Did Denny Hastert and the GOP leadership expose Democratic-sponsored pages to Foley predations?
But seriously, reading the fine details of this, via
Atrios , I came across the
following tidbit about the alleged warning that Congressional pages received about Congressman Foley (R-Whackjob):
A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.
...
Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley.
Now, there's several paragraphs separating those two sets of facts. But put them together, and they tell you quite a lot, don't they? Republican leaders valued the children of the Republicans that put them in office. Children of Democrats? Not so much.
A real editor processing that story might have engaged in just the exercise I engaged in and come out with a totally different angle to the story.
Apparently some children are totally fine to be 'left behind.' Just the kids of Democrats.
Now, just to deepen the plot a bit, Rodney Alexander was the guy who supposedly started all of this by reporting what a page he sponsored had told him. He turned right around and dutifully told Denny Hastert. The rest is history.
But I was reminded that Rodney Alexander had just recently made a bit of history of his own--he was a Democratic turncoat, remember?
No idea how or whether this plays into things, but it's an interesting piece of history that I had forgotten.
***Update***
I took out the first line of my full body text, because it read horribly. It sounded as though I were enjoying the fact that Hastert might have exposed some other group of kids to Foley, which I clearly do not. The only thing that tickles my schadenfreude about all of this is the clear hypocrisy it exposes within the GOP and the ginormous clusterfuck it's turning out to be for them. I wish it didn't involve something like this, but it's only the 89th or so scandal, so I don't know why we should be surprised.
apologies.