[Vision2020] Foley Case A Major Political Coverup

[Ted Moffett]

Paul et. al.

I think the Foley case is a focal point that illuminates why many of the
issues you raise that are so important have not been addressed sufficiently
in the halls of Congress.

Before making the following points, I would like to repeat the political
truism that the cover up is often worse than the crime.  And the
implications of the cover up in the Foley case goes far beyond any attempts
by Foley to hide his behavior, or moral and legal issues of the specifics of
Foley's behavior.

The evidence is mounting that Hastert, or his office, knew of Foley's
objectionable conduct as far back as 2003.  Either Hastert is woefully out
of touch, or he knew what Foley was doing and chose to keep silent.  Other
Republicans also knew of Foley's conduct, and also kept quiet.

If the Republican party takes advantage of being the party of "moral
values," meaning in part they support the fundamentalist religious view of
the immorality of gay behavior, which is an approach they certainly have
exploited in their courting of the powerful voting block of the religious
right, I don't think it is trivial or misguided to fully examine a case
of these moral positions being violated substantively by a member of their
party, while other party members hide this fact.  If they are hypocrites,
hiding behavior that might result in the loss of support of the religious
right, this deception requires full examination, if for no other reason than
to inform voters of the truth, to encourage truth in governance.

This case strikes at the heart of one of the primary propaganda tools of the
Republican party, a tool that has been used to deflect attention from the
critical issues you insisted are more worth discussion.  If we cannot
dismantle these effective propaganda tools used as "weapons of mass
distraction," how can government focus on the critical issues?  Instead we
have the US Congress wasting time discussing a constitutional amendment to
ban gay marriage, or intervening in the Terri Schiavo case... The party of
"moral values" indeed!

The Foley case is another example of the pattern of secrecy that the Bush
administration has exhibited on many other issues (need I list them?), that
are more important, as you point out in your laundry list, then one
congressman's sexual approaches to minor pages.  It is the damage of
conducting the affairs of government in secrecy that is critical here, a
pattern in the Bush administration, central to the fundamental health of
democratic governance.

We are also discussing abuse of power, the arrogance of approaching
governance as though above accountability, that can spill over into many
areas of government, which is another concern of many regarding how the Bush
administration has conducted itself, such as in the abuse of executive
signing statements by Bush. etc. Perhaps the Republican party became a bit
too overconfident in their dominant position, and thus arrogant to the point
of carelessness.

These three fundamental issues, a political party's hypocrisy, secrecy and
abuse of power in government, far transcend the moral and legal issues about
sexual approaches or contact between a 16 year old and a 52 year old (I
don't care whether hetero or homosexual), if this was the conduct of an
individual leading a totally private life.

However, when politically damaging information is covered up in the attempts
to deceive voters, during an election, about behavior of a member of a
political party that would contradict that party's message of being the high
minded party of "moral values," exploited to win political office, such as
in the Bush v. Kerry election 2004, we are talking about deception of the
whole nation to win the presidency.

A trivial issue?

We shall see what develops in the Foley case regarding the evidence.

Ted Moffett


On 10/8/06, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Ted,
>
> I don't mean to belittle the issues of a congressman using the page system
> as Foley did for his own personal gratification, or of coverups by either
> party.  I guess I'm just getting sick of these kinds of power plays.
>
> I know this is not what others believe, but I could for the most part care
> less what sexuality, or level of sexual promiscuity, or whatever a
> congressman has.  I put the "for the most part" in there because of cases
> such as this one where a law was broken.  I didn't care about what Clinton
> did with Monica Lewinsky or cigars.  If the page was 18 or older, I wouldn't
> care much about how Foley IMs them either.  I'd rather judge them on the job
> they are doing as a government official.
>
> I'd rather we focus on the actual real damage that (I feel) is being done
> to this country.  Such as the warrant-less wiretapping, Patriot Acts I and
> II, the new bill that McCain caved on that actually states that someone who
> disagrees with the administration can be considered an enemy combatant, the
> debate over torture and our needs as a country to employ it wantonly, the
> secret prisons, the handing off of prisoners to countries we know will
> torture them, the willingness of our telcoms to have the NSA sniff every
> packet on the Internet, the disregarding of intelligence before 9/11, the
> no-bid contracts to make those connected in power wealthier, and the
> complete ignoring of the FISA rules even when they are so broad as to be
> almost meaningless.  Did I forget anything?  Oh yes, the war with Iraq when
> we knew it had no WMDs.  Anyway, you get the point.
>
> Paul
>
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
> All:
>
> The case of former Republican Representative Foley's use of the page
> system to sexually communicate with minor pages, using his official tax
> payer supported influence, has implications that are critical to basic
> democratic principles regarding the conduct of government.
>
> As it's been said, the cover up is often worse than the crime, and in this
> case the Republican cover up, with solid evidence it extends back before the
> 2004 presidential elections, is a gravely serious violation of the public
> right to know about the conduct of public officials in government, not only
> because it allowed Foley to continue this behavior in his official
> capacity in government, but because the cover up was possibly aimed
> at deceiving voters in the 2004 election.
>
> Foley's misconduct is central to illuminating the truth behind one of the
> main propaganda tools utilized in the Republican rise to power.  The
> Republican party has made political gains opposing gay rights, with
> grandstanding measures wasting the time of the US Congress, and the tax
> payers dollars, with the proposed constitutional amendment (and numerous
> state measures) to ban gay marriage.  It is political and poetic justice
> that we discover they hid the inappropriate sexually oriented conduct of a
> gay member of their party in the US Congress, allowing the misconduct to
> continue, exposing the hypocrisy of their claim to the the party of "moral
> values," a dominant propaganda tool they have used to exploit public unease
> with gay rights issues for political advantage.
>
> Secrecy and deception have been prominent tactics of the Bush
> administration on many levels on many issues, violating a central principle
> of how a democracy must function with transparency in government.  This
> pattern is exposed again in the Foley cover up, and US House Speaker Hastert
> should be held accountable for complicity in allowing Foley to continue in
> his powerful taxpayer and voter supported role, without voters being
> immediately informed of critical ethics violations involving Foley's
> official duties in government.
>
> If it is true that Hastert or other Republicans denied voters critical
> information regarding Foley's conduct with pages before the 2004 election,
> this is potentially a case of a cover up to swing the presidency to
> the Republicans.  Exposing Foley's misconduct before the 2004 elections
> could have inflicted damage to the aforementioned propaganda message of the
> party of "moral values."
>
> The documentation that Hastert, or his office, was informed of Foley's
> questionable conduct with pages after 2004 is solid, though Hastert says,
> "he does not remember."
>
> I quote a few excerpts below from the news article at this link:
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15063977/
>
> *Speaker doesn't remember discussion*
>
> 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.
>
> ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually
> explicit instant messages with current and former teenage male pages. In one
> message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page: "Do I make you a little horny?"
>
> -------------
>
> There is documentation that Hastert, and/or his office, and/or other
> Republicans, were informed of Foley's sexual advances to underage pages
> before the 2004 election.  This evidence supports the assertion of a
> possible cover up to influence the 2004 elections favorably for Republicans.
>
>
> I have pasted in a few excerpts of this news article offering information
> that Republicans knew of Foley's misconduct before the 2004 elections below
> this link:
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100400616.html
>
> *Ex-Aide to Foley Cites '03 Warnings
> *    By Jonathan Weisman and Charles Babington
>     The Washington Post
>
>     Thursday 05 October 2006
>
> *Former staffer says he alerted Hastert's office.*
>
>     A longtime chief of staff to disgraced former representative Mark
> Foley (R-Fla.) approached House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office three
> years ago, repeatedly imploring senior Republicans to help stop Foley's
> advances toward teenage male pages, the staff member said yesterday.
>
>     The account by Kirk Fordham, who resigned yesterday from his job with
> another senior lawmaker, pushed back to 2003 or earlier the time when
> Hastert's staff reportedly became aware of Foley's questionable behavior
> concerning teenagers working on Capitol Hill.
>
>     It raised new questions about Hastert's assertions that senior GOP
> leaders were aware only of "over-friendly" e-mails from 2005 that they say
> did not raise alarm bells when they came to light this year.
>
>        Fordham says his warnings to Hastert's office dealt with a
> different matter: reports of Foley's troubling interest in male pages
> working in the Capitol Hill complex. He says he implored the highest ranks
> of the GOP leadership to intervene to thwart behavior that he had been
> unable to stop after multiple confrontations with his boss. Sources close to
> the matter say a meeting took place between a senior Hastert aide and Foley
> before Fordham's January 2004 departure, probably in 2003, in a small
> conference room on the third floor of the Capitol.
>
> -------------------------
>
> If the Democrats had solid information about Foley's sexual approaches to
> pages prior to the 2004 elections, this raises the question why they would
> not have made it public then to attempt to bring Foley and the Republicans
> down?  The fact the democrats did not expose Foley before the 2004
> elections, arguably more critical than the upcoming 2006 elections, suggests
> they did not know of Foley's ethics violating conduct, or did not have
> enough documentation to make it stick.
> Blaming Democrats, or the media, for sitting on the information regarding
> Foley's misconduct, till weeks before the 2006 mid-terms, smacks of the same
> tactics the Republicans mocked when Hilary Clinton talked of the "vast right
> wing conspiracy" during the Clinton years.  Now we have a vast
> Democratic/media conspiracy to damage the Republicans.  Note that the facts
> that Foley for years has been using the page system for his sexual advances
> on minors is so well documented that many Republicans are agreeing
> this conduct occurred.
>
> Shouldn't the Republicans pay a price for covering up Foley's misconduct
> in this matter, even if the public release of this information was planned
> to occur by political advantage seeking Democrats, or the media, in the
> weeks before the 2006 mid-terms?  Of course many Republican party supporters
> would rather have more time to distance themselves from this issue before
> the mid-terms.  But given a cover up by Republicans, this is not a case of
> Democrats or the media taking the Republicans totally by surprise, even if
> the public release of the information was opportunistically timed.
> Republicans were hiding this information, no doubt hoping it would not come
> out before the mid-terms.
>
> If Democrats (or the media) sat on solid documentation regarding
> Foley's misconduct with pages, waiting for when the information would
> receive the most exposure, and do the most damage, then it is morally
> questionable   It allowed Foley to continue in his misconduct, with the
> voters who supported him continuing to have the wool pulled over their
> eyes.
>
> Where is the documentation that the media or any Democrats had solid
> evidence regarding Foley's misconduct, and hid this information from the
> public, deliberately waiting to release it before the mid-terms?  Is it not
> possible some of this information was kept hidden, hoping to keep it a
> "secret" till at least after the 2006 mid-terms, thus rendering it difficult
> for those looking for politically damaging information to put it all
> together with enough documentation to go public?
>
> This case is more deserving of an independent counsel investigation into
> Republican complicity in covering up Foley's sexual approaches to pages,
> than there was in an independent investigation into the Monica Lewinsky case
> involving Clinton, given the evidence Republicans hid this information, from
> prior to the 2004 presidential elections up until the information broke
> publicly recently.  Clinton paid a heavy price for his misconduct, but there
> was no cover up in the Monika Lewinsky case by Democrats that influenced the
> outcome of a presidential election in their favor.  The Monica Lewinsky case
> was a burden that Al Gore had to overcome in his 2000 contest with Bush, as
> the Republicans campaigned in part on their claim to the the party of "moral
> values," compared to the sexual scandal plagued Democratic party represented
> by Al Gore.
>
> Ted Moffett
>
> On 10/7/06, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'd actually classify myself as an independent right now.  The Dem/Rep
> > lines are too close in certain areas and differ too much in some areas I
> >
> > could care less about.
> >
> > It seems to me that the sides are even, if what this article said is
> > true.  Dems play their card that they have been sitting on for a while.
> > Reps cut their losses.  Why take it any farther?
> >
> > Just to be clear, I condemn the behavior of sitting on something like
> > this because of political motivations.  Whether it was democrats waiting
> > for the right time to strike or republicans that were trying to avoid a
> > scandal, I condemn it.  Obviously, I also condemn the behavior of trying
> > to come on to underage pages.  I just think pushing it farther in the
> > political arena is a waste of resources.
> >
> > Funny that we're talking about trust here when discussing an article
> > that claims to have information on a subject but doesn't actually
> > present it as fact.  Trusting innuendo and gossip isn't much better than
> > whatever trusting you are accusing me of.  I have a naive wish to go
> > along with my naive ability to trust, though: I wish the people we
> > elected into office would spend 1/10th the amount of time they spend on
> > political maneuvering on actually trying to make this country a better
> > place.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > g. crabtree wrote:
> >
> > > Spoken like a trusting Democrat. I agree about the creepy & stupid
> > > part but, if the DNC or democrat operatives were aware of this
> > > situation months or even years earlier and waited till six weeks out
> > > from the mid terms to spring the nasty news for the advantage it would
> > > bring then I think that that has its own stink of nastiness (if not
> > > criminality) and deserves to be made public.
> > >
> > > gc
> > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Rumelhart"
> > > <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> > > To: "vision2020" < vision2020 at moscow.com>
> > > Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:37 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Scandals
> > >
> > >
> > >> So responding in sexually-explicit ways to an underage staffer is
> > >> somehow ok if it's really a joke that's being played on you?  How is
> > >> this an improvement?  Now he's both creepy and stupid at the same
> > time.
> > >>
> > >> Anyway, he's resigned.  That should be the end of it as far as I'm
> > >> concerned, at least from a political standpoint.  This arguing about
> > who
> > >> knew what should stop.
> > >>
> > >> Paul
> > >>
> > >> Pat Kraut wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> On the front page of the local newspaper tonight there is talk of
> > >>> scandals...but what scandal?
> > >>> This is from a blog and makes me question who started this and what
> > >>> and when
> > >>> did they know??
> > >>> Foleys a slime, no question but what is the rest of the story??
> > >>> Dirty tricks
> > >>> to change the election?? I think dems should be put under oath also.
> > >>>
> > >>> After the Frenzy
> > >>> 10/05 03:13 PM
> > >>> This is why it pays to wait and get more facts before joining the
> > >>> chorus of
> > >>> pundits and operatives demanding resignations.  I will revisit this
> > >>> later.
> > >>> XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON OCT 5 2006 2:53:48 ET XXXXX
> > >>>
> > >>> CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE MESSAGES WERE PAGE PRANK GONE AWRY
> > >>> **World Exclusive**
> > >>> **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
> > >>>
> > >>> According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan
> > >>> Edmund,
> > >>> the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the
> > >>> resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by
> > >>> mistake got
> > >>> into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can
> > >>> reveal.
> > >>>
> > >>> According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very
> > well,
> > >>> Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded Foley to type embarrassing
> > >>> comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill
> > >>> politicos.
> > >>> The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of
> > >>> political operatives favorable to Democrats. This source, an ally of
> > >>> Edmund,
> > >>> also adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual.
> > >>> The prank
> > >>> scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund.
> > >>>
> > >>> The news come on the heels that former FBI Chief Louis Freeh has
> > >>> been named
> > >>> to investigate the mess.
> > >>>
> > >>> Developing...
> > >>>
> > >>> =======================================================
> > >>> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> > >>> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> > >>>               http://www.fsr.net
> > >>>          mailto: Vision2020 at moscow.com
> > >>> =======================================================
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> =======================================================
> > >> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> > >> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> > >>               http://www.fsr.net
> > >>          mailto: Vision2020 at moscow.com
> > >> =======================================================
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > =======================================================
> > List services made available by First Step Internet,
> > serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> >               http://www.fsr.net
> >          mailto: Vision2020 at moscow.com
> > =======================================================
> >
>
>
>
> =======================================================
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>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
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>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
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