Reply #8: Thanks for the "on edit" clarification -- Pat knows what's going on

[Leopolds Ghost]

The Pages themselves were being blackmailed. If you were a closeted gay evangelical (half of the nation's gay people grew up in Red homes and many of them embrace Red values, remember) the easiest way to get a job on Capitol Hill was to become a page and go thru Foley's office.

That meant DeLay had the goods on you and by extension your future Congressman/employer.

Thus fulfilling Newt's pledge to "rein in" moderate Republican staffers on Capitol Hill, who run the day-to-day business of Congress.

DeLay was assigned to do that in 1994 by hook or by crook. His methods, later adopted by Karl Rove (according to David Brock, a gay ex-Republican who knows the extent of the problem) were only whispered about.

It was said that DeLay had the "goods" on so many people, primarily staffers, not the Congressmen themselves, but never specified what the nature of those "goods" were. And Foley was allowed to continue doing his thing, operating a casting couch for easy-to-manipulate closeted Republicans -- the perfect foot soldiers.

Like the Christian Janissaries who operated the Turkish war machine, they were disciplined and easy to control by virtue of their precarious position.

That's why they called DeLay the "Velvet Hammer". The "Velvet Mafia" derived from DeLay's nickname, because it was run out of DeLay's office, according to Ana Marie Cox, David Brock and Lawrence O'Donnell.