WB: Call of the Wild ++ – Moon of Alabama

October 5, 2006

WB: Call of the Wild ++

Billmon:

III. Family Values

II. State of Siege

—

I know it’s a grisly, disgusting scene, but that’s just the way the food chain works in the cyber ecosystem: The predators kill the prey and eat their fill, then leave the remains for the scavengers — hyenas, vultures, maggots — to pick over.
You could think of it as the political equivalent of a nature documentary.

I. Call of the Wild

Posted by b on October 5, 2006 at 15:50 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The Hill digs down into the murk from which the Foley emails emerged.

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.
That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim. . .
That Foley’s scandalous communications came to public light during Congress’s final week in Washington was largely determined by the media outlets which obtained the suspicious e-mails in the middle of the summer, said the person who provided them to reporters several months ago. . . .
The person who provided the e-mails to several D.C.-based news outlets in July claimed to have no knowledge of who gave them to two Florida papers last year.
D.C.-based media organizations declined to report on the e-mails. But one, ABC News, reported on the e-mails last week after a Weblog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, published a few of the exchanges between Foley and the former page. . . .
The source who provided the e-mails that ABC News first reported on its blog, denied sharing the more explicit IMs.
So while the primary source of the e-mails which kicked off the scandal was a House GOP aide, the trigger of the news coverage was the weblog.
The creator of stopsexpreditors.blogspot.com is unknown. An interview request e-mailed to the site was not returned.

Who dunnit? Or howminnny dunnit?
In any case, the ardent missives have been floating out there, and not just inside Congress, for awhile it seems. Timing is everything?

Posted by: small coke | Oct 5 2006 17:12 utc | 1

@small coke – some Florida papers also had the emails in July as had ABC. Only after a mysterious blog came up with the IMs, and ABC had hands on them, there was enough to blow this up. Doesn´t reallly look like intended election timing.
WaPo has some more IMs: Lawmaker’s Intentions Appear Clear In Exchanges

The vast majority of the messages were between Foley and one of the two former pages. Some of the exchanges took place before the boy turned 18. Attempts by The Post to contact the two former pages were unsuccessful.
Taken together, the chats seem to make clear that Foley tried to lure the boys into sexual encounters, and certainly encouraged lurid behavior online. In one conversation, it appears clear that Foley met with one boy in San Diego.
There is no clear evidence that Foley and the boys had sexual contact. But they frequently talked about getting together
At one point Foley wrote: “i miss you lots since san diego.”
“ya i cant wait till dc,” the former page replied. “did you pick a night for the dinner”?
…
“I could give you a massage here . . . just a block and a half,” he wrote. Later in the online conversation, Foley asked, “so you do see us palyin around”?
“sure,” the page responded. “weve gone over this before . . . havent we”? “i excuse your memory when you are drinking . . . cause i dont remember much when i drink,” the page continues.
…
“We will make you successful,” Foley promised, “as long as you don’t mind me grabbing your [deleted] once in a while.”

Also ABC admits they screwed up:

Yesterday, several Web sites said that bloggers had been able to learn the name of one of the two former pages because ABC News had briefly posted his screen name on its site.
“We always want to keep the identities of people involved in any kind of alleged sexual crimes confidential,” ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said last night. “On Friday, there was a glitch in our posting, and it’s possible that an actual, unredacted screen name was posted for an extremely short period of time. Obviously, it was fixed almost instantly.”

Posted by: b | Oct 5 2006 18:06 utc | 2

The question now is whether the troops are willing to go over the top. I’m convinced many will not be. This scandal has hit a Republican sweet spot – the tender bit of flesh somewhere between the brestplate and the grieves.
The Republicans win by being the party of intolerance. If that’s your angle, then you damn well better be intolerant. But if there’s one thing this scandal has made clear its that the Republican leadership – and I’m including the Religious Right leadership – is not intolerant enough. That gay-baiting crap is for the rubes, apparently. At the very least, Hastert et al knew Foley was gay and it didn’t take him down a peg in their eyes. Being “overly friendly” with 16-year-old boys also didn’t tarnish him any. The base may understand expedience, but on this scale? I’m not sure. Remember, they threw Ralph Reed under the bus for far less.

Posted by: NickM | Oct 5 2006 18:17 utc | 3

Sibel Edmonds: Freeh Investigated Hastert and other juicy tid bits and links…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 5 2006 21:09 utc | 4

b,
Radar blog, with which I am unfamiliar, has some curious comments about the blogsite that first mentioned Foley’s emailing habits. Anyone else familiar with Radar’s raison d’etre?

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.”
One early post, headlined The Sickening Six, naming and shaming the “kinds of sick people who hunt minors for their own sick purposes,” is basically an amalgam of plagiarized entries from Crimelibrary, Wikipedia, and Answers.com.
After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, “the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!” and posted four emails purportedly from “interns” outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys. . . .
Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous “Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!”, claiming they’d been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which initially dismissed them as fakes. . . .
Whoever promoted the story on DailyKos did so only 12 minutes after the fateful post went live at 11:06 a.m.:
“Check this out. Congressman Mark Foley has crossed the line.
http://www.stopsexpredators.blogspot…
by WHInternNow onSun Sep 24, 2006 at 11:18:14 PDT”

Interesting posting name, WHInternNow.
Radar suggests that whoever is behind stop-predator has a good sense of the news cycle. As billmon points out, the timing is a little early, if the intent is simply to torpedo Republican election chances. On the other hand, we aren’t talking much about habeus corpus, torture, the NIE, or Woodward’s portrait of incompetence and dissumulation, all of which stories also broke last week.
Life is certainly full of coincidence, but in this very tough game in campaign season, I’m not so sure.

Posted by: small coke | Oct 5 2006 21:42 utc | 5

Uncle –
How curious. Hastert narrowly missed an investigation in 2000 of Turkish contributions to his campaign? Makes one wonder what are the underground dimensions of that fungus on which Hastert intends to stay firmly seated.

Posted by: small coke | Oct 5 2006 22:33 utc | 6

More on Hastert: the key to understanding Brewster Jennings Sibel Edmonds, Louis J. Freeh, Dennis Hastert, Mark Foley, Foley Scandal etc…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 5 2006 22:35 utc | 7

Yeah, I’m convinced Sibel Edmonds knowledge –for which she is gagged for–
has the goods, and is the linchpin that could bring this whole criminal enterprize down. They’d kill her before letting her talk.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 5 2006 22:43 utc | 8

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