Foley's Folly

The big issue for me is not that Foley is gay nor even that he might have had sex with a sixteen year old (which, as Glenn notes, may in fact be legal). The big issue is that the Republicans made a big show of passing a bill, the so-called "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006" (of which Foley was a co-sponsor), because the Republicans cared so much about children.

Hastert: "At home we put children first, and Republicans are doing just that in the House."

GWB: "to protect our children from sexual and other violent crimes, will help prevent child pornography, and will make the Internet safer for our sons and daughters."

Yet when the GOP House Leadership became aware of the fact that Foley was a sexual predator, they exposed their hypocrisy and did, worse than nothing, they covered it up.

As Josh Marshall said:

I don't think cover-up is too strong a word since there was apparently an active effort to keep the allegations from the only Democrat who serves on the Page Board. That decision, I think, speaks volumes.

Glenn opines:

The most significant fact I've heard thus far is that, as reported by Roll Call, the GOP Chairman of the House Page Board (as he admits) excluded the Democratic Congressman on the Board from deliberations over what to do about Foley, thus ensuring that only Republicans knew about this problem (and therefore enabled them to conceal it and do nothing about it). And the conflicting, still-shifting stories about who in the House Leadership knew what and when they knew it suggest some real wrongdoing and, at the very least, produces precisely the whiff of cover-up which ensures that more and more reporters will be digging around and the story will endure.

Billmon:

So the congressional point man on sexual predation is -- or rather was -- a sexual predator. Why am I not surprised?

[...]

I think there's a long post, if not a book, to be written about this particular truth, which is the Jeckyll-and-Hyde split between appearances and reality in 21st century America -- the America where prostitutes pose as journalists (or vice versa), "Christian" activists lobby for legalized torture, generals swagger like Rambo in front of the cameras but cringe before their civilian masters in private, libertarian law professors write secret memos justifying the creation of a police state, sworn enemies of big government gorge themselves on pork, vomit, then gorge some more, and U.S. Senators with the racial values of a klavern leader masquerade as "compassionate conservatives."

And then, of course, there's our president, who preaches democracy and freedom by day and rewrites the Geneva Conventions by night.

Brad DeLong has more on the cover up:

You cannot read Roll Call and both versions of the Post story without concluding that Boehner was lying to somebody last night: three different stories in quick succession defeats all credulity.

You cannot read the Post this morning without concluding that Weisman and Babbington are unseemly eager to keep their readers from learning that Boehner was lying to somebody last night.