The Foley Mess

Well, the predicable has occurred. The SeeNo/HearNo/SpeakNo crowd (largely Republican shills) have come out and assailed the Democrats, the Press, and the "Reactionary Right."

After all, poor Speaker Hastert--and poor ML Boehner--what could they have possibly known?

Well, how about Foley's "farewell" speech to the 2002 pages?

Former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., told House pages in warm farewell speeches over the years that he took "a special interest in each and every one" of them, identifying many of the youngsters by name and thanking them for their service...

...In a June 6, 2002 send-off, Foley warned "all of you not to cry in front of me, please, so I can get through this very important day with you without shedding tears as well."

"Of course we have got several Jasons, a few Laurens. Adam, thank you for the graduation announcement," Foley said in the 2002 speech. "I sent you a handwritten note, and I was actually going to put some money in it as a graduation present.

"Then I realized he would tell all of you, and then I would get hundreds of graduation announcements. So I chose not to. I hope the handwritten note will suffice for your scrapbook," he said.

He described taking one of the young men who was the highest bidder in "lunch with Mark Foley" to Morton's Steakhouse in his BMW...

How very cloying. How very....sweet.

And how very manipulative and inappropriate.

But hey. Maybe manipulative and inappropriate are so common in the House that Hastert and his staff AND Boehner and HIS staff just didn't catch the odor.

HT: Malkin