The bloggers are attacking! The bloggers are attacking! First, they go after Mark Foley's victims, and now, they're trying to sleuth out the blog that done him in. You see, there's this major league conspiracy, see, to bring down the Republican Party by outing Foley's nasty behavior. Therefore, it's not the behavior that's the problem... it's the Democrats. (And according to Fox News and the Associated Press, Foley is ... a Democrat!)
But back to the sleuthing:
Radar picks up on the winger meme questioning the authenticity of StopSexPredators, the blog that first reported on the Foley page correspondence. The idea, apparently, is to prove that the blog is somehow connected to the Daily Kos:
After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, "the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!" and posted four emails purportedly from "interns" outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys.
(Of course, if these emails are legit, it means the "interns" somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.) ...
...One "intern" wrote:
"...I came to Washington because I care about the future of America. I wanted to be around good and decent men like President George Bush. Instead, I feel like a piece of meat. The worst part of it for me is there appear to be plenty of my fellow interns who don't mind Foley's particular 'path to power.'"
Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!", claiming they'd been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which initially dismissed them as fakes. ABC, of course, took them more seriously.
Whoever promoted the story on DailyKos did so only 12 minutes after the fateful post went live at 11:06 a.m. ... (go to the site for the pic) Six minutes later, the same person, again writing under the handle WHinternNOW posted the following (ditto). ... Meanwhile, other bloggers are attempting to prove that at least one of the pages propositioned by Foley is 21 years old ... and that he wasn't underage at the time he corresponded with the horn-dog House member.
And another gambit coming down the pike, according to Joshua Micah Marshall, is to blame the whole mess on gay staffers who are pissed off at Foley for being closeted. According to Marshall, Kirk Fordham, who just quit as Tom Reynolds' chief of staff, is gay. More on the gay staff media purge to come, from David Corn:
There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.
On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.
I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it. For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers. Nice.
And Republicans in the House (along with their media hit-people) have been blaming the Democrats for the disclosures, and even demanding that Nancy Pelosi and others testify under oath about what they knew about the emails, and when they knew it.
Hell, Hastert is even down to blaming George Soros...
But here's the problem: The Hill is reporting that the source of the email intel was ... like Foley ... a Republican. ... a lifelong Republican.
Update: Senior Republican seeks "serious investigation" of the Foley drunk at the page dorm story.
Update 2: The FBI now wants to question Jordan Edmund, the 21-year-old former page outed by a right wing blogger yesterday.
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Tags: Mark Foley, Florida, Republicans, GOP, scandal, pages |
