Robert Steffes – 10/5/06

This page was last updated on October 5, 2006.

Congressional frauds; Robert Steffes; Beaver County Times; October 5, 2006.

For a little more background about him, please see my critique of a previous letter from Mr. Steffes.

Stating the obvious, I find the alleged actions of Mr. Foley pretty disturbing. Given what we know so far, he was right to resign and should have been booted out of Congress if he hadn’t resigned. Beyond this, however, all we have are sound bites and accusations and certainly not enough information to make further judgments. The truth is, I don’t believe anyone knows the full story yet and probably won’t for a while. Folks like Mr. Steffes don’t want to let facts get in the way of a good rant, however.

Mr. Steffes isn’t alone, however. He has the Beaver County Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for company.

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“The co-chairman of the Congressional Abused and Missing Children Caucus, Rep. Mark Foley, is caught soliciting underage congressional pages.”

[RWC] From what we know now, this is incorrect. To date, “all” Mr. Foley has been accused of doing is having sexually explicit electronic communications with an underage boy. (There’s now word the boy with whom the explicit conversations took place was 18 at the time.) So far, there’s nothing to indicate Mr. Foley attempted to have sex with pages. That could change, of course, as we learn more.

Also, from what has been reported to date, Mr. Foley’s communications were with former pages, not boys who were pages at the time of the message exchanges. This could change, but this represents what’s now known.

“The Republican House leadership was aware of its colleague’s predilections for quite some time, but apparently hushed it up to preserve the seat and its majority status.”

[RWC] To date there’s nothing to support this assertion other than allegations.

Earlier this week it was reported that several months ago some news outlets (some liberal) and the FBI had the same information as Republican House leadership had at the time and found nothing actionable.

If it turns out House leadership didn’t do its job, it should be punished appropriately.

“It astonishes me that Republicans can still claim they are the party of ‘values’ and ‘security’ when they can’t even protect the minors working for them from their own members.”

[RWC] As I noted, the current reporting indicates the communications were after the boys left the page program. That doesn’t make what Mr. Foley did any less bad, but Mr. Steffes misrepresents the situation when asserts the boys were “working for them.”

“It astonishes me even more that any voters are still suckered in by these frauds and incompetents.”

[RWC] I guess Mr. Steffes expects us to forget the likes of Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) and Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-IL) and how Democrats treated them.

Mr. Studds had sex (not just electronic conversations) with a 17-year-old male page (not former) in the 1970s. Mr. Studds was only censured by the House, not forced to resign. He expressed no remorse for his behavior and claimed it was no one’s business but his. Further, Democrats continued to reelect Mr. Studds for six more terms.

Mr. Reynolds had sex with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer and was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of child pornography. While Mr. Reynolds served his full term for these charges, then-President Clinton commuted his sentence on other charges. Subsequently, Jesse Jackson hired Mr. Reynolds to work with youth to cut the number of young blacks turning to crime.

Before Mr. Steffes rants about “frauds and incompetents,” perhaps he should look at how his own party treats representatives who actually had sex with underage children.