Foley scandal ends, panel finds ‘negligence’ among GOP leaders

December 8, 2006

The end of the [tag]Mark Foley[/tag] scandal (Page-gate?) seems a little anti-climactic now; at least as far as the politics goes, the elections seemed to punish most of the people responsible. Still, it’s interesting that a bipartisan ethics panel found that GOP leaders were negligent in their handling of this mess.

The House ethics committee has found that Republican leaders did not break any rules in handling allegations against former Rep. Mark Foley, but that they were negligent in protecting the teenage pages, a congressional report said.

No one will be reprimanded, the source said.

“The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment; it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House,” the report’s executive summary states.

It further states that some who knew of the allegations shifted responsibility and some declined to probe too deeply into the matter, while “others tried repeatedly to elevate the matter, but encountered obstacles in the chain of command.”

“In all, a pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Representative Foley’s conduct,” the report states.

I have not yet read the whole document, but the “willfully ignorant” line certainly sounds like a fairly direct shot at Dennis Hastert. Indeed, who else could they be talking about?

You can read the whole report online. It’s a little disappointing that members’ negligence won’t lead to any formal punishments or reprimands, but for Hastert, Reynolds, Boehner, and others, the fact that the scandal helped push them back into the minority is probably the most appropriate penalty of all.

“the fact that the scandal helped push them back into the minority is probably the most appropriate penalty of all.” – CB

I’d say so. Since most of Foley’s conduct was with ex-pages who he seemed to have seduced into ever more raunchy conduct, I’ve kind of feel that was happened here is that the Republican’ts betrayed the delusions of THE BASE, thinking they could coddle a predatory creep and still keep their Theocratic Reactionaries happy.

  • Congressional ethics oversight is a joke.
    If Nancy wants to drain the swamp she should fix the broken pump what was supposed to keep it dry.

  • Republican leaders were negligent, but didn’t break any rules and won’t be reprimanded. Huh?

  • The Democratic ethics Committee put Whitewater to bed in ’93 and the Republicans opened it up again in ’95. This would be a suitable item for the Dems to re-open for it’s value as an historical lesson in “what goes around, comes around”

  • I love how they spent twenty minutes congratulating themselves on doing such a thorough job, told reporters they could read it on the Internet, then ran for the exits instead of answering questions. Damn, that was some fine happy dancing, boyz.

  • “willfully ignorant” is a charge that has frequently been leveled against the president himself, on sites such as antiwar.com. It fits there as it fits here, except that Denny Hastert paid the price for his willful ignorance, while Bush continues to sleepwalk his way through The Great American Disaster.

  • Spellcheck: Republican leaders were “negligent”? Or Republican leaders wore “negligees”?

  • Well, I for one am sure that if the Democratic leadership let a child predator run amok and blocked investigations of the predator’s conduct, the Republicans would allow them to let it drop, and maybe even give the Democratic leadership some nice offices. Puh Lease.

    I say if the Dems don’t beat the living CRAP out of the Republicans when they get caught doing this kind of shit, then the Dems suck. Bad.

    Not that they’re worse than the R’s, they’re not, but jezus cripes, child predation is the LOWEST crime, and the Dems on the bipartisan panel are going to let them off the hook?

    WTF.

  • Just for the record, this is not a pedophilia scandal, it’s an ephebophilia scandal. (I hope I spelled that right.)

    Even so, there is no excuse for Foley or the repugnant enablers who let it continue for so long.

  • “Just for the record, this is not a pedophilia scandal, it’s an ephebophilia scandal.” – Michael W.

    And unless I missed something, except for one drunken incident outside the page dorm, Foley kept his ‘philia’ to just that, liking. There was no physical child abuse and as HE was the one they trusted to write the laws on internet stalking, there was probably no violation of those laws either.

    The physical relationships seemed to be with legal teens.

  • Like everything else in whole sorry episode and many more like it, what we interpret as sexual misconduct is, at base, an abuse of power relationships. The pages have no power, don’t vote, so screw ’em (so to speak). Great example of Congressional ethics (so to speak).

  • And additionally, the talk here in the Chicago area is that Hastert will be resigning at the end of his term (2 more years). It sounds like he is bucking for an appointment as ambassador to Japan if he can wrangle it out of W.

  • Given Hastert’s wrestling background and elephantine carriage, I assume he’s got some Sumo plans…

    Let’s not allow the Shimkus comment to go unremarked upon, though. Why didn’t he tell Killdee? Because “he’s a Democrat.”

    No, Foley didn’t actually molest any children. But if he had, that would have been a preferable outcome for our Republican moral betters than allowing the Democrats to find out about his sexcapades, and possibly take corrective action.

    You wonder, honestly, if these guys would cover up murderers, were they in “safe” seats and proven as skilled fundraisers.

    I’m still in amazement that nobody has highlighted DeLay’s possible/likely role in all this. The bastard was legendary for the close tabs he kept on his caucus, and of course his sharp political elbows and fanatical zeal for raising money. Isn’t it likely that he knew Foley’s deal and chose to keep him in place anyway, for all he brought to the Holy Cause?

    Has anyone ever so much as asked what DeLay knew, and when he knew it?

  • So, the pages don’t have any power to say no to inappropriate conduct by the Senators. Was Monica powerless also? It would seem she was.

  • Uh Fallenwomen,

    It wasn’t senators. It was Congressmen. Next, the pages did complain and nothing was done. If Bill Clinton had tried to rape Monica then I would see your point. But he didn’t. From what I do know, she went down on Bill willingly and in turn he nearly went down due to impeachment.

    However this makes me wonder about your world view.

    Does this mean that a mere conscentual blowjob is more important than going to war under false pretenses, failing to plan, planning to fail, wasting billions if not trillions of YOUR tax dollars, getting into serious debt to COMMUNIST CHINA and killing thousands of people?

    Because it would seem it is.

  • The more I think about this the more incensed I become. If this had happened at a local school board in some small town in the middle of nowhere, the locals would be up in arms that their kids were subjected to such behavior as Foley and Republican “leadership” displayed. So called “leadership” covered Foley’s continuing shenanigans. for years. And truthfully, the fact that his relationships with pages may not have been physical is immaterial. Foley should have been ridden out of town on a rail.

    To think that the same self-righteous, santimonious slugs who feined such outrage that justified putting the nation through the impeachment of a president for lying about an affair between two consenting adults (something many of them were equally guilty of), now see fit to stand by and take no action when Congressional leaders do nothing to stop a predator of underage pages entrusted to their care — unconciounable nor any other word I can think of can begin to describe.

    These men are not qualified to serve the public as dog catchers. Given the chance, they didn’t.

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