This week the biggest story in the mainstream media has been (unfortunately) the Mark Foley story and his alleged electronic flirtations with a male Congressional page. If proven true, Foley did the right thing by resigning immediately instead of dragging the country thru the mud like Clinton and many other liberals have done in the past. There is no room for that type of promiscuous immoral behavior in Congress. (unless you are a Democrat of course.)
Having said that however I believe some context is usefull in putting this situation in perspective. Everybody knows that liberal Dems who are “outraged” that a homosexual Congressman would flirt on line with a 17-year old male page are being a tad disingenuous.
The Patriot Post has this fantastic piece on the subject.
In the early days of 2001, amid the hasty removal of the letter â??Wâ? from White House keyboards and the theft of the presidential china from Air Force Oneâ??s galley, the departing President Clinton was busily dispensing no fewer than 176 last-minute presidential pardons to convicted criminals from sea to shining sea. One of these was for Mel Reynolds, a former Democrat congressman from Chicago. Reynolds had been serving a five-year federal sentence for fraudulent-loan and campaign-finance practices, having completed a 30-month sentence for 12 counts of statutory rape of a 16-year-old campaign volunteer.
Clinton pardoned Reynolds at the behest of Jessie Jackson, who then snatched up the sleazy pol to work for his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Of course everybody remembers Bill Clintonâ??s infamous affair with 21-year-old intern Monica Lewinskyâ??letâ??s call that the â??Clinton legacy.â? Perhaps fewer, though, recall Jacksonâ??s sordid four-year affair with a subordinate, one Karin Stanford, a staffer with Rainbow/PUSH.
Where was the “outrage” of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid then? Any calls then for Clinton to “step down” or “resign” when he pardoned Congressman Reynolds? Seems to me that Clinton’s pardon of such a sordid individual would be far more “outrageous” than Foley’s on line flirtations.
If not then perhaps consideration should be given to some other notable liberal Democrats involved in far worse sex scandals.
When, in 1983, Democrat Rep. Gerry Studdsâ?? homosexual affair with an underage page was publicized, not only did he refuse to apologize, but he also called a press conference in which he appeared side by side with his 17-year-old conquest, defending his act as a â??mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults.â? Studds was censured, but being from Massachusetts he was re-elected five times. At about the same time, when Republican Rep. Daniel Crane was found to have committed statutory rape with a female page, he too was censuredâ??but voters from Craneâ??s state of Illinois had the good sense to remove him.
Did you get that? Dems re-elected that vermon of an individual Studds five times while Crane was removed by Republicans. That’s how outraged liberal Dems in Mass were I’ll tell ya.
Or consider the case of our own Barney Frank (why are all these guys from Mass?)
Another fine Democrat of the Massachusetts delegation is the all too out-of-the-closet Rep. Barney Frank, who once employed a live-in call-boy lover named Steve Gobie. Frank paid Gobie $20,000 to work as a personal aide while Gobie, a convicted felon, ran a homosexual-prostitution ring from Frankâ??s apartment in the 1980s. When the House convened for disciplinary action against Frank in 1990, only two Democrats voted to censure him. In both cases, Democrats controlled the House and failed to act against these most wayward of members, who not only violated the chamberâ??s ethical standards, but also broke serious laws in so doing.
Democrat Honorable Mentions:
Rep. Fred Richmond, arrested in 1978 for soliciting a 16-year-old girl; Sen. Brock Adams, accused multiple times of drugging, assault and rape beginning in 1988; Rep. Gus Savage, accused of fondling a Peace Corps volunteer during a 1989 African tour; and Sen. Daniel Inouye, accused throughout the 1990s of sexual assault by various women. Then there are Reps. John Young, Wayne Hays and the ever affable Sen. Ted Kennedyâ??all Democrats involved in sexual escapades under Democrat majorities, all of which went unpunished by their colleagues.
Yes Foley’s actions are clearly reprehensible and he deserves whatever punishment he recieves. But does anybody really doubt the liberal-Dem’s real intentions in making this a national issue? The real story here is that the Dems have no positive agenda to run on and an election only weeks away. They were wrong about the Bush Tax Cuts and wrong to oppose the Patriot Act and the Terrorist Dentention Act. Yes Americans know that Iraq is messy, but they don’t favor the cut and run-appeasement strategy of the Dems (err- “strategic redeployment”).
They smell blood and are convinced that they will win back Congress- which they may- who knows. But I believe that every “October Surprise” they have launched in the past have all back fired. This one will too. The American people are not as dumb as the liberal elites in the Democrat “War Room” think they are.