Sparky: For the Washington Pages; Wanna bet we'll see the further purge of all ‘outed’ Gay Republicans and even more blame shifted to the victims rather than the perverts and their enablers — like GOP top traitor Karl “Turd Blossom”Rove ... who we all know is deeply involved in the Mark Foley scandal ... because they liked the shameless way he raised big cash ...

The Huffington Post:Joshua Zeitz:245 Votes Against Protecting Children

If Democrats are looking to make hay of the Foley fiasco, they needn't look too far. While House Republicans talk a good game about protecting children, last year a whopping 94 percent of them cast a despicable vote to legally empower fathers who rape their underage daughters.
First, some background: In 2005 the House passed a measure making it illegal to transport a minor child across state lines for the express purpose of helping her elude her own state's parental notification laws governing abortion services.

The bill also imposed fines upwards of $100,000, and a year of jail time, on doctors who fail to give 24-hour notification to the parents of out-of-state minors seeking abortions. Furthermore, the bill provides that parents may sue out-of-state doctors who fail to meet this requirement.

Sensibly, Rep. Jerald Nadler (D-NY) proposed eliminating one of the bill's major deficiencies. As the bill stood, if a father raped his under-age daughter, and if his daughter sought an out-of-state abortion, and if an out-of-state doctor agreed to perform that abortion without giving prior notification to the girl's father, the father/rapist could sue the doctor for damages. Nadler proposed sending the bill back to committee and adding language that would prevent such situations from arising.

Incredibly, 218 Republicans, including Mark Foley, voted against this common-sense provision, as did 27 Democrats (HR 748, #143, 4/27/05). When push came to shove, 245 House members cared more about punishing abortion providers than protecting kids. (To read the names and party identification of these congressmen and congresswomen, follow this link.)

Republicans have been scrambling to recoup their losses in the wake of the Mark Foley fiasco. However incredible their self-defense may ring, GOP operatives like Ken Mehlman, chair of the Republican National Committee, have no choice but to insist that "the speaker and our leadership could not have been more aggressive. The moment they found out about this, they gave Mark Foley the political death penalty. They said, get out of Congress or we're going to throw you out. They called in the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate."
Of course, we now know that House Republicans did no such thing. Key members of the GOP leadership knew about Mark Foley's strange affection for pages many months before ABC News broke the story. The "moment" they learned of these strange doings, they zipped their lips and said nothing. Mehlman's insistence that party leaders acted decisively, "the moment they found out about this," reminds me of the famous moment in the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, when William Jennings Bryan inadvertently admitted that Biblical references to "days" might be metaphorically read to suggest years or even epochs ("I am simply saying it is a period," Bryan said). If a Washington, DC-moment lasts, say, six months, then Mehlman is indeed correct.

Democrats should hold Republican incumbents responsible for voting to empower child rapists. The Mark Foley scandal reveals a great deal more than simple, Republican ineptitude; it reveals a House caucus that is morally bankrupt.

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YAHOO News: Second U.S. lawmaker faces misconduct allegations

A U.S. congressional board which oversees a Capitol Hill internship program rocked by a sex scandal, discussed allegations on Monday involving a second lawmaker, said Rep. Dale Kildee, a Michigan Democrat.

Kildee made the comment as he emerged from a closed-door meeting of a House ethics committee, which has been focused on the case of former Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who resigned last month following disclosure he sent inappropriate electronic messages to male teenage interns, known as pages.

"It's only been allegations made," Kildee told reporters of the House page board's discussion about a second lawmaker, who he declined to identify.

Kildee said he and other board members had a conference call earlier in the day about "other allegations, not about Mr. Foley." Kildee also indicated the page board had talked about the matter with the second lawmaker.

Last week, a law enforcement official confirmed a report by NBC News that the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI in Arizona were conducting a "preliminary look" into a camping trip Rep. Jim Kolbe took with two teenage pages and others 10 years ago.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said federal investigators were responding to a "single allegation" about Kolbe of Arizona. The official refused to say who made the allegation or what was being alleged.

Kolbe's office denied any wrongdoing.

"The rafting trip back in 1996 consisted of five current staff, two former pages and his sister," a spokeswoman for Kolbe said. "There is absolutely no basis and no truth to any (allegations of) inappropriate behavior."

As part of the ethics committee's investigation of Foley, it is trying to determine if any other House members demonstrated troubling behavior toward teenage interns.

With reports that some Republican House members or staff were told about Foley's troubling conduct months or even years ago, the panel is also trying to determine if there was a cover-up -- who knew what and when about Foley and what, if anything, they did about it.

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Now - what do we do about those compromised Diebold voting machines? - eh? - Sparky