Republican Congressman Sends Sex Messages to Underage Boys

these guys have no shame. this is an absolute train wreck.

 

Well if the country is decaying and lacking morals, it all begins at the top. Nice job spreading Republican family values guys. I wonder how many Republicans have had their ladies of the night get abortions too?

 

First, I've been drunk a few times in my life. Not once did Jim Beam make me hit on young boys. The idea that alcohol led Foley to act this way is ridiculous on its face.

Second, being gay does not mean you are a pedophile. There are hetero and gay pedophiles. If you are a pedophile, that has to be the primary label. The conflating of gay and pedophile has to stop.

Third, if you think the GOP leadership didn't know anything about this you are fooling yourself. Every Congressman on the Hill is watched by many, many eyes whether they know it or not. To think the leadership didn't know is to believe people like Tom Delay didn't gather as much personal and professional info on people to twist their arms when an important vote came. I guarantee they knew. Furthermore, when I worked for a Congressman (1986), everyone knew who was gay (and there were more closeted Repubs then and it wouldn't surprise me if the percentage has increased since), everyone knew which Congressman would make passes at attractive young staffers, everyone knew which Congressman could be had by a flirtatious gal (there was a "club" who competed to see who could sleep with the most Congressmen), everyone knew who would cheat on their wives (and knew if their wives were in DC or staying back home). It's like a big dorm up there. There's no way Foley could go those years without people knowing.

Fourth, I appreciate the Repubs warning their pages but not the ones attached to the Dems. I guess Dem kids are worth a little less on the life value scale.

Finally, Hastert needs to resign if for no other reason than this callous statement...

That tells you everything. It was never about morals or protecting kids... it was about maintaining power.

 

LA Times weighs in...
__________

Foley Saga No Shock to Some
The Florida Republican was known to have an interest in younger men, Capitol Hill workers say.
By Noam N. Levey, Maura Reynolds and Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writers

October 3, 2006

WASHINGTON — Years before sexually explicit electronic messages sent by Rep. Mark Foley to teenage House pages became public last week, some on Capitol Hill say, the Florida Republican was known to have a special interest in younger men.

In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, several current and former congressional employees and others said they recalled Foley approaching young male pages, aides and interns at parties and other venues.

"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.

Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.

Like most of those willing to discuss Foley, the young man asked not to be named because of concern that speaking openly could harm his career.

Foley resigned from office Friday. His attorney said Monday that Foley had checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center. In a statement, Foley said: "I strongly believe that I'm an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems."

News reports about the messages Foley sent sparked a furor that continues to build. Much of the controversy centers on whether Republican congressional leaders responded aggressively enough when they learned late last year about less salacious e-mails Foley had sent to another page. In those e-mails, Foley asked the page to send a photo of himself and asked how old he was.

The GOP leaders said Monday, as they have since Foley resigned, that the matter had been appropriately handled last year, when the House clerk and congressman in charge of the page program told Foley to cease contact with the page. They also have said they knew nothing about more explicit instant messages — in which Foley graphically discussed sex — and had no reason to be suspicious about Foley's behavior.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), in public comments Monday, called the explicit messages "vile and repulsive, both to myself and to my colleagues." He added: "No one in the Republican leadership saw those messages until last Friday, when ABC News released them to the public.''

ABC reported Monday that in another set of instant messages, Foley tried to arrange a rendezvous with another young teenage page.

Hastert also held a rare off-camera question-and-answer session with reporters Monday, during which he said that Foley's inappropriate contacts with pages appeared to have occurred after the teenagers had left Washington and returned home.

"I understand that these are pages that have all left the program," Hastert said. "This was after the fact. And you know — woulda, coulda, shoulda."

At least one Republican lawmaker, however, has said that GOP lawmakers should have dug deeper into Foley's behavior months ago.

West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, who sits on the board overseeing the page program but who has said she was not told of any of the e-mails, told the Charleston Gazette over the weekend that even the less-explicit ones should have been viewed as suspicious

"I don't think it would pass the sniff test," she told the newspaper. "Even asking those questions — that is not normal between a 52-year-old adult and a 16-year-old…. It's not like they're family friends or anything. I think it would raise some serious questions."

The current and former congressional staffers interviewed by The Times, who are from both parties, said it was well known within the Capitol's gay community that Foley was interested in young men.

"Among the gay political community, there was a pretty wide understanding that he had an eye for the interns and the younger staff," said one former congressional staffer.

The staffers said Foley — who was elected to the House in 1994 and is not openly gay — would seek out the young men in bars, restaurants and even around the Capitol.

The former intern said he was approached by Foley at Bullfeathers, a popular restaurant and bar a few blocks from the Capitol. "He asked for e-mail, which I gave him," said the young man. "I was 18. To have a congressman take an interest in you seemed pretty cool."

But he said he quickly regretted it. Foley began sending him e-mails, asking for more information about him. "It was a patented act," he said. He stopped responding to Foley soon afterward.

Beck-Heyman, the former page, said several other male pages in his class also had been approached by Foley. "Mark Foley knew he could get away with this type of behavior with male pages because he was a congressman," he said.

Another former staffer said it was an oft-repeated story around Capitol Hill that Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, would sometimes accompany the congressman to keep him out of trouble.

Fordham represents a link between Foley and House GOP leaders. Shortly after leaving Foley's office last year, he became chief of staff to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Reynolds has said he was told this spring about the e-mails that sparked the initial complaint about Foley.

Fordham has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Times.

Democratic congressional leaders continued Monday to attack the Republican handling of the Foley case.

"This is about a member of Congress who used his position to prey on young children, and a Republican leadership team who set out to cover it up," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

As criticism of GOP leaders mounted, the FBI — which reported Sunday that it had launched a preliminary investigation of Foley's behavior — came under fire Monday for not acting more quickly.

The advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said it sent the FBI the less explicit Foley e-mails in July. The group's officials now have asked the Department of Justice to investigate why the bureau didn't begin its investigation sooner.

FBI officials declined to comment on the complaint.

But a law enforcement official said investigators are trying to determine the scale and scope of potential crimes, and have been reviewing the messages that have become public.

The official, who requested anonymity because of the investigation's sensitivity, said that the bureau hoped to speak with some pages and their families soon to determine whether they would be willing to cooperate with the investigation.

Federal law makes it a crime to use the Internet to solicit sex from anyone under 18 years of age. Offenders can be fined and imprisoned for up to 30 years with a minimum sentence of five years in prison.

As of late Monday, the FBI had not requested access to the computers in Foley's former congressional office.

The office has continued to operate, handling constituent requests and other routine chores, but under the auspices of the clerk of the House.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-foley3oct03,0,1739878,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

 

BREAKING: Cong. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff tried to get ABC to cover-up evidence of Foley predatory sex chat
by John in DC - 10/02/2006 07:50:00 PM

It's confirmed. Congressman Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, tried to broker a secret deal last Friday to get ABC News to cover up the worst part of the Foley child predator scandal, the lurid five-plus-page instant message chat in which Foley asked a child to measure his penis and then led the child into a detailed discussion of masturbatory techniques.

Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post wrote about this in this morning's Washington Post, though at the time Kurtz didn't name names - he simply referred to the deal-maker as a "former chief of staff" to Mark Foley. It's subsequently been confirmed to me, by Kurtz, that the individual who reportedly tried to broker the cover-up deal was Congressman Reynolds' own chief of staff (and former Foley chief of staff), Kirk Fordham. Here is what Kurtz wrote:

On Friday afternoon, a strategist for Rep. Mark Foley tried to cut a deal with ABC's Brian Ross.

The correspondent, who had dozens of instant messages that Foley sent to teenage House pages, had asked to interview the Florida Republican. Foley's former chief of staff said the congressman was quitting and that Ross could have that information exclusively if he agreed not to publish the raw, sexually explicit messages.

"I said we're not making any deals," Ross recalls.

(As noted above, I have confirmed that the guy offering the deal was Fordham.) Yes, God forbid Congressman Reynolds let the public know the truth. But we're to believe that he was interested in the truth when he first found out about Foley's creepy emails months ago. Right.

Congressman Reynolds, you'll recall, is the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the congressional body in charge of helping House republicans get re-elected. Reynolds had been notified about Foley's page-baiting months ago, yet wants us to believe he did everything he could and that he's not responsible for the sexual predator getting an easy ride, for his being permitted to remain in congress, permitted to remain the chair of the House caucus on missing and exploited children, and being permitted to remain in the House Republican leadership.

Now we know otherwise.

Congressman Reynolds let his own chief of staff secretly work for a child predator in an effort to cover-up the worst evidence of the predator's sexual wrongdoing. Without that evidence, this case might not have broken wide open. Add Reynolds to the list, alongside Hastert and Shimkus, of members of Congress who need to resign now.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/10/breaking-cong-tom-reynolds-r-ny-chief.html

 

More from ABC

ABC producer says network to name names in Foley scandal

ABC will soon report who had knowledge of the Mark Foley page scandal, and when they became aware of it, RAW STORY has learned.

In an interview with DemocracyNow, ABC's Maddy Sauer has shared some startling facts about the story.

Pages have, according to Sauer, been able to produce instant message conversations going back as far as five years. Some of them are reportedly sexually explicit.

The FBI, Sauer claims, will be interviewing pages starting today.

Sauer also indicated that ABC's next wave of reports on the Foley scandal will focus on who in Congress was aware of the situation, how much they knew, and when they were alerted.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/ABC_producer_says_network_to_name_1003.html

 

I think we have Rove's October surprise.

 

The Republican party has scheduled a news conference for 4PM to announce Rep. Foley's replacement on the election ballot. While the name of the new candidate has not been released, a picture has, and the Florida Republican party is confident that their new candidate, once elected, will be able to continue Rep. Foley's work with exploited children.

 

Hmmm...
______
Reynolds and the Kiddies

The Upstate media today is all about Tom Reynolds' bizarre press conference yesterday, at which he surrounded himself by small children. At one point, reporters asked if he could make the children leave so they could ask adult questions, and he refused.

I found this moment particularly damaging, though, in which Reynolds -- the third-ranking Republican in the House -- says he did what any employee would do with the Foley case: "I took it to my supervisor."

Because, you know, he only works here.

ALSO: More bad news for Reynolds: His chief-of-staff tried to talk ABC News out of reporting on Foley.

http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics/archives/2006/10/reynolds_and_th.php



Children of supporters are assembled nearby as Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds conducts a news conference at Daemen College.

 

Don't you mean "Foley?"

 

man, this is the type of thing that can really sink the whole organization (god willing). i have a feeling that there are quite a few congressmen, republican and democrat who have had inappropriate relationships with underage pages. every news reporter in the country is digging right now - its only a matter of time before the damn collapses.

ANYONE who had prior knowledge and didnt do anything about it or tried to cover it up should resign immediately.

 

Fixed. Damn liquid lunch!

 

New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote

October 03, 2006 1:22 PM
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/new_foley_insta.html

Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer Report:

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.

This message was dated April 2003, at approximately 7 p.m., according to the message time stamp.

Maf54: I miss you
Teen: ya me too
Maf54: we are still voting
Maf54: you miss me too

The exchange continues in which Foley and the teen both appear to describe having sexual orgasms.

Maf54: ok..i better go vote..did you know you would have this effect on me
Teen: lol I guessed
Teen: ya go vote…I don't want to keep you from doing our job
Maf54: can I have a good kiss goodnight
Teen: :-*
Teen: <kiss>

The House voted that evening on HR 1559, Emergency War Time supplemental appropriations.

According to another message, Foley also invites the teen and a friend to come to his house near Capitol Hill so they can drink alcohol.

Teen: are you going to be in town over the veterans day weekend
Maf54: I may be now that your coming
Maf54: who you coming to visit
Teen: haha good stuff
Teen: umm no one really

Maf54: we will be adjourned ny then
Teen: oh good
Maf54: by
Maf54: then we can have a few drinks
Maf54: lol
Teen: yes yes ;-)
Maf54: your not old enough to drink
Teen: shhh…
Maf54: ok
Teen: that's not what my ID says
Teen: lol
Maf54: ok
Teen: I probably shouldn't be telling you that huh
Maf54: we may need to drink at my house so we don't get busted

(By the way, that's a Congressman talking!)

 

Partial transcript of Reynolds Press Conference mentioned in Post #70...

 

Why don't Republican congressmen use bookmarks?

They'd rather bend a page over!


How do you get a Republican congressman to come?

Page him!

 

Rumor swirls in DC that National Journal will drop bombshell on another Congressman at 5:00 pm EST... Developing

 

The GOP now stands for "Grand Old Perverts"

 

well now that bush gave hastert the vote of confidence, he's doomed

 

Hastert is doing a heck of a job!