All You Need to Know about Foley’s Folly (video, audio, and documents)
New information springs to the forefront by the hour, making it increasingly difficult to keep all the facts straight. So I’ve compiled a list of online resources to keep you up-to-date with this developing story.
*E-mails from Foley to intern pages were originally released on September 24 by a (http://stopsexpredators.blogspot.com/) blogger. ABC caught wind of the story and made an official news release on the 28th (link: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/sixteenyearold_.html).
*Wikipedia has detailed the scandal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley_scandal (and you can also get more info on Mark Foley at his personal wikipedia article).
The e-mails themselves are not “so” sexually explicit as the rage over them may imply. It was the Instant Messaging that really got Foley in trouble (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2509586&page=1). What only added to the fury of all who learned of the Congressman’s sins was the fact that he has held hardline positions against molesters, rapists, and internet predators throughout his political career, even going so far as to appear on America’s Most Wanted to publicly give his opinions (video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acS7ugGPRNY). He was also trying to pass legislature called “The Child Safety Act [for missing and exploited children]” (ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Caucus_on_Missing_and_Exploited_Children) and even appeared on O’ Reilly to make his case for the Act (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34V_6ZpiFCs).
What makes the case worse, however, is that Foley had been allegedly (according to previous interns) engaging in this inappropriate behavior since the mid nineties, though the conversations under current investigation took place between 2003 and 2005. This allegation has brought the entire Republican Party under fire, and rightfully so. A 16 year old page sent an e-mail to R-La Rodney Alexander on August 30, 2005 complaining about Foley’s unwanted attention (that e-mail: http://www.citizensforethics.org/filelibrary/FoleyEmailExchangeUpdated.pdf), but—obviously—nothing was done to see that the indecency stopped. Alexander maintains that this was because the page’s parents didn’t want a big deal to be made out of something they evidently thought was not very serious. But Rodney Alexander did meet with Foley and told him to stop that kind of interaction with the pages (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01foley.html?ex=1317355200&en=3cc73da1de57ef98&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss).
On July 21, 2006, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_Responsibility_and_Ethics_in_Washington) received copies of the e-mails and immediately passed them on to the FBI, which decided that the matter wasn’t serious enough to open an investigation (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/03foley.html?ex=1317528000&en=facfda09162eea42&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss). (Indeed, some pages sent copies of Foley’s e-mails to the St. Petersburg Times back in 2005, but the publication thought the content to be merely “friendly chit-chat” and declined to run a story.)
Two months later, Mark Foley resigned, and then, a few days later—on October 2—Foley checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic for alcohol-abuse. The following day, his lawyer issued a statement insisting that “Mark Foley has never, ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor in his life. He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile.”
Really? Could of fooled me.
This is not the first political scandal to ever occur (comprehensive list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandals_of_the_United_States#Sex_Scandals), but it is a particularly disturbing one, with awful consequences to the Republican Party as a whole, not to mention Foley himself (who certainly deserves to be criminally prosecuted).
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