The Foley Follies - The Democrats Bark and the Foley Circus Rides On

"Foley Investigation Heating Up," "More Foley Revelations," "GOP Knew Foley Ate Babies." The media has with predictable abandon transformed itself into the 'All-Foley-All-The-Time" radio station and 'All The Foley News That's Unfit To Print.'

None of this has anything remotely to do with the actual importance of the case but a media whose press services report altercations with Paris Hilton as a leading headline don't remotely case about that anymore. If Walter Cronkite injected liberal bias into his stories, modern anchormen are nothing more than blow dried male and female models who are barely capable of reading from a teleprompter without stumbling and their scripts are written for them by Ivy League Harvard grad producers who only took this job because they couldn't get a job writing for the Simpsons.

The Foley story was held back by those in the know and then 'blown up' in order to impact the elections. After taking a beating in the elections for eight years straight, the Democratic party has long since given up trying to win on the issues. Instead they're hoping to slime the opposition enough with manufactured scandals and a tame press has been all too eager to bark and run in circles at their direction. "There boy, there boy. Foley's a pedophile you know and the GOP was covering for him."

But if hitting on 17 and 18 year olds makes an adult man a pedophile, America's jails will be bursting with felons. Foley isn't a pedophile. Like Bill Clinton and numerous politicians on both sides of the aisle, he was a powerfull man who abused his government position to solicit sex. Anyone who does that, in a government job, in a corporate job, whether it's actual employees, interns, pages, etc should be fired. It's that simple really.

Democrats would like to pretend that Foley instant messaging pages with sexual requests while Clinton's serial groping, exposing himself and running an adulterous affair with an intern out of the White House in the Oval Office itself were his 'private buisness.' This kind of ridiculous hypocrisy makes the entire affair nothing more than a partisan fox hunt by one political party against the other.

The mark of the politics of the time is an utter lack of shame or decency. Where Republican congressmen famously led a delegation to ask President Nixon to resign, Democratic congressmen made a point of leading a delegation to support Bill Clinton. Democrats are now demanding that the GOP leadership resign because they knew about Foley. Shouldn't the Democratic leadership then resign because it not only knew about Bill Clinton but it continued relentlessly covering up, defending him and sliming his accusers to this day?

Democrats and Republicans both believe if they shout shrilly enough about something it becomes a scandal. The Democrats have the media on their side which gives them the advantage. Unfortunately for them just because this choir of the damned shrieks its infernal racket doesn't mean the American people care.

It is the Democrats themselves with their approach to the Clinton scandal 'Character Doesn't Matter' who have set the tone for the American public. A purely moral outrage is no longer sufficent for the public to care. They will watch the tabloid shows, devour the newsprint but shrug at calls for resignation. The Democrats thought they were protecting Clinton but they set a precedent for dismissing immoral behavior by a politician, that they are discovering they cannot simply waive whenever the matter suits them. Once the level has been lowered and the standard dropped, it's lowered for all politicians, Democrat and Republican. Democrats want one standard for themselves, another for Republicans but only the perverted morality of party members works that way. To the public whatever goes for one party, also goes for the other. The Democrats significantly raised the bar for public outrage. Now they have to live with the consenquences and more importantly, so do we.

But there's nothing new under the sun. The subjective fallacy of history is for people to believe things are always getting worse. The reality is it's usually been worse.

Take Daniel Edgar Sickles. Not ringing any bells? Try Congressman Sickles then. You likely never read about him in any of your history books. If you came across his name it probably told you he was a Civil War Hero and was a major force in the construction of Central Park. You're less likely to learn that Congressman Daniel Edgar Sickles was a murderer.

Unlike someone like Senator Ted Kennedy whose actions are open to debate, Congressman Daniel Sickles weren't. He committed murder in the middle of the street, before dozens of eyewitnessness. He shot an unarmed man in cold blood. He continued firing at him even after he had mortally wounded him until he finally killed him.



The man he murdered, Philip Barton Key (descendant of Scott Francis Key composer of the National Anthem) was the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He had not been physically threatening Sickles in any way, but he had been having an affair with his wife.

The case should have been an open and shut murder case but it wasn't. Daniel Sickles should have been convicted of murder but he wasn't. Instead he went out a free man. Why? Because more important than who Philip Barton Key was, was who Daniel Edgar Sickles was. Sickles was more than just a United States Congressman. He was a personal friend of President James Buchanan. He had been secretary to Buchanan when the latter was the Minister to England.

The cover up began at the top. President Buchanan personally intimidated a page who had been a eyewitness to the murder into leaving Washington D.C. warning him he would be jailed if he didn't. He thwarted the investigation at every turn and made certain to appoint a man to prosecute the case (ironically in place of the murdered Key) who had no courtroom experience. He refused all pleas by the Key family to investigate the case at all.

Daniel Sickles meanwhile was living it up in style in prison. The warden turned over his own office to him. His 'cell' was constantly full of high ranking visitors, every comfort from home was sent to him, including his dog. And the press, the press loved him writing up stories of his martyrdom suffering in prison for 'defending his home.'

Because you see Congressman Sickles was more than just another politician, he was a scion of Tammany Hall, a part of the dirtiest heart of the Democratic Party. He had been corrupt from the very beginning pulling in money every way he knew how. His own congressional salary wasn't even sufficent to pay for his house but there were a hundred ways he knew to make money. He had friends and partonage everywhere going right to the top of the White House.

When the trial began, Congressman Sickles had a massive legal team packed with the best in the buisness, O.J. Simpson style. The trial was of course to be known as The Trial of the Century and wound up innovating that fradulent legal defense known as 'Temporary Insanity.'

Sickles' lawyers insisted that he had been so 'outraged' by his wife's adulterous affair he had lost control of himself. The papers painted him as a moral man pushed beyond his limits by the grievous outrage of the adultery. But of course Daniel Edgar Sickles wasn't just financially corrupt. Tammany Hall controlled much of the organized crime in New York, including prostitution. Sickles himself had been notorious in this regard, even bringing a prostitute along with him to meet the Queen when he was serving in England. He had committed numerous acts of adultery with other men's wives and all of this was common knowledge.

The prosecution of course was forbidden from introducing any of this as evidence. The case quickly turned his wife, Teresa Bagiolli Sickles and Philip Barton Key into the villains, dragging out every dirty detail of their affair for public consumption and introducing even a letter Sickles had dictated to his wife and forced her to sign, confessing all her actions.

Sickles was soon a free man. He was forced to leave politics but remained a behind the scenes lobbyist who had the ear of the President. He became a Brigadier General in the Civil War. He commanded the Department of the Carolinas, making him a military governor over much of the South. He became the US Minister to Spain, where he continued carrying on numerous affairs and eventually married a Spanish lady whom he left behind, but made sure to bleed dry of her money to subsidize his lifestyle.

He was appointed president of the New York State Board of Civil Service Commissions and Sheriff of New York (both posts that for a corrupt man were the equivalent of getting the keys to the safe) and then chairman of the New York State Monuments Commission where his corruption finally caught up with him again. So greedy was Sickles that he even stole the money apportioned for a memorial that had been meant to commemorate his own Civil War 'heroism.'

To the end of his day well into his 70's Sickles lived a lavish lifestyle subsidized by others decorating his apartment with the underwear of his female conquests. Like Aaron Burr, another prominent debauched, corrupt and murderous Democrat, Sickles never paid for his crimes. History has forgotten him mainly because he was a little too embarassing to remember but he is a lesson in how bad things can get when the public gives up its sense of moral judgement and the hands of politicians are loosened to do all they like.

Whether it's Bill Clinton, Foley or Sickles; the cost of ignoring corrupt and debauched behavior in politicians and worse covering up for them, is evil and breeds evil.