Mahoney Mess: Threesomes and Sex For Political Favors?

Florida Congressional District 16 is the district that just keeps on giving. First they had Mark Foley, who proceeded to send salacious emails to Congressional pages. That cost him his seat, and the GOP lost control of the House because the leadership wasn't up front and forceful about dealing with the mess.

Now, we've got his successor, Rep. Tim Mahoney who has admitted to extramarital affairs.

ABC News now reports that he pressured his staffer into engaging in threesomes and to use her to curry political favors with big name donors.

But a document obtained by ABC News reveals new allegations of threatening behavior and sexual harassment toward a female staffer, that go far beyond Mahoney’s public confession, including claims that he urged one of his mistresses to serve as a “tease” for big donors.

The former Congressional staff member, Patricia Allen, was paid $121,000 by Mahoney after she was fired and threatened to sue.

(snip)

The settlement was reached after Allen hired a lawyer who sent the Congressman a "demand" letter, listing specific examples of Mahoney's alleged "gross misconduct" and "stalking" including:

"a) Calling Allen late in the evenings and demanding "phone sex;"

b) Demanding that Allen answer his calls or face termination;

c) Demanding that Allen attend fundraisers and "tease c-ck" to bring in more donations from the male members of the public;

d) Demanding that Allen engage in sexual conduct with another woman for his enjoyment."

Mahoney was chosen by Democrat Rahm Emanuel to run for the seat in the wake of the Foley mess. What did he know, and when did he know it.

UPDATE:
ABC broke the story, and has been running it via the Blotter, but it simply hasn't gained traction the way you'd think because we're talking a Democrat here and not a Republican. This is the same that gave the nation Mark Foley and GOPers in charge lost bigtime because of claims of salacious emails to pages.

Here, we've got real sex, money, power, and abuse of power and the office of a member of Congress, and nothing but crickets from the rest of the media. This is the kind of story that should be banner headlines because of the salaciousness and sleazy attitudes of the key player, and questions should be asked of the Democrat leadership who knew or may have known of key details far earlier than previously admitted - that would be Emanuel who has admitted to knowing but trying to contain the story. The GOP lost the House under much less serious charges.

Bias? What bias?

UPDATE:
I decided to run some numbers for Mahoney and Foley for their comparable scandals. Resist they have. I'd compare the reaction from Foley to Mahoney. It's no comparison.

They swarmed over Foley. According to Google, there were 10,700 for Foley in 2006. For Mahoney, there's not nearly that kind of reaction. Mahoney gets 3,307 hits according to Google.

Oh, and Mahoney has now dropped out of planned debate for today. The GOP challenger was there by himself and simply fielded questions.

UPDATE:
Ace links. Thanks!

Mahoney Mess: Divorce Filings and Media Incuriosity

Why is the media continuing to essentially conduct a blackout on news about Democrat Tim Mahoney and his affairs (the extramarital affair with a campaign staffer and then the affair with a FEMA worker)? Well, this is a self-answering question: the answer is already in the question. Mahoney is a Democrat.

Just two years ago, the media circled around Rep. Mark Foley (R), and seized on GOP leadership's knowledge and actions on the scandal to play up the fact that the GOP were corrupt or somehow damaged. It helped play a role in costing Democrats the election.

Here? You're getting crickets, despite the fact that Mahoney was Democrat leader Rahm Emanuel's pick for replacing Foley. How and why Emanuel chose Mahoney is a mystery to local Democrats, who were pretty much ignored in the process because Mahoney was quite wealthy. Money talked, and Emanuel pushed Mahoney.

It's also apparent from various sources that Emanuel and other Democrat leaders knew about at least one of the affairs and did nothing.

Now, sometimes the ethics panel starts investigations after an official complaint is filed by a member, and occasionally it launches a probe on its own. What it doesn't normally do is this -- announce that it is "reviewing" a topic without actually forming an investigative subcommittee. The statement also sparks more questions: Who exactly is the committee going to interview? Will it seek testimony from Democratic leaders?

This last issue is important, because Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the current and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, have both acknowledged talking to Mahoney about the allegations before the story broke.

Democrats demanded hearings in which GOP leaders had to testify as to their knowledge of Foley's mess in 2006. Where is Speaker Pelosi and Emanuel to testify here on Mahoney?

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has issued a statement saying, "In 2006, House Republican leaders voluntarily testified under oath in the matter of disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley. Will House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Emanuel, and Congressman Van Hollen, agree to do the same? The American people deserve to know what House Democratic leaders knew about Congressman Mahoney's reprehensible actions, what they did with the information."

So much for the most ethical Congress mantra that Pelosi has chattered about for two years without so much as taking a single step to deal with any number of Congressional Democrats who have engaged in unethical or illegal actions, including William "Cold Cash" Jefferson and Charlie "I am the tax man" Rangel.

Emanuel and the leadership had been trying to keep the story buried until after the election, but ABC News managed to break the news. It's been an incurious media since then that hasn't forced the Democrats to answer for their actions in the same manner in which Republicans were raked over the coals in 2006. That cannot be attributed to anything other than bias in the media. After all, we're talking about the same kinds of salacious issues that newspapers usually love to cover: sex, power, politics, and corruption.

Meanwhile,
Mahoney's wife is finally taking action - she's filing for divorce. I hope she takes him to the cleaners.

Don Surber has more.

UPDATE:
Jammie reports that Mark Foley has been sighted, and now supports Sen. Barack Obama for President. Obama can have him. Foley also expressed some pleasure at watching Mahoney's meltdown and all signs point to the Republicans picking up the seat.

UPDATE:
Drudge is now carrying the following from Mark Foley:

FOLEY: 'An online article posted today on Variety's website innaccurately reported that I was supporting Barack Obama. The story on Variety's website, based on a second or third-hand account of my private conversation, is incorrect. I have already voted by absentee ballot in Florida. Although I didn't vote for Senator Obama, I intend to keep my choice private.'

Great reporting by the drive-by media in claiming that Foley was voting for Obama.

Mahoney Mess: Admission of Multiple Affairs

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL16) admits that he had multiple affairs while serving as Representative of the 16th Congressional District in Florida.

Let me just be explicit that I am admitting to it...to having affairs," Mahoney said in an interview this afternoon with reporter Terri Parker at WPBF News 25, ABC News' affiliate in West Palm Beach. "My personal behavior has been unacceptable."

How nice of him to make that admission. How about a follow up question from ABC News (or anyone else): where did the money come from that was used to silence those women involved in the affairs. What about the FEMA funds? His personal behavior extended into the public conduct of his office as a public servant. He's an absolute disgrace and should be tossed from his seat.

Sadly, no one has bothered to question Rep. Rahm Emanuel who pushed to get Mahoney elected from this district. What else did he know, and when did he know it?

Meanwhile, Mark Foley could not be reached for comment.

Mahoney Mess: FBI Investigates Salacious Details, Local Democrats Bitter

As I suspected yesterday, the FBI is looking at whether federal funds were involved in the payoffs of Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL) to keep two affairs out of sight. However, I wasn't thinking big enough. It's even juicier than I thought. The FBI is looking at two salacious lines of inquiry:

Federal agents also are examining whether a second affair Mahoney was having with a high-level official in his Florida district was the reason behind his decision to push for federal emergency funds for her county, the official said.

The person spoke to The Associated Press only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

The FBI is looking into whether Mahoney hired the first mistress—and put her on the federal payroll—so she would not reveal their affair, the person said. The woman, Patricia Allen, has not returned calls for comment.

The agency also wants to know whether any sexual favors were exchanged for Mahoney helping Martin County secure a $3.4 million reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for hurricane damage there while having a second affair with a high-level county manager.

So, even with what would appear to be on its face a blatant abuse of federal funds, abuse of his position as Congressman, and the salaciousness of the scandal, it barely cracks the headlines.

This is the same district that saw Mark Foley, a Republican, have a sex scandal of his own - if you count salacious emails as a sex scandal. That scandal, and the subsequent bungling by GOP leaders, helped cost the GOP their majority in 2006. Of course, the media was more than happy to assist in that endeavor.

Now, we're watching as real federal funds were involved to buy silence, sexual favors exchanged for federal funds, and a federal job offered to keep silent.

The Democrat leadership knew, or had reason to know of the affairs and sat on it. The media isn't willing to dig deeper and find out just what the Democrat leaders knew - and I suspect it's because the media knows what they'll find out - that they knew and did nothing except hope that the issue blows past the election and that they did all they could to keep it from breaking in the news. ABC News broke both the Foley story and the Mahoney story - and should be commended for that fact. However, they and none of the other big media outlets are doing anyone any favors by avoiding the 800 pound gorilla of what the leadership knew and did to keep this story out of the press.

That this story isn't plastered in the headlines like the Foley story is a testament to the bias within the media to avoid running stories detrimental to Democrats, especially at election time.

After all, this story has everything - a compelling story line, sex, money, and power.

Some Democrats are questioning how the DCCC pushed Mahoney on the district because he was a multimillionaire, overlooking other candidates. That may be sour grapes from David Lutrin, but he's getting to say I told you so because the DCCC didn't bother to vet Mahoney nearly as well as they should; and Mahoney's more closely tied to Rahm Emanuel than the media is letting on. The Democrats were chasing the money and former GOPers to run for office over established Democrats. In more conservative leaning districts, the crossover appeal is definitely a plus, but it looks real bad for Emanuel for backing Mahoney without doing his due diligence.

I'll give the AP credit for their story above for including Mahoney's political affiliation up front. Mighty charitable of them. I can't say the same of other outlets.

And speaking of the subject of name that party and media bias, why exactly is the non-affair story involving John McCain back in the news? Someone decided that this was the only way to divert attention from the active and festering Mahoney mess?

Florida Congressman Pays $121,000 To Former Mistress?

Florida Congressman Tim Mahoney has been trying very hard to keep this news from going public, but it's now being reported that he apparently paid $121,000 to a former mistress and promised much more.

Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said.

A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair or the settlement, but said Allen resigned of her own accord and "has not received any special payment from campaign funds."

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.

So, who is this Democrat Tim Mahoney?

He's the guy who replaced disgraced Republican Mark Foley who was forced to resign over the page scandal (and for which no criminal charges were ever brought). (HT: Florida Lady at LGF)

What is it with Florida?

UPDATE:
As Ace notes, don't expect the media to take this up as a sign that the Democrats are thoroughly involved in a culture of corruption that protects their own from "indiscretions" and demands that the Democrats lose power in Congress.

There will be no such calls. The media will simply note this as an isolated instance, and not the reason for sweeping the Democrats from power, which in part is what happened in 2006.

UPDATE:
I think someone ought to investigate and see whether this is true. Speaker Pelosi claims that she just learned about this growing scandal. I don't quite believe her given that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and the Democratic caucus have been working to keep this matter hushed up.

You wouldn't want to spoil the "most ethical Congress ever" with yet another scandal not with the November elections fast approaching.

Throw in the fact that Emanuel was on the forefront of those Democrats screaming for Foley's head on a platter and you get the idea of the stench of hypocrisy emanating from Congress these days.

No Criminal Case Against Former Rep. Mark Foley

Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida who was accused of sending salacious emails to underage staffers will not face criminal charges.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also said in an investigative report that too much time had passed since the February 2003 messages to bring any charges.

"There did not appear to be probable cause that a crime was committed," the report said.

The report also noted that a federal investigation was closed in July. A senior Justice Department official confirmed Friday that prosecutors advised Foley's attorney in July that the former congressman would not face federal charges. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

Foley's salacious emails caused quite the stir, and was one of several factors leading to the Republicans losing the House in the 2006 midterm elections. Republicans dithered and refused to take action against Foley.

Watch for history to repeat itself as Democrats continue to protect Rep. Charles Rangel and his chairmanship of the Ways and Means committee even as Rangel admits to shorting the IRS of $5,000 and revelations that the true extent of his tax evasion is likely many times that amount.

Charles Rust-Tierney: Sick Puppy

If that name doesn't sound familiar, that's because the news has not exactly plastered his name the way they might do with a politician or Britney Spears. He's a former chapter president of the ACLU who was arrested on child pornography charges.

Well, there are a few details that have leaked about what exactly he'd been up to, and they make my headline seem downright tame and charitable:

Alexandria, Va. (WUSA) -- A public defender from Arlington now finds that he is the accused. Fifty-one year old Charles Rust-Tierney appeared in United States District Court in Alexandria Wednesday.

He’s accused of receiving and possessing child pornography, and investigators outlined what they say they found after searching his home.

They say Rust-Tierney had video showing, among other things, the sexual torture of infants and toddlers. The judge said she’d never heard of child pornography that vile and said because of that, Rust-Tierney would stay behind bars until his trial.

Rust-Tierney is a father himself and also a coach of Arlington-area youth little league and soccer teams. In court, dozens of his friends and family members voiced support for him. They say they have never suspected him of improper contact with kids.

So this creep was into videos showing the rape and torture of infants and toddlers. Wonderful stuff. Other reports indicate that he was into watching pre-pubescent girls getting sexually assaulted.

The media embargo on this story is quite curious. They went to town when Rep. Mark Foley sent inappropriate emails and he never actually was involved in sexual acts with the interns. It was the top story for days on end. He was forced to resign and the GOP took a big hit at the polls as a result of the handling of the scandal.

Here? Not so much. Why? Is it because the ACLU is involved?

The ACLU has supported the likes of NAMBLA on free speech grounds even though such groups encourage and support child endangerment, child abuse, and sexual assaults that are illegal in all states. Rust-Tierney was apparently into the most vile sort of child porn, and yet the media doesn't think much of the story, despite the fact that he and his organization was trying to push NAMBLA's agenda into the mainstream and he personally was involved in trying to prevent library filters from preventing objectionable material from being viewed.

And he apparently coached youth sports teams in his spare time. That is, before he was arrested on the child porn charges.

Ace also comments.

Pimping Their Ride

The UN is still engaging in conduct that should make those who sought to hang Mark Foley for his indecent conduct go absolutely bonkers in horror. That is, unless they don't even know that it's going on or don't care.

It is the UN after all:

Children have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia, a BBC investigation has found.
Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money.

A senior official with the organisation has accepted the claims are credible.

These problems have been reported before. The UN has repeatedly claimed that it would police its own and impose new requirements that would eliminate these situations. They haven't worked. The UN is a broken organization and the leadership, starting with Kofi Annan has been derelict in its duties not only to the organization itself, but to those who have called on the UN to provide security and safety in peacekeeping operations.

The UN, and Kofi Annan, have had years to deal with the problem, and have not raised a finger to fix the institutional problems. The problems are systemic, widespread, and extend to the Secretariat itself. Yet, simple fixes - such as rigorous oversight and harsh penalties for offenses is not even in the cards. Heck, the UN hasn't even tried a simple questionaire to inform peacekeepers of acceptable behavior. They can claim zero-tolerance is the name of the game all they want, but the UN peacekeepers and top officials continue to ignore the problems.

Hot Air, Captain Ed, and It Shines for All have much more.

UPDATE:
Blue Crab Boulevard and Wake Up America also weigh in.

A New Low

Did no one notice that James Webb wrote a book and happened to include scenes showing not only gay sex, but sex with young boys? Did no one think that this wouldn't become an issue, especially after the revelations surrounding the Mark Foley situation?

Is Webb going to be forced from the race? Will the Democrats who were shouting so loudly for the heads of Hastert et al., going to call on the Virginia Democrats and anyone else who knew about this stuff going to call on Webb to withdraw from the race?

This is all a rhetorical question since these books have been in circulation since the 1980s.

All this leaves more questions than answers. It also makes me wonder what other skeletons are in the closets of those leading our nation - and do I really want to know?

It is interesting to notice that people are taking Allen's campaign to task for publishing this information in a presser, despite the fact that all they did was put all the salacious bits in one easy to read release. Webb was the person who wrote all this stuff over the course of his many books.

Will this even matter to voters, who have probably tuned out all this kind of thing by now? I don't think it will make much of a difference, even if it should raise some kind of flags.

Dinocrat wonders at all the October surprises so far. I just wonder how much of a surprise this should have been if these books had been out since the 1980s. I guess no one bothered to read them until he ran for the Senate seat?

Radley Balko thinks that this isn't much of a scandal - lame fiction. Well, it is fiction... and it makes for interesting political theater.

UPDATE:
Others noting the ickiness factor and the salacious bits, and what to make of it all: Lorie Byrd, Sensible Mom, Dan Riehl, Joe Bardi (who was wondering when the Democrats would start imploding), and Strong Conservative.

Gregg Hurwitz wonders if there's anyone who's written anything of fiction who could ever make it into politics at the rate we're going, but I guess it depends on what the writing is. We are talking fiction after all, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Also, he thinks it's a calculated absurdity on Allen's part, one that will probably work.

I sense a general theme among those on the Left versus the Right on this matter.

The Left thinks that Allen's the sleazy one who brings Webb's fictionalized tales into the discussion instead of talking about the issues. They think that this will have little effect on the race, and that Allen's own missteps are far worse than this issue.

The Right, on the other hand, can't quite figure out how Webb managed to get this far considering the extent of his writings about sex with children and other sordid tales. Some think that it's fiction, but note the ickiness factor. By and large, they want to see Webb gone.

This is an election cycle that has seen a race to the bottom, and each side has tried hard and long to be the one to get that last gotcha. I don't think we're done for this cycle, though it might be the last of it in Virginia. After all, there's less than two weeks til the election. That's plenty of time for a few more October surprises.

Technorati: george allen, james webb, mark foley, democrats, republicans, sex scandal, politics.

Foleygate and School Sex Scandals

I found this article in the New York Times illuminating on the matter of school sex scandals, with a particular focus on an incident in Bayonne, New Jersey:

After Ms. West was arrested, school officials insisted for more than a year that the allegation was the only accusation of misconduct in a sterling 24-year career. They allowed her to take an early retirement package that fattened her pension, and gave her a farewell party with cake and ice cream. When Ms. West pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexual assault charges, glowing references from co-workers, supervisors and friends helped persuade a judge to sentence her only to probation. She was also spared the ordeal of having to register as a sex offender.

Now, with Mr. Castlegrande suing the school district for failing to protect students from a woman with a sexual appetite for under-age boys, this city of 62,000 has been forced to examine how little was done to stop her earlier. Even as the news media were saturated with coverage of teachers like Pamela Smart and Mary Kay Letourneau who slept with their students, Bayonne averted its eyes for years.

Anyone else find this story interesting, especially in light of the current fascination with the Mark Foley scandal? I do; especially because of the way the media covers stories dealing with people using and abusing their positions of authority to take advantage of children.

Mark Foley was run out of Congress for sending inappropriate emails and sexually suggestive instant messages. There are even claims of sexual contact with pages after they turned 21 and after they left the Page program. Yet, we repeatedly see the media and school officials turn a blind eye to sex abuse of students by teachers, administrators and other school officials, especially when the person committing the abuse is a woman, and the abused individual is a boy.

Can you say double standard? I knew you could. But it gets better because West was politically connected and protected:

The school principal at the time, Daniel Doyle, swore in a statement to prosecutors last year that he spoke to a half-dozen teachers and became convinced that she and the student were sexually involved. “Diane has a thing for young boys,” Mr. Doyle recalled being told, according to court records.

Mr. Doyle said in the statement that he wrote to the superintendent asking that Ms. Cherchio be fired, but was startled to learn, upon returning to school in the fall, that she had instead become a guidance counselor at the high school.

“I accepted it as a political maneuver,” said Mr. Doyle, now retired, who grew up near the Cherchio family. He added that he suspected her father’s business and political connections allowed her to escape punishment.

Will we hear calls for the heads of all those involved in the decision that let this sexual predator continue working in a school, including those politically connected individuals that let this continue. These people knew of West's activities and did nothing. They continued to let West interact with children, despite the predeliction and evidence showing her to be a sexual predator.

And this is far from an isolated incident. Teachers abusing their students happens fairly regularly, and more often than people are willing to admit. Should we hold politicians to the same standards we hold our teachers? Mary Kay Letourneau. Debra Lafave. These are people we entrusted our future to - and they violated that trust. Yet, courts, prosecutors, and the public seems to lack the outrage that they're now tossing the way of Hastert and company. It's an interesting question, because it seems that we only get our hackles up when it's a man doing the abuse, but not when a woman is the predator. Sexual predators are predators regardless of the gender of the predator.

My take on this is simple. If you're a sexual predator, engaging in illicit sexual conduct with someone under the age of consent, you are engaging in criminal activity and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. It doesn't matter whether you're a female teacher/guidance counselor abusing boys, or a Congressman who was going after underage pages.

As for those who knew, had reason to know, or otherwise sought to coverup the activities of sexual predators, they too should be punished to the fullest extent of the law for putting children at risk. It is absolutely inexcusable. Period.

Technorati: mark foley, email, im, instant message, congress, foleygate.

Foleygate Revelations

Hastert is sticking to the line that he's done nothing wrong in respect to how he's handled the Foleygate situation. He's going to go down fighting and is naming the usual laundry list of potential shadowy groups/individuals who brought up this mess so close to the election. Fighting back is sure to please folks like Macranger and Mark Levin. House GOPers are also coming to Hastert's defense.

The pollsters are loving this scandal because they think that it shows that the GOP are likely to lose seats over this. I'm not so sure. The House has 435 separate elections, and most of those seats are safe - not going to change hands. Only a small number of seats are competitive, and Democrats need 15 to change hands to give them control in the House. It is doable, but not a certainty. They appear to have improved their odds with Foley resigning, but I don't see much of a carryover to other districts.

CREW is claiming the FBI is attempting a coverup:

The dispute is the latest controversy this week for CREW, a liberal-leaning group that has come under attack from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and other Republicans because it has received money from a foundation funded by liberal financier George Soros.

CREW held a news conference Monday to announce that in July it had provided the FBI suspicious e-mails between Foley and a former House page. The group criticized the bureau for not taking more aggressive action and asked Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine to investigate the FBI's handling of the case.

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.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said copies of the original e-mails she sent to an FBI agent show those assertions to be wrong. Sloan said the agent called to confirm receipt of the e-mails and to ask if one of the parties was Foley.

Sloan said the group sent unedited e-mails to the FBI because "we wanted them to commence an investigation. We're sort of outraged that they're saying anything differently." The group has asked Fine's office to look into the FBI's assertions.

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."

Foley's actions, while reprehensible did not rise to the level of criminal acts. Should they have raised all kinds of red flags, including whether Foley should have further contact with pages? Are we into precrime and indicting and convicting people in the court of public opinion on acts that are not yet criminal? It's an interesting ethical quandry that really deserves to be heard in a more thoughtful manner than in the current swirl of scandal and political hackery on all sides.

Pelosi thinks that this is all to her advantage, and if the Democrats emerge from the elections with a majority, she thinks she's the one to clean up the House. Don't get carried away Nancy. You haven't won anything yet, nor have you actually provided any substantive ideas other than "we're not the big bad GOP" on the key issues of the day - terrorism, Iraq, and national security. It doesn't look good when the Democrat leaders in the House are all angling for various investigations, including impeachment hearings.

The House Ethics Committee is investigating the matter, though it appears to be focusing on the leadership and whether they violated any ethical standards.

Three more pages have come forward asserting that Foley made online sexual advances. The continued pubilicity is sure to bring out still others who will assert that Foley acted improperly. Foley, for his part, has already resigned, so the key points to look for are whether Foley actually had physical encounters with underage individuals and whether anyone knew or had reason to know of these encounters and should have reported them to the authorities - whether it was the House leadership, FBI, Capitol Police, or local law enforcement. At this point, it looks like that did not happen.

UPDATE:
Allahpundit is seeking a reprieve from the Foleygate mess. I can understand that, but wonder at whether his "suggestion" that Hastert resigns will actually quell the controversy. I don't think it does.

It doesn't; because the media loves a good sex related scandal - even when there hasn't been any actual physical sex. All the alleged incidents involved cybersex or innuendo of cybersex.

And for all that Foley resigned. That solitary seat may be a Democrat pickup. Hastert resigning from his leadership post isn't likely to change his constituents from voting for him. So he'll be back.

Where are the other seats going to come from? The elections in November aren't to select an entire slate for Congress, but 435 separate elections for the House, and 1/3 of the Senate that is currently up for reelection.

The allegations against Hastert thus far is that he didn't manage an investigation and/or didn't do enough once he found out about the situation. I find his leadership of the GOP questionable - especially in the William Jefferson investigation, but if the GOP thinks that Hastert is sufficient to lead the party in the House, that's their call to make after the election. I think they'll find someone else, but that will come after the election, especially since they're rallying around him at this time.

AJ Strata finds some interesting discrepancies in the faxed emails that CREW claims to have sent to the FBI. The dates raise some questions as to what they knew and when. Were the emails tampered with? That's something investigators will certainly have to piece together, though I doubt any findings will be forthcoming before the election.

Did CREW sit on the emails and refuse to provide the FBI with unedited emails upon the Bureau's request? Sources at the Bureau seem to suggest precisely that.

UPDATE:
AJ Strata has a timeline posted for those who are trying to figure out what happened and when.

UPDATE:
Jordan Edmund, the page whose identity became known as receiving some of Foley's instant messages, has retained Stephen Jones as his attorney. Jones is best known for representing Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. While Jones wouldn't comment about most aspects of the investigation, he did say the following:

The attorney disputed as “a piece of fiction” a report on a widely viewed Internet site, The Drudge Report, that Edmund’s exchanges with Foley were a prank by the page.

Sauce for the goose.

Prior coverage: Foleygate Reloaded, Foleygate, The Foley Scandal Grows, Has Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?, Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails

Technorati: mark foley, email, im, instant message, congress, foleygate.

Foleygate Reloaded

Orin Kerr takes you through some of the legal issues that will shape the investigation of Rep. Mark Foley.

Some of my posters think that the whole notion that those who had access to the IMs but chose to sit on them since 2003 to wait for the opportune moment to use them in 2006 is nothing but pure unadulterated bunk have raised a good point. If you were going to use them to maximum effect, would they not have been used in 2004, during the Presidential elections, and not in the 2006 midterm elections.

That's a question that AJ Strata, Macranger, and Mark Levin, among others have not addressed. It's a good question. Why wait til 2006 to use them, if they were supposedly sent as early as 2003.

Yet, there are real good reasons to question the timing and the timeline, if only to determine the full timeline of events in the course of the investigation to determine if other individuals are culpable for criminal acts - acts of commission or omission.

The media continues to swirl around Hastert and the pressure on him to resign. I think CNN has it right that even if he doesn't resign that he's most likely not going to be voted back as the leader of the GOP caucus after the midterm elections.

Juneau Blog wonders whether anyone else had access to the computers and the IM account by Foley. That's a good question, and one that investigators will certainly need to look at.

Kerry Howley sums things up thusly:

For his part, Foley has been a one-man war on nuance: A vocal fan of broad databases, the first to yell sicko and cry pervert. In his own words, Foley is "never too tired" to jerk off. Nor was he too tired to use his position as chairman of the former chairman of the House Caucus on Missing Children to stretch the definitions of sex crime beyond all meaning—everything from running a nudist camps to child modeling was deemed perverse, hardly distinguishable from straight-up abuse. At a news conference in 2002, he explained that it was a mistake to distinguish between the internet and physical contact, saying " It doesn't make a difference if the child engaged in sex is real or virtual. In other words, an old simple saying: If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it is a duck."

No one seems to be making that mistake; thanks to a culture Foley helped create, he has been portrayed as an alcoholic pedophile/adulterer/cybermonster hybrid as guilty as any predator beyond cyberspace. If the laws he helped to write are hopelessly clumsy, the circumstances of his political end couldn't be more perfect.

As I noted yesterday, the whole idea that Foley could pawn off his current mess on the fact that he was supposedly molested as a teenager by a member of the clergy is just so much BS. I wasn't alone in that evaluation. Don Surber agrees and expounds on the subject further.

Sister Toldjah tries reading the tea leaves and wonders what would happen if President Bush pardoned Foley at some point before leaving office in a manner similar to that which President Clinton pardoned Mel Reynolds. Frankly, I can't see that happening, and his case doesn't even begin to rise to the level of one where the President can or should review the case for clemency. We're nowhere near that point, so this is just so much idle chatter.

Others blogging: Blue Crab Boulevard, Jay Tea at Wizbang, and Hot Air.

UPDATE:
MSNBC has an article about the difficulties of pursuing a legal case against Foley, considering that thus far there are no reports that Foley ever met up with any of the pages for a sexual encounter:

Graphic talk alone is rarely enough, said Joseph Dooley, a former agent who helped set up New England’s first FBI unit targeting Internet predators. Many adults engage in explicit chats with undercover agents but never show up for the scheduled meetings, he said.

“We never charged anyone unless they actually traveled to have sex,” Dooley said.

Investigators could consider federal obscenity laws, experts said, but the law prohibiting disseminating obscene material to children applies only to those under 16.

Benjamin Vernia, a former federal prosecutor specializing in such cases, compared Foley’s online conversations with pages to “grooming,” a law enforcement term for the way sexual predators bring along their underage victims. Grooming is a red flag for authorities, Vernia said, but it’s rarely enough to bring charges.

This can help explain why the earlier FBI investigation led nowhere. Foley's actions to that point - in the form of the emails - was apparently insufficient to bring charges.

UPDATE:
Glass houses and all that. Gateway Pundit rounds up the postings that suggest that Democrats actually knew about the IMs before Hastert did, and yet did nothing to inform the authorities of their existence. Via Clarice at American Thinker:

Dick Morris just said on FOX that a respected reporter told him that she has proof that a senior democrat member of congress knew about the IMs months ago–unlike Hastert.

If this is accurate (big if here), then there are Democrats on the Hill who have to be held accountable as well.

If we're going to throw Hastert et al. under the bus, there's plenty of room for Democrats who similarly violated their moral and ethical obligations to do the right thing by the Congressional pages.

UPDATE:
Confederate Yankee has the transcript of the Hannity and Colmes exchange with Dick Morris. Very curious how this will play out.

UPDATE:
Another resignation (via Michelle Malkin):

ABC News Has Learned FORMER FOLEY CHIEF OF STAFF KIRK FORDHAM RESIGNS AMID QUESTIONS OVER WHETHER HE SUPPRESSED INFORMATION ABOUT FOLEY EMAILS
By Jake Tapper

Kirk Fordham, the chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-NY, has submitted his resignation to his boss. Questions have been raised about Fordham's role in how the House GOP leadership handled initial reports of the scandal involving former Rep Tom Foley, R-Fl, and inappropriate internet messages to underage pages.

UPDATE:
Has the source of the instant messages been discovered? That appears to be the case as John of Stop the ACLU points to Passionate America's research into the matter with Ms. Underestimated. Jay at Stop the ACLU also points to what appears to be a Democrat effort to out gay Republicans, as if that is anyone's business. Who is compiling such a list and to what end? Is this what we want our politicians and their political consultants and pundits and hangers-on doing with their time?

Fordham now says that Hastert's office was warned two years ago about Foley's emails. Yet, there's word that Hastert himself was never made aware of anything more than the initial email requesting photos of a page. Shouldn't Hastert have known that his office was informed of the matter, or did his staffers not think this important enough?

Heh. Yes, the media's reporting of this whole mess is beginning to resemble entries in Playboy Letters. And it is interesting how there was reluctance to mention sexual acts or encounters in earlier sex scandals, but all caution has been thrown to the wind in this scandal.

Others blogging: Blue Crab Boulevard (yes, it does look like this scandal is jumping the shark - but to ever higher ratings), Hot Air, AJ Strata, The Real Ugly American (who takes time to bash Glenn Greenwald's latest posting on the matter).

UPDATE:
Are you kidding me? This whole mess has gotten more bizarre at every turn. It now appears that the page at the heart of the matter was of the age of consent. Any instant messages between the two, even if cybersex, would be between consenting adults. No matter how scummy Foley was, ABC News now has a mess on their hands because they knew or had reason to know that the age of at least one of the individuals in the IMs was over 18 years of age.

UPDATE:
Drudge is reporting that ABC News says that the individual in question, Jordan Edmund, was engaging in IMs with Foley both before and after he turned 18. And is there a bogus blog that has been pushing the whole Foley story? More here.

None of this takes away from the fact that Foley engaged in reprehensible conduct.

The investigations continue. People are questioning the alcoholism claim. Well, no kidding. It was pretty suspicious that he'd run to rehab as this whole scandal was breaking. Convenient excuse to get out of the limelight.

UPDATE:
The age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16.

Others blogging: Dan Riehl, Decision 08, and Euphoric Reality.

Prior coverage: Foleygate, The Foley Scandal Grows, Has Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?, Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails

Technorati: mark foley, email, im, instant message, congress, foleygate.

Scandalous

No, this isn't the Mark Foley affair, but a real serious scandal that really ought to be investigated further by the media and Bureau of Prisons.

Someone better have a real good explanation as to why convicted terrorists are still able to communicate with their terror minions overseas?

In 2005, Lisa Myers and the NBC News Investigative Unit reported that, while behind bars at the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary in Florence, Colo., the 1993 World Trade Center bombers continued their terrorist activities, writing letters to other suspected terrorists and brazenly praising Osama bin Laden in Arabic newspapers. The prison, also known as "Supermax," houses the largest number of and most dangerous terrorist inmates.

According to confidential Spanish court documents obtained by NBC, at least 14 letters went back and forth between the Trade Center bombers at Supermax and members of a Spanish terror cell. One example, from February 2003: Trade Center bomber Mohammed Salameh writes: "Oh, God! Make us live with happiness, make us die as martyrs, may we be united on the day of Judgment."

The recipient, Mohamed Achraf, later allegedly led a plot to blow up the National Justice Building in Madrid. In July 2002, a letter Salameh sent from prison was published in the Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, proclaiming, "Osama bin Laden is my hero of this generation."

As part of its investigation, the inspector general visited 10 federal prisons and interviewed 163 BOP officials. The report says none of the 10 prisons met a Bureau of Prisons goal of reading 100 percent of the mail for inmates on monitoring lists. In fact, at seven of the 10, special investigative staff told the inspector general their reading of mail for inmates on monitoring lists had decreased during the past year. Prison staff blamed the decrease on the reallocation of positions under bureau-wide streamlining initiatives, and described the mail monitoring workload as "overwhelming."

I'm sorry, but there is no excuse for these convicted terrorists in US custody being able to send their messages of hatred overseas and communicating with their minions overseas and no one in the federal government is intercepting these communications and putting a stop to them.

Foleygate

Sobek posting at Ace notes the shifting definition of sex for use in the Foleygate scandal. Whereas the definition of sex was parsed like you couldn't believe in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to define oral sex as not being sex, we now find a misleading headline Hastert Won't Resign Over Sex Scandal, where thus far we know of no actual sexual contact between Foley and any of the pages other than the sexually explicit emails. The media, and blogs, love salacious headlines, and that's quite a headturner, but the headline is misleading since Hastert himself is not implicated in a sex scandal, but the coverup.

It's always about the coverup, or the incomplete investigations, isn't it.

Hastert says he wont resign from his leadership post. That may change after the election, when the leadership posts are decided. The GOP will certainly look to fresh blood to reinvigorate the party's leadership, and to remove the stigma of the Foley scandal.

AJ Strata notes a different kind of coverup, this time involving ABC News and Brian Ross, which sat on the allegations of child abuse dating from 2003. The media outlets themselves are using the same excuse as Hastert, which should be troubling to anyone covering the story. If it is good or not good for Hastert, then it should be the same for the very media outlets that had similar or additional information. No double standards here. Various media outlets knew of the emails and did nothing. Either they didn't think that there was anything there there, or they were waiting for some major break in the story to run with it. It appears that the break was the release of the IMs.

AJ is still questioning the timing. So is Macranger, who has been adamant from the get-go about the timing of this mess.

I think Hastert has not distinguished himself with his actions here, though I thought he should have been canned over his claims of Congressional immunity applicable to the Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) case, and the search of his Congressional offices. That incident suggested that Hastert was more concerned with preserving Legislative power vis-a-vis the other branches of government and not serious rooting out the corrupt members in its midst.

LaShawn Barber doesn't think the current scandal will have as far reaching effects as some folks imagine. Foley's scandal isn't likely to affect races elsewhere in the country, despite people being fed up with Congress.

My decision on who to vote for in New Jersey will be made based on which candidates are the least ethically challenged (a tough job indeed). Thus far, that puts Kean Jr., ahead of the Democrat incumbent Bob Mendendez. I don't even think that my Congressional representative is facing a serious challenger in my district, so I doubt that there will be any fallout there either.

UPDATE:
Roger L Simon hits the right note in saying that it doesn't matter what this or that politician across the aisle did and the respective lack of punishment. This incident stands on its own. And both parties need to recognize that email and other electronic communications never completely disappear. They'll be sure to resurface at the most [in]opportune moments.

The plot sickens. [Via Michelle Malkin and Ramesh Ponnuru]

UPDATE:
Hastert wants the DoJ and FBI to investigate the situation further. That's not only a smart move, but it's the only one he can make. But here's the rub. He would be among those investigated by the FBI, and his stance on DoJ/FBI investigations of House members is one that claims the inviolable nature of the offices of the members. Sure, it is entirely possible that members on both sides of the aisle would be swept up in the investigation as to who knew what and when. Byron York wonders just how much Hastert will cooperate with the very investigation he called for. It's a good question, and I think it stands as yet another reason that Hastert should step down. This is, after all, a criminal investigation, and who knows where it may lead.

UPDATE:
Foley had a presser today, and let's add the revelation that he was molested as a child by a clergyman to the mix. As if that excuses any of his behavior? Sorry, that doesn't cut it for me. Take responsibility for your own actions. He also states through his lawyer that he engaged in no sexual conduct with any minor, ever.

Democrats are coming out of the woodwork demanding investigations. Pajamas Media has more, though I wonder where all those Democrats were when Rep. William Jefferson was busy packing away the cold cash in his freezer. Oh yes, that was when Hastert and Pelosi stood shoulder to shoulder asserting congressional immunity against any such investigation because it amounted to an infringement of the separation of powers.

No More Mister Nice Blog thinks that there is a difference between the Clinton-Lewinsky mess and the current Foleygate, but I'm not persuaded.

Mark Foley having IM sex with a high school student? Not a private matter. Bill Clinton having sex with a person legally able to vote, drink, and own property? Icky, but, purely as a moral matter, not really our damn business.

Macranger, Tom Mcguire, AJ Strata, Hugh Hewitt, and Mark Levin among others are calling on Hastert and the GOP to push back. I don't particularly agree, especially if Hastert is in charge of this pushback. I think his handling of the situation has been quite poor, and while the prior conduct of Democrats in the area of holding leadership accountable for the criminal acts of other members is poor (no one forced Tip O Neill to step down over the Barney Frank situation or various other scandals - ABSCAM comes to mind), i

Levin also raises an interesting point, which is that one of the families clearly wanted to keep this issue private. Yet someone acted on their own initiative to release this information, and then the more salacious and overtly sexual bits to the media. Who was behind that information release, and if they knew about this improper sexual advances and other interactions between Foley and pages, why did they put those pages, and other people at risk by not reporting Foley to the authorities.

Hewitt also notes that there are now questions about how the Democrats are pushing this matter to the point where it may backfire.

Frankly, this entire matter is sickening in any number of respects. Foley needs to be investigated thorough, as does who else knew about this and did nothing to inform the authorities (though they didn't exactly distinguish themselves in the initial investigation of Foley's email - no one thought to check for IMs?)

Others blogging: Confederate Yankee who offers some perspective on the Foley scandal and what the nation faces, The Anchoress hits 2 million visitors and provides some additional insights into the Foley Mess, Don Surber, Outside the Beltway, and Big Lizards.

Prior coverage: The Foley Scandal Grows, Has Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?, Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails

Technorati: mark foley, email, im, instant message, congress, foleygate.

The Foley Scandal Grows

The fallout from the Mark Foley scandal grows in many directions - from the political to the criminal. The Florida GOP has decided upon a replacement for Mark Foley. He's three-term state legislator Joe Negron. Mark Foley, meanwhile has entered a rehab center. That has done little to stem the political fallout from the scandal:

White House press secretary Tony Snow, asked about that Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," urged greater efforts to "figure out what happened here." He called it "a terrible story" and said he considered it unfortunate that "people are thinking, 'OK, can I get political advantage out of this'."

Hastert, in a letter sent Sunday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asked the Justice Department to "conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley's conduct with current and former House pages."

Republican candidates, meanwhile, are distancing themselves from Foley and seeking inquiries. Some Republicans also are calling for accountability from GOP leaders who knew about some of Foley's behavior and failed to take action.

"If they knew or should have known the extent of this problem, they should not serve in leadership," said Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican in a competitive re-election fight in Connecticut.

Like other Democrats, his opponent Diane Farrell called the scandal indicative of House Republicans run amok, saying: "This leadership, which has been so terribly wrong on so many policies, now seems willing to cover up events to protect its members."

Privately, some Republicans concede that the party now is in even more danger of losing control of the House and a few fear the scandal could spill over to the Senate as well. Democrats need to win 15 GOP-held House seats and six in the Senate for control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

The Florida Masochist sends me the following links that are worth checking out including those from the Florida Beach Post what they knew about Foley's story and when.

Stop the ACLU has more on some of the hypocrisy creeping into this story.

Meanwhile, Denny Hastert's office says that they had no knowledge of the IMs that contained the sexual advances and suggestive language. I think some folks are trying to conflate the instant messages with the emails. While the emails contain suggestive language - like asking for photographs, it is the instant messages that contain exchanges that are of a highly sexual nature.

ABC's Blotter notes that Foley was trying to arrange a nighttime meeting with one of the pages.

It should come as no surprise that quite a few on the right are slamming the GOP leadership over the Foley scandal. Add the Wall Street Journal editorial board to that list.

Macranger continues to pursue the setup angle of the Foley scandal, based on the fact that quite a few leftist sites knew about the emails and IMs and yet sat on this information until right before the election. Yes, there is a problem with the timing of this scandal coming about 40 days out from the election.

The problem is that Foley's conduct is completely inexcusable and it appears that the GOP leadership conduct is questionable as to what they knew and when they knew it. That Democrats would wait til the last possible moment to unleash this information is politics as usual. The questions for the GOP leaders are numerous: Should Reynolds have done more to press the issue with Hastert and get to the bottom of the matter? Did Hastert investigate matters as fully as he should have?

Whatever the answer should have been, we're going to see lots of investigations into the situation from the FBI and DoJ.

LaShawn Barber calls for Hastert's resignation. Her voice joins that of Ed Morrissey and my own.

And yet, there is the possibility that some of those instant messages were doctored. That's right folks. Doctored. Passionate America has more.

I think there are still discrepancies in the story, and those will come out, as will the role played by the group C.R.E.W. Mark Levin has more on that angle.


Others blogging: Sister Toldjah, QandO, Newsbusters, Dan Riehl, Michelle Malkin, Flopping Aces, AJ Strata, In Search of Utopia, and The Moderate Voice.

UPDATE:
Ann Althouse and Don Surber have interesting takes on whether this is a matter of sex. I think this is about power - the abuse thereof. Sex sells the papers and inflates the blog statistics, but the core of this scandal is the abuse of power.

If the GOP loses power in either the House or Senate, they really have no one to blame but themselves. The Democrats have no policies or ideas of their own, other than to oppose whatever the GOP is doing (the odd exception being the fence legislation, where about half the Senate Democrats jumped the aisle to vote with the GOP on authorizing the fence).

Ace notes that the Washington Times is also calling for GOP leadership heads to roll. Add Beltway Blogroll to those calling for Hastert to step down. Even Instapundit thinks that Hastert should not be reelected to the majority leader slot - though that was after his handling of the Rep. William Jefferson scandal (aka the $90,000 cold cash in freezer story).

Prior coverage: Has Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?, Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails

Technorati: mark foley, email, im, instant message, congress.

Has the Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?

What did they know, and when did they know it? Those are the questions being asked about GOP House leaders about what they knew about accusations about improper emails and instant messages regarding Rep. Mark Foley's conduct towards Congressional pages. GOP leaders deny that they knew about the extent of the sexually explicit messages being sent by Foley to former and current pages. House leaders actually take Foley to task for the emails. Yet, they did nothing to strip Foley from his post as Chair of the Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Hastert said he does not remember talking to Reynolds about the Foley e-mails, but did not dispute Reynolds' account.

"While the speaker does not explicitly recall this conversation, he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution," Hastert's aides said in a preliminary report on the matter issued Saturday.

The report includes a lengthy timeline detailing when they first learned of the worrisome e-mail in the fall of 2005, after a staffer for Alexander told Hastert's office the family wanted Foley to stop contacting their son. Alexander's staffer did not share the contents of the e-mail, saying it was not sexual but "over-friendly," the report says.

Hastert's aides referred the matter to the Clerk of the House, and "mindful of the sensitivity of the parent's wishes to protect their child's privacy and believing that they had promptly reported what they knew to the proper authorities," they did not discuss it with others in Hastert's office - including, apparently, their boss.

After the issue was referred to the clerk, it was passed along to the congressman who oversees the page program, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.

Shimkus has said he learned about the e-mail exchange in late 2005 and took immediate action to investigate.

He said Foley told him it was an innocent exchange. Shimkus said he warned Foley not to have any more contact with the teenager and to respect other pages.

Democrats charged Reynolds did far too little and said more digging should be done.

Of course Democrats will make those charges. It's politics as usual. Yet, there are quite a few Republicans who are angry at the whole situation they're facing. This goes beyond politics.

Ed Morrissey thinks that the GOP have actually figured out a way to make an already bad scandal worse by their conduct in the matter. He thinks that Hastert and Boehner should resign their leadership positions because of their inability to deal with this issue with the gravity they deserve. I concur.

Don Surber thinks that the Democrats and Leftists are a bunch of hypocrites, especially as Jim McGreevey is making a bunch of coin over his relationship with another man, Golan Cipel, who he put in charge of the NJ DHS even though he was utterly unqualified for the position. Instead of treating his resignation as one being due to his ethical lapses and other assorted misdeeds, McGreevey turned his resignation into a claim of being outed as a gay American. Flopping Aces sees this as a Democrat hit job.

I have to disagree. The Foley mess is on Foley alone. That the GOP leaders knew, or had reason to know of those misdeeds and have issued statements that are misleading or inaccurate as to what they knew and when they knew it, makes this about the GOP leaders.


Others blogging: Hot Air, The Shape of Days, AJ Strata, Patterico, John Cole, and Liberty and Justice.

Prior coverage: Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails

Technorati: mark foley, email, congress.

Rep. Mark Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explict Emails

***UPDATE 10/4/2006: For my most recent coverage, see Foleygate Reloaded - Original Posting Follows***

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

Conduct unbecoming anyone, let alone a member of Congress who also happened to be the chair of the caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. HT: Anonymous emailer.

UPDATE:
Earlier reporting about Foley's emails did not make any references to email of a sexually explicit nature, which is why the earlier reporting didn't catch my attention. This particular report certainly puts those email communications in a different light between Foley and the various pages. The fact that these emails were made by the Congressman more than amply justify his resignation. This isn't about the politics. It's about doing the decent and right thing. I hope that this matter is fully investigated, and if warranted, Foley should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Others blogging: Hot Air, Sister Toldjah, and Stop the ACLU.

UPDATE:
Mark Levin questions the timing of this news. Apparently some of these emails were done more than a year ago, and Levin thinks that this news was released to coincide with the political election cycle to maximize the possibility that Democrats pick up a seat in a tough election. He also wonders how some Democrats, like Barney Frank, were able to evade having to resign over their own sex-themed scandals.

Yes, politics will rear its ugly head regardless of which side of the aisle violated the law. The political scientist in me wonders how long it will take before Democrats add this to their culture of corruption campaign ads. None of that is an excuse for Foley's actions.

Well, it seems that the very laws that he championed in fighting online predators and pedophiles will be put to use on Foley. ABC News is saying that some of the messages are quite explicit and talk of simulating sexual acts. Disgusting doesn't quite cover it.

Brian Ross says that after he was asked about the innocous messages that he began getting messages from other pages including those involving the explicit language.

Dennis Hastert says that he's launching an investigation on the conduct of Congressmembers and staffers.

Others blogging: Dan Riehl, White Collar Crime Blog, Balloon Juice, The Moderate Voice, The Heretik, Lashawn Barber, Outside the Beltway, Pundit Guy, and Think Progress.

UPDATE:
This article in SFGate seriously undermines Levin's argument that this issue was politically timed. The article states that the GOP leadership were made aware of problems nearly a year ago, but did nothing to investigate or otherwise follow up on the matter. Shame on them.

Florida Masochist is in shock, as his family knows Foley's family. He wonders whether the GOP can find a replacement for Foley on the ballot (aka the New Jersey gambit). It is certainly unexpected to learn that your congressman, who happens to be the chair of the caucus on missing and exploited children, has been engaging in sexually explicit conversations with minors online.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred takes a couple of the Leftist websites to task for their commentary on Foley's actions, when they were silent over various Democrats who engaged in similarily serious misconduct.

Others blogging: Ms Underestimated, Gay Patriot, Lorie Byrd, Ace of Spades, Crooks and Liars, and memeorandum continues to track the situation.

UPDATE:
Will Foley's name be kept on the ballot, and any votes cast in his name will go to his replacement? According to Florida law, that should be what happens.

If the name of the new nominee is submitted after the certification of results of the preceding primary election, however, the ballots shall not be changed and the former party nominee's name will appear on the ballot. Any ballots cast for the former party nominee w ill be counted for the person designated by the political party to replace the former party nominee. If there is no opposition to the party nominee, the person designated by the political party to replace the former party nominee will be elected to office at the general election."

Hugh Hewitt thinks that the GOP could end up winning the seat regardless of Foley's situation, and proffers the name of George P. Bush. Or Dan Marino. Or Shaq. I think that's wishful thinking, but the state GOP really needs to think long and hard about who they can get to run in Foley's stead.

UPDATE 10/1/2006:
For those visiting this site via Google searches and other search engines, the most current news on the Foley situation is here. And yes, the situation has gotten worse for Foley, and for the GOP leadership.

UPDATE 10/4/2006:
For my most recent coverage, see Foleygate Reloaded, Foleygate, The Foley Scandal Grows, and Has Foley Scandal Gotten Worse?.

Technorati: mark foley, email, congress.