Image Credit: House.gov.
GOP is Adrift in Shame
BBSNews 2006-10-09 -- J. Dennis Hastert should stay as Speaker of the US House of Representatives. As a former teacher and coach no one could have expected him to be suspicious of Mark Foley, the now disgraced and resigned former Republican Representative. After all, here is the first message that he admits to knowing about:
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House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Republican from Illinois.
Image Credit: House.gov. |
"how are you weathering the hurricane...are you safe...send me an email pic of you as well...."In another email to the sixteen year-old Foley wrote:
"I am in North Carolina..and it was 100 in New Orleans... wow that's really hot... well do you miss DC... Its raining here but 68 degrees so who can argue.. did you have fun at your conference.... what do you want for your birthday comin up... what stuff do you like to do"
The 16 year-old kid was getting these emails from a 52 year-old Congressman using his personal AOL account. Everyone must sympathize with Hastert and see how innocent this all was. Who could expect that anything untoward was going on based upon such an innocent exchange?
Surely if a school bus driver was the same age and emailing teenage students so innocuously no eyebrows would be raised?
Or a teacher, or a coach. It's perfectly normal for adults of that age to be emailing students with their personal email accounts and be asking them personal questions?
Upon reading a seemingly relevent section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guide about online sexual predators they say an online sexual predator has the following characteristics:
"There are individuals who attempt to sexually exploit children through the use of on-line services and the Internet. Some of these individuals gradually seduce their targets through the use of attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts. These individuals are often willing to devote considerable amounts of time, money, and energy in this process. They listen to and empathize with the problems of children. They will be aware of the latest music, hobbies, and interests of children. These individuals attempt to gradually lower children's inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content into their conversations."
After seeing that how could anyone expect a former coach and teacher to see anything wrong in such an exchange with a minor?
What is obvious is there must be a vast left-wing conspiracy to blow all this out of proportion. This, the very first "innocent" revelation of "overly friendly" emails from a 52 year-old man and a 16 year-old page. Or it must be the fault of Hastert's staff. Or it's ABC News. Or the Democrats.
Hastert and the others who should have been worrying about the well-being of the young pages in their midst were obviously fully in control of the situation. They had this information and then sat on it, pointedly keeping it away from any Democrats who might have been moved in a different direction than the Republicans who attempted to keep this as quiet as possible.
It does not matter all that other stuff that is coming out now about the extent of Mark Foley's actions. That should not be blamed on Hastert and the other Republicans in charge because clearly they were only aware of the "innocent" emails.
And that is the stand of America's evangelicals. They are lending an exceedingly strong anti-gay defense of Hastert by claiming that it was Foley's "lifestyle," which means gay in evangelical speak, that led to his alleged seducing of youngsters over the internet. Their issues remain abortion, school-prayer and other mixing of public government with evangelical Christianity, and of course, opposing any equal rights for gays to marry.
They apparently see no moral dilemna in House leaders claiming ignorance of behavior that recent news reports puts Foley and Congressional pages together as far back as 1999. And they have no problem continuing to vote for them because as long Republicans stay in complete charge of US Government, they believe they can deny equal rights to gays, erode a womans right to decide what happens with her own body, (for after all she is simply but a "help meet" to take care of men and do their bidding) and they can influence Republicans to try their best to intermix government and evangelical Christianity so as to proclaim the "good news" to captive audiences in America's pubic schools by decrying Evolution and introducing Christianity based text book standards.
The evangelicals will apparently ignore what occurred under Hastert's purview to make sure they keep the majority that does their work. President Bush is reported to be appearing with Hastert on Thursday according to an article by Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun Times and then Saturday Presidential spokesman Tony Snow is to appear also at a Hastert fund-raising event.
From the top down, the "clueless or coverup" crowd is intent on ignoring the huge credibility problem on basic morality and the protection of children to keep a majority in American government. This reflects an institutional corruption where the ends justify the means.
This has fostered calls from some to look at the most current Republican scandal in a string of GOP corruption related scandals through a lens of what would happen if you "values" voters don't ignore what has happened? You'll get Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, you'll have cut and run from Iraq, you'll have to pay more taxes, President Bush will be impeached for misleading the US into a foolish war of choice on Iraq.
Democrats should stop calls for Hastert to resign and pray he does not before the November elections. It has been established in a news report that Mark Foley had sex with a former page and disturbingly it looks like he was actually eyeing these pages in their fish bowl existance and determining their sexuality and incredibly the size of their genitals for later when they had been out of the page program and had gotten a little older.
This goes directly to the top, those offering support for Hastert and the House leadership are tacitly endorsing behavior that would not be tolerated in any workplace of public school in America. There was enough in the initial emails to warrant further investigation. In the workplace harrassment is taken very seriously. If an employee went to a supervisor with a complaint about inappropriate email that they termed as "sick, sick, sick, sick" in their complaint, managers in most corporate workplaces in the US have a process in place that must be strictly followed. Schools are also attentive to predatory behavior, it goes with the territory.
Dennis Hastert is currently serving as the masthead of the GOP no-shame party and he should remain there until the election in November frees him from his current position. The saddest part for the GOP is had Hastert and the other leaders done the right thing in the first place, they really would look like the party of values and probably would be in little danger of losing their majority.
Since they did not do this, and apparently instead worried about maintaining their majority power, the GOP looks like a party that has lost its moral compass and is adrift in shame.
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