The scandal developing around former US House Rep. Mark Foley just blows my mind. First of all, the breach of trust by the congressman is staggering. But perhaps even more unsettling to me is the spin being put on this by the Republican leadership. I’ve seen spin at first trying to down play the seriousness of the emails to even claiming that Foley was a “victim” of the 16 yr old boy. WTF? are you kidding me. What is even more surreal about this whole thing, is that Foley helped craft the legislation that more than likely will should land him in jail.
Here is an excellent post on some of the aspects of the Foley scandal from Glenn Greenwald’s blog Unclaimed Territory: Various Foley Scandal Items
What should be even more troubling to the administration and Republican leadership, is that it increasingly looks like this scandal could consume the upper echelons of the Republican House leadership. The current Speaker of the House and House Majority leader have both been suspected of trying to cover up the Foley matter. For details read this post from Greenwald’s blog: John Boehner = Denny Hastert plus Key Questions for Tom Reynolds. Even the conservative Washington Times is calling for Hastert to resign.
So three high ranking Republicans were at least at some level involved in a cover up. At least until the evidence was to great to overcome. Then it was on to spin city.
I really don’t know what it means to be an American right now. I’m really not sure it is something to be proud of. I wonder if it is possible to restore what we’ve lost as a country in the past six years.
Update: This is ridiculous! According to Mr. Foley’s attorney, Mr. Foley was abused by clergy as a child and is gay.
So now the spin is trying to make this a “gay” issue. As I read on another blog earlier, they are right, in one way it is a gay issue. The fact that this man had hide who he was, be ashamed of who he was, because our so called “Christian” nation looked down on him is deplorable. However, whatever may have happened to him as a child is still no justification for his actions. His actions would have been just as disgusting if they were directed to a female congressional page.
