The parents of a 16-year-old Congressional page contacted their congressman, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.).
Alexander says he contacted both Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) who oversees the page program.
Reps. Shimkus, Reynolds, and House Majority Leader John A. Boehmer (R-Ohio) admit they knew about it in 2005.
Kirk Fordham, Reynolds' former chief of staff, told the Associated Press that three years ago, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives to intervene."
Reynolds and Boehner say they told Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), speaker of the house. Hastert says Reynolds may have told him about it, but he doesn't remember.
At no time, did anyone contact police or the FBI. Their concerns for justice were shallow; their fears that a scandal would affect their re-elections were deep.
The conservative Washington Times and several major conservative columnists have called for Hastert to resign.
For his part, President George W. Bush says he supports Hastert, doesn't want him to resign, and called him a "father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country." Almost as an afterthought, he said he was "dismayed and shocked."
What President Bush was "dismayed and shocked" about were the actions of Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida. The President apparently wasn't dismayed or shocked about the cover-up the Republican leadership undertook to keep the information from the public, the contacts with Foley to warn him about his conduct, and their failure to discipline one of their members.
The story broke in early September when a relatively new blog, Stop Sex Predators (www.stopsexpredators.blogspot.com), reported that Foley, a six-term congressman who was co-chair of Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to the 16-year old male Congressional pages. Within two weeks, ABC-TV's Brian Ross, and then the rest of the nation's major media, picked up the story. The day after Ross's first report, Foley resigned. Subsequent reporting revealed that Foley may have had other inappropriate contacts, dating back to at least 2003.
Trying to spin his own actions, Foley said when he was a teenager he had been abused by a member of the clergy; he now admits he's gay, and has checked himself into an alcoholic rehabilitation facility. As for Reps. Alexander, Shimkus, Reynolds, and Hastert, and dozens of other Republicans who knew of the problem, they shuffled and wobbled, but never acknowledged why they didn't take immediate action at least six months earlier.
Spinning and diverting, Hastert is blaming liberals for their reporting of the scandal; others have dug through the archives to find that 23 years earlier a Democratic congressman was censured for having sex with a 17-year-old page. (On the other side of the aisle, and not reported by the Republicans, a Republican congressman that year had sex with a 17-year-old female page.) Many screeched out about Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and a rendezvous he had with a woman on a boat called "Monkey Business," and of Ted Kennedy, MaryJo Kopechne, and the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969, hoping to cloud the blame for their own problems.
Conservative Republicans devoutly proclaim themselves the party of "Family Values." They want the people to believe they have been anointed with divine wisdom, sacred trust, and the key to the Holy Morality. Democrats and liberals, they decree, are sin-spewing heathens. But, truth is not on their side.
Rep. Robert Bauman (R-Md.), homophobic founder of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, and a darling of the Christian Coalition, lost his House seat in 1980 after disclosures that he solicited sex with a 16-year-old gay male; Bauman two years later acknowledged he was gay. Donald Lukens (R-Ohio) was sentenced to jail for having sex with a minor. The list of local and state Republican officials who were arrested and convicted of pedophilia or other sex crimes would choke even the most forgiving defense attorney. But, let's just look at the family values of some of the Republicans recently elected or re-elected to federal office.
The list of "family values" Republicans who committed adultery, but continued to preach a doctrine of morality in government, would fill the telephone book of a small city. Among them are Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), and former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who were leaders of the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton; former presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas); former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.); former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), whom the Republicans planned to vote into office in 1999 as Gingrich's successor, but whose career came unraveled by his admission of "marital infidelities"; Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), who had a five-year extramarital affair with a woman 35 years his junior and who later accused him of repeated assaults; and former Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God pardoned her sins.
Chenoweth was a "two-fer," committing both sexual and legal sins. While her campaign strategy was loaded with rhetoric about family values and morals, she accepted illegal campaign contributions and then failed to disclose receipt of more than $50,000 for her 1994 campaign. She served three terms before deciding not to run for a fourth term in 2000. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), an 11-term congressman, was first forced to resign as House majority leader after being indicted on charges he conspired to violate Texas state election laws; amid growing evidence of financial and ethical irregularities over several years, DeLay resigned from the House in April 2006.
Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and university professor. His current books are America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights, and 'Unacceptable': The Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, both available at amazon.com, borders.com and most major on-line bookstores.
The Republican hypocrites will not get their prayers answered anytime in the near future! No matter how hard they try to cover up this latest festering pile of shit, there isn't enough litter left in their mendacity filled cat box to get the job done effectively. Even now, the flies are buzzing for joy, and the maggots are eating their gluttonous meal.
Nothing short of nuclear bombs blasting New York City or Los Angeles into the oceans will deflect attention from this scandal. Americans love the lurid nature of sex scandals too much to let that happen. Even the spin alchemists are just about out of straws to grasp. There is no wiping away the stench of this scandal.
So let them pray until their clenched hands bleed. It's not going to save their hides this time. At long last, they have bitten off a whole lot more than their sanctimonious mouths can chew.
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Saturday, October 7, 2006 at 5:06:27 PM
