I am just trying to make the point that despite whatever Hastert and the R leadership say, the odds that they did not know something like this was going on is virtually nil. And, despite what Texas is saying in his attempts to defend the indefensible, Hastert did not appear to do anything, did not lean on Foley to resign (that only occured after the press confronted him), and put the protection of the party ahead of the protection of starry-eyed 16 year old kids whose welfare was intrusted to the House. He is the head of the House, so these kids were put in his charge. He turned a blind eye, so he and anyone else that knew about this needs to pay.

Also, I just heard on the news that the Republican members of the House Page Board were told of this at least last year by Congressman Alexander of Louisianna, and they agreed to not tell the Democrat member. This just keeps getting worse.
 
TTK, if you would have been e-mailed by Foley at age 16, what would you have done?

If, as a 20 year old who previously served as a page, you were made aware of e-mails and text messages of the sort we've learned (with the knowledge that this man might probably be still doing them), what would you have done?

Would you have reported him regardless of what it meant to your career?
 
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