Yes, Mark Foley is a scumbag hypocrite child predator. Plus, it's clear that Hastert and others in Republican leadership knew all about Foley's illegal behavior, for years, and did nothing.

Now here on DU we're seeing a lot of hair-splitting about the definition of pedophilia - a fine example of Republican newspeak spin talking points blah blah blah. How dull.

The larger point is that what Foley did - as far as we know - is nothing as bad as what the Bush administration does every single day in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows where else.

The young men that Foley exploited aren't dead. They weren't sodomized by CIA in Abu Ghraib while their mothers were forced to listen to their screams. They aren't toddlers sobbing in their hooded father's arms behind barbed wire. They didn't have their arms and legs blown off by bombs. They weren't shot at a check-point. They weren't raped, murdered, and set on fire by American troops.

Sure, Foley is a creep and a poster child for Republican hypocrisy. But I'll save my outrage for the real atrocities. I recommend that everyone else on DU keep their eye on the sparrow.

story from 1995, where Foley attacks the ethics of Newt Gingrich, who, this very day, defended the leadership for covering up for Foley on the grounds that they would be slammed for gaybashing. WTF???

http://icestationtango.blogspot.com/2006/10/mark-foley-slammed-gingrich-for-1995.html

But here's the bigger story: If the Republicans are as shocked as they say about Foley's behavior, wtf do they think they're supporting in Iraq?

That's the big question that needs to be asked of every single one of them.

...that allows atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and who knows where else to happen.

It's all the same thing.

NGU.

Foley's hypocrisy is small compared to the atrocities that the Republicans engineered and continue to support. They just approved torture on the floor of the Senate.

NGU.

Today all we see and hear are Republicans running around squawking with their little chicken hawk wings flapping - but where is this outrage for what we are doing in Iraq?

I'm NOT saying that we should downplay what Foley did, or the coverup that Hastert and others engaged in. I AM saying that we can't let it stop there. It's all part of the Republican Party's culture of war and violence.

We need to go for the jugular this time.

They don't give a fuck what happens to the Iraqis.

(as I just wrote elsewhere, here is why)

Habeas Corpus is gone. I can be held in an undisclosed place for an undetermined amount of time tortured however the dictator president says without ever being charged. They want to build a fence along the southern border of my country. They can spy on me, legally. I have less right to privacy, to a fair trial, to any rights than ever before in my life or my parent's lives or my grandparent's lives.

A republican has experienced extreme embarassment at the outing of his sexual predation of 16 yr olds. Others knew, for 5 yrs, that he had a problem and covered it up.

Let me laugh and feel vindictive. They have taken so much from us, let me laugh at his embarassment and their potential legal troubles. Petty? Perhaps. But still.
As sala'amu alaikum, Working in soli

REPUBLICANISM

or is it REPUBLICANITIS

or REPUBLICANOSIS

take the heat off of Iraq and the new Woodward book.. they have enough perverts to keep Iraq out of the news till after the 08 election.. and wont worry about the backlash or reputation of the GOP because they will just steal the next election.. till they can crash the economy and start a martial law decidership or dictatorship.. which ever it will be Fascist and brutal and severe on the poor.

to their torture in a country where the pain, torment, and body-psychological damage will be hidden - possibly forever. They will be like the disappeared people of Argentina and many other countries - within this hemisphere.

Brought to you be PNAC, Kissinger and Associates, and all their friends in the pulpit and Federalist Society and war weapon and services stockholders and blinded Bush lovers calling in to the Washington Journal.

This stupid country makes me sick sometimes. It really does always come down to guns, God, and gays. Like that's all that a lot of people care about. It really does make me ill.

and start screaming about Pell grants instead.

Sheesh.

The Foley outrage is something that the public will connect to, and Dems must run with it.

Yes - all the things you mention are much more important in the grand scheme of things, but the public has proved
that they don't get it.

Like Katrina, the Foley incident sheds light on the overall incompetence of this Congress and, more importantly,
the HYPOCRISY of the Republican Party.

We've got to ride the Foley story for at least two weeks or it looks like Ds are also sluffing it off. Two weeks on Foley,
then connect the dots to bush, Iraq and the whole shebang.

public's attention, if that means we beat them in November...more power to the stupid scandals!

better we call the Foley story a. . .

"red herring"

: An issue, whether legal or factual, raised in a case or law school exam which may be important generally but which has no relevant importance to the question at hand.

We hounds should be at Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove's throats. . .not Foley's who's a pathetic, aging pervert.

The real freaks are getting away with murder.
:banghead:

and when they throw out chum like this to feed the fishies...they've got something pretty big swimming elsewhere.

Something Else that we haven't seen yet.

as well. Some might see these things as gift-horses...but I really don't think the 'media' reports without consent. I don't think it's necessarily planned,..but more an option of weighing fall-out, and orchestrating drama. It's becoming so the mental gymnastics required to ascertain 'truth' in the public arena is like the needle in the haystack...but unlike the needle...you don't always recognize the truth when you find it.

I think that things are so rotten in the WH, Woodward's book and Foley actually help them distract from the even-more-awful.

That's why I keep bringing up those children in Iraq. One day the world might remember.