HYPOCRITES AND HACKS

I won’t recap any details of the Mark Foley D-MA scandal, which occupied so much newspaper space recently, mostly to spare myself the sordid details. I am only bringing it up because it seems to me that opinions which I hear and read about it are so lame. For example:

***Compared to similar scandals in the past, the Foley case seems minor.

How can it be minor just because Massachusetts Rep. Garry Studds committed similar offenses on a much larger scale in the ‘80s, never apologized, and even accused his accusers of picking on him because of their homophobia. (Perhaps more scandalous than anything else was the fact that Studds was reelected several times after that incident.) Another congressman, Rep. Dan Crane, whose juvenile prey were female, did apologize publicly for his actions.

***Foley has not been convicted of child molestation so technically he is not guilty of child molestation. There is also the question that since pages are teenagers it is not a crime for congressmen to seek sexual contact with them.

The entire congressional page system is flawed and should be scrapped entirely. These kids are not in D.C. for the purpose of being the playthings of dirty old men. They ought not to be appointed by congressmen. A new group should be set up to oversee the day to day life of the pages, security of their living quarters, and to provide counselors they can turn to if some some great patriot of a congressman or congresswoman contacts them inappropriately or bothers them in any way. Of whom should this group be comprised? Damned if I know. I only know there ought not be preachers, evangelists, rabbis, or ministers of any kind overseeing the pages.

***Foley has apologized -- give him credit for that.

Certainly not - no credit to Foley for anything! He apologized for his alcoholism but that is a whole other problem. It was sickening that he blamed alcoholism for his bad behavior. Why, that's not even a good excuse for wifebeating or abuse of any kind. He entered rehab for alcoholism and today or yesterday it was announced that he was extended his stay for continued treatment ... for alcoholism. If they give rehab for hypocricy, all senators and representatives are candidates for treatment. It's hard to imagine that Congress even has an investigation committe, and even one for abuse of ethics. A group which is trained to investigate, say the FBI, should always do all the investigations, especially of coverups.

If I could think of anyone suitable to conduct morals and ethics violations of congressmen I'd name them but I can't.

"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.' "
Theodore Roosevelt26th president of US (1858 - 1919)