We should resist taking the bait.

Don't even answer this crap. No one condones child abuse, period. So anyone that knew, and did not act, on this issue is culpable. And the only testimony so far is that the GOP leadership knew there was a problem.

Just keep hammering that home, along with Rice blowing off the terror warning in 2001 (twice), the no-plan plan for post-war Iraq, the overuse of troops that have already served, (to avoid pissing off more service families), Katrina, Abramoff, etc.

Mark,

Good points. However, the best part of this is that the simple message belongs to the Democratic side - he's a sex predator - while the complicated arguments are coming from the Repugs. And, what's more, the same sort of childish responsibility-dodging-arguments that the Repugs use for complicated things which many people can't or won't follow are being made for this; which people do understand.

BUT - let's not respond to Repug arguments. Let's just label Foley and the leadership what they are in plain and simple words.

If the Democratic party cannot make hay out of this then we really are gonners.

Bush: Let a thousand brownies bloom.

Word has it that O'Reilly checks under his bed every morning to see if Soros is there.

The part the Grand Old Perverts can't seem to figure out is that there is a difference between sex and crime. Pedophilia: crime. Rape:crime. Harassment: crime. Consenting adults enjoying each other: sex. It's really not difficult. I'm not sure I want to know what it means that it's so hard for them to figure it out.

(Grand Old Perverts is Very descriptive, by the way, Good 4. I'm using that from now on!)

http://acid-test.blogspot.com/

Don't miss Ben Stein's 10/02/06 "Special Report" in The American Spectator:

The Representative Foley "scandal" is really worthy of a whole book on hypocrisy. On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that's not great. On the other hand, we have a Democratic party that worships (not likes, WORSHIPS) a man named Bill Clinton who [etc., etc., and]... whose primary constituency, besides the teachers' unions, is homosexual men and lesbian women. I hope it won't come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys. (Take a look at anyone renting Endless Summer next time you are at the video store.)

Don't get me wrong. My very best friend is gay. I have many gay friends and they are great people. But how the Democrats, the party of gays, can be coming down this hard on a MC who's gay is simply beyond belief. One of my top, favorite congressmen, Barney Frank, is openly gay. Might he say a word in defense of his fellow gay MC right about now? Hmm, I thought not.

Ummm, those of you who are giving eiweino troll ratings, I think that he is quoting Ben Stein. I'm guessing that it's just to give us a laugh at how ridiculous some of the Republican responses are.

deleted...

I'm not quite sure that Absolutism is merely a matter of knowing and following a set of rules. Ethics is more than merely following rules. Chess has a set of rules but it is only a game. Ethics is not a game. Wittgenstein famously talks at length about language games and following rules. However, Ethics requires pre-existing intuitions about what is right or wrong. From whence these intuitions originate is a subject of much debate, but it is these common intuitions that we have that allow for us to devise rules and not the other way around. If it were the other way around then the rule formation would be totally arbitrary and we might have invented rules that make child molestation commendable, which is absurd.

The Media have put the Wetterling ad all over the place, painting it as an example of Democrats piling on..... problem is they do not take the time to make a critical factual point.

Patty Wetterling became a public figure in Minnesota seventeen years ago out of necessity; her son, nine years old, was abducted off his bike in a very rural area of Central Minnesota when he went to buy something at a highway convenience store. He has never been found.

Patty eventually organized a foundation, called "Jacob's Hope" that does two things. First, when an abduction occurs, it sends to the family professional help for dealing with immediate problems, such as a press spokesperson, someone who can organize volunteer search efforts, help in making and distributing missing posters, help dealing with police, FBI, State Criminal investigators -- Family legal help, assistance in properly banking and accounting for financial donations in a transparent way, and a whole range of counseling services. The Foundation is National. Most families of missing and exploited kids do not naturally have all these skills. In addition, Patty and other Foundation Staff have lobbyied now for about 16 years for a range of things -- legal reforms, training of police for this speciality, mandatory reporting laws -- she has taken on the whole of this area, and she is very well known in Minnesota and around the rest of the country for her advocacy and work.

Until 2004 no one knew whether Patty was a Republican or DFL'er. But in 2004, she was recruited by the DFL to run against Mark Kennedy in the 6th district, and she came within 5 points of winning. She now is polling even in this race for the same seat, and she is running against our star opponent of Gay Marriage (which is already illegal in Minnesota) State Senator Michelle Bachman, for whom Rove and Bush as well as Cheney have made multiple appearances.

For Patty not to have said the obvious with respect to Foleygate would have been absurd. This has been her issue for 17 years, and her passion comes directly from the experience of her son's being abducted and never found. Somehow the media have again fallen into the on this hand and then on that hand trap. Over and over again we see Foley strutting himself around the Hill, showing himself with his broad pink tie, or making a floor speech about Pages where he falls into tears, that almost makes them more importantant than Patton himself, and that film sequence runs over and over. But has anyone gone through the archives of Minnesota TV over the past 17 years -- for every year the supporters of Patty's advocacy hold candlelight vigils and then move on to a conference dealing with the year's agenda for advocacy. The event is always reported on state TV, and there must be miles of film archives. Or someone might tell the story of Patty's helping as a consultant when the Benedictines of Collegeville Minnesota, with 30 lawsuits pending against them for abuse in their two colleges and prep school, needing to negotiate a settlement, sat down with her and actually negotiated that settlement including in it all the child and young adult protection programs necessary to prevention of the problems that got them into such trouble -- and she did it with Jeffrey Anderson, the attorney for many of the Plaintiff's sitting with her. (Anderson has handled over 500 successful suits). Objective Journalism has something to answer for in this case.

JohnW1141

A political party "piling on"? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that politics are being played by politicians!

Of course Wetterling is justified in creating this ad.

All of the original comment, except for the first line, was from Stein's article.

As far as I'm concerned, Stein, whose claims to fame were as being a spokesman for Murine eye drops and ran a comedy game show on Comedy Central, is a jackass.

Nonsense.
"Bueller? Bueller?"
That was him.

"After yet another Republican scandal, if the Democrats cannot win convincingly in November, then we all deserve whatever reality the GOP has in mind for us." I agree with Gettysburg, but with two disclaimers. First, "we all" should extend beyond the Democratic party to include a passive, gullible public. Second, we already have that "reality," thanks to cable news and others.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

JohnW1141

If the Dems don't pick up at least one House this November
they will be out of power for a generation

After yet another Republican scandal, if the Democrats cannot win convincingly in November, then we all deserve whatever reality the GOP has in mind for us.

You consider that bumper sticker funny?

Lets see in one fell swoop it manages to trivilize the Holocaust and associate Jane Fonda with the death of 12 million people. Wow

Explains a lot about how your twisted little mind works.

Uh that is a far differen thing than saying it "was the 2nd funniest bumper sticker you ever saw" Which certainly implies you found the "joke" it expressed funny.

I'm getting the distinct impression Dennis Hastert is also a sex pest.

Regs, Shaggy

You know, the underage sex trade was a big part of what Abramoff and DeLay and their assorted Gross Old Pervert cronies fought to preserve about the Marianas Islands.

Disgustingly, this scandal goes back a decade. The Gross Old Perverts were covering this up when Newt Gingrich was speaker!

I wonder how many Republicans have been serviced by underaged Marianas Island hookers, male and female, over the years.

-- "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." (John Kenneth Galbraith) "I'm getting a little tired of disastrous." (me) --

Thanks. Sorry if I was unclear, but I thought it should be obvious from the context of this thread that I was quoting, not endorsing, what Stein wrote. (Please, note the colon after American Spectator and my editorial [etc., etc.,], which replaces Stein's rantings about Clinton's just shocking, shocking doings with a "barely legal intern.") Actually, I got the link from Altercation, which urged, "Ben Stein should be shunned." You really ought to read Stein's piece in its entirety. He goes on to call criticism of Senator George Allen hypocritical in part because -- I swear I'm not making this up -- Jimmy Carter "was inches away from being a segregationist in his early career." http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10434

And Barney Frank shouldn't defend him. Unlike Foley, Frank campaigns as an openly gay man who's not ashamed of what he is, unlike Foley, who's insisted on staying in the closet and was openly hostile to anyone asking him about his 'sexual orientation' for years. And this is what the 'closet' does, perverts and twists what could have been a normal, healthy sex drive. God knows how many murderers and tyrants we've had to endure over millenia because they repressed themselves this way.

As a gay man, I have a bit of sympathy for Foley, a tiny wee little bit.

LOL

he first pulls off his falafel mask, then checks under the bed

Start with "enable rich-text editor".