Acting like a pedophile and covering up for a pedophile not against House rules
Mark Foley, who drank himself into becoming a homosexual pedophile, put a lot of his House colleagues in danger when he spent a good deal of time hitting on (and occasionally sodomizing) male pages, most of which were underage. His Republican colleagues were aghast: They never imagined anyone would find out, regardless of how many years or how many warnings they were given.
Luckily, there are no rules against acting like a pedophile and pedophile-cover-up behavior, so, it’s all cool now.
From CNN:
The House ethics committee has found that GOP leaders did not break any rules in handling allegations of improper Internet exchanges between former Rep. Mark Foley and former pages, but they were negligent in protecting the teenagers.
No one will be reprimanded, the panel said.
Among the findings included in the report released by the committee: In addition to e-mails, Foley sent instant messages containing “sexually explicit and salacious language” to one or more former congressional pages, and that several Republican lawmakers and staffers knew of the correspondences before they were made public.It further states that some who knew of the allegations shifted responsibility and some declined to probe too deeply into the matter, while “others tried repeatedly to elevate the matter, but encountered obstacles in the chain of command.”
“In all, a pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Represenative Foley’s conduct,” the report states.
At question before the ethics panel was what and when Republican leaders knew about the Florida Republican’s actions and how they reacted to the accusations once they surfaced.
Foley’s former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, told the ethics panel that at least three years ago, he asked top GOP aides, including Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, to intervene to stop Foley’s inappropriate behavior.
Foley, a six-term congressman, resigned after his inappropriate Internet exchanges with young, male former congressional pages came to light. He then entered a rehabilitation facility for alcohol abuse.
–WKW