THE WEBSITE THAT STARTED IT ALL - STRANGE BUT TRUE
By Rick Moran Posted in 2006 | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (17) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
First, you absolutely must go to American Thinker and read this post from Clarice Feldman on the Foley scandal. It is, to put it mildly, flabbergasting in its implications.
In her article, Clarice mentions the website that started it all. Stop Sex Predators came on line in late July with one post announcing its intention to "serve as a clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned parents and citizens."
The next blog post wasn't until August 17th where the writer listed in a rather desultory manner some more notable sex predators. After that, two posts on August 26, including this curious item:
HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS! On a whim, I googled "Congressional sex scandals." WHOA! You hear stories about 'things' that happen along the gilded halls of power in Washington. But I was shocked to see how much of it goes on the record! From a Washington Post article, here are five...yes, FIVE members of Congress who had incredibly inappropriate relationships with minors. What's worse is that some continued to serve in Congress and one of them is still in office!! How much more of this is going on??
How much more, indeed. The fourth and last post for the entire month of August was a cut and paste from Wikpedia of the Gary Condit affair. More "political predators" on a site dedicated to sex predators in general? Why?
This brings us to September and what could be construed - if one had a suspicious nature - as a "build-up" of sorts to the Foley emails.
After a short post giving a link to a safety website on 9/2, there is another Capitol Hill sex story about an issue that stirred the blogs a bit on 9/4; the "skintern" culture on the Hill that saw young women dressing provocatively in order to get ahead.
Then comes a post on 9/21 that mentions Foley for the first time:
I have been away for a while, so please accept my apologies for the lack of blog posts. BUT....while I was away, the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received! I can hardly believe it! I'm posting each one below. It's proof that the Congressional Corruption of the past is alive and well today. It's up to us to expose it and stop this predatory harassment! Please promote the blog and email any further information to stopsexpredators@gmail.com . Together we will make a difference!
Why would anyone notice this blog? It has posted nothing original in its short existence. The rare postings means that it has not built up any audience whatsoever. The first Technorati reference to the blog is from two days ago. Even a Google search doesn't show it on the first 10 pages when searching for "Stop Sex Predators."
And yet, 3 separate people who had contact with Congressman Foley somehow found this website independent of one another and supposedly sent emails to the owner of this site to complain about Foley's inappropriate behavior.
Possible? Yes. Probable? I'll let you decide.
The question is, are they real emails from real former pages and interns? Does this sound plausible to you?
My dad who gives a lot of money to republicans got me an internship capitolhill. I thought that I was hot shit, having such a good internship after myfreshman year of college.After a few weeks, I was finally learning my way around DC and I wasenjoying my job.One night, I decided to go out with my new fake ID to my first gay bar.I went to this bar named Coblot.There was old guy who would not leave me alone. He kept following me around.I tried to get him to leave me alone by going to the bathroom.Instead he followed me in and tried to grope me.A few days later my boss had me run something over to another congressmansoffice. It turned out that the guy who groped me was Representative MarkFoley.
All three emails sent independent of one another naming the same Congressional pervert? That is really stinking up the smell test.
Finally, we get to the emails sent from Foley to the former Page. These are the emails that the House Republicans knew about and, after investigating the situation, ordered Foley to stay away from the boy and have no more contact outside of official Congressional duties. This was posted last Sunday, 9/24 - a full 5 days before the story broke:
This is absolutely amazing. I just received these emails. They were sent by Congressman Mark Foley to a 16-year-old male page. I have removed his name to protect his identity. But how shocking is this? I can't believe this was emailed to me? There must be even more out there. Email me at stopsexpredators@gmail.com and let me know what we should do!! Something must be done!!
The emails are blurry - probably faxed and not, as the author claims, emailed. But the question is how did they migrate from an incredibly obscure website into the mainstream media? This is indeed a mystery. It is possible that an opposition researcher could have Googled "Foley" and found the tiny website. But search engine rankings being what they are, that would have had to have been one dedicated oppo researcher to find the emails on Stop Sex Predators, a blogspot blog with virtually no posts and zero incoming links.
Clarice informs me that an old friend might be behind the Stop Sex Predators blog:
One of the JOM (Just One Minute) posters who's been paying attention thinks Jason Leopold is the owner of stopsexpredators. The only place we can find a link to the story is another site (from the desk of patrick J fitzgerald which we also think is Leopold) Leopold you may recall was writing all those crazy stories for Truthout including the one that Rove was indicted and the indictment would be unsealed in 24 hours.
Highly speculative, but it fits. Leopold would have been able to make CREW aware of the emails published on the blog. Here's ABC News on the genesis of the story:
Yesterday, we asked the congressman about some much tamer e-mails from one page, and he said he was just being overly friendly. After we posted that story online, we began to hear from a number of other pages who sent these much more explicit, instant messages. When the congressman realized we had them, he resigned.
Instant messages not emails. As ABC makes clear, there are two different stories. The question is, how many sources?
Clarice picks up the narrative:
As soon as the ABC story ran, and organization called C.R.E.W., which said it had the original exchange which Hastert had heard of and the St Peterburg paper had seen, put them on their website .They said they’d earlier conveyed them to the FBI, were releasing them because of the ABC story, and asked for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Republican leadership.It is abundantly clear to me that C.R.E.W. and ABC communicated and may have coordinated the release of this story.
CREW is a liberal public interest group funded by George Soros and seems to have its fingerprints all over this scandal.
The question isn't whether or not Foley is a lowlife pervert who belongs in jail. He does. The question isn't whether the House leadership did a good enough job with the Foley case when it came to their attention. They probably didn't.
The real question is if CREW sat on these emails for months with the knowledge that children were at risk on the Hill thanks to stalker Foley. And if CREW knew, why release the raunchy IM now?
For maximum political damage to Republicans, of course. And I would hope that some enterprising reporters and bloggers out there will ferret out the details of this story and bring to light everything that needs to be known.
UPDATE
Tom McGuire, doing what he does best, lays out what we know about this website and has some more information on how the former page's emails migrated from SSP to the mainstream press:
The River City Mud Bugle has even more backstory:
Two hours later [following the first posting of the former page's emails], someone writing under the name “WHInternNow” published a diary on Daily Kos linking to Stop Sex Predators. The diary was met with skepticism from Daily Kos users, and received only a few largely critical comments. “This diary makes an accusation,” one commenter wrote, “a serious accusation, but provides no evidence to back it up.”
In a previous Daily Kos diary about Foley, “WHInternNow” made an early attempt to draw attention to Foley’s peccadilloes.
So the Kos Kids acted pretty responsibily under the circumstances for which they should be praised.
Come to think of it...if the Kos Kommunity wasn't buying Foley as internet stalker, maybe you liberals out there would like to explain to me why the GOP leadership should have been more skeptical about Foley than their most rabid opponents?
I hope someone keeps digging into this. It may all lead nowhere but there seems to be a rather long history of very clumsy operations to plant dirt in the public arena during campaign season by one side of the aisle. Mysteriously taped Newt strategy phone conversations and Hollywood-style planting of faked documents with a dupe in Texas come to mind. It’s still very early in this smell test but this one already has an odor.
"Everybody has an agenda. Except for me." - Michael Crichton, State of Fear.
But keep plugging away.
make m sick. I realize that the e-mail was actually sent. I realize that someone actually saved their IM's for later reference, but come on. I wondered why thias came out now? I think I have my answer. I hope Foley didn't meet with these YOUNG MEN. By the way, the age of consent in Florida and Washington D.C. is 16. None of this makes it ok. It is just NOT AGAINT the law to be a pervert on the internet these day.
Just ask the Supreme Court.
My prayers are with congresman Foley. Apperently he was a nice guy. (albiet with some deep problems).
sex with a minor on the internet which is what Foley did according to the most recent IMs ABC obtained.
Hope he enjoys the time he will spend in prison
I cannot believ[e] that ANYONE [-] even the most brainwashed of the [R]e[p]ublicans [-] would try to defend this PEDOPHILE. Y[ou] guys are really drinking the Kool-Aid.
"My prayers are with [C]ongres[s]man Foley."[] [Although, to be fair, that was a quote.] GET OUTTA HERE! Prayers[?] [F]or a pedophile[?] I guess this is consistent with the hypocr[is]y [Why is it that nobody ever spells this word correctly? It's the single most used term in the blogosphere.] that plagues the [R]ight. One more s[e]at for us[!]
[Listen, when it comes to particularly emphatic punctuation, don't equivocate. Either use just one, or go straight into five-exclamation point territory.]
"Those who would sacrifice essential freedom for temporary security deserve neither[...]" - Benjamin Franklin
[But he gets points for getting the quote right, if slightly truncated. Not enough to save him from the boot out of the door, but golf claps all around. - Moe Lane]
Aren't we supposed to pray fro enemies and those who despitefully use us? Maybe liberals only pray for those people they like.
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Are you saying the word 'pedophile' *doesn't* mean 'someone who writes distasteful e-mails to someone of legal age'?
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
writings to 16 year old pages doesn't quite meet the definition.
Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. In very rare cases are 16 year olds prepubescent.
Ephebophilia is sexual attraction to post pubescent teens. This definition fits Foley.
Now on to the legal definitions, which are key. Age of consent varies by jurisdiction-but in the US tends to range somewhere around 16-18, or in some cases 14 but with a specific age difference defined between partners. Foley's actions in at least some jurisdictions violate the law, and I hope he is prosecuted to the fullest where he is deemed to have violated it.
Foley's actions are unethical and in my opinion pretty gross and pretty sick. I am not 50 yet, but when I see 16 year old boys I do not think potential sex partner.
I also think that even if in every jurisdiction no crime actually occured, his actions are absolutely unethical. Pages are sent to the congress for experience and their parents expect that they will be kept safe and protected.
Why can't we say it's wrong for a member of Congress to be putting these pages into this situation, without calling him a sick pedophilic predator?
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
except the word "ephebophilia".
While I agree with you that a Congressman in particular should be prosecuted for any law he has broken (nb, this may be hard to prove, as you would need to prove where he was when he did these things) I am very uncomfortable with laws which set the age of consent as high as 18 or which specify a maximum age difference between the parties. If you are old enough to consent at 16, you are old enough to consent with any partner.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
of attacking the victim, someone needs to be looking at the kid's parents and their political affiliations. You don't get to be a page by applying at Job Service. That will tell the story unless the kid himself ran this game; possible but unlikely. Though no one should have any illusions about the things a sixteen year old is capable of these days.
Someone had to consciously keep those IMs; it is possible that the kid just let them sit on his computer, but a willful act was required to gather them and distribute them. Now the kid and parents claim they just wanted the matter to go away, that's easy to say, but it took a willful act to gather and distribute those IMs and only the kid, Foley, and, perhaps, the IM service provider would be in a position to do that.
I don't know what kind of security the House has, but most corporate and goverment networks' security and monitoring systems can't catch IMs. That's why the smart ones ban them on their networks.
In Vino Veritas
read somewhere that the current number of pages in congress are nominated in a 1.5 to 1 ratio, Republican to Democratic.
So most pages are Republican nominated.
As far as the Parents not wanting this to go further, we only have that one Congressman's word that this is so. When and if we hear from the parents we will know more.
...on a related matter:
"People are furious at Republicans. We have some damage to repair. . . . We could certainly lose the House. People are tired of it. Some Republicans have demonstrated a persistent determination to be the divining rod of what is moral and what is not. Now that's coming back to haunt us."
From the Palm Beach Post, 1/31/99
If we can't trust our own GOP leadership to take care of business then thank you to any lefties that exposed Mark Foley for what he is.
I welcome any political group - left or right - to find and expose any of these sexual predators.
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Eliminate the IRS and all payroll taxes! http://www.fairtax.org
I used to be a House LA on the Hill working.
When I was working up there, folks use to refer to the Terrible Three – Barney Frank, Mark Foley, and Jim Kolbe.
Everyone knows about Barney Frank’s exploits…living with a man who ran a gay prostitute ring out of Frank’s house…and how he how used to hit on men much younger than him.
And Jim Kolbe…everyone who works on the Hill has heard rumors about Kolbe. One of my friends even told me that Kolbe hit on him on several occasions.
Despite all the stories, Frank and Kolbe are well respected because when they got caught, they admitted that they were gay.
That and neither Frank nor Kolbe have anything on Foley.