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:
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
Uhm…Mark… You’re a Lawmaker…
Okay…at least one of these teens wasn’t nearly as embarrassed by this as the other one was. But there is still no excuse. What a kid may want to do with an adult is one thing. But part of being an adult is you know what your responsibility to kids is. And Foley was a lawmaker. That’s (if you’ve read your Constitution lately) what congress does. So…to recap…Foley walks away from a vote in progress, to have IM sex with a teenager, and then in another message suggests they all get together at his house for a little underage drinking where they might not get busted for it. Sweet. If either one of those kids grows up to be a responsible adult they won’t have Mark Foley to thank for setting an example.
And…not anyone in the republican leadership either. So remind me again, what is the value to young Americans to serve as congressional pages? I can see the value to the republican congress easy enough. Free labor…a handy pool of awe stricken kids who are easily manipulated into having sex…
What next was Mr. Hastert supposed to do with an elected Congressman? Assume that Mr. Foley was a potential sexual predator and bar him from having any private communication with pages? Refer him to the Ethics Committee? In retrospect, barring contact with pages would have been wise.
But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts’ decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where’s Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?
So is the Wall Street Journal calling for a ban on gay congressmen then, on those same grounds? That was a rhetorical question. Without a doubt they would if they thought they could get away with it.
As if this was rocket science. All you have to do to grasp the magnitude of the failure on the part of the republican leadership is ask yourself if any warning flags should have been raised if a heterosexual congressman made comments about a female page’s body, and asked for pictures of her friend. I’ll bet most parents of teenage daughters would instantly pick up on the subtext of that kind of email. You don’t need to set different standards of behavior for gay adults. Just treat them the same as any heterosexual in a similar context.
I know…I know…it’s Capital Hill. Maybe they just need to set a minimum age of 70 to be a congressional page, or at least to be a republican page.
There’s a weak excuse emerging from Republicans for Foleygate – they might have known about the e-mails to Rep. Alexander’s page, but they never knew about the explicit IMs. Too much of the media coverage right now is centering on that question, as if knowledge of the IMs is the only way to show the leadership was remiss.
But that’s irrelevant, and here’s why: Once ABC got hold of the e-mails, it took them one day to flush out the IMs. That’s what an actual investigation looks like. The Republican leadership simply didn’t want to know how bad the Foley situation was. That’s just as morally negligent as if they had started digging and found the IMs.
[Emphasis mine] All these fuckers had to do was look into the matter. That’s fucking all. Didn’t matter if it was a heterosexual congressman or a gay one. If it looked even vaguely inappropriate all they fucking had to do was look into it. Maybe it amounts to nothing and then they just quietly drop it. But all they fucking had to do was lift their little finger and look into it and they didn’t. It took ABC one day, just one fucking day, to get to the rest of the horrid story. To blame all this on PC coddling of homosexuals is grotesque. But then the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is pretty much the same kind of creeps that are in the republican leadership.
That Wall Street Journal editorial fairly drips with longing for the old days. Back in the 1950s a scandal like this would have resulted in gay purges and witch hunts from one end of the country to the other, and these right wing louts are probably crying in their beer right this moment that it isn’t happening now, that America has matured enough regarding homosexuality that it isn’t going to go into wholesale convulsions of anti-gay hate for what one pathetic closet case republican did. Now all the old guard can do is piss and moan about political correctness while the rest of the nation looks on appalled at this complete failure of oversight on the part of a party that’s made Family Values its pet issue, and wonders, rightly, just how safe their children are from heterosexual republicans. There’s not a single person in the republican leadership who signed on to the Adam Walsh Act who isn’t involved somehow in this coverup.
Cardinal Law, meet Speaker Hastert. You’d think Watergate would have taught at least the republicans that it isn’t the crime, it’s the coverup that kills you. But then this is the party that wanted to do Vietnam all over again in Iraq.
I’ve been at this blog racket for almost six years. And usually you’ve got to really pore over the details to find the inconsistencies and contradictions. So I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this big a train wreck where leaders at the highest eschelons of power repeatedly fib, contradict each other and change their stories so quickly. It’s mendacity as performance art; you can see the story unravel in real time.
Just consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn’t know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership — Boehner and Reynolds — say no, they warned him about it months ago. Hastert got Boehner to recant; Reynolds is sticking to his guns.
Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker’s office. And Hastert’s office tonight put out the results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership — not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk — had actually laid eyes on the emails in question.
…
At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We’re supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him.
These fibs and turnabouts amount to a whole far larger than the sum of its parts. Even the most cynical politicians carefully vet their stories to assure that they cannot easily be contradicted by other credible personages. When you see Majority Leaders and Speakers and Committee chairs calling each other liars in public you know that the underlying story is very bad, that the system of coordination and hierarchy has broken down and that each player believes he’s in a fight for his life.
Well…they’ve been they’ve been deliberately rousing the passion of the mob against democrats for their support for civil liberties, and women’s and gay rights. And in particular, they’ve been playing the Homosexual Menace card as a way to drive their base to the polls. This is what they were doing in the swing states last election…
The entire religious right machine has been doing this for decades now, because their polling tells them that anti-gay hate will motivate a certain group of voters more then Any of their other pet causes. More then abortion. More then prayer in school. More then creationism.
So the religious right has been carefully, meticulously stoking that hatred for decades. It funds anti-gay propaganda mills like Paul Cameron, to churn out one hysterical lie after another about the homosexual menace. Ex-gay ministries like Exodus and Love In Action would have gone out of business long ago, were it not for the lifesaving injection of funds by religious right powerhouses like James Dobson’s Focus On The Family. They exist today, not to save homosexuals from The Gay Lifestyle, but to allow heterosexuals to continue denying their gay and lesbian neighbors equal rights without a guilty conscience. Anti-Gay hate has been a gold mine to them, in terms of money and votes, in a way nothing else ever could be. And in the process, stoked a terrible hatred and contempt toward a portion of the human family, with utterly no concern whatsoever about the inevitable bloodshed, death and heartbreak. They would pile our bodies up in stacks like cords of firewood if they had to, so long as it got them votes. And money.
And now that Frankenstein’s Monster is looking at them. Well…at the republicans. In the panic on Capital Hill, it must really gall the republican leadership to watch various religious right figures distancing themselves from All Those Corrupt Politicians, as if they hadn’t all been playing this game of Hate For Power together all these years. And they know they don’t dare point their fingers back at the ministers of hate for any of this. But the religious right has it’s own gallery of Mark Foleys to account for. Just ask Cardinal Bernard Law.
Or…this guy…
At least Swaggart’s prostitutes were of age. I think. But the same reckless disregard for human sexuality that drove Mark Foley away from a life as an out and proud gay man, and into the chat rooms of teenaged boys, keeps driving one man of the cloth after another into their local red light districts, year after year after year. It’s a vicious cycle of teaching people to be ashamed of their sexual nature, and that shame warping their sex lives, making them even more ashamed, and ready to be manipulated. And thus shame turns into money…and votes.
Mark Foley is not the monster here…let’s get that clear. He’s a profoundly disturbed man, but he is no monster. The monsters are the harvesters of shame. The players who know Exactly what they’re doing when they teach people to fear and loath their sexual nature, coldly unconcerned with the human wreakage it causes so long as there is money to be had, and votes to be counted. They could teach a healthy respect for human nature, for sexual desire, and how to deal with it responsibly, and honorably, and break the cycle of shame and abuse. Think of a world where kids didn’t have to be afraid of adults. Now think of the kind of person who could not survive in a world without shame, who would gladly unleash a hundred Mark Foleys on the teenagers of the world, so long as it meant more shame, more dollars in the collection plate, more votes on election day. There’s your monster.
U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, one of Washington’s leading advocates for missing and exploited kids, doesn’t like the idea of a clothes-free camp for teenagers. After reading a story Wednesday in the New York Times, he decided to raise a fuss.
Foley, running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Bob Graham, plans to deliver letters today to Gov. Jeb Bush and Attorney General Charlie Crist, singling out Lake Como nudist resort in Land O’Lakes, which hosted a bare-skinned youth camp that ended last week.
Foley said the camp, sponsored by the American Association for Nude Recreation, appears to exploit children to make money.
The camps operate under a Florida law that allows people to be nude as long as they’re not lewd. Foley wonders if state statutes should change. Thus the letters to Bush and Crist.
"What’s wrong with your kids going to Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls or sports camps?" Foley, the West Palm Beach Republican, said Wednesday from Washington. "It’s beyond the pale that this is a normal way to bring up a 14-year-old child."
…
Foley, a fifth term congressman, denies that he’s raising the nude camping issue to bolster his chances for the Republican nomination for Senate.
Well your chances of holding any office at all are pretty slim now aren’t they?
The Representative Foley "scandal" is really worthy of a whole book on hypocrisy…
Deux…
On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys…
Trois…
On the other hand, we have a Democratic party that worships (not likes, WORSHIPS) a man named Bill Clinton who did not send suggestive e-mails as far as we know, but who had a barely legal intern give him oral sex…
Quatre…
We have a Republican man in Congress who sent e-mails to teenage boys asking them what they were wearing…
Cinq…
…and an entire party, the Democrats, whose primary constituency, besides the teachers’ unions, is homosexual men and lesbian women…
Six…
I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys…
And Speaking Of Closet Cases That Shouldn’t Be Allowed Anywhere Near Kids…
Via Firedoglake…the unsurprises just keep on coming. Here’s another republican operative and closet case, Matt Drudge, on the despicable predatory sexual behavior of…wait for it…teenage boys …
And if anything, these kids are less innocent — these 16 and 17 year-old beasts…and I’ve seen what they’re doing on YouTube and I’ve seen what they’re doing all over the Internet — oh yeah — you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You’re not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on! The kids are trying to get this out of him. We haven’t got the whole story on this.
Well we’ve got the whole story on you Matt, now don’t we?
You could say "well Drudge, it’s abuse of power, a congressman abusing these impressionable, young 17 year-old beasts, talking about their sex lives with a grown man, on the internet." Because you have to remember, those of us who have seen some of the transcripts of these nasty instant messages. This was two ways, ladies and gentlemen. These kids were playing Foley for everything he was worth. Oh yeah. Oh, I haven’t…they were talking about how many times they’d masturbated, how many times they’d done it with their girlfriends this weekend…all these things and these "innocent children." And this "poor" congressman sitting there typing, "oh am I going to get any," you know?
Well those shameless young hussies. Strutting their stuff in front of that poor closet case of a wack job republican congresscritter. Maybe next congress they’ll put them all in burkas just in case there are any grown adults on capital hill who can’t fucking control their libidos, let alone can’t remember that part of being an adult is Fucking Setting A Goddamn Example!
Obviously the difference between an adolescent and a child is that the teenager is becoming sexually mature. But the operative word there is becoming. At Minimum it is not the prerogative of grown adults to indulge that sexual inexperience and immaturity, to push a kid’s buttons when the kid is only just discovering that the buttons are even there to begin with, for the sake of their own greedy selfish urges…I won’t even dignify it with that beautiful word desire. Jesus Christ Almighty! Adults are supposed to be teaching and encouraging kids at that stage in their lives how to Fucking Manage Their Sexual Nature Responsibly And Honorably not exploiting their inexperience, their naivety, their adolescence, for pleasure, like they’re some kind of sexual junk food.At long last, at long fucking last, is there Anyone left in the republican party that knows how to be an adult?
I can see where a kid would be positively creeped out by what Foley was doing. But I’m 53 years old now, and I can see something else perfectly well: how deliberately, how calculatedly Foley was pushing that kid’s buttons. There is no mistaking it for what it is. Foley was taking sexual advantage of that kid…even if at that point he hadn’t laid a fucking hand on him. I can see how a kid would be creeped out. But as an adult I can see something more. At our age (Foley is a year younger then me it seems) even a guy who has very little life experience knows perfectly well where those buttons are, and just how to push them. That’s what’s so disturbing. Foley is sexually manipulating that kid and the kid sort-of seems to realize it, but he’s still too young to really grasp what’s going on the way a mature adult can.
And the profound embarrassment lurking just behind that kid’s words are palpable to me. Drudge it seems, can only see the surface bravado…but not the heart…of a kid. Why is that not surprising? Are they fucking all a bunch of sociopaths in the republican establishment?
A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.
Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk’s office.
Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don’t get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff."
…
Pages report to either Republican or Democratic supervisors, depending on the political party of the member of Congress who nominate them for the page program.
Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley.
Mark Foley, co-author of the Internet Child Protection Act, supported by the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, is discovered having Internet Chat Room Sex with a 16 year old former congressional page boy. At one time he had an 84 percent rating from the Christian Coalition. He’d voted for the Defense Of Marriage Act, refused to commit to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and after being outed by a reporter for the Advocate, offered lukewarm opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. He consistently refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation, even as it was an open secret on Capital Hill. But in the world of republican virtue and morals, being homosexual is alright, so long as you’re ashamed of it, so long as you keep your sexuality in the shadows, in the gutter, where they think it belongs…
The Open Sewer That Wants To Remake America In Its Image…(Continued)
Via Atrios… The True Blue Patriotic Christian Americans responsible for covering up Mark Foley’s behavior with teenagers (that would be House Majority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Dennis Hastert) are planning a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, who by the way, recently settled a multimillion dollar lawsuit with a young mistress who accused him of abuse. Pam’s House Blend had the details…
Rep. Don Sherwood reached a settlement Tuesday with a former mistress who accused him of abuse in a $5.5 million lawsuit, according to his lawyer.
Terms of the settlement between Sherwood, R-Pa., and Cynthia Ore, with whom he acknowledged a five-year affair, will remain confidential, said Paul Clark, a spokesman for Sherwood’s attorney, Bobby Burchfield.
"Attorneys for Cynthia Ore and Congressman Don Sherwood announced today that their clients have resolved their differences, and the lawsuit will be dismissed," Clark said, reading from a statement.
…Sherwood, a fourth-term congressman, is married with three daughters. He issued a statement this summer apologizing for the affair but denying he physically hurt Ore. He also said she never lived with him, which she had claimed in her lawsuit.
The Open Sewer That Wants To Remake America In Its Image
Pam’s House Blend has a poll up, from the right wing World Net Daily, which asks the question…
What does the Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation mean for the Republican Party?
The highest affirmative response, at 37.66 percent, is…
What Foley did is inexcusable, but if the U.S. is to win the war on terror, republicans must win in November.
Well what a coincidence. As it turns out, 37 percent seems to be about the floor beyond which Bush’s approval ratings never seem to drop any lower, no matter what jackass thing he says or does. Iraq. Katrina. A mountain of debt amid corruption and cronyism that would make Grant blush. None of it seems to matter. Bush never gets below the mid thirties in the polls no matter what.
Well now we now where that 37 percent is coming from don’t we? This is the Bush power base talking. They are the 37 percent of True Blue American Patriots who will vote republican, even if it means putting a grown man who hits on vulnerable teenage boys back into office…for the sake of…what was it again? Oh yes…to bring America back to decent Christian Moral Values.
Remember this the next time some republican starts yapping at you about liberal moral relativism.
Warning…the site I’m linking to here has a really obnoxious streaming video ad that comes up right over the news story after a couple seconds, and may bog down your computer severely. Turn off Javascript before clicking on the link below.
It comes to this: If the victim was killed because his killer wanted to rob him, it’s first degree murder and the killer gets life in prison. But if the victim was gay and made a pass at his killer, then it’s manslaughter and a slap on the wrist…
Gonzalez says back in 2003, he met Trevino on the street and went to his Central Fresno apartment to drink beer. But, he says he was shocked when Trevino made a pass at him and reacted by stabbing Trevino to death.
Michael Idiart, Defense Attorney, said "If you believe that pass, that sexual advance was made then I believe it’s going to come down to two choices– murder-two or voluntary manslaughter." Idiart says both men were drunk and his client killed Trevino in the heat of the moment.
The prosecution says Gonzalez only wanted to Rob Trevino, a factor that would make him guilty of first degree murder…
Dig it. The robbery makes it first degree murder. But the victim’s sexuality makes it voluntary manslaughter. And drooling morons like Richard Cohen wonder why we’re fighting for hate crime laws.
A hard-fought football battle between Melrose and Malden high schools was marred by post-game events Friday night, when an altercation near the field left two Malden students in the hospital.
Following the game, the Malden cheerleading squad exited through the crowd towards the team bus, according to Pat Ruggiero, Melrose director of health, physical education and athletics. According to police reports, a 17-year-old, male cheerleader from Malden alleged that an unidentified female teen from Melrose began harassing him with homosexual slurs.
When the cheerleader ignored the taunts, a male teen accompanying the female, described as a 17-year-old, white male with a lip piercing and wearing a black hat, allegedly punched the cheerleader in the face and several times in the chest.
…
The cheerleader was taken to Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. Another 17-year-old from Malden began hyperventilating during the incident, and was also transported to the hospital.
Pretty obvious what happened…right? Hahahahaha! You must be living on another planet then…
Administrators from both schools conducted an investigation of the incident and had a meeting Wednesday morning to discuss how to proceed. Following the meeting, administrators released the following statement: "It was mutually decided that this is an opportunity for a teachable moment," a press release states. "A diversity rally is being planned for Friday, Sept. 28 to take place concurrently at both schools to speak out against ignorance and promote diversity."
Melrose Superintendent Joe Casey said that five students were interviewed during investigations, and only three or four teens were involved in the actual altercation. He said the students would be disciplined, but no punishment had been determined as of press time Wednesday.
"Neither school feels this rises to the level of being a hate crime," Casey said. "I think what took place was a lot of bad judgment, with a scuffle that followed."
[Emphasis mine] Okay…what the fuck?! A student, perceived to be gay, was beaten badly enough to be taken to the hospital after being repeatedly fag baited by the girl friend of his attacker. Another student who witnessed the attack also had to be taken to the hospital. And this isn’t a hate crime? Ah…no. It’s a Teachable Moment. Right. Let’s teach the gay students of both our schools that we don’t think beating the living crap out of them amounts to a crime. Just…bad judgment.
It’s been decades now since I saw that "For Sale" sign on your house. I can measure the years that have passed in all the little messages I’ve stuck in this or that random bottle, and tossed out into this ocean of time ever since. Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?
If only I hadn’t been such a nerdy little geek. If only I’d had a little more courage to just be myself instead of hiding behind my cameras all the time. And my cartoons. There’s more I wanted to say. But mostly this: You opened up the world for me.
Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?
These little messages in a bottle are the only way I have of waving to you now. But I reckon I’ll keep tossing them in…because I can still hope one of them will find you one day. Because I just want to wave at you one more time. Because I just want to see one more smile. Because I have to know. I tossed another one in yesterday. If it finds you, please wave back. Please.
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