Wednesday, October 04, 2006

On their way to a much warmer place...

I haven't written much on the whole Mark Foley scandal. What's to be said? He used his position to proposition teenage boys, had cybersex with some, met at least one for drinks and 'whatever', and it's still unknown whether he actually engaged in sexual relations with any pages.

Yeah, Foley is gay. So what? That, as a factor, is akin with the Catholic Church blasting gay priests for the church's pedophilia scandals. Makes a great red herring, helps turn the inattentive against gays, and has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand.

My personal take on Foley and his acts: This man is slime. As an adult with a position of authority, he abused his position to proposition (and more?) teens for sex. His position implicitly put pressure on them to go along, or (at the very least) to shut up about it. We now hear that his activities have been going on for years.

The house Republican leaderships has been denying any and all knowledge of this -- taking the "nobody told us" route -- even though there's been a real laughable lack of anything like "getting their stories straight". Unfortunately for Denny Hastert (R - IL, and incidentally Speaker) there's three members to date who've 'flipped' on him. Every man for himself, I guess.

Now, Foley's former chief of staff (who, until today worked in the same role for Tom Reynolds) has gone public. Well, that puts the lie to that one. Lots of speculation out there that Dennis Hastert is toast. Of course, he's denying that he was ever told. Who's telling the truth? I dunno, though I have some strong suspicions. Things are happening fast, and I'm pretty sure truth will out, probably very soon.

How dumb do they think we are? The leadership has known for a long time about Foley and his extracurricular activities, but chose to do nothing. It's not that there was nothing to find. It's not that there was no basis to pry. Foley has been considered "creepy" by the pages for years, and every new class of pages has been warned about him. Seemingly EVERYONE involved with the house has known about this -- EXCEPT the republican leadership. Why didn't they know?

Simple.

THEY DIDN'T WANT TO.

Once ABC got hold of the story with the 'suggestive' emails, it took them a loooong time to find the damning IM's. Umm, it took at least 24 hours. So, what it basically comes down to is that the leadership could have know all about it with a minimum of effort, roughly equivalent to opening their eyes.

Why? Why didn't they want to know?

Politics. Purely politics. Under the Rovian system, you do anything to win. Anything. Whatever it takes. Ethics and morals have a completely different meaning than in the 'real world'. If it helps you to win, it's by definition 'good'. If it hurts your electoral efforts, it's by definition 'bad'.

So, stories of a pedasterist congressman reach the speaker. The congressman is from the speaker's party, so exposure of the congressman is 'bad'. (And if the congressman had been a Democrat, then exposure would have been 'good'.)

The short version is that Hastert (and the rest of the so-called leadership) blew off the danger to the pages, because doing something about Foley would have had a 'bad' effect politically. In their warped system of ethics, they did precisely the correct thing.

In the real world it's the kids that are important. You've got a pedasterist after their butts (literally!) and the top priority is to STOP HIM before he can do any more harm. It's not Hastert's concern, though. The scandal, now, that is a problem.

Priorities.

The ironic thing is that, if when he'd been put on notice that there was a problem, he'd done something about it, there wouldn't be a problem today. The scandal would have been long-since over, and there wouldn't be anything to distract the public from the was and terror.

Instead the house Republican Party is imploding, rumor has it that Dennis Hastert may be out as speaker as early as tomorrow (and, possibly, out of the house entirely) and there's speculation his won't be the only head to roll.

And, with everything going on, has anyone been doing anything to help the kids? At the end of the day, that's what this is supposed to be about.