In their campaign to defend former Republican Congressman Mark Foley and high-level Republicans such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert who refused to do anything about Foley's sexually-explicit messages to teen-age boys and invitations to meet in person, conservatives like Newt Gingrinch [that's not a spelling error - he is a grinch, to say the least, and by the way, why the hell would anyone name their child Newt?] are lying their asses off, as usual.
Republicans want everyone else to take responsibility for their actions, but when it comes to one of their own, their motto is: Blame Democrats or anyone else. Foley blamed alcohol and a priest for his predatory behavior. Hastert blamed "liberals" for his role in the Foley scandal cover-up. Gingrinch lied that Democratic sex scandals are worse than Republicans molesting kids, then could not cite any such Democratic scandals. The usual one conservatives cite - Monicagate - is old and boring and involved adults.
Fox News outright lied by labeling Foley as a Democrat. Blogger Matt Drudge blamed a victim. Others tried to divert attention by citing the name of Gerry Studds, a former Democratic representative from Massachusetts who in 1983 was censured by the House for having sex with a 17-year-old male page.
That's right, Republican researchers had to reach waaaaayyy back to 1983 to find a Democratic politician who sexually preyed on underaged teens, although someone pointed out to me that 17 was the consenting age in D.C. then. That tells you something about how relatively few Democratic pedophiles there are compared with Republican ones. Some say that Republican pedophilia is even official, that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to humiliate their parents into providing information about the insurgency.
As usual, Republicans who bring up Studds have a selective memory. Also in 1983, former Rep. Daniel Crane, an Illinois Republican, admitted to having an affair with a 17-year-old female page. Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh bring up Studds but surely not Crane.
For every Studds that the conservative hypocrites bring up, I can bring up five or six Republicans arrested or convicted in recent years for sexually preying on underaged boys or girls. Some have occurred this year.
There is Texas Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer, who was sentenced in June 2006 to six years in prison for molesting two 8-year-old girls, one of whom appeared in an anti-Al Gore television commercial. There is Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano of New York, who was arrested in June 2006 and charged with sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl. There is Tom Adams, the Republican mayor of an Illinois city, who was arrested earlier this year for distributing child pornography over the internet.
There is the Republican human resources director of the arch-conservative Washington Times, 53-year-old Randall Casseday, who was arrested in Sept. 2006 on charges of soliciting a teenager for sex on the Internet. He had allegedly arranged to meet what he believed was a 13-year-old girl he had been corresponding with online, but that person turned out to be a D.C. police official.
There is former Waterbury, Conn., Republican Mayor Philip Giordano, who was sentenced to 37 years in federal prison in 2003 for sexually abusing two girls, ages 8 and 10. There is Republican Constable Larry Dale Floyd, who won several elections in Denton County, Texas, before he was arrested in July 2005 and charged with sexual solicitation of a an 8-year-old girl. A grand jury indicted him on three counts of possession of child pornography.
There is former Republican Monroe County, Pa., judge Mark Pazuhanich, who pleaded no contest in 2004 to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. There is Robert "Bobby" Stumbo, a former Republican Party chairman in Kentucky, who was arrested in 2005 and charged with sexual abuse involving a 5-year-old boy.
The Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition, Lou Beres, admitted in a police report that was released during a lawsuit filed in March 2006 that he molested a 13-year-old female relative. Beres, who once ran for a seat on the Republican National Committee, also acknowledged sexually touching a teen-aged friend of his daughter's.
Former Republican Constable Larry Dale Floyd, who won several election in Denton County, Texas, was arrested in July 2005 and charged with sexual solicitation of a an 8-year-old girl. A grand jury indicted him on three counts of possession of child pornography. Former Republican Monroe County, Pa., judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest in 2004 to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. Robert "Bobby" Stumbo, a former Republican Party chairman in Kentucky, was arrested in 2005 and charged with sexual abuse involving a 5-year-old boy.
A Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups in Montana, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was arrested in 2004 and later found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women. California Republican petition drive company owner Tom Randall pleaded guilty in 2002 to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business. He served six months in jail and another three months on a work crew.
Republican former New Jersey city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexually molesting two teen-age girls. New Hampshire Republicans repeatedly hired convicted child molester Mark Seidensticker to work on the campaigns. The Republican Mayor of a New York city, John Gosek, was arrested in 2005 on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls. A former Republican County Commissioner in Ohio, David Swartz, pleaded guilty in 2004 to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
The former speaker of Puerto Rico's House of Representatives, Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo, was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter. Former Kansas Republican zoning supervisor and Lutheran church leader Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered. Iowa Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, was arrested in 2004 for having sex with a female juvenile.
Randy Ankeney was a rising star in Colorado Republican circles who held a $63,000 position in the Governor's Office of Economic Development until he was arrested in 2001 and accused of trying to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he met through the Internet. Another 17-year-old girl said Ankeney sexually assaulted her while working on a political campaign. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault of a child and was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2003.
Parker J. Bena, a Virginia Republican activist who proudly cast one of his state's electoral vote for Bush in 2000, was indicted for possessing child pornography in 2001. Bena was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. Long-time Virginia Republican fund-raiser Richard Delgaudio was more fortunate. He only received two years probation in 2003 after pleading guilty to taking sexually-related photos of a 16-year-old girl in a motel room.
Republican Marty Glickman of Florida, one of those rabid dog conservative talk radio commentators who rail on about the lack of morals, was arrested in 2001 and charged with giving drugs like LSD and money to underaged girls in exchange for sex. Kevin T. Coan, a Republican who formerly directed the St. Louis Election Board, was charged in 2001 with trying to solicit sex from a 14-year-old girl in cyberspace.
Jackson Thoreau is a Washington, D.C.-area journalist/writer. His latest book, "Born to Cheat: How Bush, Cheney, Rove & Co. Broke the Rules, From the Sandlot to the White House," debuted at the Take Back America conference in June 2007. More info on the book is at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/cheat.html
Foley is just trying to blame being pedopihle on anyhting. I am in recovery , I have over 11 years sober, I am also Gay and I am not a pedopepiple. None of my friends are , they just like me.
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Gregory A Reece (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments)
on Thursday, October 12, 2006 at 9:36:16 PM
Are they sacrificing Hastert to stop further revelations?
It is time -- way past time -- to put the Jeff Gannon story right up there next to the Mark Foley story and to ask some very hard questions. The Bush White House is shocked -- shocked!! -- to hear of this slimy Congressman -- but they are already letting their minions use it as an excuse to turn the focus from pedophilia to gay-bashing -- all the nasty right-wing talking heads are already out dispensing fake statistics that blame tolerance of gays for Foley's preying on children. Never mind the apparently straight men, like Denny Hastert, who may be accessories after the fact for covering up for Foley; blame gays.
Let them hang themselves with gay bashing instead of focusing on their failure to protect minors from sexual predators.
It's time to talk openly about the closeted gay connection between the White House, the very top of the GOP, and Congress.
Time to play six degrees of separation with promiscuous gay sex in the Bush White House, the Bush Administration, the Bush Congress and Bush's GOP.
Time to connect the dots:
Who gave a male homosexual prostitute named Jeff Gannon repeated access to the White House? Who was he visiting? Why did he have repeated over-night stays in the White House?
Where was Mr. Gannon when he wasn't at the White House? Did he also visit Congress? Did he socialize with Congressmen? Which ones? Foley, perhaps? Did they take Congressional pages out to party together? Share emails? No one has asked if Foley had others, besides pages, present for any of the soirees he was trying to set up.
Time to ask, don't you think?
What connection does Jeff Gannon have to Ken Mehlman and other closeted gays in the Bush Administration? And, if, as the right-wing chattering monkeys are saying, tolerating gays in high offices is to blame for this latest Republican lapse of morals and common decency -- then who exactly is gay in Bush's White House, the top levels of the GOP, and Congress? Who has been lying -- whether by denying or refusing to admit their sexual orientation? And why have the lied? Was it to hide something?
Last night I heard Joe Scarborough and others in the GOP and the press talking about what a well known secret it was that Foley was gay. OK then, who else do they know about who has been covering up their orientation? Scarborough, et al, insisted that Foley was a good friend and a "great guy" and they were all sooooo surprised about this. If that is true, then who else do they know is covering up their homosexuality that might, unbeknownst to them, be using Congress as their personal gay sex playground? Who else would they be shocked, shocked!! to hear was up to the same things?
Is the GOP eagerness to throw Hastert under the bus just as much to stop any further revelations as it is to bury the Foley story before the election?
Foley may well be just the tip -- no pun intended -- of this scandal, and Jeff Gannon may very well be a part of it, too. Someone in the GOP, or the Bush Administration, got Gannon press access to get into the White House, over and over again. Who? Was it another closeted gay? There has never been any real investigation into Gannon's access. It's overdue. And is there ANY connection between Foley, Gannon and anyone in the Bush White House?
Because, what if this wasn't just Foley? What if there are others, enough to make it more worthwhile to cover this up rather than clean it out when it first came up? Not just Congressmen, what about staffers, GOP party hacks, lobbyists? If it was just Foley, Hastert and the GOP could have taken him aside and told him to step down in time to get someone else into his solidly Republican seat. They had enough time when this first came up, why didn't they? Are there enough others doing similar things that it was better to cover it up than risk blowing the lid off of something massive and irreparable to the GOP?
Who else in the Bush Administration is hiding their orientation? And, why? What, if anything, is the Gannon connection? I think we should spend the next month pounding this issue, over and over and over. Make the Bush White House and the GrOPpers spend the next month denying and explaining the connection, or lack thereof, between Foley in Congress and Gannon in the White House.
And let's be VERY clear about the gay-bashing aspect of this: when a straight person is accused of sexually preying upon and abusing a child, nobody says the problem is their heterosexuality. Likewise, the issue here isn't homosexuality. This is about the sexual abuse of minors and the connection between hiding sexual orientation and hiding abusive sexual practices against children.
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Ruth Lopez (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 8:17:43 AM
JT said "Republican pedophilia is even official: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to humiliate their parents into providing information about the insurgency.
Wow what a strawmen attack that is totally unsubstaniated.
I state this because I have seen the same allegations made about the IDF. It is a common arab accusation because they themselves have done it for centuries. So they claim their "oppressors" are also committing rape acts that the local populace can relate to. And then their is also the whole Arab denial of their own perverse sexuality. Arab male criminal sex acts are much higher than western civ. if you use western legal standards.
/I notice also that your partisan list does not show that an equal number of democratic sexual pecadilloes. I state because both parties involve human males and power seekers. IE those who routinely have sexual issues.
// With slanderous attacks as mentioned above, do you really wonder why people do not take up your banner? Polarizing positions that are unsupportable even in the arena of public opinion, much less a court of law, have their consequences.
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 153 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 9:27:03 AM
Accusations from 2 years ago. Since many ofther details have come to light, and prosecutions I might add; you would link to unsupported accusations. Not facts as shown by the IRC or such.
You have no proof. Seymour Hirsch has no proof. If so it's not like he lacked the capability to present it to the world. And even more you don't have a verifiable link that Rumsfeld authorized and condoned that "supposed acts".
/Let me guess you don't need proof, because you know it all make snese in your world view. Nice but let's face it when was the last time you were right about something that did happen.
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 153 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 10:40:36 AM
Could you please give a rebuttal to the illegal government of america being rightfully called "NAZIS" by the actual real world ?
ie; torture bill,illegal invasion,demonizing dissent,etc,etc
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ANTINAZIS (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 10:57:01 AM
so you have no proof about Rumsfeld? IS that what you are saying? Two years and you still can't provide a casual chain between Rumsfled and some soldier's improbable interrogation actions. Remember there have been multiple prosecutions and admin actions taken against US soldiers for illegal actions in Iraq. You see unlike the arabs the US and Israel actually enforce a code amongst their soldiers.
Secondly I believe that some of those picts are fakes "war porn " that was created in Europe if I remember correctly.
/Next if you throw in the old canard that those in power are responsible for ALL the unauthorized acts committed by the organization's members, then I would guess you never led.
//But please stop shifting your argument. You claimed Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children. At most you have one written statement and some unrelated pictures and yet none mention Rumsfeld. DailyKOS: it's easier than thinking.
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 153 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 9:39:36 PM
You can't back up your Rumsfeld allegation and time has not substantiated it either. Even when time has shown other accusations of Abu Ghraib to be true and prosecutable. So you attempt guilt by association?
/Sorry not a republican. Strictly free independent voting/acting/contracting as the occasion warrants it.
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 153 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 11:39:10 AM
to see a blog, or an article written by you. This way you could really state a positive message as to what you believe in, or stand for. (or not so) I am an 'idependent' also. I understand what you mean. But you still must have had experiences, or stories, that really touch on an important issue; that are not purely intellectual..something you know. Anyway, I would really like to hear from you in a way, that is not either in opposition to someone else's statement, or in agreement with.....but rather, your own.
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Katrin R. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 525 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 3:14:35 PM
As I have stated before, it is you and yours who have to convince the people like me. I am not a republican , but I support the WoT and understand the long term goals. I am a independent who has some small amount of power and can either help or stop any change happening in my loci. I post because I see all these wild eyed claims about impeachment, coups and revolution and wondered if they had any support. I could not get an answer about what people would do when after the DEMs take power in November, and yet their much talked about impeachment/regime change/etc did not occur. Why because no one here except Joel seems to have a plan B or can even conceive of their fantasies being shattered in '07.
//Second no one would believe me; they can't conceive of a gun toting professional that understands issues in a historical context. Hell most here can't even concieve of pro-active self defense. Or that there is a reason for armies. Rob Kall knows who I am and that is enough.
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 153 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 9:56:22 PM
I don't know the first thing about Politics, and I am unfamiliar with most of the Politicians who are being discussed independently on this site. But I still have a lot to contribute...perhaps not only in-spite of my political ignorance, but because of it. Your comment about not being believed is funny. Nobody ever believes anything I say either. But, then neither do you believe what other people are saying most of the time. It does not really matter. You know how quick people are to change their beliefs, anyway. What ultimately matters, it what people know about you. And 'you' are more important than your words in the end. Just think of how misinterpreted they are often, anyway. What difference does it make if you are right or wrong? Or both, or neither. Nobody cares. If you tell me something of a personal experience, or story that involves you, though, I'll be much more moved and interested, and affected by that than some statistic about a few thousand people being killed. It does not need to be anything heroic, only 'human'. 'Real is better than perfect'..any day. And if you have convinced me of anything by now, it is that there is a lot more to you than your comments. It's not about what you have said, but what you have not said. And I have kinda gotten used to your presence, and I would like to meet more of the 'real you'. I cannot prove this to you, but I do trust myself. katrin
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Katrin R. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 525 comments)
on Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 11:33:36 PM
