Grand Ol' Police Blotter: Who Else Goes Down With Foley?

Mark Foley (R-FL) was some piece of work. Check out his dirty email exchange, which was turned over to ABCNews after it published a story about these creepy emails Foley sent to a 16-year-old page. Members of Congress emerging from a closed-door meeting yesterday said there are 35 pages or 36 pages of this garbage.

It's clear that this page's complaints were made to Republican leadership several months ago. But they were brushed off, or worse, actively covered up.

Now the unraveling of the cover-up begins. The original, complaining page worked for Rodney Alexander (R-LA), who says he contacted Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, several months ago. Alexander says he didn't do anything more because the parents of the page didn't want to pursue the matter. Reynolds says Alexander told him the same thing so he didn't do anything more.

John Shimkus [R-Ill.], head of the Page Board, says he was told about the page's complaint by the Clerk of the House and did an 'immediate investigation', which seems to have consisted of asking Foley, "Hey, Mark, what's the deal here?" and accepting his denial of perversion without doing any real investigating or even reading the emails themselves.

This tale of Republican incompetence at dealing with a known threat (sound familiar?) comes from today's Page One article in the Washington Post Rep. Foley Quits In Page Scandal; Explicit Online Notes Sent to Boy, 16.

And boy, are the heads of the party wriggling on the spit:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

Man, wouldn't you have wanted to hear that conversation between Hastert and Boehner? You told the Post WHAT?

Oh, and the Democratic member of the Page Board, who has served in that position for 20 years, wasn't told about the page's complaint about Foley. Which made it easier to cover up, n'est pas?

The only thing everyone can agree on here? Foley has $2.8 million in his campaign war chest; he should donate the entire amount to charity. Foley's House website has been taken down, so you can't contact him that way, but I bet his AOL email account is still active: MAF54@aol.com

Drop him a line, why don't you? But you might want to use one of your alternative email addresses, or you never know what you might get back from him. Ewwwwww.