Mark 9:42

A verse in the middle of yesterday's Gospel reading seems apposite in the midst of what can only be described as a titanic scandal engulfing the Republican leadership in Congress and threatening to swamp any chances they may have of holding onto their slim majority:

Καὶ ὃς ἂν σκανδαλίσῃ ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων τῶν πιστευόντων, καλόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον εἰ περίκειται μύλος ὀνικὸς περὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτοῦ καὶ βέβληται εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν.

And if anyone should cause one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

--Mark 9:42, my translation from the Greek

Now, I'm not qualified to make judgements about the eternal consequences of Mark Foley's actions with a series of pages over the last year five years, or of the Republican leadership's knowingly allowing it to continue: that right is reserved solely to God. I am, however, a citizen of this republic and as such entitled to consider political and other kinds of secular consequences. And of those, I insist, there should be plenty.

As ABC News reported last night, Republican Party staffers knew about Foley and his troubling relations with congressional pages in 2001-2002. Another ABC News report indicates that pages were warned about Foley's tendency to get "too nice to you and all that kind of stuff" at least that long ago. One internet message from Foley to a page from the 2001-2002 page corps, as reported by ABC last night, included a request that the page not forget to "measure for me." Meaning, as ABC was too delicate to say on the air, that Foley wanted the boy to measure his penis and tell the congressman how big it was.

That was five fucking years ago! And yet, in June 2002, Rep. John Shimkus (R.-Ill. 19) said, in his farewell address to that page class, that Rep. Foley was "someone who spends a lot of time with you." And then Foley told a story of taking one of the pages to a private dinner ("cruising to dinner," he put it--a phrase that can have quite another meaning in the gay community).

But the real turdlet on top of this shit sundae is this (from page H3281 at the linked site in the previous paragraph, or about two-thirds of the way down the file):

Call your mother, get permission, make sure she notifies the Clerk and we will go to Morton's.

(Emphasis added)

That's Foley's counsel to one of the pages from the 2001-2002 class, the one he "cruised to dinner" with in his BMW. The "Clerk" referred to is the Clerk of the House, who works for the Speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert. So the leadership knew that Mark Foley was taking young men from the page corps out for private dinners five years ago, and did absolutely bugger all about it, apart from issuing a tepid warning to the pages in subsequent classes to "watch out" for Foley, and making sure they had political cover in case anything broke.

Well, the waste dam on the cesspool is well and truly breached now, boys. The FBI investigation is going to be the least of your worries. Though it appears from Hastert's weasel-worded statement that this investigation may be just the latest in a series of attempts by the GOP (that's Ghastly Old Perverts, by the by) to throw up a smokescreen for a bit of political cover from what ABC News's anchor rightly described as a "potentially massive, metastasizing scandal, just five weeks before election day."

Be the smoke ever so thick, be the lies deeper than the snows in Siberia in the depths of winter, be the chorus of "mea culpas" louder than the roaring of a Category 5 hurricane, I'm afraid the House Republican leadership isn't going to be able to duck this one. Karl Rove was reputedly preparing an "October Surprise" to help his flailing party shore up its chances of holding onto Congress. I think his efforts will have been for naught, because October came a little early this year, and the surprise was not of Unca Karl's making--nor to his liking, I'm sure.

Mr. Hastert, Mr. Shimkus, Mr. Boehner, Mr. Blunt, and all the other Republican "leaders" in Congress, there is one, and only one way to salvage anything from this disaster. Resign. Resign post-haste. If you're so inclined, maybe a little sackcloth and ashes will help. There is no good outcome to prolonging this scandal, there is no recovering from this ocean of filth which you are responsible for damming up and keeping hidden these past five years (if not more), solely for the sake of partisan gain. You are permanently, irretrievably, ineradicably stained, tainted, and besmirched. You are none of you fit for an office of public trust or honor. If there is a just and loving God in heaven, you will all of you be found criminally negligent for having failed in your duty to report sexually explicit exchanges between a middle-aged man in a privileged position and several teen-aged boys effectively in his employ. That constitutes sexual harassment, in case you didn't already know that. And under a law ironically written by Rep. Mark Foley, the use of the internet for the purposes of sexually soliciting a minor is a federal crime as well. You not only let him break that law, you covered up for him as he broke it. And therefore you, like he, must go.

Both John Laesch, who is running against Hastert in Illinois' 14th District, and Danny Stover, running against John Shimkus in the 19th District, are having a press conference in Chicago later today. If I didn't have a ton of stuff to do at the office, I'd be there to hear what the two people who will be representing those districts next year have to say about the unforgivable criminal actions of their predecessors in office.

Comments

[Mustang Bobby]

What are you getting so worked up about? According to Tony Snow, they were just a couple of "naughty e-mails." [/sarcasm]

Isn't it incredible how quickly the Republicans have become truly liberated about gay sex? Suddenly it's no big deal (even if he did measure it...). Why, just eight years ago they were positively convulsed over a blow job between two adults, and yet scoping out a hot teenager is just "overly friendly."

I guess all those free subscriptions to Blue Boy that I anonymously sent to the House leadership had their effect.

[Andrea]

I'm laughing where I shouldn't. The situation is horrible, but you two are very funny.