What Crime Did Bill Clinton/Mark Foley Commit?

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

October 2, 2006

The resignation of Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fl) appeared to me on the surface to be a story that could be analyzed with little research. After all, Foley resigned quickly after e-mails that he sent to a 16 year old page were reported in the media and has since entered an alcohol treatment center in West Palm Beach. He released a statement admitting he was an alcoholic with emotional difficulties and had “accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and related behavioral problems."

However, the airwaves are now filled with Democrat accusations and the charge that “it is clear that key members of the Republican House leadership failed to take action to protect students in the Congressional page program, choosing instead to sit on their hands for as much as a year after learning that Republican Congressman Mark Foley had sent inappropriate emails to a minor.”

This struck me as rather bizarre, based on the reaction of Democrats in the 1990s when the charge was not inappropriate e-mails sent by their president, but totally inappropriate sexual BEHAVIOR. The charge here is not that Mark Foley actually DID anything inappropriate to a minor. He, and supposedly the entire Republican Party are said to be in big trouble because, we are told, he sent “inappropriate e-mails to a minor?” So, what was it that he said that was so awful that his party should have immediately taken action to kick him out of the House of Representatives and perhaps out of the party? I assumed from the media and the Democrats reaction that those e-mail would be X-rated at least.

Yet, according to CNN, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said House Republican leaders knew of the Foley allegations and "chose to cover it up rather than to protect these children." And, what, exactly was in those perfectly awful e-mails that should have caused the Republicans to condemn and oust Mark Foley? According to CNN the offending e-mail asked the 16 year old boy: “Did you have fun at your conference…what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do?”

After Hurricane Katrina, Foley wrote the following to the boy: “How are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe…send me an email pic of you as well.”

Now, actually, that doesn’t appear to me to be at all pornographic or threatening to a modern Internet savvy 16 year old boy. Yet, the boy told a congressional staffer that it was “sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.” Based on this information the voting public is now supposed to go to the polls on November 7 and pull the lever for all Democrats to protect our youth?

Let’s compare this current news item with a news item that broke in February 1998. A White House intern named Monica Lewinsky had admitted that she and the President of the United States of America had been having a highly “inappropriate” sexual relationship that had left semen on her blue dress. This was discussed and investigated for over a year then in February 1999 followed up by a report that, in 1978 Bill Clinton, then the attorney general of Arkansas, had raped a woman named Juanita Broderick. Broderick’s report was verified by a nurse who had helped treat her injuries as a result of the rape. All this eventually led to Clinton being found guilty of perjury by lying about it in a court of law .

However, none of that ever prompted the Democrats to even suggest that Clinton be removed from office or even reprimanded. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction on December 18, 1998, the day the House voted for impeachment of Clinton was: “It is not about Whitewater, it is not about Travelgate, and it is not about Filegate. It is about sex. It is about a punishment searching for a crime that does not exist.”

So, exactly what IS the crime that she believes the Republicans failed to react to that has been committed by Rep. Mark Foley? Even she claims that it is an “allegation” that the e-mails Foley sent were a danger to a 16 year old boy. And, exactly what law did Mark Foley break in asking a 16 year old boy “Did you have fun at your conference…what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do?” and “How are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe…send me an email pic of you as well.”

Now, I am aware that the undercurrent of this story hinges on the fact that Mark Foley apparently has never been married. Obviously, what is being inferred here is that the words in the e-mail were meant to lure the 16 year old into a homosexual liaison. Only….that is not what those supposedly “inappropriate e-mails” as reported actually SAY.

And, even if they did, how come Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who so stoutly defended President Bill Clinton’s “right” to do whatever he pleased in the Oval Office with an intern (since is was merely “about sex), a mere 8 years later, believe the Republicans should be defeated in November for not driving Mark Foley out Congress for asking a teen-ager how he was doing after a hurricane and whether he had fun at a conference?

There isn’t even an ALLEGATION being invented that accuses Mark Foley of the kind of sexual misconduct with a young page that has been PROVEN that Bill Clinton engaged in with a number of young women, one of them a White House intern. Yet, Bill Clinton was given and is still being given a complete pass on his outrageous sexual behavior and we are supposed to destroy Mark Foley because he is unmarried and wrote an e-mail to a 16 year old that someone claims is “inappropriate?”

On February 24, 1999, CBS News interviewed Juanita Broderick about being raped by Bill Clinton. That issue magically disappeared from the news less than a month later when Clinton made a major foreign policy decision to bomb our traditional friends, the Serbs for 79 days at the bidding of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which was armed by the Iranians and trained by Osama bin Laden and listed as a major terrorist group by the US State Department.

Now, I don’t know what the real story is about Mark Foley, but from what has been reported, I suspect this is really an effort to confuse the voting public and defeat Republicans on November 7th.