Friday, September 29, 2006

Mark Foley (From The Annals of the Weird)



According to ABC (via Eschaton), Congressman Mark Foley has submitted his resignation today:

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

As noted in the quote, Foley is or was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children:

As a founder and co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, Mark has been instrumental in the development and passage of legislation designed to protect our children.

He authored legislation that became law -- the Volunteers for Children Act -- that gives volunteer organizations that work with children, such as scouting and sports groups, access to FBI fingerprint-based background checks to ensure that they are not inadvertently hiring child molesters.

He has also cosponsored legislation toughening the penalties levied at those who hurt children and, most recently, has joined forces with the Administration and Congress to fight child predators. His Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which has passed both the House and Senate, will overhaul the way we track and monitor predatory pedophiles. He has also introduced and cosponsored legislation designed to eliminate child pornography and exploitive child modeling web sites.

Other news sources argue that Foley is not resigning, just not seeking re-election.
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Added later: Scratch that last sentence. He is gone. So are his websites, it seems.
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Added even later: It looks like some other Republicans knew about at least part of Foley's peccadillos:

Campaign aides had previously acknowledged that the Republican congressman e-mailed the former Capitol page five times, but had said there was nothing inappropriate about the exchange. The page was 16 at the time of the e-mail correspondence.

The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen's parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, "We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem," a reference to the House's Republican leaders.