The Big Tent has the exclusive….
We would like to express our support for our congressman, Rodney Alexander, whose office sponsored our son’s position as a House page. As far as we know, Congressman Alexander’s conduct in this matter has been beyond reproach. He has tried his best to do what we have asked him to do from the very beginning: Namely, to protect the privacy of our son and family from the intense media scrutiny we are now having to endure.
In the fall of 2005, as soon as Congressman Alexander became aware of the e-mails received by our son, he called us. He explained that his office had been made aware of these e-mails by our son and that while he thought the e-mails were overly friendly, he did not think, nor did we think, that they were offensive enough to warrant an investigation.
Rather, we asked him to see that Congressman Foley stop e-mailing or contacting our son and to otherwise drop the matter in order to avoid a media frenzy. He did so. If we had any other knowledge or evidence of potential impropriety, we would have asked for the matter to be treated differently. For instance, we were not aware of the instant messages that have come to light in the past few days.
These instant messages, which have only recently surfaced as a result of the news of the ambiguous e-mails received by our son, are separate matters.
As a young man with integrity who had the courage to question the intention of the e-mails, we respect and honor our son as a hero. Despite his courageous actions, he is becoming a victim due to the harassment by some of the media. Please honor our request that we be left alone. There is nothing more that we can contribute to this ongoing matter. He is not the story, and we feel this intense media scrutiny could endanger our son and family.
We have no intention of discussing this further. Thank you.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Note the family considers the “media” a source of fear and harassment at this point. How ironic.
And this from Fox News:
Internal Poll Suggests Hastert Could Devastate GOP
WASHINGTON — House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.
“The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,” a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. “And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss.”
Most GOP lawmakers have stood by Hastert, pending a full airing of the facts in his handling of the Mark Foley affair, in which the former Florida representative was caught exchanging salacious messages with teen pages in Congress. The new polling data, however, suggests that many voters already have made up their minds.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,218043,00.html
Umm… I thought the party line here was that this kid (a) wasn’t a minor at the time and (b) entrapped Foley into it via a prank and (c) deserved whatever he got after a conservative blog identified him and published his names and pictures. Now he is some kind of victim?
If it wasn’t for conservative bloggers, no one would know who this kid is. So why is all the blame reserved for others?
Thank you for demonstrating your utter lack of grasp of this situation, Anonymous.
The statement here cited is from the family of the page to whom the emails were written and who reported them to Republican representatives and leadership.
What you, like the rest of the Pelosi puppets are doing, is conflating the emails with the instant messages.
Why? Because doing so allows you to claim that Republicans “should have investigated” when, in fact, not even the family that reported an issue to them thought it was worthy of an investigation.
Fact of the matter is, Pelosi and the Dems somehow managed to materialize those instant messages — but sat on them for months, despite their wringing-hand rhetoric that failing to act would “endanger children”, and did not pass them on to Republican leadership so that they could act.
Well, if the family doesn’t object to the sexual overtures of a Congressman to their teenaged son, why in the world should anyone else be concerned?
I bet, NDT, if you put on your pointy thinking cap, you can come up with the reason a family might choose not to make an issue out of their son’s flirtatious chat with an adult man.
#5 The point is that the e-mails that everyone knew about and supposedly should have taken action on weren’t something obviously actionable. The boy felt uncomfortable and the parents asked that Foley stop e-mailing him but no one felt there was something that needed to be done about it.
Except in retrospect.
Looking back, with the IM conversations in mind, the e-mail exchanges seem far creepier than they would have seemed without other information.
#3 Demonstrates complete confusion about events and claims made by anyone here.
And in my home state, the attorney general who is running against the Republican congressional incumbant is claiming that she is responsible for knowing about Foley and doing something while the attorney general has directly presided over a judicial system that let a man who solicited, exposed himself via web-cam, and gone to meet his “14 year old” chat partner for the purpose of having sex and confessed to it, off.
An attorney general with all the facts and a confession and she’s not responsible for letting a pervert walk, but a republican congresswoman is responsible for information she didn’t even have.
It’s Democrat math.
JonathanG spouts the Liberal Family Talking Points quite well — the Central Government can take care of our children much better than their parents can. Yeh, right.
All power to Washington! Heil Pelosi. Heil Kerry.
I bet, NDT, if you put on your pointy thinking cap, you can come up with the reason a family might choose not to make an issue out of their son’s flirtatious chat with an adult man.
LOL…..and again you demonstrate your bot powers of conflation.
The person in question here did not have “flirtatious chat” with Foley; he was the recipient of Foley’s emails.
Why can’t you understand that differentiation?
-Fact of the matter is, Pelosi and the Dems somehow managed to materialize those instant messages –
Didn’t The Hill say that Republicans are the ones who gave info to ABC?
I remember Drudge saying the pages involved in this were “beasts”, and other such colorful language, and one of them had his name and photo put on a conservative blog. Obviously the boy who contacted Rodney Alexander is a different matter, but I do wonder if some are conflating him as part of some group out to get Foley. I feel sorry for him and his family.
National Journaly has a pretty good article on the fears of gay Republicans in DC:
http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/1005nj1.htm
“JonathanG spouts the Liberal Family Talking Points quite well — the Central Government can take care of our children much better than their parents can. Yeh, right.
All power to Washington! Heil Pelosi. Heil Kerry.
Comment by GayPatriot — October 5, 2006 @ ”
Uh, buy a clue, Brucey. This isn’t about one page.
Are you saying you oppose an investigation into Foley’s behavior unless families demand it? Just curious.
#6: “The point is that the e-mails that everyone knew about and supposedly should have taken action on weren’t something obviously actionable. The boy felt uncomfortable and the parents asked that Foley stop e-mailing him but no one felt there was something that needed to be done about it.”
You are making the mistake of considering the emails in isolation. Someone knew enough about Foley’s predilections for there have been years of warnings to pages to watch out for him. Furthermore, Fordham has stated the following:
“The fact is, even prior to the existence of the Foley email exchanges I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest levels of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate behavior.”
In light of what was known already about Foley, the complaint by the parents should have at the minimum resulted in a quiet bipartisan investigation by the whole page board. But the GOP House leadership chose to do nothing rather than risk an embarrassment going into an election year. Bad leadership and bad judgement.