The Bogus Blog Behind Foley's Fall

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/10/the-bogus-blog-behind-foleys-fall.php

The Bogus Blog Behind Foley's Fall

ABCNews.com brought Mark Foley's boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn't the first website to flog the story. That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle.

In other words, a blog whose sole raison d'etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.

If its time/date stamps are to be trusted (like most free blogware, Blogger allows its users to backdate posts), the pervert-outing anony-site was set up on July 28 as a "clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned citizens."

One early post, headlined The Sickening Six, naming and shaming the "kinds of sick people who hunt minors for their own sick purposes," is basically an amalgam of plagiarized entries from Crimelibrary, Wikipedia, and Answers.com. (Click here, here, and here, for examples.)

After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, "the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!" and posted four emails purportedly from "interns" outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys.

(Of course, if these emails are legit, it means the "interns" somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.)

One "intern" wrote:

"...I came to Washington because I care about the future of America. I wanted to be around good and decent men like President George Bush. Instead, I feel like a piece of meat. The worst part of it for me is there appear to be plenty of my fellow interns who don't mind Foley's particular 'path to power.'"

Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!", claiming they'd been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which initially dismissed them as fakes. ABC, of course, took them more seriously.

Whoever promoted the story on DailyKos did so only 12 minutes after the fateful post went live at 11:06 a.m.:

 

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20061005/2006-10-05T203749Z_01_N05389255_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SCANDAL-CONSPIRATORS-DC.html
Many conspirators seen behind Foley scandal

Oct 5, 4:37 PM (ET)
By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ask some Republicans what is behind the scandal that forced a congressman from their party to resign for sending dirty e-mails to underage boys and they'll give you a list of the usual suspects.

They have fingered Democrats, accused associates of former President Bill Clinton, named liberal billionaire George Soros and questioned the role of the media.

And they've wondered about the motives of the anonymous individuals who gave the e-mails to reporters and the mysterious self-described "nobody" who first published them on the Internet at a Web site called StopSexPredators.

Speaker Dennis Hastert, the top Republican in the House of Representatives who is struggling to keep his job in the face of fury over the scandal, accepted responsibility on Thursday but not before pointing the finger elsewhere.

"The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros," Hastert told the Chicago Tribune.

 

The timing of the disclosure seems to be more important to democrats than either "Foley's reprehensible behavior" or the protection of pages from a sexual predator.

 

Agreed.

I believe democrats have known about Foley at least as long as Republicans have and waited till now to be sure it became public.

I ask the same question of them that they demand of Republicans. Why didn't they do something about it earlier?

It appears the main concern of both Republicans and democrats was politics, not the welfare of the pages or Foley's behavior.

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/foley_flap_highlights_dems_hyp.html


Foley Flap Highlights Dems' Hypocrisy
By Jonah Goldberg

The Democrats prayed for an October surprise, and like manna from heaven, a hypocritical, sexually disturbed Florida Republican dropped into their laps. They looked at the cyber-stalking ephebophile and said, "Behold, this is good."

Overnight, Nancy Pelosi has emerged as the nation's soccer grandmom, leading the mob alleging a GOP cover-up of a supposed sex predator and pedophile. (Foley may or may not be a predator, but pedophiles don't dig post-pubescent teens; ephebophiles do.)

Almost as instantaneously, Democratic candidates denounced their opponents for taking money from Foley, as if acceptance of such funds constituted support for pederasty.

Let me be clear: I carry no water for the House GOP. Less than a month ago, I wrote that it would probably be a good thing if the Republicans lost the House, so I'm hardly inclined to rally to their flag because of their handling of this Foley mess. But let me make a prediction: Despite the moral panic sweeping Washington right now, this will backfire on Democrats, liberals and the gay left.

Self-described progressives are great at whipping up a moral frenzy when it serves their purposes, and hilariously indignant when moral majority types return fire. Remember the national St. Vitus' dance over sexual harassment in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Liberals made sexual harassment their signature issue, rending their clothes and gnashing their teeth over Sens. John Tower and Bob Packwood and Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, among others. The puritanical zeal of these inquisitions cannot be exaggerated.

Then came Bill Clinton, who was, by any fair measure, a worse womanizer than Thomas or the rest of them. The Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit led, inexorably, to revelations of alleged rape and scandalous behavior with an intern. Forced to choose between power and principle, liberals and feminists held an impromptu fire sale on principles.


SNIP

What liberals don't understand is that social conservatives actually believe their moral rhetoric, even when it's politically inconvenient. That's why GOP Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana had to resign when his marital infidelities became public during the Clinton impeachment, much to the chagrin of Democrats who wanted to advance the "everybody does it" defense of Clinton. And that's why vast numbers of social conservatives now want House Speaker Dennis Hastert's head on a pike.

SNIP

Fanning the flames of righteous fervor over Foley will probably reap electoral benefits for Democrats. But the time will come when something like the "Foley standard" will be inconvenient to Democrats. In response, liberals will hold another fire sale. And yet, they will be stunned again when people claim the Democrats don't stand for anything.

 

The Foley Chronology


http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/politics/15685333.htm

Chronology of events in Foley case
Associated Press

Important dates involving the messages that ex-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., reportedly sent to then-current or former House pages.

_2003: Foley, a Florida Republican, reportedly writes sexually explicit instant messages to a male House page.

_May 2003: Foley faces questions about his sexual orientation as he prepares to run for a Senate seat in Florida. He later drops out of the race.

_Before January 2004: Foley's chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, has conversations with senior aides in House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office "asking them to intervene" to address Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, according to Fordham.

_January 2004: Fordham leaves Foley's office.

_Fall 2005: A former page contacts the office of his sponsor, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., about e-mails he had received from Foley that asked about the boy's age, then 16, and his birthday. Foley in one e-mail also requested a photo of the page.

_Alexander's chief of staff calls House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office about the e-mail exchange. Alexander's aide declines to show the message to Hastert's staff and to the clerk of the House, who administers the page program, but says it is not of a sexual nature and that the family simply wants the contact to stop. Hastert said last week he was not aware of "a different set of communications which were sexually explicit ... which Mr. Foley reportedly sent another former page or pages."

_The clerk and Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., meet with Foley, who assures them he was only acting as a mentor to the boy. Shimkus, who chairs a House board that oversees the page program, orders Foley to cease contact with the boy and Foley agrees.

_Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff, begins serving in the same capacity for Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee.

_November 2005: The St. Petersburg Times says it assigned two reporters to investigate after being given copies of the e-mail exchange with the Louisiana teenager. The paper said Saturday it decided not to publish at the time because of the seriousness of what would be implied and because the boy and the family would not go on the record. The Miami Herald says it, too, had a copy of the e-mail but decided not to go public because the message was not sexually explicit and was subject to interpretation.

_Spring 2006: Alexander mentions the Foley situation to House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Alexander says Boehner refers him to Reynolds. Both Boehner and Reynolds say they talk with Hastert about it. Boehner quotes Hastert as telling him the Louisiana page's complaint "had been taken care of." Hastert says later he doesn't recall the meeting with Boehner and the speaker's staff says he did not learn of it until much later.

_July 2006: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal leaning watchdog group, obtains copies of Foley's e-mails and gives them to the FBI. The FBI says later the initial group of e-mails did not rise to the level of a federal offense.

_Sept. 28: ABC News reports on the e-mail exchange with the Louisiana teenager. Foley's Democratic challenger, Tim Mahoney, calls for an investigation into the exchange.

_Sept. 29: Revelations emerge of sexually explicit instant messages Foley sent in 2003 to former pages. Foley resigns. The House votes to refer the matter to the ethics committee.

_Sept. 30: Hastert says he is setting up a hot line for current and former pages and their families to report problems about the page program.

_Oct. 1: Hastert writes a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking for an investigation of Foley's conduct. Hastert writes a similar letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. An FBI spokesman confirms the agency is "conducting an assessment to see if there's been a violation of federal law."

_Oct. 2: Foley's attorney, David Roth, says the former congressman is battling alcoholism and has checked into a rehabilitation facility.

_Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asks the Justice Department to investigate why the Foley e-mails they gave the FBI were not pursued.

_Oct. 3: The Washington Times calls in an editorial for Hastert to resign as speaker. Hastert says he won't resign. President Bush says he supports Hastert's call for an investigation and says he was "shocked and dismayed" at Foley's behavior. Boehner talks about conferring with Hastert in the spring about Foley.

_Roth says at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., that Foley was molested as a child by a member of the clergy but had never had sexual contact with a minor. He says Foley asked him to reveal publicly that Foley is gay.

_Oct. 4: Fordham announces he is resigning as Reynolds' chief of staff and tells The Associated Press he had conversations with House leadership about Foley's behavior prior to January 2004.

_The Justice Department orders the House to preserve Foley's official computer files. A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation says that FBI agents are interviewing participants in the House page program.

_The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirms that it has begun its own preliminary inquiry into Foley's e-mail contacts with House pages.

_Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calls for a group of former senators and others to investigate how the House handled the Foley matter.

 

Do I detect some personal animosity?:laugh:

Get a grip, Jack. raying:

 

The preponderance of the evidence shows that the blog was only part of the strategy for release of the IMs. Timing is everything.:smilewinkgrin: