FOLEY GATE

WHAT A LIAR.

DES MOINES, Iowa - House Majority Leader John Boehner on Friday accused Democrats of endangering House pages for political gain.

Boehner, speaking at a campaign event for 3rd District Republican candidate Jeff Lamberti, said Democratic operatives have known about inappropriate e-mails sent by former Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, to young male pages for some time. He said Democrats had been shopping the information around Washington as a political ploy.

"Someone who had this information allowed those 16-year-old pages to be at risk while they were playing their political games," said Boehner, R-Ohio. "I do not believe thus far that Republicans knew about these sexually explicit instant messages."

Boehner, a 16-year veteran of the House, found himself at the center of the page scandal when he claimed to have talked with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, about improper contact between Foley and the pages.

Hastert said he doesn't recall the conversation with Boehner.

--source

FOLEY GATE

Oct. 13 — Representative John Shimkus, who has been chairman of the Congressional page program since 2001, said Friday that he was unaware of previous complaints about Mark Foley.

Mr. Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, said that had he known of the complaints about Mr. Foley, he would have handled concerns about Mr. Foley’s e-mail messages to a page from Louisiana differently.

“There is stuff that everybody would have done differently,” Mr. Shimkus said after testifying under oath for more than three hours before the House ethics committee. “Having 20/20 hindsight, a lot of things would have been different.”

Mr. Shimkus said that he learned of concerns about Mr. Foley last fall and that he and the clerk of the House confronted Mr. Foley at a meeting in Mr. Foley’s office.

=--SOURCE

when actions like these are handled in secret

we have lost our democracy.

ATLANTA, Oct. 13 -- The imam of a northern Georgia mosque pleaded guilty to providing material support to the militant group Hamas in a case in which the agreement, charges and even the plea hearing were handled in secret.

--source

the party of family values

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors in Arizona have opened a preliminary investigation of a camping trip Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., took 10 years ago that included two teenage congressional pages, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News. NBC News first reported on the camping and rafting trip on Tuesday.

--msnbc

the party of family values?

that's a hoot.

Is a second GOP congressman getting drawn into the House page scandal? NBC reports:

Federal prosecutors in Arizona have opened a preliminary investigation of a camping trip Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., took 10 years ago that included two teenage congressional pages, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News.
A spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington said that the U.S. attorney in Arizona has started a "preliminary assessment" of the trip, after an unidentified source made allegations about the congressman's behavior on the expedition. . . .

One participant, who requested anonymity, said he was uncomfortable with the attention Kolbe paid to one of the former pages. He was "creeped out by it," he said, adding that there was a lot of "fawning, petting and touching" on the teenager's arms, shoulders and back by Kolbe. . . .

Kolbe's office issued a statement to NBC News denying that anything improper had happened. "The rafting trip back in 1996 consisted of five current staff, two former pages, and his sister," a spokeswoman for Kolbe said. "There is absolutely no basis and no truth to any [allegations of] inappropriate behavior."

--story

it would be one thing if the participants were adults, but these were teenagers. what's more damaging is that republicans were always screaming about how OTHER's behavior was abhorrent in cases like this.

when do they start to call it corruption?

Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "appear to have perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday.

--story

FOLEY GATE - TIMELINE

As early as 1997, Foley began sending sexually explicit messages to a page; other pages have come forward from the 1998, 2000, and 2002 classes saying that they also received explicit messages.

--continued

those fox family values?

Former LOS ANGELES TV reporter and LAPD officer and sometime CLEAR CHANNEL Talk KFI-A/LOS ANGELES fill-in host and guest ROD BERNSEN was arrested in LONG BEACH on SATURDAY on suspicion of molestation after an incident on board a cruise ship.

BERNSEN, 58, who is well-known in the market for his long run as a reporter for FOX O&O KTTV (TV) (FOX 11), was a fill-in for KFI from late last year through MAY, was on a cruise with his wife and sister; KFI, whose reporter ERIC LEONARD broke the story MONDAY afternoon, reports that the incident took place in the ship's sauna with two 12 year old boys.

--story

and what about pakistan's khan?

why hasn't bush been as forceful with musharraf on khan's activites as he banters about with north korea's underground test of a nuke? bush now drew a 'new line in the sand' about exporting the technology from north korea, but forgave pakistan for doing it. what a hypocrite.

why is this website still up?

http://cunningham.house.gov/