An American congressman has resigned in disgrace now that it has been revealed that he has been engaging in X-rated email conversations with teen pages:
Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation came just hours after ABC News questioned the congressman about a series of sexually explicit instant messages involving congressional pages, high school students who are under 18 years of age.
In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.
As a parent, I worry about this sort of thing a lot:
We are not the last line of defense for our children, we are the only line of defence. While they are at home, we have to do all we can to protect them. But we might as well unlock the door and leave the windows open, a ladder conveniently leaning up against the house, if we don’t keep an eye on the computer. Foley and people like him use the Internet both as a means of entry and a way of staying hidden. So keep the computer in the hall or a common room. Set time limits on its use. Learn how to enable logging features and use them.
The technology to do it is improving all the time.
Your kids will hate you for it. Good. A parent who is not hated by their kids at least twice a week is not doing his or her job.
Take care everyone. And pay attention.
This scandal and the cover up of a pedophile by the Republican House leaders for over a year, on top of Woodward’s book on the White House, are all dynamite as the mid-term elections approach.
‘Anyone else finding the filter is eating half their stuff…
‘Anyone else finding that the filter is eating a lot of their stuff–and it never sees the light of day again…?
‘Just posted and it’s gone…maybe I can post at AGWN, though that’s a site it’s really hard to post at…
Oh well…
About posting at AGWN…the planned move is supposed to take place this weekend. Hopefully we’ll start seeing improvements.
ooooooo ya.
*everything* has been sent topsy turvy because of desktop home computers with all that processing power. now combined with the internet and all that information to access.
I keep saying it, one day some descendant of photoshop will be used to throw recorded forensic evidence out the window; then the bad guys will have an absolute &^$%^% FIELD DAY. its quite easy really; crown attorney trots out ‘video evidence’ showing the accused @ the scene of the crime and defence trots out an equal quality video (faked? cant say….) showing the client 500 km away at precisely the same moment.
software experts are called in and can on testify that since it all originates in digital form, it only takes an even more powerful digital system to massage the recorded sound/image sufficient that it is indiscernable which version is the real one.
case dismissed!!!
sign of the times.
How come schmuck’s stuff is getting through?
True story: The son of friends was on the Internet a lot, as both parents worked outside the home. The day of his 16th birthday, he didn’t come home from school, which was in a rural area of the province they live in.
Just as they were about to become alarmed, a friend of their son arrived at the house with a note. They became much more alarmed: Their son had been corresponding with a man in a province over 1000 kms away, who had bought the boy a plane ticket. The boy had caught a bus to the nearest city with an airport, picked up the ticket, and had flown to his destination: the man’s house. The note said, “Mom and Dad, I’m fine. I’ll be in touch when I get to where I’m going.”
My friends immediately contacted the provincial police who, fortunately, had an officer who was a computer whiz–their son had e-mailed them on arrival at the man’s house, only telling them what city he was in and that he was OK–and who was able to trace the e-mail server and prevail upon them to help him identify the customer. I don’t know if that’s totally legal, but that’s what happened. And this police officer did the computer work on his own time, he was so concerned.
To make a long story short, one of this boy’s parents flew to the city where their son was, where they were met by one of the city’s policemen, who then went to the house where they knew he was. When the door was answered, the only thing the officer could tell the man, because the boy was 16 and no longer a legal minor, was “we’re watching you. We know you have this boy living with you. His parent simply wants to talk to him and will not coerce him to go home.”
The boy and parent had a meal together, and the boy opted to stay in the big city, where he could attend a larger high school with more exciting programs than his rural school offered.
Who knows what he was exposed to while he was in the big city? He did, however, eventually return home.
Right under his parents’ noses, from the bosom of his family (he has other siblings who were quite traumatized by the event), this boy was whisked away by a body snatcher. And it’s happening far more than we know.
well batb, could be because I am so attuned to the inner werkins of these nifty little gadgets with the keyboard layout from the late 1800s, that I know how to get it thru….
besides, what do you find so ‘filterable’ about a warning of things which will create an open season on the entire foundation of the security of this society??? you right wing boys wanna sweep that under the carpet too???
the conjuncture of technology and savvy defense attournies. that part isnt new; the scope and power of the technology is.
Foley said he wanted to turn over a new leaf, or more precisely, bend over a new page.
I question the timing.
Holy crap… Steve Janke posts three links and fully TWO of them aren’t to his blog!
Astounding!
Parent your children well!!
In the latter part of the 19th century, well before Freud, Krafft-Ebbing gave fair warning in “Psychopathia Sexualis”.
Be warned! Teach your children well.
And another thing; there is a sexual urge that develops before knowledge, this is purely physiological. It is without object, it is purely subjective.
The recipient tempers this urge according to established mores within the family. If there are no, or loose mores within the family, then the recipient will be psychically and physiologically impotent, or will develop sexual aberrations in the sense that the sexual urge is focused to the release of sexual energy in ways that are contrary to the male/female bonding that gives a nurturing uniting bond to the offspring.
Else, there is fetishism, masochism, and sadism in all there degrees.
any bets foley evades jail time?
I use the word ‘evade’ deliberately.
any bets foley evades jail time?
He will receive ZERO jail time because he was not CAUGHT in the act. Neither did he ACT on his ambiguous thoughts.
He was simply a perverted flirt.
What’s the big deal, it is only sex and character doesn’t matter. Bet the msm treats this a lot differently than the Clinton scandals. All of a sudden they care about a politicians sex life. Too bad he didn’t know about BS.
I agree with Steve when he says “Your kids will hate you for it [monitoring their use of the computer]. Good. A parent who is not hated by their kids at least twice a week is not doing his or her job.”
And this is precisely the problem. Because so many parents hardly see their children in a day–a hurried breakfast, goodbyes while everyone rushes off to school and work, a frenzied after-school round of sports or after-school activities, no sit-down dinner, homework, laundry, shopping, cleaning, bed–too many of them hesitate to put restrictions on their kids OR they just aren’t physically around to watch what’s going on. They dread being hated by their kids, whereas when you’re with them 24/7, it’s not such a big deal.
Kids don’t bring themselves up. As ‘grownups’ have been intent on fulfillment and career success in the past 30 years, there’s been a growing societal myth that kids should be independent, that they don’t need ‘parental guidance’ as much as they used to, that they’re ‘resilient’ and can handle a lot of ‘freedom’ or activities without adults ‘hovering.’
This is a myth. It simply is not true. Without adult supervision, it’s too easy for kids who are inexperienced, looking for laughs, fun, danger, and to push the envelope, to experiment with all kinds of things, like drugs, sex, Internet, e-mail, etc. and find themselves in much hotter water than they had ever thought was possible.
Being vigilant is part of a parent’s responsibility. Being thought to be “too strict” or “the only mom or dad who does this,” etc. goes with the territory—and your kids will thank you later when they realize how high the stakes were.
I want to say something about this because I find it disturbing, and I’ve done some thinking about it.
I’m not talking about the politician who got busted. I’m glad he was caught. Every couple of years we have one that we have to get rid of becaue of some sexual weirdness.
I’m talking about all of the exploitation opportunities presented by various forms of electronic communication, including ipods and the internet. From what I have discovered, basically the situation is that millions of people of every age are flashing each other on the internet.
Old are flashing young, young are flashing old, and this all results in this growing problem we have.
I will leave it to the shrinks to try to delineate the different kinds of pathology, voyeurism, or psycho-sexual developmental weirdness that all this represents.
A month or two ago over on lukefort.com (Don’t go over there if you are offended by sexual content. It’s a gossip column for the porn industry. You have been warned…) I read an article that I think gets to the heart of this matter.
Apparently hundreds of thousands of kids used to rush to Hollywood every year to try to get into the movies. Well, today, hundreds of thousands are flocking to Tinseltown to try to get into the port industry.
And why should we be surprised? Porn and explicit sexuality is virtually everywhere. I doubt if I’m the only one that has occsionally ventured into the red light district and seen forms of sexuality that I never ran across in waterfront bars in third-world countires.
Kids are all over this. A new movie is coming out in which one of the former kids from Little House on the Prairie is supposed to simulate an affair with a pit bull terrier. Nude scenes are commonplace. X-rated videos are a multi-billion dollar a year market.
A couple of porn stars and porn houses tried to contribute to the Republican Party. Hugh Hefner and the Hustler guy have both been involved in politics for years. If it were not for Bill O’Reilly, a famous porn actress was about to become the national spokesperson for Gillette.
And in the midst of all this, the only grave warnings we are given is that parents should keep careful tabs on their children’s internet activity. Well, hell. I don’t have any kids at home to worry about these days, but if I did they could be downloading plans for an atomic bombs and a Stalinist attack on Norway, and I wouldn’t know the difference. I know how to do about a dozen different things on the internet, and that’s about it.
So in summary, explicit sexuality is now virtually everywhere. There are no limitations, and there are no monitors. There is probably no place in the Western world where a kid cannot access some form of porn. They grow up exposed to an unstoppable ocean of explicit sexuality screamed at them from every corner of the universe.
The other day, I heard about 2 underage girls who lured an old guy into a compromising situation so that they could stick him up at gunpoint and rob him. So today this entire area is now being used in a multitude of ways that involve sexual exploitation regardless of age.
I agree with Steve when he says “Your kids will hate you for it [monitoring their use of the computer]. Good. A parent who is not hated by their kids at least twice a week is not doing his or her job.”
And this is precisely the problem. Because so many parents hardly see their children in a day–a hurried breakfast, goodbyes while everyone rushes off to school and work, a frenzied after-school round of sports or after-school activities, no sit-down dinner, homework, laundry, shopping, cleaning, bed–too many of them hesitate to put restrictions on their kids OR they just aren’t physically around to watch what’s going on. They dread being hated by their kids, whereas when you’re with them 24/7, it’s not such a big deal.
Kids don’t bring themselves up. As ‘grownups’ have been intent on fulfillment and career success in the past 30 years, there’s been a growing societal myth that kids should be independent, that they don’t need ‘parental guidance’ as much as they used to, that they’re ‘resilient’ and can handle a lot of ‘freedom’ or activities without adults ‘hovering.’
This is a myth. It simply is not true. Without adult supervision, it’s too easy for kids who are inexperienced, looking for laughs, fun, danger, and to push the envelope, to experiment with all kinds of things, like drugs, sex, Internet, e-mail, etc. and find themselves in much hotter water than they had ever thought was possible.
Being vigilant is part of a parent’s responsibility. Being thought to be “too strict” or “the only mom or dad who does this,” etc. goes with the territory—and your kids will thank you later when they realize how high the stakes were.
I’m wondering about his past , before he became a Congressman. Were there warning signs? What were his motives for introducing laws that could end up convicting him? Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of the situation, was there something more to his motives? Was he trying to prove something to someone? Himself? Or was it an elaborate plan to disguise his true self?
today’s skill testing question: if foley doesnt do jail time, what message and resultant behaviour will that result in with the cybersex crowd?
this just in:
FBI to investigate U.S. congressman’s emails
Updated Sun. Oct. 1 2006 11:45 PM ET
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The FBI is examining former Rep. Mark Foley’s e-mail exchanges with teenagers to determine if they violated federal law, an agency spokesman said Sunday.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the FBI is “conducting an assessment to see if there’s been a violation of federal law.” He had no further comment.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert requested Sunday that the Justice Department conduct an investigation into Foley’s electronic messages to teenage boys — a lurid scandal that has put House Republicans in political peril.
“As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated federal law,” Hastert, R-Ill., wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress also called Sunday for a criminal probe. White House counselor Dan Bartlett called the allegations against Foley shocking, but said President Bush hadn’t learned of Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to a 16-year-old boy and instant messages to other boys before the news broke last week.
“There is going to be, I’m sure, a criminal investigation into the particulars of this case,” Bartlett said. “We need to make sure that the page system is one in which children come up here and can work and make sure that they are protected.”
Foley, R-Fla., quit Congress on Friday after the disclosure of the e-mails he sent to a former congressional page and sexually suggestive instant messages he sent to other high school pages.
A law enforcement official, who asked for anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said agents from the FBI’s cyber division are looking into the text of some of the messages and checking to see how many e-mails were sent and how many computers were used. They are also looking to see if some of the teens who were sent messages will cooperate with the probe.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the Foley case “repugnant, but equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives knew there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a congressional seat this election year.”
I have a proposal. Let’s search the email of every Congressman and Senator for such perversion. Do you think either party will consent?
To defend themselves the Republicans only have
to repeat what all the democrats and msm said when Clinton was doing his intern. Its only sex, and is no reason to make a big deal out of it.
Funny how values change when it is the other side.
A typical phoney shallow American politician. Clinton had sex with consenting adults.