Republican Congressman Sends Sex Messages to Underage Boys

I quibble where others harangue-- likewise becaue of partisanship...

 

If you aren't defending what he did, then why do you keep trying to bring up the point that it was ok because of how old the pages were?

If it is wrong then why try and drag that up?

 

What was that you said Mr. Speaker?
___________________

Staffer Cites Earlier Role by Hastert's Office
Confrontation With Foley Detailed

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601888_pf.html

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, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley's behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

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.

"We are not preparing to cooperate. We are affirmatively seeking to," Heaphy said.

Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean declined to directly comment on the second House staff member's assertion, saying that it is a matter for a House ethics committee investigation. "The Standards Committee has asked that no one discuss this matter because of its ongoing investigation," Bonjean said.

The emergence of a second congressional staffer describing such a meeting came on a day that Hastert (R-Ill.) was working to solidify his hold on the speakership. Prominent Republicans, including President Bush, have defended Hastert, saying he should not step down, but the criticism continues to flow.

New Jersey's Thomas H. Kean Jr., whose candidacy offers the GOP its most promising hope to take a Senate seat from a Democrat in November, called for Hastert's resignation yesterday, as did the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times. Democratic House candidate Patty Wetterling of Minnesota, a child-safety advocate and the first to air a television commercial about the Foley scandal, will deliver the national Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio address today.

Hastert maintains that he knew nothing of Foley's actions until last week, when the story first broke and Foley resigned. His stance contradicts that of House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), both of whom said they had informed Hastert this spring.

Palmer has resolutely said he had no earlier meeting with Foley, and other leadership aides have questioned the truthfulness of Fordham. Fordham quit his job as Reynolds's chief of staff last week after acknowledging that he had tried to persuade ABC News not to publish the salacious instant-message exchanges between Foley and two former pages.

Hastert's office contends that the first confrontation with Foley occurred in November 2005, when Shimkus, the head of the House Page Board, and then-House Clerk Jeff Trandahl took Foley aside to discuss what they termed "over-friendly" e-mails that Foley had sent to a Louisiana boy. Fordham's account not only pushed the matter back at least two years but also indicated that alarms over Foley's behavior had gone well beyond bland e-mails.

Sources close to Fordham say Trandahl repeatedly urged the longtime aide and close family friend to confront Foley about his inappropriate advances on pages. Each time, Foley pledged to no longer socialize with the teenagers, but, weeks later, Trandahl would again alert Fordham about more contacts. Out of frustration, the sources said, Fordham contacted Palmer, hoping that an intervention from such a powerful figure in the House would persuade Foley to stop.

Now, a second House aide familiar with Foley and his actions told The Washington Post yesterday that "Scott Palmer had spoken to Foley prior to November 2005." The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is now the subject of a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee inquiry.

Two law enforcement officials said yesterday that the FBI had not yet determined whether a crime had occurred in the Foley case. Justice Department and FBI officials have cautioned that cases involving the enticement of minors are notoriously difficult to prosecute.

On Wednesday night, Palmer was described as highly emotional while aides sifted through e-mails and files to determine whether he had ever spoken to Fordham. Several people who spoke with Palmer said the chief of staff was emphatic in denying that he knew anything about Foley's questionable contacts with young male pages.

Palmer, who shares a townhouse with Hastert when they are in town, is more powerful than all but a few House members. Members know that he speaks for Hastert.

The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public's understanding of Foley's undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

Pages apparently saw Trandahl as a strict disciplinarian. In one instant-message exchange obtained by The Post, a former page, on his way to his first annual reunion in Washington, told Foley in January 2003 that "everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc."

He then added, "well we dont have the [expletive] clerk to fire us anymore. . . . we didnt like trandahl that much . . . he isnt a nice guy . . . and he gets really scarey when he is mad."

Trandahl's departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl's exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.

Trandahl's departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.

"My one-hour Special Order changed to a five-minute Special Order, now to a one-minute," Shimkus said. "I just want to say thank you for the work you have done."

Lilly said: "He seemed to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke."

Trandahl, now the executive director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, has not returned repeated phone calls and e-mails.

Congressional aides point to another factor that links Trandahl to the Foley matter. A member of the board of the national gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Trandahl is openly homosexual and personally close to the now-disgraced former lawmaker, who announced through his lawyer this week that he is gay.

 

Liars all... It goes from Foley resigned on his own (what actually happened) to Repubs demanded he resign to Hastert demanded he resign.
____________

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/06/foley-lie/

Conservatives Propagate False Talking Point Defending Hastert’s Handling Of Foley Scandal

Top conservatives have fanned out on television to defend House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s role in the Foley scandal.

A key talking point: when ABC made Foley’s sexually explicit communications public, Hastert “dealt with it immediately” by going to Foley and telling him, “Resign or be expelled.” Both Ken Mehlman and Ed Gillespie said Hastert’s bold ultimatum to Foley was something not seen “in thirty years in this town.”

In fact, their entire story is a fabrication. Hastert could not have issued an ultimatum to Foley after the sexually explicit instant messages were made public, because by that time, Foley had already resigned. ABC did not make Foley’s sexually explicit communications public until Friday, September 29, at 6pm ET. Foley had already resigned three hours earlier, at around 3pm ET.

As ABC producer Maddy Sauer has described, Foley decided to resign not after an ultimatum from Speaker Hastert, but after ABC called his office on Friday morning and read Foley staffers the instant messages they had obtained. According to Sauer, Foley’s office called ABC an hour later and said the congressman would be resigning.

Speaker Hastert himself acknowledged that he had no role in Foley’s resignation in his first statement on the issue on Monday:

When [the instant messages] were released, Congressman Foley resigned. And I’m glad he did. If he had not, I would have demanded his expusion from the House of Representatives.

Full transcript video:

HASTERT: When Congress found out about the explicit messages, Republicans dealt with it immediately and the culprit was gone. [10/5/06]

HASTERT: I, first of all, learned of this last Friday, when we were about to leave Congress for the break, to go out and campaign. And that’s the first time that I heard of the explicit language. When it happened, Republicans acted. And the guy’s gone. [10/5/06]

HOEKSTRA: I mean, we were all disgusted by what we found out last week Friday. But we also need to remember that what we did do on Friday is the speaker, the leadership and the House Republican conference, we spoke with clarity. It was a defining moment for us. We said, Resign or be expelled. Mark Foley left the House of Representatives within hours of this information becoming public. [10/6/06]

MEHLMAN: The fact is, what Denny Hastert did is something that we haven’t seen done in thirty years in this town in Washington DC, and that is he said to a member of congress, either you go or we’re going to make you go. That happened the moment that Denny Hastert found out about this. [10/6/06]

GILLESPIE: In fact, voters are starting to understand that speaker Hastert reacted very strongly. As the father of a 16-year-old son, I appreciate him going to Mark Foley and saying, “You either resign or you’re going to be expelled.” That would be the first time in thirty years. [10/6/06]

 

Glenn Greenwald writes well... here's a snippet...

----------------
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

...
There are, as Matt Yglesias pointed out the other day, huge numbers of people in this country -- clearly the majority of the electorate -- who are not at all stupid but simply do not have the time or inclination to pay close attention to political events. In that regard, people who spend substantial time in the blogosphere are aberrational; it is not the norm to monitor political developments on a daily basis. Most people rely upon journalists and pundits, as Yglesias said, "to let them know if something goes dramatically wrong with the governance of the country." But journalists have failed in that duty and the conservative pundits on whom many people (particularly conservatives) rely have purposely obscured what has been happening.

But for so many reasons -- its relative simplicity, its crystal clarity, the involvement of emotionally-charged issues, the salacious sex aspects -- this Foley scandal circumvents that whole dynamic. People are paying attention on their own. They don't need pundits or journalists to tell them what to think about it because they are able to form deeply held opinions on their own. None of the standard obfuscation tactics used for so long by Bush followers are working here. To the contrary, their attempted use of those tactics is making things much worse for them, because people can see that Bush followers are attempting -- through the use of patently dishonest and corrupt tactics -- to excuse the inexcusable. And seeing that, it gives great credence to all of the accusations voiced over the last five years that this is how the Bush movement operates in every area, because people can now see it for themselves.

In that regard, this scandal is like the Cliffs' Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM'd with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on. There has been a virtual carousel -- as there always is -- of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working.

What Bush followers did yesterday really encapsulates what they are about. They had Matt Drudge -- the same Matt Drudge who "broke the story" in the 2004 campaign of the intern who fled to Africa in order to escape John Kerry's lecherous stalking -- post a screaming headline claiming that one of the pages claims that he only engaged in sex chats with Foley as a prank. There are countless, obvious reasons why a page might claim that he only engaged in sex talk with a 53-year-old man on the Internet as a prank (much the way people caught with child p*rnography claim they have it only for research), but assume that it's true that this particular page chatted with Foley for that reason.

It is painfully obvious that this proves nothing, that it does not help the House GOP leadership in any way or even remotely mitigate their conduct. It has been clear from the first day that Foley has been engaged in a pattern of sexual pursuit of numerous Congressional pages over many years. Some pages seemed to have welcomed the pursuit and encouraged it; others found it highly objectionable; and some may have been fueled by different motives. But nobody doubts that Mark Foley has been systematically pursuing pages for sexual pleasure for years now. That is not even in dispute. And even if this one page were engaged in a "prank," that would not change the nature of Foley's behavior or impact the obligation of the GOP House leadership to act (just as someone's guilt is not mitigated when they try to hire someone they believe is a hit man but who is really a policeman pretending to be one).

Even if this one page out of all of the others were engaged in a "hoax," it is still the case that Mark Foley was systematically pursuing Congressional pages while the GOP House leadership looked the other way. The Drudge item (even if true) changes nothing. It does not even arguably affect the scandal. That is self-evident. And, on top of all of that, the "report" came from the person who is probably the single least credible source on the Internet.

Despite all of that, Bush followers in every crevice immediately and mindlessly seized on this Drudge item and cited it virtually to proclaim the scandal over, suggesting-- based solely on this single item -- that the whole thing, the entire scandal, was a meaningless hoax from the beginning. Even the Deputy Editor of The Wall St. Journal, Dan Henninger, repeated the "report" in arguing that the whole affair was a meaningless distraction: "By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages."

They all seized on a plainly false -- and, even if true, totally irrelevant -- "report" to declare that the whole scandal was nothing and was even the fault of those who talked about it. Their only objective, as always, is to defend their Leaders, who can do no wrong, even when caught red-handed, and they will grab onto any claim, no matter how unreliable, false and/or irrelevant, to do so.

Beyond the deceit and desperation is the hypocrisy so glaring that it makes one's eyes squint. The examples are literally too numerous to chronicle, but one of my personal favorites is the feigned above-it-all, dismissive bewilderment that something as inconsequential and petty as a sex scandal could possibly be getting so much attention.

The Wall St. Journal's Henninger yesterday asked: "Is this Mark Foley thing really happening?" Hennginger can't believe that with so many Important Things going in the world, our country would really be focused on what he dismissively refers to as "Congressman Foley's 1995 email traffic." Henninger is the Deputy Editor of the WSJ Editorial Page -- the same Editorial Page that spent much of the 1990s focusing on the spots on Bill Clinton's penis, Hillary's affair with Vince Foster, and semen stains on a blue dress.

The same people who impeached a popular, twice-elected President of the U.S. over a sex scandal involving consenting adults, who caused our country's political dialogue for several years to be composed of the filthiest and most scurrilous speculation peddled by some of the lowest bottom-feeders and dirt-mongers, and who constructed a political movement based in large part on sermonizing about private sexual morality and demonizing those who deviate, are now protesting -- without any irony -- the fact that a sex scandal is distracting from the Truly Important Issues our country faces and that Mark Foley's sexual pursuit over many years of 16 and 17-year-old Congressional pages is nothing that really matters.

It is as though Republicans are being punished for all of their serious political sins at once, in one perfectly constructed, humiliating scandal designed to highlight their crimes and exact just retribution for them. The Foley scandal is shining a very bright light on their conduct, not just in this one incident but with regard to how they have been governing the country generally over the last five years. That is why this scandal is so important and it is why Bush followers are so desperate to proclaim the whole thing over with -- even if it means having to jump on a pathetic Matt Drudge item to do it. The one thing they don't want is for a clear, illuminating light to be shined on how they conduct themselves.

 

Staffer Cites Earlier Role by Hastert's Office
Confrontation With Foley Detailed

By Jonathan Weisman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006; A01


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, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley's behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

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.

"We are not preparing to cooperate. We are affirmatively seeking to," Heaphy said.

Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean declined to directly comment on the second House staff member's assertion, saying that it is a matter for a House ethics committee investigation. "The Standards Committee has asked that no one discuss this matter because of its ongoing investigation," Bonjean said.

The emergence of a second congressional staffer describing such a meeting came on a day that Hastert (R-Ill.) was working to solidify his hold on the speakership. Prominent Republicans, including President Bush, have defended Hastert, saying he should not step down, but the criticism continues to flow.

New Jersey's Thomas H. Kean Jr., whose candidacy offers the GOP its most promising hope to take a Senate seat from a Democrat in November, called for Hastert's resignation yesterday, as did the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times. Democratic House candidate Patty Wetterling of Minnesota, a child-safety advocate and the first to air a television commercial about the Foley scandal, will deliver the national Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio address today.

Hastert maintains that he knew nothing of Foley's actions until last week, when the story first broke and Foley resigned. His stance contradicts that of House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), both of whom said they had informed Hastert this spring.

Palmer has resolutely said he had no earlier meeting with Foley, and other leadership aides have questioned the truthfulness of Fordham. Fordham quit his job as Reynolds's chief of staff last week after acknowledging that he had tried to persuade ABC News not to publish the salacious instant-message exchanges between Foley and two former pages.

Hastert's office contends that the first confrontation with Foley occurred in November 2005, when Shimkus, the head of the House Page Board, and then-House Clerk Jeff Trandahl took Foley aside to discuss what they termed "over-friendly" e-mails that Foley had sent to a Louisiana boy. Fordham's account not only pushed the matter back at least two years but also indicated that alarms over Foley's behavior had gone well beyond bland e-mails.

Sources close to Fordham say Trandahl repeatedly urged the longtime aide and close family friend to confront Foley about his inappropriate advances on pages. Each time, Foley pledged to no longer socialize with the teenagers, but, weeks later, Trandahl would again alert Fordham about more contacts. Out of frustration, the sources said, Fordham contacted Palmer, hoping that an intervention from such a powerful figure in the House would persuade Foley to stop.

Now, a second House aide familiar with Foley and his actions told The Washington Post yesterday that "Scott Palmer had spoken to Foley prior to November 2005." The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is now the subject of a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee inquiry.

Two law enforcement officials said yesterday that the FBI had not yet determined whether a crime had occurred in the Foley case. Justice Department and FBI officials have cautioned that cases involving the enticement of minors are notoriously difficult to prosecute.

On Wednesday night, Palmer was described as highly emotional while aides sifted through e-mails and files to determine whether he had ever spoken to Fordham. Several people who spoke with Palmer said the chief of staff was emphatic in denying that he knew anything about Foley's questionable contacts with young male pages.

Palmer, who shares a townhouse with Hastert when they are in town, is more powerful than all but a few House members. Members know that he speaks for Hastert.

The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public's understanding of Foley's undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

Pages apparently saw Trandahl as a strict disciplinarian. In one instant-message exchange obtained by The Post, a former page, on his way to his first annual reunion in Washington, told Foley in January 2003 that "everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc."

He then added, "well we dont have the [expletive] clerk to fire us anymore. . . . we didnt like trandahl that much . . . he isnt a nice guy . . . and he gets really scarey when he is mad."

Trandahl's departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl's exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.

Trandahl's departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.

"My one-hour Special Order changed to a five-minute Special Order, now to a one-minute," Shimkus said. "I just want to say thank you for the work you have done."

Lilly said: "He seemed to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke."

Trandahl, now the executive director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, has not returned repeated phone calls and e-mails.

Congressional aides point to another factor that links Trandahl to the Foley matter. A member of the board of the national gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Trandahl is openly homosexual and personally close to the now-disgraced former lawmaker, who announced through his lawyer this week that he is gay.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601888.html



I think the wheels are coming off the spin.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

I never said it was not wrong; I was addressing the uncertainty of the illegality of some of the behaviors.

 

More Fox mis-labeled Democrats

 

Why does the illegality matter? Why not let the courts handle that, and focus on the GOP cover-up and the wrong that Foley did, then?

Why is it that when talk turns to how wrong it was of Foley, and how wrong it was of the GOP leaders to cover up for that you start trying to find legal loopholes for Foley?

I hope you understand why that seems like you are defending him.

 

Oh, I understand it perfectly.

I don't find any correspondence between YOUR talking about a coverup and MY "covering" for Foley... but I find it interesting that you do.

I have made NO excuses for Hastert or anyone remotely associated with the coverup. I have made no excuses for Foley for that matter.

It is a matter for the courts to decide, but is it okay if I comment or criticize YOUR SIDE'S over-zealous commentary... because wouldn't that be a matter for the courts to decide also?

This thing runs both ways.

 

You've suggested multiple times that this isn't a crime and is no big deal because the page was at the age of consent.

 

What I said was that some of the behavior was not criminal and some probably was. Numerous times I pointed out the irony of the inconsistency of the laws.

Here's my second post discussing Foley; there were some other posts discussing Clinton...

Let's see: he's either a creep or pathetic but he needs to be gone either way. I cite an apparent crime. Which is the part where I am excusing Foley?

 

My point is that if we all agree it was wrong of Foley and wrong of Hastert and other GOP members to cover it up, then what does it matter if some of the pages were legal age.

Does that really change anything anyplace other than courts?

I don't see that it does, and it seemed like you were trying to lessen the severity of what Foley had done.

 

1. I was trying to be accurate in describing what Foley had done and not done.

2. I said pretty much or exactly nothing about Hastert or anyone else

... your side is just making a lot of assumptions and/or extrapolations in the politiciization of the matter.

 

You're missing the point. The very line of legal reasoning used by you in this situation was soundly blown off when the Clinton scandal came out. Every single partisan whack at Foley that has occured now is nearly identical to the same stuff that Republicans through at Clinton. If you weren't hounding the Republicans then for their brazenly partisan attacks on Clinton, then you have very little credibility to make those same claims now.

 

Give me a break, it's the Clinton supporters who still want to decry that he was impeached for "having sex with that women, Ms. Lewinski" rather than for lying before a Grand Jury not to mention wagging his finger in the face of the American People.

Any other similarities you want to point up?

 

wasn't he initially crucified for "having sex with that women, Ms. Lewinski"?

that was way before he lied and was impeached..

 

He didn't have sex... head is not sex.

 

What both Clinton and Foley "did" was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think it is legitimate to make a distinction between wrong and illegal. Either way, I cut Foley no slack. He should be out of office due to the sensitive position he held, however it is our burden to be "fair and accurate" about what was illegal and what was just plain wrong. I'm puzzled as to why that is viewed as going easy on Foley. We are still a nation of laws.

Contrary to that, I didn't hold Clinton to the same standards because of his being The President. I was enthusiastically critical of Clinton for "having sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski," but the impeachment movement came when the lies to the Grand Jury became evident. I expect better character of our national leader. He, and any man or woman, would be deserving of my criticism on that point because that is a value that I hold and that is my right whether or not anyone else agrees with it. I think many do though.

The impeachment was brought on by a different set of circumstances which the Chief Executive of The Land should never stumble into...

 

Head is not intercourse, but it is still sex-- that exchange of bodily fluids is really problematic here.