Capitol Hill Pages Paragons of Virtue

We gotta reform the page program again. We gotta reform the page program. We reformed it back in 1983, and you know what we did We put 'em all together in dorms making them more easy to find for the predators out there. So now we gotta reform the page program again after we reformed it after Gerry Studds and his little tryst, an actual tryst with an actual page. They overhauled the page program, they adopted new protections, and now we have to do it all over again. I spent a lot of time on the Internet last night, ladies and gentlemen, searching and searching and searching and I went to the House Page Alumni Association website. And a fascinating number of entries by Jordan Edmund, who's now all lawyered up, and he's got a criminal lawyer, and I think his FBI interview is coming up.

That's another thing that's interesting. The FBI -- you know, this group, Stop Sex Predators or whatever it is, the FBI claims now that the e-mails, not the IMs, the e-mails -- oh, and that's another thing. The family of the guy, the page that sent the e-mails is ripping the media. They don't want to go public. They don't want any more to do with this, they're blaming the media for causing their life to become a living hell with the media trying to find them and get hold of them, and they end up saying, "Our son would be happy to serve again as a page." Really Does it make it sound like there's all kinds of rotten stuff going on there So, anyway, the FBI, when they originally were presented these e-mails, noticed two things. They had been altered, not substantively, but like a comma where it wasn't, page break or line break where it wasn't, an apostrophe where it wasn't. There are two different versions of these e-mails, and they've been altered. As far as we know, the substance hasn't been altered, but the point is they've been played with.

So if various elements have been altered, could the content have been altered and yet remain the same in both Yes, it's entirely possible. The FBI said, without a name on these e-mails -- and they've redacted that -- we can't investigate, and there's nothing here to investigate anyway. Brian Ross thought the same thing of ABC. He said, there's nothing here, I gotta worry about destroying Bush and the anniversary of Katrina. And then we got the 9/11 anniversary coming up to destroy Bush again. I don't have time for these e-mails. It wasn't until the website people, oh, the e-mails aren't enough Okay, we gotta find something else, found the instant messages, however they came up. That still is the question of the day. How did those instant messages find their way into the public domain. Anyway, as to the House Page Alumni Association, the topic that I found for discussion, April 23rd of this year, "The book." Jordan Edmund began a discussion on the book. What book His entry, "Has anyone been in contact with the author Do we know how it is coming Was it just given up on"

"Not the faintest clue. I would venture to say it's been given up on. I was never under the impression the person had a publisher of any such thing. Well, when I spoke to her on the phone a year or so back, she said she had written a few other books, but I would doubt that there was someone who would be willing to publish a book about pages. The clerk's counsel would probably keep anything from being published anyway probably on the ground that we all signed confidentiality agreements when we started, so every interview she did with a page would be null. Just my assumption."

There's different people here, different pages talking to Jordan Edmund about the book project. And then another item on this website, the House Page Alumni Association, from 19 September, this year, not even a month ago, "Pages in Roll Call. As pages, lawmakers mixed politics and pranks." Now, the link for this story is not active. It's Roll Call magazine, so they obviously had a story about pages, and that was the slugline.

These pages are talking to each other on the website here. "Pages in Roll Call. As pages, lawmakers mixed politics and pranks." So an entire discussion was started on the book and as part of that discussion, one of the threads, as pages, lawmakers mixed politics and pranks, September 19th of 2006. Hmm. Now we had the story from Drudge yesterday, two sources close to Jordan Edmund said this whole thing was a prank. Sounds to me like what happened is that the word was out on Foley, and every incoming class of the page group was told about this guy, and one of the mistakes that everybody makes, particularly a story like this, the way the template has unfolded is that these pages are the essence of innocence. They're all virgins, and they take a bath three or four times a day, they've never seen a curse word or heard one, they don't know anything about sex. They're just the essence of innocence. They're people trying to become good government people, they want to understand our system of government, they're good civics people and they're going up there and they have been corrupted by the perverts and the creeps that are there.

Bottom line is, they all have to be pretty smart, and they're probably thus typically like many teenagers. And you know teenagers can be mean. They haven't yet had the maturity to understand sensitivity and decency, love making fun of people, they walk around mimicking the way they walk, they make fun of the way people look, and they'll do it sometimes to their faces. So you can imagine that the word's out on Foley. I can see where some of these pages would just have more fun than a human being could be allowed to have trying to titillate the poor guy, into sending him all this stuff. None of them ever met with the guy, apparently, and what does that tell us He tried, come on over for a massage, come over for an adult beverage, according to the IMs, but none of them ever met with him, it seems like, privately. But it seems like someone just had a grand old time teasing the guy and getting their jollies, and they print out their instant messages to show everybody, to get a yuk and a laugh.

It's sort of like sharing the practical joke with people that weren't in on it at the time, they have a grand old time, somebody saw it and thought, ooh, this is explosive stuff, and it somehow gets in the hands of a political operative not friendly to the Republicans, and, bammo, you've got the beginnings of how this stuff finds its way into the public domain. That apparently is what a couple people are suggesting that Jordan Edmund did. There's also another page out there, Tyson, other pages, I can't remember his last name, he's the one that's been all over TV. And other pages are sending e-mails out from concerned pages of America or some such thing, warning people in the media about this guy, that he's nothing but a media hog, he's a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' roller. I don't know the details of this and how true they are, but the point is there's not unity among the pages.

They're like any other group of people; there are jealousies, there's envy, there's resentment, and apparently this guy hasn't accounted to much, hasn't accomplished much. He's divorced and now has proclaimed himself gay publicly, and other pages are a little resentful that he's trying to make himself the face of the story with all this TV time and so forth. I think it's common with any group of people, they're going to have top dogs, you know, bottom feeders, and there's going to be the resulting cliques. Going to be people that fit in and people that don't. Here's the CNN story: Page's Family, Leave Our Hero Son alone. And the interesting line from this, "We are pleased that he had the opportunity, our son, to serve as a page in the US House of Representatives, and if given the opportunity, he would serve as a page again." Well, uh-oh, that sort of argues against the fact that the whole place is a sexual cesspool, does it not, if some parents want to send their son back there Ernest Istook on whose staff Jordan Edmund now works, Ernest Istook, a congressman from Oklahoma running for governor there, apparently got a question from the media asking if it was Karl Rove who recommended that he hire Jordan Edmund.

Now, why would that question pop up Because I suspect after the Drudge post yesterday, somebody in the left, some people are suspecting a Rove dirty trick to trip 'em up. So Istook dismissed the question. He did not answer it. And before we go to the break, a story here from Channel 10 in Tampa Bay, Florida, by Mike Diesen. Actually it's in St. Petersburg. "Some Florida Democrats called Kevin King a rising star amongst the ranks of Democrats but others like the head of the Pinellas Democratic Party Ed Helm had doubts. King was arrested, a Democrat, 2001, a judge ordered the St. Petersburg police department to seal all records regarding the arrest. Kevin King admits that the arrest stems from when he was a substitute teacher. He was arrested for computer solicitation to commit a lewd and lascivious act and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

"According to published reports, Kevin King sent e-mails or instant messages to two female students, aged 14 and 15 trying to get them to skip school and drink adult beverages with him. In addition, the reports say that King also asked the 14-year-old to perform a sexual act on him." Wow. "King, who admits he was arrested, insists he did nothing wrong. He points to the fact that the records were sealed and he was not found guilty of anything. King would not appear on camera for this story." Who is this guy "Kevin King resigned his paid position in the Democratic Party after the primaries to care for his parents two weeks ago. However, Kevin King was elected a Democratic committee member in Pinellas County. The position concerned Ed Helm, head honcho, who had earlier asked the Florida Democrat Party leadership to relieve him of his duties in Pinellas County 'or to terminate him'".

This information comes, of course, in the wake of scandals involving Mark Foley. So I mean it's not big enough to make a national impact out there, but we have a Democrat engaging in the same sort of stuff as a substitute teacher, and I am assume he was a Democrat when he was a substitute teacher, whether the Democratic Party hierarchy. (interruption) The principal Yeah, well, the principal, that's right, the principal of that school should have quit, that's a good point, Mr. Snerdley, the principal of that school should have resigned, there's no question, it's a good point.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material

(CNN: Page's family: Leave our 'hero' son alone)
(TB10: Allegations of inappropriate e-mails involving Democrats)
(ABC: Three More Former Pages Accuse Foley of Online Sexual Approaches)
(HE: Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals in Congress)
(American Thinker: The Foley set-up starts to break open)
(NewsBusters: Is Brian Ross the Next Dan Rather) Is Brian Ross the Next Dan Rather)
(RadarOnline: The Bogus Blog Behind Foley's Fall)
(National Review Online: Thoughts on the Bogus Blog)
(American Thinker: Worst October Surprise, EVER - Patrick Godfrey)

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