The Foleyation of Politicians, Leakets and Cover-ups

Lee Ellis

Having been a Republican for a great many decades, I have developed only one complaint about my political party over all these years, and that is its naivety. The Democrat party has always been very sophisticated in the way it trounces Republicans in public relations and media stories. Newt Gingrich, along with many others, can attest to this, I am sure.

What brought this back to my attention is the news, just before the coming election, about Congressman Foley of Florida. It comes out, now, that some Republican leaders learned, more than a year ago, about e-mails from Foley to former pages that could have been regarded as over-friendly or even flirtatious. Since these messages were not sexual in nature, these leaders simply scolded him and told him to cease. The naivety of these Republicans comes in to play right at this point. Rep. Hastert et al. should have investigated further, because this kind of information gets circulated along the office grapevine almost immediately.

Once the Democrats picked this up, they could have hired a computer hacker to do a computer search on everything that Foley did. This could well be how information on his "instant messaging" to boy pages was discovered. But wait. Here is how some Democrats display their hunger for power. Being such political animals, these Democrats would have kept this info until they really needed it, such as just a few weeks before an election. It is at this propitious moment that such "gotcha" news is secretly fed to the media! If you don't believe this, think back to all the news headlines against Bush in 2004 that suddenly came out about his supposed past life just before Election Day. Did not the opposition party collect these items over the years and keep them closeted in order to create headlines against the Republicans and Bush just before people were ready to vote? Has this happened again?

Of course, Kennedy, Kerry, Reid, Pelosi and their cohorts loudly label Republicans hypocrites. But where were they all when the story came out about a house of male prostitution being held in Barney Frank's lavish home? In late 1985, Steve Gobie, a young male prostitute, said that he began to use Frank's home and two other locations for prostitution. According to an article in the Washington Post, Gobie said, "He knew exactly what I was doing." Gobie added, "It was pretty obvious. If he had to come home early (from work), he would call home to be sure the coast was clear . . . . He was living vicariously through me. He said it was kind of a thrill, and if he had been 20 years younger he might be doing the same thing."

Attempts to expel or censure Frank failed; instead the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him. This condemnation was not reflected in Frank's district, where he won re-election in 1990 with 66 percent of the vote, and has won by larger margins ever since.
Earlier, sex-related cases were brought up against a Massachusetts Democrat, Gerry Studd who had a1973 relationship with a 17-year-old male congressional page. He was censored but spent many more years in Congress. Later, two other Democrats, Gus Savage and Jim Bates were also involved in sex scandals but were defeated by voters.

The fact that Clinton had molested one of his interns inside the Oval Office, and then lied about it, has always been excused by liberals claiming that Republicans were bigots for trying to impeach him. Why, this is normal, they claimed ---it happens all the time! While it is true that other Presidents have had mistresses, they were older women, not young interns, and all activities were kept out of the White House.

I am not saying that Foley's pedophilia should have been covered up! Rather, I am saying that the Republicans should have been less naïve and immediately investigated. They could have had Foley arrested or forced to resign almost a year ago. The timing would then have given the Republicans the applause from a thankful public for getting rid of a bad apple.

Harry Reid is now accusing Republicans of a cover-up. Shades of Watergate!

There might well be a cover-up, but it would have to be either done by the Democrats or a media person. Think this out. Whoever leaked this story had to have been gathering this information for a long time. He or she had to have kept it quiet until it would either boost ratings or wreak the greatest damage to the Republicans, just before a major election.

While Foley needs to be punished, the person who held on to this story instead of notifying authorities in order to get protection for the young pages, also needs to be prosecuted. Foley has resigned, but who remains at large? This is the real cover-up that needs to be exposed!

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Lee Ellis is a retired journalist and narrator, formerly with both CBS and Gannett (USA Weekend). He was also a combat veteran of WWII, having fought in the South Pacific invasions. He had the pleasure of interviewing Ronald Reagan as an actor and then later working to help him become Governor of California. At the age of 80, he is keeping busy writing and doing free lance narrations for radio and television. He is an active member of Rotary and the VFW.

indiolee@dc.rr.com