Post by beatlies on Mar 27, 2018 17:42:46 GMT -5
voat.co/v/pizzagate/1724515
"Archived Dennis Hastert and Mark Foley Connection: Has this relationship been explored? (pizza gate)
submitted 1 year ago by Littleredcorvettn
The Page Who Took Down the GOP by Leaking the Mark Foley Messages: archive.is/OlSxT
In November 2006, after Democrats retook the house, Hastert announced he'd step down from leadership in the next Congress. He didn’t have much choice in the matter. That fall, a story exploded that likely cost Republicans their House and Senate majority: Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley, it was revealed, had repeatedly made sexual advances to several congressional pages. Hastert, the speaker at the time, had allegedly been told by House colleagues about Foley’s history of messaging teens, and did nothing.
Why did the Page report it?
I didn’t do it to sink the Republicans, though as an aspiring Democratic politico, I wasn’t sorry to see it happen. I did it because I realized just how easily Rep. Foley had been evading accountability for repeat offenses, and that the House leadership was either unwilling or unable to solve the problem. I had no idea what I’d eventually learn about the speaker in whose hands the problem was placed.
In 2006, it seemed clear the House leadership knew something inappropriate was happening with Foley and the pages; Hastert’s disgraceful exit from the speakership that year reflected this suspicion-by-consensus. But knowing what I now know, it’s chilling to realize that the speaker of the House had, decades earlier, allegedly sexually abused a teenage boy while working as a high school wrestling coach. What if Hastert’s neglect was not simply incompetence, but choice?
The Page Program Is this just a grooming program?
I knew I wanted to be a page since literally the first time I heard of it, right around the time that my seventh-grade love of professional wrestling gave way to an eighth-grade love of politics—I had to get into the page program. I volunteered long hours with my congressman for years to make it a reality. In August 2001, weeks before my junior year of high school, the acceptance letter came in a thick envelope from House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. I had been granted admission to my own personal Hogwarts.
During Labor Day weekend, my parents and I joined a block-long line of 70 incoming pages and their doting parents for move-in day. We were all living away from home for the first time, housed in a dorm that often took on a summer-camp atmosphere. We were adolescents, subject to the same teenage romances and cliques as all high schoolers, only ours played out in the halls of Congress.
Did he just mention underground tunnels?
That first week was a blur—the need to familiarize yourself with the Capitol, to make sense of the House office building system, the Morse code-like bell system and corresponding row of tiny lightbulbs found on every clock on the Hill, the cramped labyrinth of hallways in the basement, the underground tunnel system. We began memorizing the names and faces of every member of the House, using a stack for of hundreds of glossy photos as flashcards.
Vulnerable kids
That was our introduction to Washington, D.C.[9-11] We were 16-year-olds, alone and in the middle of it all. Our families were back home, and in their absence, we became a family, with all of the affection, arguments, favoritism, comfort and drama that families entail. Looking back, I realize just how vulnerable we all were. When the House was in session, we had to be there, too. If they started early in the morning, we’d end our school day early enough to be on the floor before they arrived. If there was a big vote and they stayed late into the night, we were there until they finished."