Foley Quits Amid Allegations of Email Sex Scandal

One of them, for sure.

Cycloptichorn

No wonder blue flame is so far out if he uses that site for news. Good Grief!

Yes, Fox is a sleazy hotbed of lies and disinformayion, isn't it?

Surprised to see you acknowledging it, though.

It isn't.

Fair enough.

I was listening to a talk show, and was reminded about Hastert defending Jefferson at first and afraid that law enforcement had overstepped their bounds in raiding his office. I had forgotten that, so I admit a change of heart a bit. I am tired of pompous legislators either party protecting "this body," meaning they are feeling their self importance. To tell the honest truth, I've never cared for Hastert, he's a pushover for Democrats, so if he isn't telling the truth, lets get the broom and sweep him out. Surely we've got somebody better than this guy that can push a conservative agenda?

But where are the Democrats demanding Jefferson resign? This still goes back to a double standard. Which reminds me, how come Ted Kennedy is still there? And Barney Frank? The list goes on.

SICK NEW FOLEY E-MAILS
SICK NEW FOLEY E-MAILS
HAD VIRTUAL SEX WITH TEEN BETWEEN VOTES
By NILES LATHEM, New York Post Correspondent
October 4, 2006

WASHINGTON - Shocking new Internet messages surfaced yesterday, revealing that former Rep. Mark Foley engaged in online sex with a male high-school page - while taking a break from an important vote on the House floor.

The graphic April 2003 exchange between Foley, the disgraced former chairman of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, and the underage former House page is one of two new sets of instant messages that were obtained by ABC News and published on its Web site.

"Ok[sic] I better go vote . . . did you know you would have this effect on me," writes Maf54, identified as Foley, after the two apparently had what they described to each other earlier as orgasms, according to ABC.

"You go vote . . . I don't want to keep you from doing your job," the teen responds.

"Can I have a kiss goodnight," Foley asks.

"*:- KISS," the teen responds.

In another stunning development, Robert Novak today reveals in his column - published in PostOpinion on Page 31 - that even after House GOP leaders knew that Foley had written an inappropriate e-mail to a 16-year-old former male page, they were still urging him to seek re-election.

Novak writes, "A member of the House leadership told me that Foley, under continuous political pressure because of his sexual orientation, was considering not seeking a seventh term this year but that Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), talked him into running."

In a second set of cyber chats, Foley, author of 15 pieces of legislation designed to protect children from sexual predators, invited yet another teen to his house to drink alcohol, and acknowledged that he was fully aware the boy is underage, according to a partial transcript.

The new shocking instant messages emerged on a day of dramatic twists in an already lurid sex scandal that has rocked the halls of Congress and threatens to reverberate in elections five weeks from now.

Foley's Palm Beach lawyer, David Roth, dropped a bombshell last night, saying his client was sexually abused by a "clergyman" when he was 13 to 15 years old and has carried that "shame" around with him for four decades, affecting his mental health.

"Mark Foley wants you to know he is a gay man," Roth told reporters, adding his client "continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct."

The lawyer said that making the abuse public "is part of Mark's recovery."

Foley checked himself into an undisclosed clinic Sunday for treatment for alcoholism and mental illness.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said yesterday the Justice Department has opened a preliminary inquiry - a precursor to a full scale probe - into the Foley e-mail scandal.

"We are responding to requests to look at the facts," Gonzalez said yesterday. "Obviously, we take these allegations very seriously."

And there were signs last night that the new revelations could be just the tip of the iceberg, with more ex-congressional pages stepping forward.

Sources told The Post that more former pages and other youngsters who held jobs on Capitol Hill are surfacing with tales about Foley - and at least two more members of Congress.

Former pages have set up a link on the social networking Web site Facebook, inviting members to share past experiences with Foley. The name of the site is "I was a House page and Mark Foley totally weirded me out."

The scandal threatens to turn off the conservative Christian base that is so important for Republican turnout in elections. It has also led to calls for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who was aware of some of Foley's inappropriate e-mail contacts with minors last spring, but chose not to act against him.

The latest instant messages published on ABC News' Web site are among 52 new exchanges involving Foley and two different students under 18 that the network said it recently obtained.

Foley was already under fire for exchanging sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages with at least two more underage ex-congressional pages.

The latest exchange took place in April 2003, when the House was voting on HR 1559, the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act.

After saying, "I miss you," Maf54 wrote that the House was still voting and then the exchange veers into heavy sexual content as both appear to write about masturbating while chatting online, ABC said. The second set of instant messages, also with an underage boy, is equally shocking and could further expose Foley to serious criminal charges.

Foley invited the unidentified teen to have "a few drinks" during a Veterans Day weekend.

"Your[sic] not old enough to drink," Maf54 writes.

"shhh,"[sic] the teenager replies.

"we[sic] may need to drink at my house so we don't get busted," Maf54 replied.

House leadership knew about Foley since 1995
Some Say They Felt Uneasy About Representative's Attention
By James V. Grimaldi, Juliet Eilperin and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 4, 2006; A01

In 1995, male House pages were warned to steer clear of a freshman Republican from Florida, who was already learning the names of the teenagers, dashing off notes, letters and e-mails to them, and asking them to join him for ice cream, according to a former page.

Mark Beck-Heyman, now a graduate student in clinical psychology at George Washington University, and more than a dozen other former House pages said in interviews and via e-mail that Rep. Mark Foley was known to be extraordinarily friendly in a way that made some of them uncomfortable.

Beck-Heyman, who was a Republican page and is now a Democrat, said the attention was "weird," and he provided a handwritten letter that Foley sent him after the page left Washington to return home to California. The note suggested that they get together during the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996.

The e-mail exchanges that have become public in recent days are between Foley and male former pages. None of those interviewed said they had received a sexual or suggestive overture from him during their time on Capitol Hill. Yet many of them said they were uneasy about Foley's actions and felt awkward complaining to anyone about them.

"Mark Foley knew that he could get away with this type of behavior with male pages because he was a congressman," said Beck-Heyman, who later worked in the Clinton White House and on Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. "But many people on Capitol Hill," including many Republican staffers, "have known for over 11 years about what was going on and chose to do nothing," he said.

The six-term lawmaker resigned Friday after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit electronic messages he had sent to a former page.

Yesterday, his attorney said Foley has never had sexual contact with a minor.

Also yesterday, ABC reported that Foley had a sexual conversation via instant message with a former page during a House vote in 2003.

Foley was popular with many of the pages. The teenagers come from all over the nation to serve at the Capitol, taking school classes and living in dormitories.

Their schedules are tightly controlled. They travel with adult chaperones and their computers are monitored. They attend social functions and sometimes spend time alone with House members. So when they do receive extra one-on-one attention, it is a big deal.

The pages did, however, receive a lot of attention from Foley. He attended one of their parties in a tuxedo. He donated to the fundraiser that helps pay for their prom and spoke admiringly about them in floor speeches. He learned their names and asked them about themselves. For many, it was welcome attention.

"He was consistently kind," said Bryce Chitwood, president of the 2002 page class. "He was just a very friendly man and was always willing to befriend a page. It was something we appreciated. You find yourself very low on the totem pole of the congressional power scale. For a congressman to act like he was interested in a person and cared about us was something pretty special and pretty important."

Foley spoke about his attachment to the program occasionally as part of the farewell address lawmakers delivered to House pages each summer. In 2002, he discussed how he was tempted "to put some money" in a card he gave to one page who had sent him a graduation notice.

"Then I realized he would tell all of you, and then I would get hundreds of graduation announcements," Foley said, according to the Congressional Record. "So I chose not to."

Another page had won a lunch with the congressman that year at the annual page auction. When he asked to go to Morton's steakhouse, Foley said on the House floor that the two of them "proceeded to cruise down in my BMW to Morton's. And all of this story is meant to make you all feel jealous that you were not the high bidders."

In a separate floor speech two years later, Foley praised the teenagers for their maturity. "Now, I know you have one more year of high school to conclude and that probably is some degree of relief or maybe, to those you feel like you are probably well equipped to enter your first year of college," he said. "Some of you, I think, in conversing with you, some are actually mature enough to enter college right away."

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who served as a Senate page between 1963 and 1967, said Foley's attempts to socialize with pages went beyond the ordinary. Davis and other lawmakers may have taken their own pages to lunch at the Members' Dining Room at the end of the year, Davis said, but anything else was considered inappropriate.

As a page, Davis recalled, "if a member of Congress, a House member or a senator, took the time to talk to you, that was a big deal."

Anna Fry, a former House page who said she had never heard about Foley's advances, said some of her classmates may have been tempted to correspond with the congressman after they left because they were eager to land jobs on Capitol Hill.

"After we graduated, everyone wanted to come back. Everyone was looking for an opportunity to stay in Washington," Fry said. "I can see how a 16-year-old would be vulnerable to that."

Matt Schmitz, a former page whose younger brother also was a page, said: "I certainly warned my little brother, who was a page last year. A few of the members are a little friendlier to the pages."

Beck-Heyman, who contacted The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, joined the page program in the summer of 1995. He said a departing page told him to be "very careful" of Foley. Within weeks, Beck-Heyman said, Foley had learned his name and asked at least once to take him to get ice cream. He declined. After one all-night work session, Beck-Heyman's girlfriend -- another page -- offered to bring him breakfast. Foley asked if she was his girlfriend. "It was an odd conversation," Beck-Heyman said.

After he completed the page program, Beck-Heyman wrote thank-you notes to 10 House members. He received a reply from Foley almost immediately, suggesting that the two meet up during the Republican convention in San Diego.
--------------------------------

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Hmmmm......that article is real tabloid nastiness, isn't it?


Breathless with delight over misdoings....salaciously enjoying what it condemns...full of moral panic and feigned outrage....


Sounds like some of the **** published about Clinton.

Yuck.

innit!

okie, here's a golden oldie from cloak&daggers. It's true enough. I've been researching this call boy ring for years. If things had been pursued then we might have put an end to much of this kind of atrocity. Truthfully this Foley thing should lead to much greater revelations that would matter. Child sexual slavery is rampant on this planet. And not well hidden. 2 American Presidents, Clinton and Bushie have addressed the issue at the UN in major speeches. When that guy Karr was arrested in Thailand tv news was openly talking about child sexual slavery but it was later glossed over once again. There are child sex clubs where many rich and powerful people travel around the world to molest children. When this Foley dust settles the world will go back to ignoring the bigger problem of rampant child sexual slavery on earth. And those who keep on pushing the issue will still be taking crap for caring enough to try to keep the issue alive.

Rosie: The Current Pope Covered Up The Church's Sex Scandal...
World Net Daily | October 4, 2006 at 02:16 PM


Less than three weeks after she insisted on national TV that "radical" Christians in America are just as dangerous as the Islamic terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 terror attacks on America, Rosie O'Donnell is now attacking the pope.

O'Donnell, the newest face on ABC's "The View," yesterday accused Pope Benedict XVI of covering up the Roman Catholic Church's clergy sex scandal for the past two decades - an allegation denied as absurd by Catholics.

blueflame, that's an interesting topic, but a bit off the point of this thread.

Why don't you start another?

snood, it's all connected in my opinion. Hastert reminds me of Cardinal Law. But enough on that. Sorry.

No problem, and it is sort of connected, I guess. But I think the issues you raised - Rosie accusing the pope, and child slavery on a big scale would be interesting threads themselves.

snood, well a thread encompassing the bigger picture of child sexual slavery has been done before. But I could give it a shot. I seem to have a different attitude on sticking strictly to subjects. A bit of wandering dont hurt imo. And rather than a debate I see the forum as being a sharing of info, interaction and counter interaction. In other words on my threads I dont mind a lot of flexibility. Anyway I'll post a thread and call it The Franklin Coverup which I'm sure is old hat for a lot of posters.

There is much greater irony in the Republican party's problem with Foley. In 2004, the Bush reelection and the Republican congressional victories owed a great deal to Karl Rove's "moral values" strategy.

We all know that Democrats are "soft on sin", and that Republicans are just hypocrites

Now, now, fm ... be fair; neither Republicans nor Democrats have any special claim to hypocracy - its the very stuff of politics, without which there neither would nor could be politics.

Video: Another page talks of instant messages from Foley

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday October 4, 2006

Tyson Vivyan, a page who worked in Congress in the late 1990's, claims resigned Rep. Mark Foley also sent him instant messages that were sexual in nature.

"I was surprised ... that a member of Congress, a person in his position," Vivyan told Cosby, "would be fostering these types of conversations with a minor, a former page and a male. That's what really surprised me more than anything."

He continued, "[W]hat was really shocking at all is the fact that even once I discovered who it was, he didn't stop. The conversations continued for quite some time."

A video of Vivyan's appearance on Cosby's show is available here (8mb WMV file).
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Video_Another_page_talks_of_instant_1004.html