Congressman quits over sexual harrassment

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Nuke, I think you're right. Not only is it better for America, its also better for Republicans. I think standing by Hastert is the absolute dumbest thing they can do. He can keep his seat... Just force him out of the Speaker role.

 

I'm a Democrat. Politically, it helps us if he stays on... but its bad bad bad for people's view of American society and government. I hope he resigns... or the right wises up and forces him out on their own.

 

 

When something like this comes up and one of our own is so clearly in the wrong there's nothing else to say. Hastert has, overnight, become a cancer and he needs to be removed.

[Balta1701]

Abe, one question though...if Hastert does wind up taking the fall, which is how it certainly appears...what happens to his natural successor, John Boehner, the current Majority leader in the House, who also seems to have known about it and taken roughly as many actions as Hastert?

[Mplssoxfan]

Abe, one question though...if Hastert does wind up taking the fall, which is how it certainly appears...what happens to his natural successor, John Boehner, the current Majority leader in the House, who also seems to have known about it and taken roughly as many actions as Hastert?

Especially since Boehner and Blunt are shivving Hastert right now. I think that if the GOP holds the House, we'll see all new leadership next January.

[Steff]

Much as it pains me to say it, Hastert really has to go. If he doesn't step down because of this then the voters should make him next month. I was listening to Kudlow and Company on CNBC radio a while ago and Hastert actually called Larry Kudlow before the show. His explanation for not moving on this a year ago when the E-Mails surfaced was "we were distracted and too busy at the time". What a load of horses***! To offer a lameo excuse like that for sitting on a sex scandal involving kids is beyond the pale.

 

 

You're exactly right with the last line. It's not about which side you support. It's about a man taking advantage of a child.

[AbeFroman]

Abe, one question though...if Hastert does wind up taking the fall, which is how it certainly appears...what happens to his natural successor, John Boehner, the current Majority leader in the House, who also seems to have known about it and taken roughly as many actions as Hastert?

 

It incumbent on the Republican Party to find someone who's clean and not afraid to fight for what's right. Whoever it is, it has to be someone 1) with credibility, and 2) the forsight to maintain his credibility by doing whats right, even if its not right for a particular member of the party. If that means its time for the Republicans to go back to the drawing board and find a new rising leader, than thats what they should do.

 

I don't know who that is... but there's 200 some odd republican congressman. Many of them are reputable. The Republican message should be that this person is a sharp change from the old ways of Hastert.... Our Republican Party will not fall because of the bad acts of a limited view.

 

This is principally what I don't understand about the bush administration. They seem so slow to acknowledge error. Why on Earth would you stand by Hastert? It make absolutely no sense at all. This IS worse than the Clinton episode. So stand up and change it. I really think the American people want a government that isn't afraid to just do what is right rather than play party politics.

Edited October 4, 2006 by AbeFroman

[Rex Kickass]

The answer would be Henry Hyde, who is retiring at the end of the session. This would make him a lame duck speaker, over a Congress whose business is basically over anyway and would allow the GOP to elect fresh leadership.

 

Kap, I'm not responding to what you think Clinton did or didn't commit in 1998 because the two situations are not comparable in any way shape or form.

 

We have Chiefs of Staff who are being forced out and to save their name are telling an interesting story. That the Congressional Leadership, including the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, knew about these issues and didn't so much as launch an investigation. Over and over.

 

If its true, its damning for the entire Republican leadership. In a sense, it is in any case. If the leadership wasn't aware of this situation despite what appears to be a steady stream of warnings, they clearly aren't capable of leading the nation's business. They can't even keep their own house in order. And the worst part about that is that its the best case scenario. A Speaker of the House made ineffectual because the people below him in the leadership have decided that matters deserving of serious investigation involving sexually predatory behavior on the floor of the House don't need to inform the Speaker of the House, or even the full panel of House Page advisors.

 

The worst case scenario is that the Congressional leadership knew about this, decided not to investigate it because the maintenance of partisan power and its current structure is more important to those making the laws of this land than doing the right thing and allowing behavior like this to happen right under their nose.

 

People who talk about suspicious timing should know that it seems pretty clear that the person in charge of House Republican re-electing strategy seems to have been in the know at the time. If that's the case, the GOP not the Democrats controlled the timing. If the allegations are true that the GOP leadership knew about this months, if not years ago shouldn't shout anything about timing unless they're frantically looking for someone else to blame. That seems to be the case here.

[AbeFroman]

People who talk about suspicious timing should know that it seems pretty clear that the person in charge of House Republican re-electing strategy seems to have been in the know at the time. If that's the case, the GOP not the Democrats controlled the timing. If the allegations are true that the GOP leadership knew about this months, if not years ago shouldn't shout anything about timing unless they're frantically looking for someone else to blame. That seems to be the case here.

 

I think thats a great point Rex.... anybody trying to play the suspicious timing angle will disregard it. But if they knew about this, then they had every reason in the world to think it might hurt them some day.

[EvilMonkey]

Not that it makes it better, but according to one of the IM's, he was 17, almost 18, not 16. 17 is the age of consent in DC. He is still scum.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/foley_excerpts4.pdf

[Rex Kickass]

And now allegations that he showed up to the Page Dorm drunk at least once.

 

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...NGNEWS/61004028

[FlaSoxxJim]

Anybody hear the NPR Michele Norris interview yesterday with Conservative activist Paul Weyrich (Free Congree ss Foundation)? He rescinded his earlier demand that Hastert resign (fair enough), but also seized the moment for some amazing gay bashing by boiling the "real problem" down to Foley being gay and the fact that "homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex."

 

Norris was aghast at what was coming out of his mouth as he continued to think that being gay should have kept by itself Foley off the committee to protect Missing and Exploited Children, and invoked some fnciful psychologists wose findings justify this hatemongering.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6196749

 

What an ugly little man.

 

Listen to the interview here, it comes up in the first minute of the piece.

[Texsox]

 

Let's remember he doesn't speak for, nor reflect, the views of the vast majority of GOP voters. They have a fringe element, like the Dems.

[Kyyle23]

Supposedly Hastert had knowledge of Foley's tendencies 3 years prior to the recently dropped bombshell.

[Texsox]

Here's a question, why are there 16-year old pages? I thought the program was more of a college thing than a High School? Timing would be bad to do it now, but I think the program should be limited to 18-year olds and up*.

 

 

 

*And to make it palatable for the congressmen, they must be smokin' hot.

[southsider2k5]

Here's a question, why are there 16-year old pages? I thought the program was more of a college thing than a High School? Timing would be bad to do it now, but I think the program should be limited to 18-year olds and up*.

*And to make it palatable for the congressmen, they must be smokin' hot.

 

I don't know how different programs work, but I paged in 6th and 9th grades at the Indiana state house... granted it was in 9th grade I pissed off the Gov, and we ended up getting asked to leave the capitol building, but hey that's another story.

[Texsox]

I don't know how different programs work, but I paged in 6th and 9th grades at the Indiana state house... granted it was in 9th grade I pissed off the Gov, and we ended up getting asked to leave the capitol building, but hey that's another story.

 

Common, tell the story. We want to be certain our candidate for School Board sin't hiding a terrorist past

 

[southsider2k5]

Common, tell the story. We want to be certain our candidate for School Board sin't hiding a terrorist past

 

 

The funny thing is that the trip in 9th grade wasn't even the first time I pissed off a politician, that was 8th grade... but that is yet another story

 

Anywho... We took about a dozen kids down to page for our local rep and state sens (Mary K Budak and Dennis Neary). At the time, they were hugely cutting the education budget coming out of the infamous double dip recession, and the story in MC was that to make the projected budget we would have to cut all extra curriculiar activities including things like newspaper, band, athletics, prom etc. EVERYTHING was going to go. So when we went down there our rep actually managed to get us a 5 minute meeting with Governor Evan Bayh. Well when we got taken into his office, he did everything he could not to answer questions, instead he started talking about the history of his office, who put what picture up etc... boring. Well guess who the guy who interupted him and said,

 

"Mr Governor, we don't really care about that stuff. We wanted to ask you about the education cuts."

 

We were literally out of his office in under 30 seconds from the point he started his pathetic evasive answer back to me (tough choices, we don't really want too etc).

 

I know the vast majority of you have never been in the Indiana state capital building, but it consists of two floors, with the second floor kind having openings in the middle of areas that look down onto the first floor. Well one of the elementary schools had all signed a banner that read something about saving our funding, so we took that banner from Budak and draped it down that it could be seen over the ledge and onto the first (main) floor. The governors bodyguard who had escorted us out of his office only minutes before came out and informed us that such protests were illegal, snatched the banner back up off of the ledge, and informed us that we must immediately exit the capital building, or face arrest. Needless to say, we left.

[Texsox]

Damn, so you were once a Democrat

 

[southsider2k5]

Damn, so you were once a Democrat

 

 

Eh, once a trouble maker, always a troublemaker.

[Rex Kickass]

Before 1983 a page could be under the age of 16. When the program started in the 1800s, the first pages were under 10.

[Balta1701]

Not that it makes it better, but according to one of the IM's, he was 17, almost 18, not 16. 17 is the age of consent in DC. He is still scum.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/images/WNT/foley_excerpts4.pdf

Still, this is that wierd bit of grey area in the law...it's legal in D.C. for an adult to have sex with a 17 year old...but the way Congress writes the laws regarding internet behavior, they always draw the line at 18. So it can be legal for an adult to actually have sex with a 17 year old partner, but then illegal to go home and talk about it online.

[Rex Kickass]

He's been doing this since 1997 at least apparently.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061005/ap_on_...mhuBHNlYwNtdHM-

[Texsox]

This is all the fault of democrats. If Al Gore hadn't of invented the internet . . .

[bmags]

man these past 2 years have been an absolute disaster for the republicans...they all try and distance themselves from bush to get re elected, then there is a huge sex scandal with teenage boys, so america sees whatever they see is wrong with bush above, and a sex scandal in the house. THE MONTH BEFORE. disaster.

[Balta1701]

Limbaugh also struggles to find a way to blame the kids. And get this, he thinks it's Abu Ghraib all over again: nothing but a prank.

 

Back in these days you could call Sears and order a refrigerator on the phone. I had a teacher living up the street and it was the biggest thrill in the world to just call and order a refrigerator and watch Sears deliver it to an unsuspecting teacher and his wife, and far stranger things than that. But we always picked out adults that we just thought were odd or weird, and it would be fun to make fun of them, and I don’t think kids today are any different…

 

But you know as well as I do that young kids make fun of gay people. They make fun of the way they talk; they make fun of the way some of them walk and so forth. Who knows what the word around town about fellow Foley was. Who knows? We all know that young people gay bash. Young people do a lot of stuff. They don’t have the maturity to understand this kind of stuff…

 

I tell you, folks, you’ve got this page out there; you probably have a bunch of pages laughing and making fun of Foley and the way he comes on to them, and he’s gay and so forth, so they egg him on and so forth….

[EvilMonkey]

Limbaugh also struggles to find a way to blame the kids. And get this, he thinks it's Abu Ghraib all over again: nothing but a prank.

Why would it be so unbelievable to think that some kids could have been 'having fun' with him by stringing him along? People all the time represent themselves as somebody they are not whiel on the internet. Back in the AOL internet days you heard all sorts of stoies about people pretending to be a woman and getting some guy to have 'cyber' with them, only to later bust out and proclaim themselves a man. And before you start foaming at the mouth, noone said this in any way absolved Foley from being a creep.