So we’ve heard for something like a dozen years now about Values Voters, them folks what vote less for people they think will do a good job than those who they think are Just Plain Good.
Hence our current president.
After all, there’s really no way to look at the fact that he lost the World Trade Center and (almost) New Orleans on his watch and think he’s doing well. His own intelligence agencies have officially said that Iraq didn’t have Weapons of Mass Destruction and that by invading it we merely encouraged global terrorism—and that they can only see things getting worse there over the next year. Meanwhile, given how he allowed Osama bin Laden to attack us on September 11th, invading Afghanistan was a good idea…but then he screwed that up, too, by getting bored and pulling troops out early, thus allowing the mastermind to escape. Heckuva job, Bushie. Heckuva job.
Oh, and it turns out Condi Rice apparently lied to the 9/11 Commission about a previously undisclosed meeting shortly before September 11th. More on that another day.
And, of course, the economy sucks.
And yet that’s not what I’m writing about today. None of that.
No, today I’m writing about many of the most powerful elected officials in Washington D.C. being in on a plot to allow a sexual predator continued access to young and impressionable children.
Pretty amazing, no?
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) were both warned that Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) had been having inappropriate email conversations with pages.
That’s right, pages. Young high school boys who work for Congressmen.
What kind of inappropriate? How’s about a 50-year-old man telling a 16-year-old boy he’d like to slip the tightie-whities off him?
That pretty much fits the bill, dunnit?
Then there’s the IM where he tells a boy to make sure to measure his penis and report back.
Oh, but that’s not all. No, see, the thing is, the Republican leadership knew this congressmen was a sexual predator—they were warned about him back in 2001, and again in 2005.
And they did nothing.
Because they didn’t want to lose his seat to a Democrat.
How’s them for those good ol’ family values politicians like to crow about?
Actually, that’s not entirely true. They did do something. They had a couple meetings about it. And they warned the pages to be careful around him.
Which, I dunno, somehow, just doesn’t really seem like the appropriate action on their part. Especially since at least one page has said he was afraid to be rude Congressman Foley or tell anyone because many of the pages were hoping to go into politics someday—like when they grew up—and as he put it, “they people in Congress, they’ve got the power.”
Oh, and they did one other thing: they kept the emails and IMs secret from the Democrat on the board which oversees the pages. Further proof that they were concerned about power, and not people.
And because a good story always has a nice dose of irony, there’s this: Congressman Foley was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
And that’s not all. He’s now (finally!) being investigated by the FBI for breaking laws he himself helped pass as the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
But that’s not enough. If Foley did indeed commit a crime, it certainly seems to me that those who knew he was bad news and said nothing—and in some cases, took extremely large campaign contributions from Foley, shortly after learning of his misdeeds—then they’re guilty of aiding and abetting.
My question to them Values Voters: what are your values really? Putting Good People into Congress? Or putting people with a little R after their name in?
Oh, and check out this nugget from an abc news site:
Pages report to either Republican or Democratic supervisors, depending on the political party of the member of Congress who nominate them for the page program.
Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley.
Isn't that special? I guess it's open season on the children of Democrats.
Posted by: Tom E. | Monday, October 02, 2006 at 09:28 AM
Read this post again. Scratch your head. Wonder why the Daily Show is more relevant than the news.
Posted by: j | Monday, October 02, 2006 at 11:13 AM
I am particularly fond of the implication that I am not a values voter if I don't vote for limiting the freedoms of gays, government control over a woman's uterus, indiscriminant ecological distruction, and religious intolerance.
Posted by: fish | Monday, October 02, 2006 at 01:45 PM