Shimkus let Foley spend "a lot of time" with pages after GOP knew

[mcg]

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/10/gop-rep-john-shimkus-r-il-let-foley.html

"Shimkus is toast. There's even video of Shimkus letting Foley talk to the pages AFTER the GOP knew Foley had page-issues. ...

MR. SHIMKUS: I thank my colleague. Now someone who spends a lot of time with you also, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), would like to say a thank you. ..."

[wakeme2008]

1. This is getting bigger and bigger all the Repugs that knew

and did not say anything...

[mcg]

9. Link to thread: Shimkus helped Foley with pages (even private dinner)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2279677

From AMERICAblog:

FOLEY: John was the highest bidder on lunch with Mark Foley. Maybe you all do not know this story, but John had paid considerable sums to dine with me. I had offered to take the winning bidder to lunch in the Members' dining room. Then I heard how much John Eunice paid. And I said, ``John, there is no way in the world after you committed so much money to have lunch with me that I would dare take you downstairs to eat in the Members' dining room.'' I said, ``Where do you want to go?'' He says, without reservation, ``Morton's.'' I said, ``Morton's? Like in Morton's Steakhouse?'' He said, ``Oh, would that be too much?'' I said, ``Oh, no, we'll go.'' I said, ``Call your mother, get permission, make sure she notifies the Clerk and we will go to Morton's.'' And so we proceeded to cruise down in my BMW to Morton's.

[Bunny]

21. You mean to tell me that 16-17 year old kids are actually bidding

money for the privilege of lunch with these sleazeballs? How does a young kid have money for that, and furthermore, why are they bidding money at all? Where does the money go to? I'm confused and more than a little revolted.

[mcg]

10. Link to Daily Kos thread on this

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/1/21298/6680

one comment:

"So, Shimkus & Trandahl were de facto pimps?

For a GOP man-boy dating service? Only the boys were, well, first of all, boys. And, second, underage boys. And, third, underage, unconsenting, non-adult and likely very intimidated, or way-in-over-their-heads, boys.

Uh, may I suggest that, well, uh, not one Republican, not. a. single. solitary. one. has any business in or around Capitol Hill, House or Senate? May I suggest that?

BenGoshi"

another:

"My theory based on nothing but the sound of this story and another diary. Shimkus and the GOP leadership learned of Foley's secret. Foley agreed to key GOP votes if he got to meet the pages he wanted to.

by jkfp2004"

[aquart]

15. Wow! Votes for pages! That will be a good question to ask Foley

when we torture him.

[Kikosexy2]

20. New talking points for Demmies:

Republicans: the party of Pedophilia...are your children safe under Republican controlled Congress? And then list all Repigs who were convicted or exposed for crimes against minors...

[Bjorn Against]

2. They let him go out on dates with the pages!!!!

OMG, just when you think it can't get any worse it does.

[Bjorn Against]

3. kick

Come on people this belongs on the greatest page, follow the link and you will understand why this is so big.

And mcg, if you can still edit your post remember you can post up to four paragraphs from the article without violating the rules. Maybe if people saw a little more of the story they would understand how important your post is.

[mcg]

8. The editing period has expired. Mods: feel free to edit the post.

I hadn't read it all when I posted it.

I'm wondering if taxpayer dollars were spent enabling Foley's
sexual abuse of children.

[RamboLiberal]

4. K&R - GOP has entered the Perfect Storm

:kick:

[Independent_Liberal]

5. God I hope you're right.

I'm feeling so sick to my stomach right now. Something's going to happen. Something big. I don't know if it's good or bad.

[civildisoBDence]

6. It does seem like a lot of storms big and small are converging

Will Captain Bush go down with his ship, like Clooney did?

Newsprism

[beaconess]

7. Creepy Creepy Creepy

He wanted to send one page money as a graduation present. He "cruised" to Morton's with another page for a private lunch. And this was AFTER GOP staff had warned the pages to watch out for him.

Here's the transcript:

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank my colleague. Now someone who spends a lot of time with you also, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), would like to say a thank you.

Mr. FOLEY. I warn all of you not to cry in front of me, please, so I can get through this very important day with you without shedding tears as well.

. . .

I hear so much laughter here and I am glad that there is laughter, because this is a wonderful time of your life. Every time we celebrate the departure of a page class, we remember your first day here and, of course, we are here at your last. You came in very shy and meek and very polite and for the most part you have remained polite, but no longer shy and meek.

. . .

Of course we have got several Jasons, a few Laurens. Adam, thank you for the graduation announcement. I sent you a handwritten note, and I was actually going to put some money in it as a graduation present. Then I realized he would tell all of you, and then I would get hundreds of graduation announcements. So I chose not to. I hope the handwritten note will suffice for your scrapbook.

. . .

{A}nd finally John Eunice. John was the highest bidder on lunch with Mark Foley. Maybe you all do not know this story, but John had paid considerable sums to dine with me. I had offered to take the winning bidder to lunch in the Members' dining room. Then I heard how much John Eunice paid. And I said, ``John, there is no way in the world after you committed so much money to have lunch with me that I would dare take you downstairs to eat in the Members' dining room.'' I said, ``Where do you want to go?'' He says, without reservation, ``Morton's.'' I said, ``Morton's? Like in Morton's Steakhouse?'' He said, ``Oh, would that be too much?'' I said, ``Oh, no, we'll go.'' I said, ``Call your mother, get permission, make sure she notifies the Clerk and we will go to Morton's.'' And so we proceeded to cruise down in my BMW to Morton's. And all of this story is meant to make you all feel jealous that you were not the high bidders. So we went to Morton's, and I do not know where you all went.
. . .
God bless you all.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r107:./temp/~r107l1qT09

[wiley]

11. stoverforcongress website is down!

I have tried for hours to get onto Danny Stover's website (running against Shimkus in IL-19) for hours from 4 computers.

Anybody know what is up? Can't even get there from a Google or Yahoo search.

[Auggy]

12. From what I can tell

Looks like it's just down - possibilities for this include maintenance and simply high traffic. My guess, based on the time of day, is leaning more toward maintenance. Of course, the usual electronic dirty tricks and whatnot can't be dismissed, but why take a site down with dirty tricks at this time of night?

[aquart]

16. Welcome to DU, Auggy!

It's possible that the volume of people wanting to give him money and support simply crashed his system.

People tend to react swiftly to scandals like this.

[Radical Activist]

17. Its working now.

Hopefully everyone looking him up at once after a year of slow traffic.
http://www.stoverforcongress.com/

[wiley]

22. Stover calls for Shimkus to resign as Chair of the House Page Committee

October 2, 2006


DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE DANNY L. STOVER DEMANDS THAT U.S. REP. JOHN SHIMKUS RESIGN
AS CHAIR OF HOUSE PAGE PROGRAM IN WAKE OF FOLEY E-MAIL SCANDAL

Springfield, IL – October 2, 2006

Centralia city councilman Danny L. Stover, the Democratic candidate for Illinois’s 19th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, demands that incumbent Representative John M. Shimkus resign immediately as Chairman of the Board of the House Page Program due to Shimkus’s failure to investigate diligently allegations about Florida Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate exchange of electronic mail and Internet messages with at least one former page. Stover insists that Rep. Shimkus was obviously the wrong choice to conduct an investigation a year ago, and is even more convinced that Speaker Hastert’s decision to ask Shimkus to investigate further is yet another error.

Rep. Shimkus neglected his specific duties as chairman, Stover complains, and Shimkus appeared to be more concerned about politics than protecting the well-being of the victim identified in the current news reports. The news reports suggest other victims may exist, and all victims were presumably minors when the alleged incidents occurred. Stover is concerned that the congressman failed to conduct even a modest investigation of potentially serious wrongdoing, Shimkus instead having simply accepted assurances of the accused that nothing inappropriate had taken place.

Stover asserts that there was an obvious cover-up by Shimkus and other GOP House members, evidenced by Shimkus’s admission that the sole Democratic member of the Board, Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), was not told of the e-mail exchanges until they became front-page news.

Stover adds this latest incident to a litany of failures to carry out congressional oversight duties, and to show proper judgment, on the part of Rep. Shimkus.

Councilman Stover, as a father, expresses personal concern and sympathy for the victims and their families during this difficult time.

Kay Marie Philon
Sangamon County Project Coordinator
[email protected]
206 South Sixth Street Springfield, IL 62701
217.891.7038

[yellowcanine]

13. Holy Shit! Never mind smoking gun. This is a smoking cannon. It almost

sounds as if Shimkus might have a "page problem" himself. That would explain a lot.

[JPZenger]

14. Should have banned him from all contact

The GOP is saying that the initial emails that they saw weren't explicit, and therefore they didn't act.

However, they should have a) justified further investigation and questioning of other pages, which could have uncovered the more explicit contacts, and b) justified banning Foley from having any personal communications with any pages. Instead, they just told Foley to stay away from the one page who reported him.

Think about it: the GOP put 70 FBI agents and millions of dollars and an actual Presidential impeachment behind an investigation of consensual sex with an adult, but didn't lift a finger to look further into sexual harassment of a minor.

Meanwhile, Gingrich is now claiming that the GOP didn't investigate further to avoid being accused of "gay bashing." As if that is a real concern of the GOP leadership.

[Willinois]

19. Shimkus also voted to impeach Clinton.

Their hypocrisy should be pointed out.

[Willinois]

18. I was talking with Shimkus' Democratic opponent, Danny Stover, last week.

He's a community college professor and Centralia City Councilman. If anyone has seen "The Big One" by Michael Moore, Centralia is the town Moore visits where the candy bar factory shut down. A mining disaster there was also the subject of a Woody Guthrie song called, The Dying Miner.

He hasn't gotten much support from the party because this district was drawn to be strongly Republican, but I'm sure that will change now. Shimkus earlier announced that he is breaking his term limit pledge. Shimkus is an ultra-conservative rubber stamp for Bush. Danny has a lot of interesting, intelligent things to say and will make a great Congressman. Replacing Shimkus with Stover would be a blessing for the entire nation. There were also rumors that Shimkus was going to run against Dick Durbin for US Senate in two years, but I'm guessing that won't happen now.

[wiley]

23. DEMANDS THAT U.S. REP. JOHN SHIMKUS RESIGN

October 2, 2006


DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE DANNY L. STOVER DEMANDS THAT U.S. REP. JOHN SHIMKUS RESIGN
AS CHAIR OF HOUSE PAGE PROGRAM IN WAKE OF FOLEY E-MAIL SCANDAL

Springfield, IL – October 2, 2006

Centralia city councilman Danny L. Stover, the Democratic candidate for Illinois’s 19th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, demands that incumbent Representative John M. Shimkus resign immediately as Chairman of the Board of the House Page Program due to Shimkus’s failure to investigate diligently allegations about Florida Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate exchange of electronic mail and Internet messages with at least one former page. Stover insists that Rep. Shimkus was obviously the wrong choice to conduct an investigation a year ago, and is even more convinced that Speaker Hastert’s decision to ask Shimkus to investigate further is yet another error.

Rep. Shimkus neglected his specific duties as chairman, Stover complains, and Shimkus appeared to be more concerned about politics than protecting the well-being of the victim identified in the current news reports. The news reports suggest other victims may exist, and all victims were presumably minors when the alleged incidents occurred. Stover is concerned that the congressman failed to conduct even a modest investigation of potentially serious wrongdoing, Shimkus instead having simply accepted assurances of the accused that nothing inappropriate had taken place.

Stover asserts that there was an obvious cover-up by Shimkus and other GOP House members, evidenced by Shimkus’s admission that the sole Democratic member of the Board, Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), was not told of the e-mail exchanges until they became front-page news.

Stover adds this latest incident to a litany of failures to carry out congressional oversight duties, and to show proper judgment, on the part of Rep. Shimkus.

Councilman Stover, as a father, expresses personal concern and sympathy for the victims and their families during this difficult time.

Kay Marie Philon
Sangamon County Project Coordinator
[email protected]
206 South Sixth Street Springfield, IL 62701
217.891.7038