The Foley Case

The Foley Sex Scandal hit the headlines in September, 2006 when it was learned that Representative Mark Foley, number four man in the House leadership, had been sending sexually inappropriate e-mails to a 16 year old House page. The leadership and Ethics Committee Republicans had been aware of the harassment of this sixteen year old for eleven months and had not acted. Within two days of the breaking of the story, more evidence was produced that showed that the leadership knew about Foley sending sexually inappropriate e-mails to pages as early as 2001.There was even more evidence that there had been discussions about Foley’s problem within the leadership in the last year. Though knowing Foley could prove an embarrassment, Carl Rove asked him to run again in 2004.

Before ten days had passed, it was known that Rep. Jim Kolbe, then head of the Pages’ Board saw Foley’s messages in 2000. Kirt Fordham, Foley’s former chief of staff, said he alerted Hastert’s office of Foley’s troubling misconduct more than three years ago, Fordham went on to become chief of staff for Tom Reynolds, chair of the congressional Campaign Committee. Others in the leadership said they alerted Hastert a year ago. A former page told the Los Angeles Times that Foley stayed in contact with him after he left Washington and that they had sex when the young man was 21. Majority members of the Congressional Pages Board were aware of the problem but this information was withheld from the Democratic member.

The press covered the story in terms of whether the scan dal would lead conservative Christians to stay home on November 7 rather than show up and vote Republican as usual. These good people do not approve of sexual immorality, but they hate still more "liberals," whom they imagine are "elitists" who detest and somehow conspire against ordinary Americans. Perhaps regular conservative Christian voters will stay home because they have learned that the Bushies use them and otherwise make fun of them, but most will turn out to exorcise the demons clergy and clever Republican spinmasters have inserted into their streams of consciousness.

Who can forget the host of Republican Congressmen exposed as degenerates, adulterers, and home-wreckers in the Clinton days. The Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals did not punish them. More recently, fifteen godly House Republicans, mostly from the Appropriations committee, were found exchanging votes for adult sex. There was no conservative Christian outcry. One of the most pious Christian Congressmen in California was recently photographed with a prostitute, but apparently his Christian constitutents have ignored the infraction, perhaps thinking that he, like Gladstone, was trying to convert her.