Say Anything Blog

Not that it excuses what Foley did, or any Republicans who looked the other way, but still…

The House Ethics Committee Report includes new information that top Democrats were also aware in 2005 of Mark Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to congressional pages at about the same time as outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office was informed.

While the report is critical of Hastert and his staff for not taking sufficient action, nowhere is there any evidence that the Democrats followed up.

According to the Committee’s report, “the communications directors for both the House Democratic Caucus and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” in the fall of 2005 also had copies of e-mails written by Mark Foley to a congressional page, which the high school student described as “sick, sick, sick, sick.”

All the Democrats who have been criticizing Haster and other Republicans for not “protecting the pages” can kindly shut up now, because clearly the Dems took these Foley emails and filed them away in the “for use right before the election” cabinet.

Or, alternatively, said critics can maybe admit that the emails weren’t that damning and Hastert wasn’t all that negligent in his actions.

Any guesses as to which of those two options the Dems will choose?  I’m guessing they’ll go with “door three” and pretend like this revelation in the Foley report doesn’t exist.