Terry Cowgill

9 responses so far ↓

• 1 Tom Shachtman // Oct 6, 2006 at 12:45 pm

  Not for publication, but please consider in your article:

  Any barrel can have a bad apple. Foley is at fault, not for being gay but for going after underage boys, and doing it from a classic position of trust and power. But that’s not the real issue; the basic issue is the willingness of the Republican leadership to conceal and protect that bad apple, thus ensuring he’d continue to become more rotten — and their doing so because they knew darned well that if the bad apple was exposed, their stance as the party of moral purity and certitude would be blemished with the voterrs they need the most, the evangelicals.

• 2 nikki // Oct 6, 2006 at 8:57 pm

  1.Do you consider this an isolated scandal that could happen to members of either side or is it a symptom of one-party rule, as we have in Washington right now? It’s the culture of perversion (Foley) and corrpution (Delay, Nay, Cummingham, Rove who just resigned today to name a few) that has become the trademark of this administration. Evil to him who evil thinks (”Honi Soit Qui Mal Pense” if HS french had any lasting impact..)

  2. How would you assess media coverage of the scandal? I wish they gave as much emphasis to the terror bill, and the desecration of the Constitution, the administration cutting VA befits, rewriting the historical number of the jobs report to make it look rosier, saying the dow is at a high (with inflation, its not, that’s hooey).. do you REALLY want me to go on?

  3. What do you think of recent statements by Foley’s attorney that his client has checked into rehab for alcoholism and that he was molested by a clergyman as a high school student? I think it’s garbage.

  4.From what you have observed, do you blame members of the House leadership for not reacting quicker to Foley’s communicatons with the pages?ABOSULTELY. And this INCLUDES our ‘beloved’ Nancy Johnson.

  Do you think this scandal will have significant repercussions on the Congressional elections next month? Should it, for that matter? I sure hope so .. I’m just saddened that this seems to be the only scandal that people react to. There are so many more far reaching problems with this administration.

  thanks for letting me get this off my chest so to speak. I needed that

• 3 nikki // Oct 6, 2006 at 9:21 pm

  oops my bad. Rove didn’t resign, it was some aide of his. Wishful thinking. I have a bad cold and I was delirious.

  damn I was all happy there for a minute.

  oh well. 800 more days..

• 4 Paul Bartomioli // Oct 10, 2006 at 4:50 am

  As always, history is important to the study of politics, as is the understanding of a double standard in this nation concerning the Leftists, aks “democrats.”

  For attribution:

  chuck@chuckmuth.com Thursday, October 5,20061:14 PM PauIBartomioli@msn.com DC Confidential - October 5, 2006

  As you’d expect, the story of Florida Rep. Mark Foley and his salacious IMs (instant messages) to an underage congressional page is the talk of the town here in Washington - just as you’d expect from a city built on sex and scandals. The Republican leadership is in full CYA mode. Conservative activists are in a funk.
  And the Democrats are jumping for joy. Some observations.

  * First, in answer to the question “What is a congressional page?” here’s an explanation from Yahoo. com: “Since 1839, the United States Congress has employed young people as pages who serve as messengers and perform administrative tasks. Currently, the House of Representatives has 72 pages, while the Senate has 30. These pages are high-school juniors from around the country, and competition to become a congressional page is fierce.”

  * If you go to former Rep. Mark Foley’s official website, you now get a notice of the vacancy which includes this opening sentence: “The Washington, D.C. office and the district offices of the Honorable Mark Foley will continue to serve the people of the Sixteenth Congressional District of Florida under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives.” Honorable? Are you kidding me? What idiot left that word in?

  * And what Washington political story would be complete without a healthy dose of world-class hypocrisy. Note that many of the same Democrats now calling for Republican heads to roll for not protecting “the children” (of course) from a pedophile congressman are the same Democrats who want to shut down the Boy Scouts because of its ban on gay scoutmasters. How do these people take such positions without their heads exploding?

  * In Foley’s “defense,” his lawyer now claims that Foley has an alcohol problem and was molested by a clergyman as a teen himself. As for the claim that “demon rum” made him do it, I don’t buy it. Longtime acquaintances are telling the press they never saw Foley touch a drink. But even if he WAS a falling-down-sloppy-Ted-Kennedy-drunk, that’s still no excuse. Ditto if Foley was, indeed, molested himself as a “young stud.” All the more reason NOT to subject someone else to the same pain and agony. Both of these are horsesh*t excuses that no one in their right mind should buy for an instant (message).

  * Speaking of studs, the last time a major sex scandal broke involving a house page, it was a Democrat in the eye of the storm. Just to put things in historical perspective, back in 1983 Democrat Rep. Jerry Studds of Massachusetts admitted to having actual sex (not cyber-sex on a Blackberry, which hadn’t been invented by AI Gore yet) with a 17-year-old page. The House Ethics Committee in the Democrat-controlled Congress decided to give “Studdly” just a reprimand.

  * However, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich objected to the slap on the (limp) wrist and demanded that Studds be censured. The difference being that a censure meant, according to Carl Forti at the National Republican Congressional Committee, “having the disgraced Member stand in the well of the House while their condemnation was reported, and according to Democrat Caucus rules at the time, a loss of committee chairmanship.”

  * On July 20, 1983, the full House voted 338-87 to censure Studds, with 79 Democrats voting against the upgraded punishment. Among current Democrats who voted to let pedophile Studds off the hook: Reps. Howard Berman and Henry Waxman of California, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, John Conyer of Michigan and Chuck Schumer of New York.

  * Unlike Foley, who at least had the decency to resign immediately once caught, Studds remained unrepentant. According to Wikipedia, he “refused to apologize for his behavior, and even turned his back and ignored the censure being read to him. He called a press conference with the former page, in which both stated that the young man, who was 17, consented. Studds had taken the adolescent to Morocco to engage in sexual activity, and therefore did not break any U.S. laws in what he called a ‘private relationship.’ He continued to be reelected until his retirement in
  1996.”

  * But back to Foley: Rumors around town say this is far from the last shoe to drop on this story. There may be other instances of inappropriate behavior with pages which are going to come forward now. Including some involving Democrats. Nancy Pelosis in glass houses might not want to be throwing so many stones.

  * Conservatives are split on whose head, if any, should roll over the scandal. Some are calling for Speaker Hastert to resign (mostly social conservatives). But Hastert’s office is putting up a vigorous defense, maintaining that while the Speaker knew of some innocuous emails a year ago - at which time Foley was told to knock it off - he had no idea about the salacious IMs Foley had been sending until last Friday when the story broke on ABC News. According to the Speaker’s defenders, as soon as Hastert found out about the … IMs, he pulled the plug on Foley.

  * If the Speaker’s account is true - and most folks here take Hastert’s word for it regarding the timeline on what he knew and when he knew it - there are still other questions being raised. Such as, when did ABC News know about the IMs. Some of the more paranoid are suggesting ABC knew about them as early as last August but covered up the story until October when it would do the greatest amount of harm to Republicans. Then again, it’s not paranoia when they really ARE out to get you.

  * Another question is whether or not some Democrats in Congress knew about the IMs last August, as well, and sat on it for maximum political gain. See “Paranoia” above.

  * For the record, HAD Speaker Hastert taken firmer action against Foley sooner based on the inappropriate but not salacious emails that he DID know about, he’d have been skewered by the Left for bowing to the homophobic religious right for going after Foley simply because he was gay. And you can’t deny that the War on Gays constantly being waged in some quarters of the social conservative movement would have left the Speaker open to such a gay-bashing charge.

  * Which brings me to a point: Not all gays are pedophiles, and not all pedophiles are gay. For exhibit #1, I give you William Jefferson Clinton. And don’t give me any guff about Lewinski technically being an adult. She was a stupid, immature little girl with kneepads who was preyed upon by the most powerful man on the planet at the time.

  * Which brings me to another point: When Republicans found a sex pervert in their midst, you didn’t see GOP party and conservative leaders rushing to his defense. No, Republicans drummed him out of office within hours. As Carl Forti of the National Republican Congressional Committee put it on Monday: “The bottom line is that today, Mark Foley is a former Member of Congress without apologists and without supporters in the Republican-controlled Congress.”

  * Compare that to how the Democrats and liberals jumped to the defense of the Pervert In Chief in ‘98, even after he admitted that he lied about having sex with “that woman.” Recall how then-Vice President AI “Buddha” Gore led a phalanx of Democrat leaders to the Rose Garden to extol William Jefferson “Put-Some-Ice-On-That” Clinton as the greatest president in history.

  * And finally, while all the nation’s talking heads and political svengalis are obsessing on the Mark Foley story, a true national scandal goes largely

  unremarked. Before Congress mercifully adjourned for the duration of the fall election campaign,· they passed a port security bill which, as the Wall Street Journal notes again in an editorial today, “would have barred workers who had been convicted of treason, espionage, murder and other serious felonies.” But under pressure from Big Labor, a House-Senate conference, in the dark of night, stripped out the bulk of that provision, allowing some of America’s worst criminals to continue prowling American docks. That would be a House/Senate conference committee made up of a majority of Republican congressmen and senators.

  * On the other hand, Congress did see fit to ban you from using your Visa or MasterCard to place a bet on this Monday’s Ravens/Broncos game in Denver. Tell me again why it’s so important to have a Republican majority in Congress?

  end of history lesson.

  Now, you know the rest of the story.

• 5 Fred Baumgarten // Oct 10, 2006 at 1:34 pm

  There is an interesting article on CounterPunch that asks whether the reaction to this “scandal” is largely fueled by the religious right’s anti-sex agenda. A short excerpt:

  “Sex has never found a welcoming home in America. From the earliest Puritans to today’s religious zealots, sex has been a constant source of discomfort in terms of both personal physical experience and social relations. This discomfort is, at root, what drives the Foley scandal and the public’s peculiar fascination with it.”

  The writer asks whether Foley’s actions rise to the level of “sex crimes.” An interesting question, since Foley never actually “molested” the objects of his obsession — though it can also be argued that his being in a position of power, and in some sense using it, is a form of exploitation or abuse.

  Anyway, the writer goes on to hypothesize that there’s more than a little exploitation involved on the side of those who would use this “scandal” to tighten the screws on gays and other forms of legitimate sexual expression.

  I share his concern. One of the worst chapters in the annals of American life, as far as I’m concerned, was the bizarre witch hunt of daycare “child molesters” in the 70s and 80s, virtually all of whom turned out to be innocent. Let’s hope this new episode does not presage a witch hunt in or out of Congress (should I write that with a lower-case “c”?).

  And, it almost goes without saying, there are far more urgent matters and Congressional crimes to think about, such as the ongoing wars on Iraq, on our economy, and on our freedom. I couldn’t care less if every senator was having sex with a farm animal — but why did every one of them, Democrat and Republican alike, just vote another $70 billion to the “war” effort?

  –Fred–

• 6 Terry // Oct 10, 2006 at 3:10 pm

  Fred,

  There is some sense to what that article says. It could be a Puritanical streak that is driving this scandal and the religious right’s reaction to it. I would hate to see a backlash against all gays because of the actions of a creep like Foley.

  To be fair, however, politics is driving at least the other half. The incriminating emails and IMs were leaked by a group calling itself Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The group has received funding from George Soros, a wealthy and highly partisan activist on the left. And if you take a look at their activities list, they seem to concern themselves primarily with suing Republicans.

  If, as some have suspected, CREW knew about these emails much sooner and delayed their release for maximum impact a month before the midterm elections, then they are just as guilty as Hastert and the rest of the House GOP leadership in not taking action sooner.

  I, too, remember the witch hunt that went on in southern California in day care centers in the 1980s. And as you correctly point out, it was not a proud moment in our history.

• 7 Paul Bartomioli // Oct 10, 2006 at 3:54 pm

  So, the question is what did Hastert know and when did he know it?

  If Hastert was blindsided by not knowing about the IMs, which are indeed quite explicit, his response would appear to be correct, at the time. He thought the discussion was about the emails from an earlier time.

  BTW, what sort of action should have been taken?

• 8 Fred Baumgarten // Oct 10, 2006 at 10:46 pm

  Sure, I totally agree that it’s politics. I’m sure the Dems are falling all over themselves with joy. Actually, I cringe at the thought of sounding conspiratorial, but the whole episode raises curious questions. Who were these “pages” who busily went along with the e-mail exchanges, but then suddenly went and spilled the beans? The whole content and tone of the incident seems fishy. I suspect some kind of entrapment, perhaps?

  –Fred–

• 9 Paul Bartomioli // Oct 11, 2006 at 5:30 am

  No, I don’t think entrapment. The page in question, based upon the emails, was a willing participant, a male version of Monica. He was apparently 17, which legally made him a child, but…

  Foley is a slimeball. He has lied over the years to his friends, confidants and the people he represented in Congress. Somewhere along the way, like Joe Lieberman, Bill Clinton, Nancy Johnson, George Bush, and just about every other career politician, he believed he was above the law. His “public service” record to Florida and the US would protect him.

  Foley is a product of the direction of our society over the last 30? 40? 50? years. Everything is fine to do and practice and no one should be judged.

  I often wonder if Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan would be free men today, if their crimes were committed in the 80s or 90s.

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