House Ethics Committee Finds GOP Negligent After a lovely evening out and about, hobnobbing with local society, I was thrown back into the real world today because, alas, life goes on. So, what is going on in the world today that has caught my attention. Shall we dance with the House Ethics Summary into the Foley inquiry?

"The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment; it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House," the report's executive summary states.

It further states that some who knew of the allegations shifted responsibility and some declined to probe too deeply into the matter, while "others tried repeatedly to elevate the matter, but encountered obstacles in the chain of command."

No one, according to the story at CNN and MSNBC, will be reprimanded, however, The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has opened a criminal investigation into Mark Foley. In my opinion, Mark Foley is a piece of work. I have said before on this blog that he was the adult, he made a choice to send these instant messages to a teenager and in my opinion he was wrong and he knew it. Then, he goes through a book of excuses from alcoholism to child sexual abuse to get himself off the hook with the American public. But for other politicians to shift and squirm knowing that what Foley did was inappropriate and skated around the corners of even being legal is mind-numbing. When I worked with battered women, I was mandated by law to call the Dept. of Children's Services if I even slightly suspected that a child might be abused. Let me repeat, mandated by law. In the cover-up perpetuated by certain lawmakers, I cannot comprehend how everyone is just getting a slap on the wrist. In the bullets on this story, it states lawmakers remained "willfully ignorant" about Foley's behavior. Why? Because they didn't want to their power on Capital Hill to be interfered with. And that, to me, is heinous as well because it just implies that the safety of our youth is secondary to political power.  ¶ 12/08/2006 02:23:00 PM