Thursday, October 05, 2006

Foley Whistleblowers Concerned For Safety

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has reason to be sweating these days, but why should the whistleblowers?

The website that was instrumental in getting e-mails and IM's between Rep. Mark Foley and White House pages exposed has been the object of threats.

According to the Stop Sex Predators website, in a post dated yesterday (Wednesday),
In case you didn't notice, all of the comments on the blog are gone? Wonder why? Because there are so many awful people out there. I started getting threats, so I decided that if somebody was going to threaten me, they were going to have to email me directly. So, they have continued to do so. There is no logical reason for someone to be so angry. I understand that the ramifications of these emails is far and wide. Much farther than I could ever have imagined. Regardless, think about how awareness has been raised.

The blog's creator, choosing to remain anonymous, also assures his readers that,
I am not Karl Rove, Mark Foley, or John Boehner. I am not employed in Democratic politics. I am not 'funded' by George Soros. I'm nobody that anybody should care about. So, please, go about your day as if I don't exist. If you have something that needs to be posted on this site, please let me know.

A new post today (Thursday) expresses amazement over the priorities of House Speaker Hastert and makes an additional observation about FBI involvement,
I can't believe that Speaker Dennis Hastert is blaming this blog on people like George Soros and Bill Clinton. That's just an attempt at escaping responsibility. What does it matter who actually posted those first emails? Which leads me to my next point.....

How the heck can the FBI investigate this? Media reports say that they had the emails that I posted over a year ago. How are they investigating the House leadership for not handling it when they got the emails and they didn't look into it either?

That blogger is not the only one voicing concern for their well-being.

The family of the page whose online contact has been most scrutinized has issued a statement asking to be left alone. The statement reads, in part,
As a young man with integrity who had the courage to question the intention of the e-mails, we respect and honor our son as a hero. Despite his courageous actions, he is becoming a victim due to the harassment by some of the media. Please honor our request that we be left alone. There is nothing more that we can contribute to this ongoing matter. He is not the story, and we feel this intense media scrutiny could endanger our son and family.

Earlier today, I actually heard a right-wing pundit remark that one of the pages may have been complicit, because he may have been 18 at the time of the contact. I have previously reported the astounding comments of Matt Drudge, who complained about "16 and 17 year old beasts."

Don't be surprised if the entire strategy of the GOP in the coming days will have little to do with seeing that justice is served and everything to do with attacking the messengers.

We know that the GOP has a vested interest in turning this into a partisan issue and it should come as no surprise that the administrator of the Stop Sex Predators website, or even the pages themselves, should be concerned.

We now live in a nation where anybody, for any reason, can be branded an enemy combatant by the president and simply disappear.

Just because we might be paranoid, doesnt mean....well, you get the idea.

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