Arkansas Blog

Let's hope Foley will be held accountable for his crimes, but Hastert and the other camoflagers should go down, too. Is it possible for a special prosecutor besides Kenneth Starr to have teeth?

From the article: The e-mail exchanges that came to light after the first news reports were far more graphic. . . Republican leaders said they had not known about the other e-mail correspondence. . ."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.
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Is Mr. Foley's conduct reprehensible? Yes.

Should he resign? Yes.

Should there be a further investigation and prosecution if there was criminal wrongdoing? Yes.

But at what point does this become a cover-up? It sounds like Foley's party leadership was aware of the initial odd emails and told him to stop. They weren't aware that he crossed the line until the later emails were disclosed.

These arrogant congressional a******* shouldn't be above the law. They should be setting an example of voluntarily policing themselves to be above reproach and be accountable to their peers and the public.

In retrospect, it is obvious that the leadership should have investigated further. And maybe both political parties will learn to not wait until there is a public revelation of bad behavior before an investigation occurs.

I doubt that this is just a Republican issue. In this climate of grasping for political power in a vacuum of morals and ethics, I am confident that there are more problems on both sides, lying in wait for discovery.

And it could have been worse; Foley could have gotten drunk, consorted with a page or staffer, driven off a bridge and run away, offering no help to the person who trusted them, to let that person slowly drown, alone and ignored as the air is slowly exhausted in their underwater tomb. . .

Man, wouldn't that be a cover-up worthy of a resignation. . .

Why didn't the parents notify the police that a 52 year-old man was writing to their child with sexual comments and asking for photos, instead of just telling someone from the GOP? Did they care so little about the safety of other kids? Their behavior is a shocking disgrace.

Have the Dems ever been so lucky? The Republicans are self-destructing right before the voters' eyes with lies, cover-ups, faux pas galore, crooked leadership, a decline in the power of the religious right that is proportionally opposite to the fear Americans have of a religious takeover of our democracy, wasted opportunities and lives, mountainous debt, and a growing public awareness of how bad Bush has been as a leader.
My campaign slogan would be "What a Mess!! Let's Clean Out the Republicans and Clean It Up."
Foley should have remembered the old country maxim:

"Don't make love by the garden gate.
Love is blind, but the neighbors aint."

We now know why top Bush Administration and republican congressional's republications have always been able to speak so force able and with such clarity on the subject of child (pedophilia)abuse -- it's the world of experience factor!

Sure glad Clinton stuck with the female genders.

Sick, sick, sick! While I hope the Republicans complete their self-destruction in time for the election, this isn't so much about politics as knowing basic right from wrong. Covering it up -- which IS about politics -- is equally as bad as the act(s) themselves.

We have Log Cabin Democrats, why not Outhouse Republicans?

Don,

I thought even you would get this. When does honesty, integrity and anger supercede party partisianship?

I take this real personal. This was a cover up - to protect the power and controll of congress. And they thew the House Pages under the bus to do it.

If this had been our 16 year-old son, whom we had entrusted to the U.S. House of Representative to protect and teach...and we found out that the leadership had a predator and a pedophile amongst them, and they were protecting him....hiding him....I just might of taken a very large knife and started necessary surgical proceedures on the whole damn bunch.

The leaderhip and "odd emails"? Please, the hair on the back of their heads should of stood up when they heard about these "odd" emails. For now, they didn't even investigate - imagine that...and you find that Ok? They didn't realize that they were inappropriate? No shit, they didn't ask. No cover up, just what do you call it?

It's obvious the "House Leadership", I feel dirty typing it, can't protect a 16 year old boy...how they gonna protect my country, without having a super secret, how do we cover our asses and keep the power political strategy meeting. It's never been about America with your party Don, it's always been about the power, money an how to keep it.

As a parent, what "they" did is personal, and a stellar example of how power corrupts.

Remember "I did not have sex with that women"

Well, "We did not cover this up."

It's worse, it's about a predator, cyper sex and a desprate attempt by those in power, who will do anything to stay in power, make the decision to keep the lid on Foley, for over a year.

I wonder how many more young boys Foley damaged during the time "they knew"?

This congressional page sex scandal that has barraged the Republican leadership weeks before the general election is a re-flash of a similar scandal in the late 1980s. In June 1989, openly gay Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, two months before he admitted that his aide was using his Capitol Hill home for prostitution purposes, threatened to expose the identities of a number of closeted gay Republican members of Congress after a Republican National Committee surfaced that suggested then-House Speaker Thomas Foley was gay. The Republican leadership went into immediate crisis mode and wanted to sweep the matter aside. However, the story of Republican lobbyists and members of Congress procuring the services of underage male prostitutes soon hit the newspapers.

The scandal surrounding GOP congressmen having sex with minors first burst onto the headlines in October 1980 when Maryland conservative Republican Rep. Bob Bauman resigned after his arrest for having sex with a 16-year old male prostitute. In 1983, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Gerry Studds was censured by the House for inappropriate sexual contact with a 17-year old male page. The Republicans clearly pulled their punches amid calls for Studds to be expelled by the House. However, after Studds' admission he was gay, he was re-elected in 1984.

Although Studds was the first House member to admit his homosexuality, the GOP was worried about starting a trend of self-disclosure. They had their own skeletons to be concerned about. In 1989, the Barney Frank-male prostitute aide scandal broke. However, Frank cooperated with the House Ethics Committee in its investigation and he quickly fired the aide involved. The year 1989 would also introduce the American public to the underground sordid world of GOP underage male prostitution rings -- a story that emanated from a scandal involving male congressional pages that culminated in headlines in The Washington Times beginning in June 1989 that reported underage male prostitutes had been given midnight tours of the White House. As WMR reported yesterday, these tours involved the private quarters of the White House.

There is a long trail with this stuff....

Take a closer look at House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Hastert, while working from 1964 to 1980 as a popular history/government teacher and wrestling coach at Yorktown High School (a private school), in Yorktown, Illinois -- a suburb of Chicago -- was the subject of persistent rumors about inappropriate contact with male members of his high school wrestling team. The culture of the times usually resulted in such alleged behavior being covered up by public and parochial school authorities. However, the rumors were enough for his Yorktown constituency to reject him when he ran for an open seat in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1980. However, Hastert lucked out when another sitting Republican House member who represented the three-seat district had a stroke and declined to run for re-election. The GOP machine bosses selected Hastert as the replacement candidate.

Hastert served in Springfield from 1980 to 1986, six years to make the transformation from wrestling coach with a cloud surrounding himself to politician. In 1986, Hastert received an unexpected promotion. After incumbent Republican Rep. John Grotberg was nominated by the GOP for a second term, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and fell into a coma. The Illinois Republican Convention selected Hastert as the replacement on the ticket, a virtual election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the strongly Republican district.

In 1989, when the allegations of homosexuality among GOP congressmen arose during the first "Pagegate" scandal, Hastert's name was one of those whispered. In 1995, Hastert became Chief Deputy Whip under now-disgraced GOP Majority Whip Tom DeLay. Hastert would luck out again. In late 1989, amid scandal, House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned. After Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston was elected as Speaker by the GOP House Caucus, he too resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair -- an amazing development since the House had impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his own extramarital affair. Hastert, without much scrutiny, emerged as the compromise candidate for Speaker, after the GOP deadlocked on Majority Leader Dick Armey (also the subject of various rumors after he called Barney Frank, "Barney Fag") and Majority Whip DeLay.

Now Hastert is fending off allegations that he knew about the page problem with Mark Foley for 11 months and refrained from taking any action. It is also noteworthy that the Chairman of the House Page Board is Republican Rep. John Shimkus, a close ally of Hastert's from Illinois. Allegations of cover-up are also surrounding Louisiana GOP Rep. Rodney .
crisis mode and wanted to sweep the matter aside. However, the story of Republican lobbyists and members of Congress procuring the services of underage male prostitutes soon hit the newspapers.

NOTE: I ad libbed some of this and borrowed information from two or three sites plus my own files.

Don, When does honesty, integrity and anger supercede party partisianship? I take this real personal. This was a cover up - to protect the power and controll of congress -Posted by: BlueTicker
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BT- If this was a coverup, then it should be exposed and dealt with. Fortunately, NOBODY DIED in this coverup! Apparently you feel it is different, that when Democrats cover-up for a member causing the slow, agonizing death of someone's INNOCENT daughter in whose care she was entrusted, there are no consequences? No resignation?

Hey - as least Foley, the creep, chose the supposedly honorable step of resignation. And maybe there will be more in his wake.

Can't say the same for the driver of the underwater car . . . or his party leadership.

Well...BlueTicker and Cato took the wind out of my sails and I don't mind a bit. Don gave a good attempt at spraying Febreeze on this stinking GOP turd by doing his best to imply this very well could be a Democrat problem too. Yet so far no one with a D behind their name has been connected.

The thinly veiled reference to Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo was a nice try too. But he might have scored more points saying he's just thankful Foley wasn't more like Jeffrey Dahmer and had Pages over for dinner....I mean a last supper...you know what I mean.

I'm thinking if Don has a young daughter and I emailed her with all kinds of questions about her genitals and what she does with them and ask for pictures....how happy would he be if I got off with just a warning after I got off talking dirty to his underage daughter. I have 2 daughters....the first warning would be the cocking of the hammers on my old double-barrel shotgun.

I figured out years ago that no politician is my friend. They more closely resemble bail bondsmen with tiny hearts and only the desire to get theirs. I certainly wouldn't be trying to excuse Vic Snider or Mike Beebe if they were homosexual predators or involved in protecting one. I have no party loyalty when it comes to horrible stuff like child molesting.

It very well could be that the reason the GOP has been bashing gays since day 1, is that it's the best cover-up of all, if you yourself are gay. I have read stories about homosexual orgies in the George H. W. Bush White House, some involving underage boys and I dismissed it as nutty talk. Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps the scrotums don't fall very far from the tree after all.

What we forget is vast power and money and fame changes people and after nailing a thousand woman, sometimes a guy needs a change, something new, something naughty. I've seen it happen in Fort Smith, why not DC? Much much bigger sexually bored fish up there, ya know.

When things like this happen it makes you question everything you ever knew. I sorta sat on Nixon's side all thru Watergate because I was raised to trust my President and I thought the whole thing was a Democratic plot to get rid of a man they couldn't beat at the polls. Now I understand better what kind of threat a renegade President is to our country, our laws, our future. Boy, has the last 6 years taught me this lesson!

But I have to say, covering up for a 3rd rate burglary of political papers and covering up for homosexual child molesting predators in Congress......which do you think is more serious? Which is more important, McGovern campaign secrets or homosexual attacks against children.

Pretty disgusting they had to raise the age of Pages from 14 to 16 after Studds episode...that should have told us a whole lot about what goes on behind DC closed doors.

Somewhere when Ma was telling me about Jesus, she must have also stuck in something about our elected officials being better than us, smarter than us, good-er than us. Something made me believe such like I believed there was land and water. Where did I get such an idea? And how stupid I feel now.

If a Keith Olbermann would just list all the benefits, perks, and free passes even the most lowly politician in DC gets as compared to the deal the average American gets out of life it would be obvious that our leaders have set up a separate world for themselves. A world where there are fewer rules, more rewards, more pleasures and no doubt where banging hookers and underage kids is more the rule than the exception.

And yet they all pull the tar paper shack crap, they're for the working man, but they only work 150 days a year. They can't raise minimum wage, but a couple of months ago they gave themselves a 2% raise as they've given themselves a raise every year in the last decade.

And if we can sit on our hands after we find out about Congressional Child Fuking being covered up by the highest ranking members of the Republican Party, then maybe we deserve everything Osama has given us.

Maybe we're not such a hot country after all, I mean we've legalized torture, why not screw the young on street corners? Disgusting!

DBI.........its very very seldom that I disagree with anything you say concerning our politicians. But, this time I must respectfully disagree with your, I'm sure, unintentional and very unfair painting of the Foley picadellos as being a homosexual problem. I doubt very seriously whether Foley is a homosexual, but he is most certainly a predator and a pedophile

Pedophilia is almost always (96 %) a crime committed by straight, married males on both underage sexes, not just boys.

I take no offense at your comments, I just felt the need to set the record straight (pun intended)

I'm shocked. It's not Clinton's fault?

It's Kennedy's fault? Reaching here? I said power corrupts...the sins of one does not justify the sins of the other.

That's kindergarten school yard politics. He did it, why can't I?

Anybody who knew...about Foley...whether they ingnored it and did nothing to find the truth or they knew and turned a blind eye...needs to resign today. Even if that this dirty little secret walks into the WH (Karl?) they need to go.

I'll say it again, how can we trust the leadership of this country when they hide a pedofile to protect their power, money and jobs? We can't.

I think a little research would show that pedophiles are more likely to be conservative -- that is, supposedly above reproach -- and therefore Republican.

I am not sure, given their record, that we shouldn't assume every one of them is a pedophile until proven otherwise.

For more evidence, you need to look no further than their deep desire to surveil every American citizen, down to even their behavior in the bedroom.

Since I am a father, is it too much to ask that I be informed if a pedophile Bush backer is living in my neighborhood?

I think not.

Charles, while I don't see any difference between porking an underage child of the opposite sex or the same sex, Republicans of course consider any gay sex worse than selling secrets to Osama.

I'm thinking that Foley gets the gay stamp because he was loving up on a MALE teenager and talking about HIS teenage penis. If he walks with his hand on a boy's penis, and talks with a boy's penis in his mouth, I'm going to brand him a homosexual.

Having said that, I agree that there are more heterosexual child molesters than homosexual, the facts bear that out. But in this instance we have a guy going after a male child, so reviewing I don't think I spoke unfairly or indicted all homosexual males.

I am having trouble keeping myself from typing macaca, macaca, macaca over and over again. My meds must be off again.

hey liberals there was no cover up !

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0610010344oct01,1,741532.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

According to the narrative, a staff assistant in Hastert's office got a telephone call in the fall of 2005 from the chief of staff for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana) saying he had an e-mail exchange between Foley and a former House page that had raised concern.

`Proper authorities'

Hastert's deputy chief of staff, Mike Stokke, then called a meeting between Alexander's chief of staff and the clerk of the House.

At that meeting, the clerk asked to see the text of the e-mail, but Alexander's office declined to release it, saying the family wanted to maintain privacy, according to the Hastert staff report.

When the clerk asked whether the e-mail exchange was "of a sexual nature," the report goes on, he was assured it was not. Rather, Alexander's office characterized the e-mail exchange as "over-friendly."

Stokke and the other staff members did not discuss the matter with others in the speaker's office, the report says, because they believed they had reported the matter to the "proper authorities." They also were attempting to be mindful of the "parents' wishes to protect their child's privacy."

Now what Foley did was reprehensible and i think he needs to go to jail like all the dateline guys but you cant pin that on the whole party.C,mon.

It is sick, and oh so wrong, but it is not pedophilia, that term is reserved for the adult attracted to actual "children" under the age of 13.
I HOPE that just as much scorn and media attention will be focused on the Republican hierarchy as there was for The Church when their sins were revealed.

Step back from the Kool-Aide bar.

It's not the whole party - it's the leadership and the 12-15 thugs who knew and refused to kiss and tell.

If you think for one minute that the deputy Chief of Staff didn't tell Hastert or his Chief of Staff (who would of told Hastert) about Foley...you need to go the hospital for an antedote for kool-aide poisoning.

Rule 101, never ever leave your boss out of the loop. And in this case, with the potential consequences (power and control of the house) - cause who would really, really lose if the D's took over the House - Hastert - he'd lose his leaderhsip role. He'd suddenly be a minority leader.

There were meetings, strategy and political ramifications were discussed, and at the end of the day...it was decided to cover this up - period.

Anybody that's got a half a brain and knows anything about the workings of poltical offices...knows that Hastert was fully informed and fully involved in the cover up.

They can spin this every which way but loose...the shit has hit the fan and the Republican leadership are the reciepients of some very smelly and telling splatter.

It's funny that the usual Asa apologists are now trying to explain why this (A) wasn't technically pedophilia, and (B) the Republican cover up was somehow the Democrat's fault.

Apparently, family values involves homosexual advances on children. Asa should be ashamed of the company he keeps.

The thinly veiled reference to Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo was a nice try too . . . I'm thinking if Don has a young daughter and I emailed her with all kinds of questions about her genitals and what she does with them and ask for pictures....how happy would he be if I got off with just a warning after I got off talking dirty to his underage daughter. - DBI
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Thinly veiled? THINLY VEILED? I couldn't have laid that on any thicker with a snow shovel! DBI, Blue-whatever, rosso, Zelda, Max - somebody - anybody - please explain why this crappy, vile conversation this guy had with a page is worse than Ted Kennedy protecting his a** and knowingly abandoning May Jo in the pitch-black dark, trapped underwater, breathing in an air bubble with her face pressed against the roof of the car, dying an agonizingly slow death while she waited for help to come? That perp is still one of the leaders of your party! Is this so conveniently forgotten?

Your turn, DBI. If Ted Kennedy drove his car into a canal and left your daughter to drown and die the death Mary Jo suffered, what would you do? Would he still be the esteemed leader of your party? Where's your shotgun now?

This moron's behavior has only been exposed in the last week. In America, we usually punish perps after a fair hearing. That way, the punishment should be severe enough to fit the crime. But, apparently that part of America is not important to you folks when it gets in the way of your politics.

MSNBC couldn't help themselves - they had to run a picture of Monica Lewinsky in the middle of their Foley coverage. Damn liberal media!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15063977/

Hey Citizen's Journal;

Next time you have a long URL
as you posted at 2:30 PM
please shorten it because it
causes HTML pages to overflow.
It's very easy to shorten a long URL. Go here:

http://tinyurl.com/

copy your long URL and paste
it into the window provided
and you will get this:
http://tinyurl.com/jot52

"MSNBC couldn't help
themselves - they had to
run a picture of Monica Lewinsky
in the middle of their Foley
coverage. Damn liberal media!"

Yippers. those Libs in the media
couldn't even mention Newt Gringrich's
nice peice of ass, you know
the one that caused
him to resign. But in 9 posts they
did manage two Republicans.

I had a list last year of about 20-30 Repubs who were guilty of sex abuse, cheatin, or child stuff. All of them office holders around the nation. Dam I wish my comp had not crashed.
_

Don, now you're practicing the "change the subject" tactics that Anonymous uses all the time. This is not about Ted Kennedy in 1969. This isn't about a drunken mistake...this is about sex and fat white GOP guys trying to cover it up.

This is about a sober 52 year old Republican member of the House of Representatives trying to pull down the pants of a male 16 year old Page. It's about the top members of the GOP covering something up ala the Catholic Church because either they like Man-Boy sex or they didn't want to lose Foley's seat to a Democrat.

Either and all is as low as it can get. Nancy Pelosi asked for a full investigation which would show if Hastert knew anything or not....but no one wanted that...Ken Starr taught us all a good lesson about investigations that color outside the lines...for years and years.

Screw Ted Kennedy and 1969, ain't no one on this blog interested in condemning 40 year old actions or excusing them. SMOKE SCREEN! But it's not going to work. PERIOD!

Hey, I'm so far down here nobody will see my post. I't just as well since I'm doing pro bono work for Arkansas Opinions, LLC.
Anyway, would it all be okay if the congressman married the page?

Screw Ted Kennedy and 1969, ain't no one on this blog interested in condemning 40 year old actions or excusing them. SMOKE SCREEN! But it's not going to work. PERIOD! - Posted by: Deathbyinches
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Well, I can see why you would consider this as changing the subject- we are talking about Republican accountability for a congressional scoundrel as opposed to Democratic accountability for a worse scoundrel.

Apparently Democrats fear losing power just as much as the Republicans do - Democrats will even look the other way and protect their scoundrel - they will even give him 40 years to atone for his cowardly deed, while Republicans give their scoundrel . . . uh, looks like they gave him the boot.

I can't wait to see Mr. Kennedy's slurred demeanor posturing about this awful, scandalous, immoral behavior. That will be a savory hoot.

And I can understand why you say noone on this blog seems to be interested in condemning a Democrat for saving himself at the cost of an innocent young lady's life. Kinda goes against the partisan demographics of this blog doesn't it? But I am willing to stand alone against all others and call for equal justice, because . . .

I am Don Keyhotay!

Mr. Keyhotay,

I wasn't even born in 1969, and, to be honest, I don't really care what happened then regarding the story you've brought up. I'm sorry that young lady died, and had I been blogging then, I'm sure I would have called for Kennedy's head. But, until you posted that, I didn't even know about it. It does't affect our current government or the problems we face now, in my opinion.

However, can we, for the sake of time, effort, screen space, etc. focus on THIS issue - the one with Foley and the underage page he was sending pornographic messages to? And the Repulican cover-up of said situation? Can we? Please?

Lib & Proud, Don is between a rock and a hard place. There is no way to defend Rep. Foley or the GOP leadership who has spent a year covering for him.

So Don has to switch the conversation to a bad thing that happened 37 years ago. It's all he can do, it's all he'll be able to do next week too. Especially as this scandal sucks in more and more Republicans. I was a little Republican 37 years ago. I had no love for Teddy Kennedy.....I later loved the cartoons in Penthouse of a drenched Teddy standing in the ocean holding a sign saying 1972 then 1976...funny funny Teddy.

Since 1969 I've had sex and I've been drunk. I have woke up not knowing where I'd been and how I got home. I have woke up in someone else's house. I woke up in Fayetteville one time....try explaining that to your wife. Smart? No. A good idea? No. Damn stupid? YES. Have I grown up? Grudgingly, finally, YES.

I have not attempted to have sex with an underage boy or girl....no matter how drunk I was. And I never been a member of Congress who was the head of a Congressional caucus on children's issues. I was not, nor have I ever been the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

None of us are without sin....but Jesus H. W. Christ......Foley, and far too many Catholic priests have crossed over the worst line of all. Toss the torture loving, man-child loving Republicans out now!

Sex between an adult with power over a child should never happen, agreed?

DK,

If you care to look, you'll find that an inquest was held and Edward Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident and received a suspended two-month jail term and one-year driving ban.

The only thing I see is another pederast protected by his colleagues and political party who will not face any charges or due process. Besides it would expose to the RR's that the Republican party has and accepts Gay congressmen.

But you know the Bush Republicans. Due process and the judicial system is an antiquated relic that doesn't apply to them or their party. And if anyone tries they'll just pass a law authorizing it.

Why don't you research Billy Sol Estes. He was a convicted associate of LBJ? Oh, yeah. Sorry, LBJ is not current enough for the typical Bush or Republican apologist deflection response..

I don't really care what happened then regarding the story you've brought up. - Posted by: Liberal and Proud
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You SHOULD care. The moral of the story is that the Democrats didn't clean their own house when they had an abuse that was as bad . . . or worse. And the chief perp is still to this day a Democrat leader!

How ironic. It will be humorous to see how indignant Mr. Kennedy can be - if he can get past the blatant hypocrisy to say anything.

Maybe you aren't old enough to remember that death, but some events shouldn't be forgotten for the lessons they teach.

Lib & Proud, Don is between a rock and a hard place. There is no way to defend Rep. Foley or the GOP leadership who has spent a year covering for him. -Posted by: Deathbyinches
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A cursory reading of my first post would hardly justify what you are saying - Let me repeat my comment:

Is Mr. Foley's conduct reprehensible? Yes.

Should he resign? Yes.

Should there be a further investigation and prosecution if there was criminal wrongdoing? Yes.

If you consider that defending Mr. Foley or the Republican Party, then you are surely nuttier than I am. So just prattle on and ignore what has been said or make it up as you go. Wouldn't want accuracy to get in the way of your humorous comments, would we?

you'll find that an inquest was held and Edward Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident and received a suspended two-month jail term and one-year driving ban. - Posted by: docholliday
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Which means Mr. Kennedy essentially got a traffic ticket for abandoning this girl and running home where he plotted with his family all night long how to save his political hide . . . while she eventually drowned.

Kind of illustrates the concept of the benefits of . . . political influence . . . doesn't it? Poor old Mr. Foley doesn't have the juice of a Kennedy . . . But, I gues you could say that now he is doing the right thing . . . with a little help from his friends. . .

Don, you may as well give it up. This is now!

As someone that has seen the damage that this kind of thing can do, I have to say that letting it go on is the issue. They should have booted him out as soon as they found out about it. Who knows how many he has preyed on in the meantime.

That ol' guys will be guys attitude is sooo 1900's. There is a need to grow up.

...somebody - anybody - please explain why this crappy, vile conversation this guy had with a page is worse than Ted Kennedy protecting his a**...

Damn...I can't believe you're tossing Kennedy out there to take the sting off the revelations about Foley, Don. Though you condemn what Foley's done, it's tempered by your insertion of 'Kennedy was bad too' argument. If political corruption from the past is used to excuse the excesses of today we're screwed. Every elected official should be held accountable for wrongdoing regardless of which party previously got away with what.

And shall we bring up Laura Bush running over and killing a man at a stop light years ago? How many years in prison did she spend? Should I have fixed up a bloody corpse to parade past her when she was in Fort Smith 6 or 8 months ago?

Was Laura drunk? She knew the man she killed, was she just trying to shut him up, afraid he was going to tell about their love child she flushed. We can play this game all day and night. But trying to nail an underage child is no accident. And taking the scoundrels well worn path to alcohol rehab isn't going to work either. I been drunk a zillion times in my younger days and it didn't make me come on to a child or rob a bank or kill student nurses in Chicago.

RIP
Republican Party
1854-2006

If political corruption from the past is used to excuse the excesses of today we're screwed. Every elected official should be held accountable for wrongdoing regardless of which party previously got away with what. -Posted by: zelda
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Zelda, I agree with you. But please note, I am not in any way excusing Foley's wrongdoing. Heads should roll - his and any leader that covered it up. Just kinda funny that one of the chief demo-perps got a free ride for doing much worse - but apparently that was too long ago to matter.

And shall we bring up Laura Bush running over and killing a man at a stop light years ago? - Posted by: Deathbyinches
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Well, since you brought this incident up, let's see how they compare . . .

Was Laura an adult at the time of the incident? (I think she was 17).

Was Laura a powerful elected representative of our country's leadership? (Remember, it wasn't Laura BUSH, it was Laura WELCH).

Was the victim a subordinate that she was responsible for? (A same-age classmate maybe?)

Was Laura boozing it up? If she was, somehow that didn't make it to the arrest report. (You may have confused her with her husband who had that propensity - but in America, you can make all the spurious allegations that you want - don't let the confirmed facts ruin a personal attack).

After the wreck, did she run home to get her family to cover up the incident for her while the victim lay dying at the scene of the accident? (Seems like everyone wound up promptly at the hospital as is normal after an accident).

Did Laura hide and not report the incident until the next day, allowing the victim to die a slow, preventable death?

I usually give you plenty of rope to hang me with - surely you can do better than that.

Well Don my thoughts turn more to whether Laura Welch was horny and maybe distracted by a new Swedish sex toy someone had sent her from Waxahachie, that plugged into the dash of the car.

How do we know she had both hands on the wheel at the time of the wreck. Check the witness reports again and see if anyone saw her careening thru town with her head back screaming something like "holy sweet Jesus where's the off button on this thang!!!!"

RIP
Republican Party
1854-2006

I guess not.

Don,

I still don't care. And I don't care that Laura BUSH killed a guy on accident at a stop light (didn't know that either) and I don't care that Bill got off in the Oval Office. I focus on NOW. That's all I'm suggesting you do. I want to get to the bottom of this hideous event and make this country a better place for everyone, especially children - whether they are Amish school kids or D.C. pages.

Stop the smokescreen and focus on NOW. Don't you think the Republican leadership should have done something about this as soon as they knew Foley was acting inappropriately? Don't you think he should have been investigated earlier? Don't you feel some sense of illness - like you want to throw up in your mouth a little - that you're typing about events from 1969 when this guy has been text messaging an underage kid about penis size and masturbation methods?

Seriously. I'm sick, and the Kennedys and the Clintons and the Bushes don't have much to do with this particular event. FOCUS.

Stop the smokescreen and focus on NOW. Don't you think the Republican leadership should have done something about this as soon as they knew Foley was acting inappropriately? Don't you think he should have been investigated earlier - Posted by: Liberal and Proud
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I am quite comfortably part of the stampede wanting this investigated. But, before getting uncontrollably nauseous and joining you in having to chug Tums by the bottle load, I will wait for some facts to be developed about what was known and when it was known. If we are going to place blame and call for heads to roll, lets base it on facts, not emotional partisan innuendo that we all want to believe.

Crucify them! Crucify them! (And if these aren't the guilty ones, well it would have been people like them. . .)

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Forget the past - live in the NOW?

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.- George Santayana (1863-1952)