{"id":8713,"date":"2006-10-10T12:34:16","date_gmt":"2006-10-10T16:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8713.html"},"modified":"2006-10-10T12:34:16","modified_gmt":"2006-10-10T16:34:16","slug":"hastert-addresses-foley-scandal-from-a-graveyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hastert-addresses-foley-scandal-from-a-graveyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Hastert addresses Foley scandal — from a graveyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans aren’t much for governing, but they’re usually great when it comes to style (slogans, banners, camera angles, etc.). Why, then, did House Speaker Dennis [tag]Hastert[\/tag] talk to reporters today from a cemetery<\/i><\/a>? Was the metaphor about Republicans fighting for their lives not quite literal enough for the GOP? Atrios has been calling Hastert “dead man walking<\/a>,” but this is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Of course, it wasn’t just the poor choice of locales; what Hastert had to say<\/a> wasn’t particularly encouraging either.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday he’ll dismiss anyone on his staff found to have covered up concerns about ex-Rep. Mark [tag]Foley[\/tag]’s approaches to former pages.<\/p>\n

Hastert said he huddled with his staff last week and in that, in hindsight, the situation could have been better handled. But he added that “if there is a problem, if there was a cover-up, then we should find that out through the investigation process. They’ll be under oath and we’ll find out.”<\/p>\n

“If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs. But I didn’t think anybody at any time in my office did anything wrong,” Hastert told a news conference in Aurora, Ill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s an odd response. Hastert simultaneously said his aides did nothing wrong and<\/i> that they may have been involved in a cover-up. The Speaker seemed to be pinning the blame on his staff indirectly. In other words, he practically told reporters, “See those aides? The ones who knew about Foley but didn’t tell me or take appropriate action? No one should blame them, the ones who may have been involved in a cover-up.”<\/p>\n

It certainly sounded as if Hastert was trying to implicate his aides, blaming them for his negligence. Of course, since two members of the House GOP leadership — House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) — have already said publicly that they spoke with Hastert directly about Foley, blaming the staff hardly seems like an effective strategy.
\n
\nThere were a few other Foley-related developments to pass along. For example, the NYT reported today<\/a> that a former page approached Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) six years ago with concerns about Foley making him feel uncomfortable after a series of suggestive messages.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kolbe, a former member of the board that oversees the House page program, remembers talking to a page with concerns about Mr. Foley’s conduct, said Korenna Cline, Mr. Kolbe’s press secretary. But Mr. Kolbe could not remember whether he confronted Mr. Foley directly, Ms. Cline said, or delegated the matter to his staff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, Kolbe’s office said the lawmaker passed along concerns to Foley’s office and the clerk of the House.<\/p>\n

ABC News, meanwhile, does some interesting follow-up<\/a> on Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite’s (R-Fla.) concerns.<\/p>\n

“Even though the e-mail exchange could be perceived to be innocuous in nature, as a member of Congress who has consistently fought to protect children from predators and who also values the page program, I thought it was incumbent upon me to look further into this matter,” she says. “Therefore on Thursday evening I initiated my own investigation. I discovered that Congressman Foley had made some pages uncomfortable.”<\/p>\n

She also learned — from first hand accounts, she says — about the “incident when Congressman Foley showed up at the page dorm one night, inebriated. I did not know about these incidents until Thursday night. On Friday, September 29, 2006, I discussed what I’d discovered about Congressman Foley with House GOP leadership” — though she won’t say who.<\/p>\n

What’s interesting here is that nowhere in their public stated comments Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday — or since, as far as I can tell — has anyone in the House GOP Leadership mentioned the drunk dorm incident. Indeed, they have confined their discussions to the Instant Messages and e-mails.<\/p>\n

Though, it should be noted, on Tuesday, October 3, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-OH (and in a separate letter, Boehner along with the other three members of the GOP Leadership) asked the clerk of the House to look into the matter.<\/p>\n

Since then, Republicans have assailed the Foley story — ludicrously, with no evidence — as being some nefarious plot between ABC News and their political opponents. The insinuation is that these electronic communications were held until this last month before election day.<\/p>\n

But all of this ignores the fact that Brown-Waite — a loyal, conservative Republican — conducted her own investigation and found evidence of Foley’s behavior that had NOTHING TO DO WITH ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION.<\/p>\n

She claims she uncovered evidence of Foley drunkenly trying to get into the congressional page dorm. She further claims the GOP Leadership knew about this.<\/p>\n

Odd, no?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Odd, yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans aren’t much for governing, but they’re usually great when it comes to style (slogans, banners, camera angles, etc.). Why, then, did House Speaker Dennis [tag]Hastert[\/tag] talk to reporters today from a cemetery? Was the metaphor about Republicans fighting for their lives not quite literal enough for the GOP? Atrios has been calling Hastert “dead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}