Oh please, make it stop … the Eric Massa revelations keep coming
The Washington Post has what’s sure to be just the beginning of the Nasty Massa stories:
Not long after Eric Massa joined Congress in January 2009, several male staff members began to feel uncomfortable with the sexually loaded language their boss routinely used, according to accounts relayed to the House ethics committee.
As the months passed, rumors began to circulate in the office that the married New York Democrat had sexually propositioned young male staffers and interns — allegations, according to two sources with knowledge of the inquiry, that included Massa groping at least two aides.
In the second week of February, Massa’s deputy chief of staff contacted the office of Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer for help in dealing with the accusations. Once Hoyer (D-Md.) himself became aware of the claims, he delivered an ultimatum to Massa’s office: Report the staffers’ complaints to the ethics committee within 48 hours, or Hoyer would do it for them.
Last week, the panel’s investigation became public, and Massa resigned, effective Monday.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s very close to the chain of events that led to the downfall of Florida Congressman Mark Foley, who had also been rumored to be “too familiar” with young, male pages, and even engaged in inappropriate Internet banter with one, before he resigned in disgrace back in 2006. (As with all disgraced Republicans, he now has his own talk radio show…) Of course, there are differences in the two scandals, not the least of which is that when questions about Foley’s conduct with pages began to crop up, House Republicans at the time, and possibly for years leading up to the scandal, to include then- House Speaker Dennis “the wrestler” Hastert, covered them up. Not so with the current House leadership, which didn’t have to be threatened with exposure in order to refer charges to the ethics committee. And good for them.
Meanwhile, back at the Washington Post, it turns out that Massa, who was a Republican up until 2004, has a history of claiming he was “forced out” of jobs:
After more than two decades in the Navy, during which he reached the rank of commander, Massa moved to Upstate New York to work for the manufacturing company Corning. In his official biography, he says he was laid off from his job because, “due to unfair free trade agreements, the company could not afford to keep those jobs in America.”
Massa then became a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. He says in his biography that he was an early critic of the Bush administration’s strategy for invading Iraq and that he was “forced out” of his Armed Services job for “standing up against the failed pre-war planning.” Congressional salary data on file at the Web site Legistorm shows that Massa was employed by the committee for eight months in 2003.
Can’t wait to see what they dig up next. Actually, then again, I can …
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