Got to be Freeh

October 5, 2006

We’ll know more about House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s comeback plan soon, but in the meantime, Roll Call is reporting that Hastert will acquiesce to requests to bring in an outside investigator to determine what happened in the Mark Foley sex scandal. That’s the good news. The bad news is who Hastert picked.

Sources said Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will announce today that former FBI Director [tag]Louis Freeh[/tag] will oversee an investigation of the House page program, which has been rocked in recent days by the scandal surrounding resigned Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.).

[tag]Freeh[/tag]? That would be the same Freeh who wrote a book saying he was too “preoccupied” with trumped up Clinton scandals to do his job. No wonder he caught Hastert’s eye.

Indeed, could the GOP leadership have picked someone less appropriate? Dems should be all over this one. First, they could point out that Freeh is a partisan Republican, who donated nearly $20,000 to the GOP, including Bush, in the last campaign.

Second, one might take note of the fact that, by Freeh’s own argument, he let a sex scandal distract him from real law enforcement work in the 1990s. Why, then, ask him to investigate a sex scandal?

And third, it’s also probably worth remembering that Freeh was helplessly, almost shockingly, incompetent at the FBI.

There’s no great mystery here. Politics drove the House GOP to look the other way on Foley’s predatory problems; politics drove the House GOP to try and cover it up; and politics has driven the House GOP to pick a like-minded Republican to conduct an investigation that will almost certainly tell [tag]Hastert[/tag] & Co. what they want to hear.

Update: Freeh has reportedly turned down the offer and won’t oversee the investigation. Also, CNN reports that Nancy Pelosi has already announced her opposition to Freeh.

October 5, 2006 at 2:29 pm

This would be a more appropriate place for my comment from the previous thread. I’m still amazed that Hastert is calling for expulsion for characters like Foley when he has refused to demand the same treatment for Bob Ney. I’m further amazed that very little notice has been taken of this disparity.

Is Coach Hastert doing everything wrong with this scandel, or has he missed something?

Talk about an arrogance of power. Maybe if he got out of his party caucus sometime and talked to the opposition, or even real people, he might have a better idea of how badly this is playing.

The whole point of Freeh is to attempt to smear the Democrats with “pre-knowledge and failure to report to the police”. Which is pretty sick, considering the Republican’ts have known about Foley for eleven years.

But I suppose Coach Hastert’s talking point is just an admission that Democrats are better at protecting our children than Republican’ts, because clearly the Republican’ts relied on the Democrats to catch Foley, and they are just pissed that we outed him as a sex pervert one month before the election 😉

I hear Ken Starr is looking to get back into the game. Maybe they could make him special presecutor.

I wonder how many of the 5000 or so members and staff have had trysts with Pages. It’s gotta be several of both parties. That’s why the issue has to be accountability, not sex.

Gosh, ya just gotta love it. Every decision they make just comes around and bites them on the a$$. Instead of handling it seriously and straight they try to put in the fix. All I can say is way to go Denny! Each attempt you make to minimize and denigrate this makes it bigger and longer lasting.

I hear Ken Starr is looking to get back into the game. Maybe they could make him special presecutor.

Comment by Liam J

Yeah Dependent Persecutor Starr. He wrote the book!

Good title, CB

Freeh dumb’s just another word
for no values left to lose

Clinton made me screw little boys. It’s his fault for not taking personal responsibility.

It’s going to take longer than six years of Republican rule to restore our moral dignity.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Barney Frank is making me string up Arabs by their thumbs and eat a fetus…

Nice report, CB. Good to see the GOP still hasn’t learned. It’s all still politics and only politics. I sincerely hope the political system will, at long last, come back and bite them on the butt this November.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this in comments on another post, but the timing appears to go back a LOT farther than 2003:

New, Earlier Foley Text Message Surfaces

A choice tidbit:

(Atlanta, Georgia) A former congressional page said Thursday he received sexually suggestive messages from then-representative Mark Foley in 1997.

Tyson Vivyan’s account appears to show the earliest exchange of suggestive messages reported so far between Foley and teens who had served in the Capitol page program. Previous accounts placed the earliest contacts in 2003.

Vivyan, 26, told The Associated Press that Foley began sending him instant messages about a month or two after his nine-month stint as a page ended in June 1997.

The only drawback to this particular revelation is that the page in question did not report it at the time.

Coach Hastert reminds me why everyone always looked down at the phys-ed majors who wanted to be high school coaches at the “number two teacher’s training school” I went to for a year (where I discovered why I had hated 12 years of public education when I saw what they made the majority of teachers out of and how they did it). Shall we say they were the ones who couldn’t have gotten a B.A. in another major???

MSNBC is saying that the Louis Freeh appointment has been squashed, for now, by Pelosi. If true, good for her!

I imagine this is a job no Republican will want. Any investigation will probably turn up ickiness, but more importantly, the pressure from GOP minders to whitewash it all would be intense. OTOH the press will have made a complete whitewash impossible. So there will be lots of opportunities to flush away your reputation and make powerful people mad at you.

Michael W, if I recall correctly, you have a unique insight on the Foley issue since you were a gay teen who had an affair with an older man. From your viewpoint what do you think of Foley’s actions if you don’t mind me asking?

Sorry to keep harping on this, but a correction is in order. I said above that Bob Ney had pleaded guilty to corruption. In fact, he has only made an agreement to do so — the actual plea comes next week. Perfect timing, I say.

Michael W… very interesting. Other reports say pages were warned about Foley as soon as he joined the House in 1995. Either way, it would mean he was up to no good *during* Monicagate.

I say they appoint Bill Clinton to investigate

Comment by Dale — 10/5/2006 @ 3:15 pm

I have to say, I have seen firsthand the damage done by the sexualizing of a 9 year-old boy – not me, but someone else. It screws you up, big time, and requires lots and lots of therapy, and you still probably won’t recover entirely. I’m as liberal as they come, but believe me, it messes with your head if you’re exposed before you’re developmentally ready to understand what’s going on.

Michael W, if I recall correctly, you have a unique insight on the Foley issue since you were a gay teen who had an affair with an older man. From your viewpoint what do you think of Foley’s actions if you don’t mind me asking? – Dale Post 13

I hope I did the blockquote properly.

I don’t mind you asking at all. I think Foley’s actions are reprehensible. A (hopefully somewhat mature) teen approaching an adult not too far out of their age range is one thing. A mature adult approaching the unknown conundrum that is a teen is quite another. In either case, it is the adult’s responsibility to take the appropriate action. Personally, I would never even consider someone under 30, let alone underage–I’ve always had a thing for older men, ya know–I’m 42 now, and it still holds true. Just ask hubby. 😉

I have to say, I have seen firsthand the damage done by the sexualizing of a 9 year-old boy – not me, but someone else. It screws you up, big time, and requires lots and lots of therapy, and you still probably won’t recover entirely. I’m as liberal as they come, but believe me, it messes with your head if you’re exposed before you’re developmentally ready to understand what’s going on. Memekiller Post 16

We apparently cross-posted and I missed your response. You are absolutely right, of course, but there’s a big difference between a 9 year-old child and a 16 year-old teenager. Puberty for one, and life experience for another. A teenager is inately curious about any number of topics, the first and foremost usually being sex. A 9 year-old boy (or girl, for that matter) usually has no conception of what sex is (unless his/her parents happen to be unusually enlightened and explained the facts of life to them). An adult preying on a 9 year-old is much different than a 16 year-old trying to seduce an older man (or woman–Mrs. Robinson, anyone??).

It’s not an easy ethical course to navigate, and the circumstances are different every time. I looked 30 when I was 16. I acted 30 when I was 16 (according to those adults around me at the time. I don’t want to say that my situation was unique, but those of us who grow up gay/lesbian don’t usually have the luxury of a regular childhood. It’s either learn to survive and deal with it, get eaten alive by those around you, or kill yourself thanks to religious guilt.

I chose the first, rather than the latter. I think I made the better decision.

Thanks for speaking from your experiences michael w and memekiller. I guess the objective issues are predation and violating trust.

http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/franklin.htm

Anyone remeber this? Anyone know of the MKUltra program run by the CIA? Does anyone see a chain of linkages, across generations, within the GOP, and, incredibly, with the involvement of the Bush Crime Family? C’mon, folks, we’ve known that this stuff goes on for years. Now, don’t get me wrong, I thank the Grand Ole Perverts for giving us this communal ticket to the ring side seats at their self immolation, and hope that we are able to rid our nation of this group of power whores, but, why do we always look away before the job of cleaning up the mess is finished? What is it that compels us to tolerate and accept the bull s**t? Why did’nt the scandal at the credit union, and the associated scandal involving Boys Town, get resolved at it’s base? Because we the people allowed our leaders to fix the game. We need to demand the truth from our leaders, and hold their feet to the fire until we get it. And, conveniently, we again have an opportunity to do just that. I hope we don’t let the slimy creeps slink away, only to reappear again, somewhere down the road.

Louis Freeh claimed he didn’t know about the COINTELPRO Program–get this–as a sitting federal judge who’d just been nominated to head the FBI.

I’m not for litmus tests, but a minimal understanding of the Constitution, and a willingness to go on record as rejecting the COINTELPRO program and like activities DAMN well oughta be a required statement for ANY judge, FBI agent, AND lawyer. Not to mention the head of the FBI itself.

The Press had asked Freeh of his opinion of COINTELPRO after Clinton had nominated him–but “Judge” Freeh said he wasn’t aware of the biggest threat to American Constitutional democracy during the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet the treasonous hack was –somehow –confirmed.

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