A Lose-Lose Situation…

Friday afternoon, Republican congressman Mark Foley (FL) resigned his seat in the House of Representatives. This occurred after ABC News posed questions to Rep. Foley regarding emails and instant messages which were sexually suggestive and sent to former pages.
The pages were boys and all under the age of 18.
There is no doubt–at least in my mind–that Foley is a scumbag of the lowest order. This piece of human flotsam built a career fighting sex crimes against children.
He deserves what he gets from the justice system, the only problem is, the list of people who knew about his perversion may extend pretty high up inside the House’s GOP leadership.
From the Associated Press, via MyWay:

GOP leaders admit their offices have known for months that a Florida Republican congressman was sending inappropriate e-mails to a boy who had worked as a page in the House of Representatives.

The office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who earlier said he’d learned about the e-mails only last week, acknowledged that aides referred the matter to the authorities last fall. They said they were only told the messages were “over-friendly.”

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who heads the House Republican election effort, said Saturday he told Hastert months ago about concerns that a fellow Republican lawmaker, Rep. Mark Foley, had sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.

Reynolds, a Republican from New York, is defending himself from Democrats who say he did too little to protect the boy.

Now I don’t care who knew about this. If they knew and did nothing about it, they should be censured and then prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I don’t care if that involves Denny Hastert or any other Republicans. If they had knowledge of Foley’s actions and emails and didn’t notify law enforcement officials, then…well…to Hell with them. I don’t care who gets their seat as long as it’s not them.
We are a nation of laws and, as such, any adult with knowledge of these events had a responsibility to these children. I don’t care if they were Republicans or Democrats. This isn’t about politics, it’s about right and wrong.
The überLibs are already whining and complaining that this is a GOP cover-up, calling it “Foleygate.” They’re going to pursue this as a political matter, attempting to use it to benefit their own political capital for the mid-term elections next month. The überLibs are clearly playing the wrong card here.
I don’t say that because I’m a Conservative, don’t misunderstand me here. The Democrats actually would fare better, in my opinion, if they let the legal investigation run its course. Look at it this way: what makes a better commercial for the Democrats–tape of an Ethics Committee hearing or tape of Republicans being led out of the Capitol in handcuffs with raincoats over their heads?
Now, let’s be realistic here: there aren’t going to be lots of Republicans doing the “perp walk” when this is all said and done. Even just one gives them better fuel for the fire. However, they’re going to hedge their bet that an Ethics Committee investigation will give them a better chance of affecting the mid-terms…
…and they’ll be wrong.
There comes a time when politics has to be set aside to do what’s right in the eyes of the law, and that’s exactly what should happen here.
As far as Mark Foley is concerned, there isn’t enough they could allegedly do to that allegedly sick bastard to make me allegedly happy. Allegedly.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com