More shit hits the proverbial fan on the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), the only openly gay Republican* member of the House*, saw sexually explicit messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-NAMBLA) to a young page in the year 2000 and confronted Foley about the emails.
Reading between the lines of the rest of the article, it seems that WaPo is pointing to Kolbe as another member of Congress with an 'unusually close' relationship to the underage pages:
In interviews with The Post last week, multiple pages identified Kolbe as a close friend and personal confidante who was one of the only members of Congress to take any interest in them. A former page himself, Kolbe offered to mentor pages and kept in touch with some of them after they left the program, according to the interviews.
Kolbe once invited four former pages to make use of his Washington home while he was out of town, according to an instant message between Foley and another former page, Jordan Edmund, in January 2002. The pages planned to attend a first-year reunion of their page class. But because of a snowstorm, they did not take Kolbe up on his offer, according to one of the four pages.
Hastert's spokesman's statement also seems to portend the later throwing of Kolbe under the GOP megabus:
In addressing the revelation about Kolbe, Bonjean said, "This allegation reiterates why the speaker has also called for a full review of the House page program to ensure that it is as safe and secure as possible."
Lawmaker Saw Foley Messages In 2000
Page Shared Exchanges With GOP Rep. Kolbe
*Edited 10/9/06; at first I said only openly gay member of the Senate. There are no openly gay members of the Senate (cough, cough, Lindsey Graham, cough, cough). After I demoted Kolbe to the Senate, I realized that there are a few openly gay Democrats. Whew. Discuss amongst yourselves.
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