Tag: Scandals

From beyond the right wing: Leave it to one of our least-favorite arh-wingnuts, Richard Viguerie, to pile on Republican House leaders while they’re all scrambling to cover their collective sorry asses. The man who thinks Barry Goldwater was a bit too liberal issued this press release today:

Richard A. Viguerie, author of the new book, Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause and a founder of the conservative movement, has called for the immediate resignation of any House GOP leaders who knew of former Congressman Mark Foley’s improper contact with underage pages and took no action.

‘Anyone who covers up such behavior should have the full wraith [sic] of the authorities and of the public fall upon them, because they are the enablers who made it possible.’

Viguerie stated that any public official who takes advantage of a page or intern – someone to whom they are “in loco parentis” (in the place of a parent) – should be treated the same as a teacher or member of the clergy who commits a similar act. “And anyone who covers up such behavior should have the full wraith [sic] of the authorities and of the public fall upon them, because they are the enablers who made it possible.”

He said that calls for a Justice Department investigation “could be part of an effort to cover this up until after the election. Once an investigation is under way, they may claim, falsely, that they can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” He said House GOP leaders must “tell the American people the truth right now, not sweep it under the rug for the next six weeks.”

Said Viguerie: “This isn’t an isolated situation. It is only the most recent example of Republican House leaders doing whatever it takes to hold onto power. If it means spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars on questionable projects, they’ll do it. If it means covering up the most despicable actions of a colleague, they’ll do it.”

“They’ve lost their moral rudder,” Viguerie said of any House leaders who tolerated Foley’s behavior.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on Fox News Sunday yesterday, and came up with the most off-the-wall explanation yet of the House GOP leadership’s failure to deal with Rep. Mark Foley and his “naughty” emails to minors. Gingrich’s spin would be funny if it weren’t so dastardly:

Well, you could have second thoughts about it, but I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would have also been accused of gay bashing.

How many elections have the Republicans won by placing anti-gay initiatives on the ballot? Gay bashing is standard procedure for the GOP, and the House leadership is among the worst. So the idea that they would be afraid of being accused of gay bashing is just silly.

Perhaps Gingrich meant the leaders were afraid of appearing to bash a gay Republican. If so, he was wrong again. They’d happily do it.

Disarray in the Republican Party escalated another notch today when Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida and current host of one of the Fox-Lite rightwing gabfests on MSNBC, posted a harsh critique of his former colleagues on his network’s website:

The fact that Republicans allowed Mark Foley to continue as Chairman of the Committee on Missing and Exploited Children is terrible. The fact that they let him lead the charge on a bill to stop the exploitation of minors on the Internet is unpardonable.

Scarborough also suggests that within the conspiracy by the leaders to cover up Rep. Mark Foley’s emails to the 16 year old boy there was another conspiracy:

Someone had these IM’s and held on to them for a year so to inflict maximum damage on Mark Foley and the Republican Party. Why did this person (or people) withhold possible criminal evidence from authorities? Shouldn’t they also be arrested for obstructing an investigation and preventing congressional leaders from taking whatever steps is necessary to protect these high school pages?

The GOP leadership sat on this thing, hoping to kick it down the field until after the election in order to suppress it until after Foley was re-elected, at which point they would quickly force him out so that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush could appoint a GOP replacement before his term as governor ends in January.

Joe Scarborough suggests that someone had contrary objectives. This person — a disgruntled staffer or someone in the leadership ranks — leaked the emails to thwart the GOP’s continued control of Congress, or perhaps to get Foley personally.

CNN is “live” right now — after 10PM in the east — reporting on the Foley scandal. One big headline is that House Speaker Dennis Hastert has requested an investigation into a possible cover-up of the Foley sex scandal.

And Neither of Them Was Barney Frank

If the scandal erupting over illicit emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, to at least one 16 year-old House page has a familiar ring, it may because 23 years ago the House Ethics Committee charged Rep. Dan Crane, R-Illinois, with having inappropriate relationships with an underage female House page:

After his 1982 re-election, Crane was charged with having a sexual relationship in 1980 with an underage female congressional page. Crane plead guilty to the charge and issued profuse, tearful apologies. He was defeated for re-election in 1984.

During the same 1983 investigations, the Ethics Committee charged Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass, with having sex with a male page:

During the course of the … investigation, Studds publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, a disclosure that, according to a Washington Post article, “apparently was not news to many of his constituents.” Studds stated in an address to the House, “It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official and gay.”

As the House read their censure of him, Studds turned his back and ignored them. Later, at a press conference with the former page standing beside him, the two stated that what had happened between them was nobody’s business but their own.

Rep. Studds was reelected five times before he retired in the mid-1990s.

On C-SPAN this weekend, I heard a rightwinger bring up the sex scandal connected to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, as if to mitigate somehow the Foley scandal. But in the Frank matter, the congressman was not the one having sex, and no one involved was under 18:

In 1990, the House voted to reprimand Frank when it was revealed that Steve Gobie was running a prostitution business from Frank’s apartment. Frank had dismissed Gobie earlier that year after learning of Gobie’s activities.

The Boston Globe, among others, called on Frank to resign, but he refused. The House Ethics Committee recommended Frank be reprimanded because he “reflected discredit upon the House” by using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie’s parking tickets. Attempts to expel or censure Frank failed; instead the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him. This condemnation was not reflected in Frank’s district, where he won re-election in 1990 with 66 percent of the vote, and has won by larger margins ever since.

On Friday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert denied knowing about the inappropriate, probably illegal, emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley to a 16 year-old boy late last summer. Now he’s been forced to ‘fess up and admit he’s known about the emails for months:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday — contradicting the speaker’s assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week.

Hastert did not dispute the claims of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), and his office confirmed that some of Hastert’s top aides knew last year that Foley had been ordered to cease contact with the boy and to treat all pages respectfully.

Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, became the second senior House Republican to say that Hastert has known of Foley’s contacts for months, prompting Democratic attacks about the GOP leadership’s inaction. Foley abruptly resigned his seat Friday.

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post on Friday that he had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert, who appeared to know already of the concerns. Hours later, Boehner contacted The Post to say he could not be sure he had spoken with Hastert.

Yesterday’s developments revealed a rift at the highest echelons of House Republican ranks a month before the Nov. 7 elections, and they threatened to expand the scandal to a full-blown party dilemma.

Only after Reynolds’s definitive statement did Hastert concede yesterday that he may have been notified of some of the questionable activities of Foley, 52, who had co-chaired the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus.

The GOP leadership appears to be in full meltdown:

Republican insiders said Reynolds spoke out because he was angry that Hastert appeared willing to let him take the blame for the party leadership’s silence.