Foley Update
From reading certain news stories, you'd think that Congressman Mark Foley had said some ambiguously "creepy" things to a young page. You know, your friend is really in good shape, send me a pic, stuff like that.
If that has been your impression, then go to ABC News and check out the 9 pages of IM text they have published.
They say there, READER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED: Foley's Exchange With Underage Page, and they're not kidding. Please only click on the link if you're an adult. And have a bowl to puke into next to the computer.
If that has been your impression, then go to ABC News and check out the 9 pages of IM text they have published.
They say there, READER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED: Foley's Exchange With Underage Page, and they're not kidding. Please only click on the link if you're an adult. And have a bowl to puke into next to the computer.
posted by JimK at 10:44 PM
16 Comments:
damn it. the internet was made for porn. i demand that foley release all his one-handed typed im’s, all his web cam recordings and all his private photographs of pages and others.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sorry, Anon, I deleted that, it's not the kind of comment we tolerate here. We don't mind if you enjoy yourself, but let's keep those kind of details, you know, between Congressmen, or somewhere else private.
JimK
"Clinton blew it on bin Laden: ex-CIA official
October 2, 2006
BY ROBERT NOVAK Sun-Times Columnist
A week after Bill Clinton lashed out at anchor Chris Wallace's questioning on "Fox News Sunday," prominent Democrats were still debating among themselves whether the former president's performance was good or bad for their party. But they all disregarded a harsh but widely overlooked rebuke of Clinton the next morning.... On CBS's "Early Show" Monday, the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit during the Clinton administration, Michael Scheuer, said the al-Qaida leader "is alive today" because Clinton and his top lieutenants refused to kill him. "It's just an incredible kind of situation," said Scheuer, "for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them."
Scheuer's blunt remonstrance goes to the heart of what probably impelled Clinton's finger pointing on national television. Rather than attempting to shape the midterm campaign, as Republicans believe, he was interested in protecting his legacy. No former president in the last half-century has seemed so sensitive to critical assessments of his tenure. Unexpected by Clinton was a rebuttal by a CIA professional never confused with being a Bush acolyte.
Asked whether Bush was no less responsible for letting bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, Scheuer replied: "The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration had one chance that they botched and the Clinton administration had eight to 10 chances that they refused to try. At least at Tora Bora, our forces were on the ground.""
It's not just Foley and the House GOP leadership who closed their eyes to GOP wrongdoing. The toxicity of this one party system has corrupted the FBI. Maybe they were too busy dealing with all the new Iraq-war-spawned terrorists but for some reason the FBI didn't think a Congressman emailing an unrelated teenage male page to ask for a photograph called for an investigation. We learn in today's Washington Post:
"Officials from the liberal-leaning group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said yesterday that they received copies of the Louisiana e-mails on July 21 and turned them over to the FBI the same day. Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, said she spoke with a special agent in the Washington field office, and she questioned yesterday why the FBI did not investigate Foley weeks ago.
An FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the field office concluded that the e-mails "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." The bureau announced Sunday that it would begin a preliminary investigation into Foley's more explicit electronic exchanges with teenagers.
Some House Republicans said yesterday that the FBI and House leaders erred in not considering the e-mails -- and the concern they raised among the recipient's parents -- as justification for an inquiry.
"This thing should have been looked into months ago," said Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.), who said he is "disgusted" by his leaders' response. "That's abnormal for a 52-year-old man having those kinds of e-mails going to a 16-year-old child."
The FBI didn't act, it didn't investigate when told of suspicious behavior, but at least it admits it remembers being told. Hastert and Rice, by contrast, are pulling the "I don't recall" defense for their inaction.
"Hastert, as the House's top officer and the man in line after the vice president to succeed the president, has been the main target of questions and barbs from both parties. He reiterated yesterday that he recalled hearing nothing about Foley's e-mails until last Friday, but he does not dispute the assertion of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) that he informed the speaker last spring."
Oh, so Hastert "does not dispute" that Reynolds told him, he just doesn't remember being told! Got it. Right! Maybe he's just following Condi's lead:
"Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously, according to a transcript of the interview and the recollection of a commissioner who was there.
Tenet's statements to the commission in January 2004 confirm the outlines of an event in a new book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that has been disputed by some Bush administration officials. But the testimony also is at odds with Woodward's depiction of Tenet and former CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black as being frustrated that "they were not getting through to Rice" after the July 10, 2001, meeting.
Rice angrily rejected those assertions yesterday, saying that it was "incomprehensible" that she would have ignored such explicit intelligence from senior CIA officials and that she received no warning at the meeting of an attack within the United States.
Rice acknowledged that the White House was receiving a "steady stream of quite alarmist reports of potential attacks" during that period, but said the targets were assumed to be in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Jordan.
"What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told -- as this account apparently says -- that there was about to be an attack in the United States," Rice said..."
From the Larry King interview with Bob Woodward last night:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/02/lkl.01.html
KING: Condoleezza Rice disputing the book's account of a July 10, 2001 meeting. She has no specific recollection. She said, "I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States. The idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible."
WOODWARD: Well, as I understand it, I don't want to misspeak but then apparently the spokesman for the State Department held a briefing recently saying they have discovered there was such a meeting.
Now, I do not report in the book where Tenet and the CIA people came in and said, you know, "We know exactly where there's going to be an attack." Now this was two months before 9/11.
What I report is they came in and said, "We're giving you strategic warning. There's so much noise in the intelligence system here. We think something is going to happen." Dick Clarke in his book quotes Tenet around this time saying, "I have a sixth sense it's coming."
"What I report is they came in and said, "We're giving you strategic warning. There's so much noise in the intelligence system here. We think something is going to happen." Dick Clarke in his book quotes Tenet around this time saying, "I have a sixth sense it's coming.""
Wow! Rice didn't immediately tell Bush to declare a state of martial law because George Tenet has a sneakin' suspicion? Try her for treason!
"Try her for treason!"
What a great idea! Condi and a few others...
That'll teach her to ignore the SIXTH SENSE!!
Condi and the rest of Dumbya's gang should not ignore things like terrorism experts' hunches about impending terror plots especially when they are followed up a few weeks later with Presidential Daily Briefs entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." This bunch is obviously more interested in protecting their jobs than doing them.
As has been explained, the "hunches" were flying fast and furious at the time. It may have been a little hard to sort them out.
Are you one of the people who criticize the Bush administration for issuing red alerts at every "hunch" now?
No, I criticize the Bush adminstration for upping the terror alert level at election time.
I must say I was glad to see Bush fundraising out west in Nevada, California, Arizona and Colorado. I'm especially glad that he's out raising funds for those stalwarts of GOP ethics Pombo and Doolittle, Jack Abramoff's good friends.
There was a demonstration against his fundraiser in Reno. "I think it's an indication of how desperate the Republicans have gotten to try to hang onto a seat that just a year ago was considered a slam dunk for the Republicans," said Pam duPre, executive director of the Washoe County Democratic Party.
Me too. :)
this is a tipical gay man doing what a tipical gay man does what is the big deal. are you all going conservitive on me? what is the big deal.
What's the big deal?
Knowledge of Foley's misconduct goes back 5 years or so and yet until ABC started asking questions recently, NO ONE came forward with what they knew. Foley's colleagues, elected representatives each and every one of them, would rather protect him and keep his seat in GOP hands than protect underage teens working in the page program.
The big deal is the cover up. GOP leaders made a bad choice to sacrifice the safety of our teens to ensure the safety of a GOP seat in the House. Americans are saying 'no thanks' to this GOP concept of moral leadership and family values.
"The big deal is the cover up. GOP leaders made a bad choice to sacrifice the safety of our teens to ensure the safety of a GOP seat in the House. Americans are saying 'no thanks' to this GOP concept of moral leadership and family values."
You know, I was beginning to buy this line and I still think Hastert as the person in charge should resign for failing to act,
but
after what I've been reading today, it seems that the fact that Foley was doing this kind of stuff was well-known among all the pages on Capitol Hill. It's somewhat hard to believe that no Democrats were aware of it. They probably chose to look the other way too.
"They probably chose to look the other way too."
As if anything a Dem would say would sway a GOP House member!
No, the problem is with the House leadership. Make that the lack of leadership.
Aide Says He Reported Foley 3 Years Ago
By DEVLIN BARRETT and DAVID ESPO
Associated Press Writers
October 4, 2006, 10:54 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert's political support showed signs of cracking on Wednesday as Republicans fled an election-year scandal spawned by steamy computer messages from former Rep. Mark Foley to teenage male pages.
At the same time, Foley's former chief of staff said in an Associated Press interview that he first warned Hastert's aides more than three years ago that Foley's behavior toward pages was troublesome. That was long before GOP leaders acknowledged learning of the problem.
Kirk Fordham, who was Foley's top aide until January 2004, said he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" several years ago.
Fordham resigned Wednesday as staff chief for another lawmaker caught up in the scandal, New York Rep. Thomas Reynolds, the House GOP campaign chief who says he alerted Hastert to concerns about Foley last spring....
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-congress-pages,0,3457792.story
Ethics Committee Votes to Set Up Page Investigation Subcommittee
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2006; 7:04 PM
http://tinyurl.com/g5wrf
Ted
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