psychotoxic187 wrote:
Masques wrote:
psychotoxic187 wrote:
Here's another funny story some of you mite like. It's funny how they slam Foley, which he was wrong, and needs to be punished. The Democrats have a nasty skeleton in their closet. This guy did the same thing, except he took the underage page on a cruise, and had sex with him, then was re-elected to office 5 times after the fact. Democrats are such hypocrites.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20061002/bs … 02issues01
Studds was forced to give up his committee assignments, I don't recall Foley (who was deputy majority whip (4th highest ranking Republican in the house) being forced to give anything up in the years that this conduct has been known. You can't force someone to resign from office. The next best thing in such an instance is loss of assignments (ie. power) which affects influence and money. None of that excuses the behaviour of the individuals in question.
We even have an example of a congressman who has been charged and pled guilty of a crime (perjury and influence peddling), but who has yet to resign his seat (Bob Ney R-Ohio). Until a congressperson is actually convicted of a crime there is nothing that can remove them from office (save impeachment, which almost never works) if they don't want to vacate a seat.
Very true. Except, they still did not damn Studds, who did have sex with an underage boy. I agree though Foley should be dealt with, he was wrong. But, we're not talking only Republicans knew about this going on, we're talking about people from both sides turning a blind eye to it. They need to be dealt with as well.
I've heard all of this about how Democrats "knew" about what Foley did for months and all I've seen are reports saying that Republicans say that Democrats have known about this for months...consider me non plussed. All of the sources that have mentioned Foley's behaviour in the past have been republicans (Hastert, Reynolds, Alexander, Boehner, Blunt, Fordham, etc.) and apparently the lone Democrat on the pages committee was not notified of the e-mails or IMs. The only thing that kinda-sorta-almost seems like what the Republicans are saying is that the first organization to receive the messages was CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) which is run by former Democratic pages. But in this case CREW immediately forwarded the information to the FBI. It appears that they only released it to the media when the FBI didn't take action.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1006/p02s01-uspo.html The GOP seems to be just baldly making shit up here.
Rep. Patrick McHenry went on Wolf Blitzer's show and made the same accusation. When pressed he couldn't produce any proof and according to ABC news the source of the story was
Republican.
Frankly, the attempts to pin this on Democrats (esp. when there has been so little exploitation of the issue by Democrats) reeks of desperation. They've already tried to blame the pages, the gay, Foley's alcoholism, Foley's supposed molestation as a teen, and now Democrats.
And re: Studds, if removing him from assignments is the most the members of congress can do, how else were they supposed to "damn" him? As I said, congresspersons can remain so unless convicted of a felony. They can even admit to committing a felony and remain in office.