Foley Cover Up And Whitewash Complete As The Republican Sexual Predator Slinks Away Without Punishment

News started leaking out last night that GOP congressman Mark Foley would get off scott free and never even be charged for molesting any of the young boys who worked for Congress as pages. Foley, who represented a gerrymandered swath of central Florida north and west of West Palm Beach, resigned from Congress in disgrace two years ago this month. Although the congressional leadership had taken great pains to cover it up, it was long known that Foley-- a typical Family Values Republican hypocrite-- was a sexual predator with an eye on young men. Like so many Republican closet queens-- from Mitch McConnell (R-KY), David Dreier (R-CA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patrick McHenry (R-NC) to Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Larry Craig (R-ID)-- he covered up his self-loathing with dysfunction, alcoholism and vicious homophobia, seeking to "prove" he was "straight" by denying gay families human dignity and equality under the law.

In Foley's case-- as with many of the above Republican leaders-- "everybody knew" he was a closet queen. Everybody but the voters who trusted him and believed his regurgitation of hollow and deceitful Republican Party talking points-- meant to stir up hatred and divisiveness and nothing more-- knew he was chasing-- and catching-- young men whose well-being had been entrusted by their parents to Congress.

The Republican Party quickly moved to defuse this "investigation" away from Foley molesting young men to naughty e-mails and improper use of government computers. There was no investigation. Voters in Florida's 16th CD are still being played for suckers and rubes. When Foley was caught, drunk, trying to break into the boys' dorm after midnight, does someone think it was to borrow a computer and send a racy e-mail? Several ex-pages have spoken out about having had sex-- the real thing, not the cyber version-- with Foley. Apparently that wasn't part of the investigation. And it wasn't just the Republicans; because of Rahm Emanuel's decision to use Foley's dangerous criminal behavior as an electoral campaign, he didn't report the crime and became complicit in it himself-- just like the entire Republican Party leadership, from Denny Hastert to John Boehner. Since then, both parties conspired to cover this grotesque scandal up.

A House Ethics Committee investigation of the scandal concluded in December 2006 that House GOP leaders were negligent in not protecting male teenage pages from possible improper advances by Foley. But the panel said there were no violations of the House Code of Official Conduct and decided that no one would be reprimanded.

A Justice Department report issued a month later said the FBI should have notified the House or other officials when members first learned of inappropriate e-mails. The FBI acted within its "range of discretion" when it initially decided not to open a criminal investigation in the case, the Justice Department said. But the internal watchdog's investigation concluded that simply filing away the complaint from a public interest group was an inadequate response.

...[T]he House of Representatives had blocked efforts to review files on computers Foley used in his congressional office. Smith said the agency was working with the FBI and Foley's lawyers to review the contents of those computers, which are federally owned.

So the whitewash concludes there is not enough evidence to pursue the matter. Read some of the e-mails and decide for yourself if this was an investigation or a coverup. Decide for yourself if Congressman Foley was just sending boys mash notes or if he was raping them.

Every Republican (+ Rahm Emanuel) who knew this was going on and didn't alert the police should be in prison. I bet if 50 members of Congress are arrested and tried this kind of outrageous criminal hanky panky will stop... forever. Members of Congress and other public officials have to be made to understand that espousing fake Family Values talking points is not a license to molest children.