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Fuck the GOP

Ex-page says he got messages from Foley

AP Photo: Tyson Vivyan, 26, speaks about former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley during an interview in Atlanta,...

ATLANTA - A former congressional page said Thursday he received sexually suggestive messages from then-Rep. Mark Foley in 1997.

suggestive messages reported so far between Foley and teens who had served in the Capitol page program. Previous accounts placed the earliest contacts in 2003.Vivyan, 26, told The Associated Press that Foley began sending him instant messages about a month or two after his nine-month stint as a page ended in June 1997.

Vivyan, who gave interviews this week to other media, said he never met Foley personally during his stint as a page, other than brief greetings while working in the cloakroom beside the House chamber where members take breaks.

A few months later, he said, he started getting instant messages via computer from a person with the screen name MAF54, which has been linked in news reports to Foley. He said he wasn't sure who it was, but the person knew his name and physical description. He said the person asked personal questions, such as his sexual orientation.

Vivyan said he figured the person had to be on Capitol Hill, and began looking up initials in a congressional guide. He said that when he found Foley's initials — MAF, born in 1954 — he realized who it was.

"It was almost surreal. Not only was I conversing with a congressman in a personal manner, I was conversing in a sexual manner," Vivyan said.

After he guessed it was Foley, the person continued to contact him. Vivyan said he tried to turn the talk to politics. Foley would often stop talking and contact him a week later with suggestive messages.

Vivyan also said he was invited to Foley's brownstone in Washington. Vivyan said he didn't want to go alone, so brought a fellow page with him. He said they had pizza and soft drinks, and nothing sexual happened.

David Roth, attorney for the Florida Republican former congressman, declined to comment on the allegations.

Foley, 52, resigned Friday. He has since entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility at an undisclosed location. Through his lawyer, he has said he is gay but denied any sexual contact with minors.

Vivyan said he was nominated as a page by Rep. John. J. Duncan, R-Tenn. Don Walker, Duncan's deputy chief of staff, confirmed Thursday to the AP that Vivyan was a page from Duncan's district.

"We did not get any complaints form him while he was a page or after he was a page or anytime thereafter until Monday," Walker said. "As soon as we learned of it we turned it over to the authorities."

Vivyan said he was interviewed this week by the FBI.

Podcasting’s Reluctant Evangelist

"Just 10 months ago, Leo LaPorte stood before attendees of the first-ever Podcast and Portable Media Expo and said he didn't ever want to take advertising on his wildly popular programs. Sell your air, he said, and you sell at least a part of your soul.This weekend, at the 2006 PME in Ontario, California, his second consecutive keynote address was a bit different. His programs have been sponsored by Dell, Visa and T-Mobile in recent months, and he declared podcasting "the best advertising medium ever."

Yet the 49-year-old host of This Week in Tech is so beloved that it was tough to find anyone who had heard both addresses and thought he was hypocritical. LaPorte acknowledged he had hoped a listener-supported business model would work, but quickly realized it wouldn't and advertising didn't have to ruin the show.

Indeed, in a world where stars become despised and their every perceived fault and mistake assaulted by jealous rivals, LaPorte has remained arguably the most popular person in podcasting. When Leo changes his mind about something, it is seen not as a flip-flop but rather as a reflection of the evolution of the medium as a whole.

That, his admirers say, is because no matter how big LaPorte becomes, he's also been self-effacing and friendly and, most importantly, involved in a variety of tech communities."

Read the rest of the article over at Wired News.

The Daily Show as Substantive as Broadcast News

From Slashdot:

"Anyone who watches the evening news with any regularity knows that it's not a bastion of substance. However, a new study conducted by researchers at Indiana University reports that The Daily Show has just as much substance to it as the broadcast news. 'The researchers looked at coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions and the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, all of which were covered by the mainstream broadcast news outlets and The Daily Show... There was just as much substance to The Daily Show's coverage as there was on the network news. And The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype — references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls — that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study.'"

Diebold execs accused of using software patch to fix election results

Courtesy of John Dvorak:

If this is true, the real nightmare begins. Who will bell the cat?

Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files to Georgia’s electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 Elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Former Diebold official Chris Hood told his story concerning the secret “patch” to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Kennedy’s second article on electronic voting in this week’s Rolling Stone Magazine.

Hood’s claims corroborate a second whistleblower who spoke with Black Box Voting and Wired News in 2003.

Is it possible to examine the machines involved, and see what software is on them?

ABC News: Pages ‘Sending All Sorts of Messages About Possible Other Members’

From Think Progress:

Tonight on ABC, investigative journalist Brian Ross suggested there may be other members of Congress who engaged in inappropriate behavior towards congressional pages:

BRIAN ROSS: So far, Foley is the only member whose overt sexual approaches have been documented. Charlie?

CHARLES GIBSON: The only one to be documented, but are there other shoes to drop?

ROSS: We’re hearing quite a bit from former pages. They’re sending us all sorts of messages about possible other members.

Republican Page Board Member Confirms: No Investigation Happened

From DailyKOS:
In addition to Kildee's statement, now there's this, from the Charleston Daily Mail (via AMERICAblog):

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., says she was not told about suggestive e-mails that a Florida congressman sent to a 16-year-old former Capitol page, even though she is one of three representatives who oversee the page program. [...]Several high-ranking House Republicans have known about the e-mails for months, including Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the House Page Board.

Late last year, Shimkus met with Foley about the e-mails. But Shimkus never told Capito or the board's other member, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., about them until Friday, according to all three.

"There's only three of us on the page board. I feel that we should have been informed," Capito said. "I'm absolutely disgusted by what I'm hearing. I was caught totally unaware."  [...]

Capito said she would have been very concerned if she had read those e-mails.

"I don't think it would pass the sniff test," she said. "Even asking those questions -- that is not normal between a 52-year-old adult and a 16-year-old. It's not like they're family friends or anything. I think it would raise some serious questions. But I wasn't given that opportunity."

Late last year, Shimkus and former House Clerk Jeff Tandahl met privately with Foley to talk about the e-mails, but did not tell the other House Page Board members or launch an investigation.

Hastert -- unbelievably -- is changing his story yet again, trying to claim that the House leadership "didn't know." That's a flat lie. There have now been at least two high-level GOP figures, Boehner and Reynolds, who gave direct quotes to the press saying Hastert personally knew about the Foley "problem". Boehner then rather astonishingly called up the Washington Post to retract his previous quote -- but Reynolds didn't, and Hastert has pointedly refused to dispute Reynold's assertion.

The undisputed facts here are these: the GOP pages (but not the Democratic pages) were "warned" about Foley as of 2001. Alexander, Shimkus, Reynolds, Boehner, Tandahl, and Hastert, at minimum, knew about the problem. It came up very directly again in late 2005, and there are stories in the press describing Hastert and the others as discussing the problem multiple times between then and the spring of 2006.

And nothing happened. Hastert himself knew, his office knew, and a sizable chunk of the leadership knew -- and they just didn't do nothing, they prevented the usual channels from even investigating the claims. As Capito says, it doesn't pass the sniff test.