Rep. Mark Foley didn't get busted by Dateline NBC's Chris Hansen, but he might as well have been. ABC's Brian Ross reports
Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.
A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former male pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.
John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has screen captures of some of the e-mails, thought apparently not the ones Ross is referring to.
Update: Foley was apparently one of "The Terrible Three" along with Barney Frank and Jim Kolbe. The e-mails are from the first source most of us saw the Foley story on last week, Stop Sex Predators. Of course, at the time, they just looked like really bad Photoshop jobs...
Lorie adds: I will be posting a roundup of reaction to the Foley resignation later tonight, but wanted to say one thing now, and I predict the roundup will bear me out on this. I have not seen Foley's resignation, but assume it contains some form of admission or he would not be resigning. I want to go on record saying the behavior alleged is despicable and should be condemned in the strongest terms, and I fully expect that to be what most if not all Republicans do. I do not expect to see any blaming the page, or any circling the partisan wagons. When another Republican does something wrong, I am happy to say that (at least the majority of the time) other Republicans will be the first to call them out on it and will push for appropriate punishment. As I said, I will know after I have seen all the reaction to the story, but I fully expect that to be the case in this instance.
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Comments (1)
I fully expect that to b... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Brian | September 29, 2006 8:09 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
I fully expect that to be what most if not all Republicans do
...
I do not expect to see any ... circling the partisan wagons. When another Republican does something wrong, other Republicans will be the first to call them out on it and will push for appropriate punishment.
Your phony righteousness is endearing.
The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen's parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, "We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem," a reference to the House's Republican leaders.
That House leadership must have been whispering when they were the "first to call [him] out on it." But I guess they couldn't just reassign him to another district, the way priests handle their pedophile coverups.
1. Posted by Brian | September 29, 2006 8:09 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on September 29, 2006 20:09