December 8, 2006
Focus on the right specifics and you can make anything look good
The Mark Foley House Page scandal is wrapping up today with the release of a tepid blameless report from the House Ethics Committee. It comes as no big surprise that this lame duck committee from one of our finest do-nothing Congresses issues a report that shows lots of evidence of people doing nothing beyond exhibiting willful ignorance to the problems.
While this site pointed out that doing what numerous Republican members of Congress did is against the law for people in a range of professions that involve contact with children is a criminal offense, the committee found no reason to reprimand anyone because failure to report possible child abuse is not against House rules.
Despite the fact that the report shows numerous cases where Republican Representatives and their top staff members knew about some sort of inappropriate communications between former Florida Rep. Mark Foley and teenage House Pages, no one took any definitive action to step in on behalf of the pages. For John Shimkus, John Boehner, Tom Reynolds and at the time Speaker Dennis Hastert, politics and plausible deniability mattered more than taking action and helping young Americans.
They didn’t have to confront Foley on the floor of the House and make a historic scene about it, but they should have called some sort of investigation, especially when the same allegations about the same Congressman keep popping up. Of course, this has been a Congress that doesn’t really believe in investigating things or demanding accountability, or even working.
They’ve set records for taking days off and are recently complaining about the incoming Democrat majority planning to increase the Congressional workweek by two days to the inspiring total of five. They’ve rarely passed a budget on time or required important people to testify before them under oath, but love to call the opposition obstructionist when any debate is raised.
The one thing this Republican Congress does do well is make sure every little thing is thought of in political terms and used accordingly. The report quotes Shimkus as explaining that he never informed the sole Democrat on the House Page Board Dale Kildee about Foley’s actions because, “Dale’s a nice guy, but he’s a Democrat, and I was afraid it would be blown out of proportion.”
It’s funny, a sensible person might think that if news of Foley’s page communiques was something that could be blown out of proportion, it’d be at the very least worth being given the whatever little bit of attention fits its proportions. But then again, you can always react to the report like Hastert who said he was pleased the committee found “there was no violation of any House rules by any member or staff.”
You can’t argue with a narrow truth like that.