First off, Foley is scum. You can argue that he is just a sexual predator as opposed to a pedophile based on the age of the boy but either way what he did is awful.
And he used his position of authority to prey on a child who had been entrusted to the care of the House of Representatives. So he was directly responsible for protecting this child from predators. And he used that position to prey on them. And the news articles definitely allude to his having done this with multiple pages.
But that brings up an even bigger question. Did the Republican leadership cover up for him? It sure looks that way.
The present claim is that Shimkus asked Foley about it and Foley said there was nothing inappropriate. And that was good enough for Shimkus. Gee, do you think someone might lie if asked that? If this was all they did, they were choosing to not find out what was going on.
At the Capitol Hill signing ceremony for the commissions bill, a GOP campaign priority, reporters asked Hastert only about Foley. "He's done the right thing," Hastert replied. "I've asked John Shimkus [R-Ill.], who is head of the Page Board, to look into this issue regarding Congressman Foley. We want to make sure that all of our pages are safe and our page system is safe. None of us are happy about it."
Shimkus said in a statement last night, "in late 2005, I was notified by the then Clerk of the House," that Alexander had told the Clerk "about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page. I took immediate action to investigate the matter."
In the e-mail, "Foley asked about the former Page's well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph," Shimkus said. He said Foley assured him it was an innocent exchange, but "nevertheless, we ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact" with the boy and to respect all pages. "Only now have I learned that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct," Shimkus said.
And if they were so sure that Foley had done nothing, why did they never report this to the Democratic member of the Page Board? This was not investigated, this was avoided at best and covered up at worst.
I hope the Democratic opponent of each member of the Republican leadership who knew and did nothing runs an ad asking exactly that question. And close the ad with "if we can't trust them to protect our children from sexual predators, do we want them representing us? Send a message to Washington that protecting pedophiles is not acceptable. Vote {insert name here}."
And kudos to Rep. Rodney Alexander. It appears he did the right thing. Normally I would assume people would do the right thing in this case. But as he appears to be the exception, thank you for being a decent human being.
I don't know the source to the below - but it is hilarious:
Update:
There is a very good listing of why it looks as though Hastert, Reynolds, & Boehner all either knew what was going on or chose to not investigate so they would not know at Unclaimed Territory.
And another good discussion of how everyone had to know how bad it was at Talking Points Memo.
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