10.07.2006

Hasterts Office Told Earlier than Acknowledged.

Source "a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of of Foley and his behavior with pages":

Assertion:
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action


The staff member's account buttresses the position of Foley's onetime chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, who said earlier this week that he had appealed to Palmer in 2003 or earlier to intervene, after Fordham's own efforts to stop Foley's behavior had failed. Fordham said Foley and Palmer, one of the most powerful figures in the House of Representatives, met within days to discuss the allegations.

Palmer said this week that the meeting Fordham described "did not happen." Timothy J. Heaphy, Fordham's attorney, said yesterday that Fordham is prepared to testify under oath that he had arranged the meeting and that both Foley and Palmer told him the meeting had taken place. Fordham spent more than three hours with the FBI on Thursday, and Heaphy said that on Friday he contacted the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to offer his client's cooperation.


And guess what??

Hastert's investigation means that House members and staff don't have to talk about this anymore. Shove it under the carpet! Yep, down low like the dirt under the carpet. Yet, behind the scenes the Republicans are not only working to make this look like the result of a Gay Cabal among aides to Republican Congressionals, but to out them all.


The Gay Cabal Theory is already out at CBS

Everyone of those staffers is to be "outed" according to David Corn quoted at Howard Kurtz's Media Notes. Apparently the Republicans are just looking for some over-eager liberal blogger to do the job for them so they can blame Democrats and liberals for the smear job.

Wait, so gay Fordham tried to warn the speaker's office and got a powerful aide to warn Foley about his behavior, and now the 'straight' or closeted Republicans are blaming the out there gays for this?

At Media note you can also read about Michelle Malkin's disgust with fellow conservatives who outed one Republican aide who was the young man in San Diego (or with whom Foley talked about a dinner date -- platonic -- in "sd"). I dealt with that blogger in a post below.

And Kurtz quotes Andrew Sullivan saying that online sex is not sex. Who knew? Mr. S. also says that age 16 is a legal age for sexual consent in DC, but Mr. S. when Mr. F was IMing J.E. in S.D. Mr. E. was in California. In California the age of consent is 18. Mr. F. emailed Mr. E. "Do you see us fooling around?" (about when the guy got to dc for a page reunion). Gee, that sure sounds like setting up a sexual contact to me. And people do get put in jail for setting up sexual contacts over the internet with a young person residing in a state in which they are a sexual minor.

The former page of the above paragraph (Mr. E.) is the subject of another report by the Washington Post in which his lawyer affirms that the conversations with former Representative Foley were not a prank. People asked why the former page might have come forward with the saved IMs after the news broke of the other page that received what he felt were upsetting IMs from Foley?

Maybe Mr. E. felt like Mr. V. of Atlanta felt, that his was an isolated case and therefore, not a big deal. When they heard that other, more vulnerable type young men were being hurt by Foley's advances, they came out to make sure things like this don't happen again.

The same might be true of 3 more pages who received emails from Mark Foley after leaving the page program from whom ABC has received information.

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