For now Fordham’s the fall guy:
Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.
“He begged them not to tell the page board,” said one of the Republican sources.
People familiar with Fordham’s side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
They said Fordham had repeatedly warned Hastert’s staff about Foley’s “problem” with pages, but little was done.
As Kevin Drum observes the two stories are hardly exclusive. Kevin also speculates that Fordham could spill the beans, but I doubt it. If Elliot Abrahams has a job in DC then Fordham can look forward to a well-paid second act in some other department. As long as Fordham sticks to omerta somebody will make sure that he keeps making payments on his second home.
***Update***
Undoubtedly Kirk Fordham forced the GOP leadership to ignore Foley’s behavior as far back as eleven years ago.
Pharniel
*sigh* seriously. sending the entire lot of them to gitmo isn’t even near enough i’m afeared.
Mr Furious
That potato is as hot as the inside of a Pop Tart.
Richard Bottoms
Haven’t enjoyed myself like this in ages. BTW, where’d all the Republican apologists go????
This popcorn is great, pass the salt please.
t. jasper parnell
The Foley fallout, while interesting, is not the only coverup and lie.
chopper
i know. ah, schadenfreude (or however the hell you spell it) is a wonderful feeling.
Perry Como
The Party of Candy!
Tsulagi
Guess we get to keep munching the popcorn while watching the shell game of who’s the bad apple while fingers are pointing to look that way. These guys are funny.
Don’t be so sure there won’t be any bean spilling. Don’t know about the laws in DC or federal ones that might apply, but in my state I’ve heard it’s a felony to cause or aid and abet the corrupting of a minor’s morals. It’s sort of a catchall. Age of consent doesn’t apply to this statue and it gets you on the sex predator list. Now if one or more of the Dobson acolytes in DC were to be threatened with something similar, their lips might loosen.
I’m still waiting for a page parent to show up. If they said they were lied to, that would be gold.
ThymeZone
My take on the rightwing faux-tian crowd istoday that they are taking this as a win … for themselves.
They talk and act as if this “proves” that gays are dangerous, that constant vigilance is required to protect America from Satan’s Agenda …. they don’t have a lot of party loyalty and think nothing of throwing Hastert or anyone else who disappoints them, under the bus.
So they might lose some seats in the short term, but they will gain power in the long term.
That’s my takeaway from listening to Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, today. One almost gets a sense that he is glad to see this blowup, glad to see the evil of teh gay exposed for all its shocking penis-into-child hideousness.
These people truly are crazy.
Steve
Sounds like that would make it illegal to send your kid to work in Congress.
t. jasper parnell
They stand up, we stand down.
Faux News
An apt observation. Of course Tony Perkins et. al. have nothing to say about the Hetero man who shot 10 Amish girls, killing 5, in PA on Monday.
(Cue crickets chirping)
Pb
Ouch. Kos has more from Novak:
This one’s a real page turner!
Richard 23
This only puts blood in the water. It doesn’t however stop the bleeding. If leadership thinks this will end the story and the criticism they’d better think harder.
If the GOP is stupid enough to take a cue from its fundie wing and make this about gays and decide to purge their party of homosexuals it certainly won’t help their PR.
I doubt they are that stupid. Maybe they’ll just tell Mehlman and others to keep more firmly in the closet. That won’t help either.
ThymeZone
Satan, uh, works in mysterious ways.
Or something.
Look, we’re the family values people. We can’t be psychoanalyzing every bad person out there. We are starting withe the low hanging, uh, fruits. So to speak.
Tsulagi
Yeah, I guess after the Foley drama I could be tagged with knowingly aiding and abetting. But not to worry, after this no way in hell would I allow either to be a page in DC. Way too many Dobson cloaked pervs.
Punchy
Nobody gives a fuck if they canned some nobody from a nobody Congressman. The only person people will continue to bitch about, no matter how many clowns they pink-slip, is Hastert and/or Boener (sp?).
Demdude
I watched Perkins & Buchanan on Hardball and other programs. It really get me furious when these crackpots start talking about statistics “proving” their point. I wish someone would actually push back and ask them the source of the their “studies”. Of course we know they are bullshit, but someone needs to clean their clock once in awhile. Of course they wil just lie about it again anyhow, but it would be nice to watch them get challenged.
sglover
They talk and act as if this “proves” that gays are dangerous, that constant vigilance is required to protect America from Satan’s Agenda …. they don’t have a lot of party loyalty and think nothing of throwing Hastert or anyone else who disappoints them, under the bus.
So they might lose some seats in the short term, but they will gain power in the long term.
That’s a bad bet, though. In the long run, unless we go whole hog into the 14th Century, gays are only going to be more accepted. It’s going to be more difficult to use them as bogeymen.
Richard Bottoms
Fordham quite or was fired, take your pick, because his one of the closted gay staffers who have “nis-served” the House leadership.
Expect the next few days to hold leaks of just who is in the closet on the Hill.
Steve
Andrew Sullivan spotlights this amazing quote:
The Catholic Church really needs to call this guy up and get him to stop using the name “Catholic,” because he absolutely kills them every time. Man, he makes the Catholic Church’s ACTUAL response to the pedophilia scandal look almost adequate by comparison!
Richard 23
That’s why there’s Bum Fights. The homeless are destined to be the next gay. Everybody moves up a rung. Or not. The most recent 60 Minutes that featured angry young men beating up homeless people really pissed me off. Sorry, off topic.
Andrew
I was quite happy to learn that those young, white, middle class assholes will be somebody’s prison bitch for the next 30 years.
Jess
Ooh that was bad. Very bad.