Behind the First Foley site

Now that's some good digging:

ABCNews.com brought Mark Foley's boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn't the first website to flog the story.

That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudovigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle.

In other words, a blog whose sole raison d'etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.

If its time/date stamps are to be trusted (Like most free blogware, Blogger allows its users to backdate posts), the pervert-outing anony-site was set up on July 28 as a "clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned citizens."

..... read the link to get the full story. Good stuff.

On the side of bad stuff... this was just a matter of time:

"The List" (of Gay GOP Aides on the Hill); Hubris on Bloggingheads.tv

There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.

On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice."

The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.

I have a copy.

I'm not going to publish it.

For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.

What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas.

These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices?

After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality,incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors.

That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation.

And for those of you who blame this as an October surprise. from the Wall Street J

Ex-Pages Brought Explicit Messages to Light

By SARAH LUECK
October 4, 2006; Page A13

WASHINGTON -- Former congressional pages themselves supplied some of the
most damning emails in the scandal that forced the resignation of Rep. Mark
Foley, stepping forward only after tamer messages were posted by ABC News on
its Web site Thursday.


Several media organizations, along with law-enforcement and congressional
officials, had seen the Florida Republican's tamer messages to male teenage
pages months ago, but the messages didn't set off alarm bells, even at ABC,
which didn't consider them worthy of its broadcast TV news, a reconstruction
of events shows.

Mr. Ross declined to identify any of the sources by name. He described the
first tipster as a "Capitol Hill source" -- though not an aide or
congressional official -- who was "aware of the pages' complaints" and
"concerned about kids and pedophiles." This person, Mr. Ross said, is
"involved in public-policy issues" but isn't affiliated with either
political party.


Mr. Ross's account sheds new light on a question that has vexed Washington
insiders for days: Why did the story, which had circulated months before to
several news outlets, break just five weeks before the election? The timing
of the news, which emerged too late for the Republican Party to put a
different candidate's name on the ballot in Mr. Foley's congressional
district -- has led some Republicans to question whether the sources had
partisan political motives.


Appearing with conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh, House Speaker
Dennis Hastert said the opposition was orchestrating the leaks of explicit
instant messages between Mr. Foley and former pages dating from 2003. "We
have a story to tell, and the Democrats have -- in my view have -- put this
thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to
put us on defense," Mr. Hastert said.


Mr. Ross said that, in his opinion, ABC's path to the story was too
convoluted to be part of a broader partisan conspiracy. "The chain of events
that just doesn't hold up...in terms of being from a political party," Mr.
Ross said. "I know how that works. This was not it."

The pages who provided information to ABC insisted on anonymity, in some
cases because they were worried about the impact on their current or future
political careers, Mr. Ross said. One of the former pages "is now involved
in politics," he added. If his name surfaced "it would be extremely
detrimental to him and to his candidate, who is a Republican."