ME Times runs AFP article: Child sex scandal rocks US Republicans

[ProSense]

Child sex scandal rocks US Republicans

AFP

October 2, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Top US Republicans Monday scrambled to put out a political sex scandal ignited weeks before crucial elections by explicit Internet messages sent by a lawmaker to teenaged male congressional aides.

Disgraced Florida congressman Mark Foley checked into a rehab center for treatment for alcohol addiction, reports said Monday as the FBI launched a probe into an e-mail he allegedly sent to a 16-year-old congressional page and earlier online messages to other young aides.

President George W. Bush's Republican party meanwhile tried to stop the fast-moving political storm from rocking other congressional races weeks before November's elections.

As the scandal gathered pace, Foley, a renowned campaigner against Internet child pornography, faced the prospect of being prosecuted under the very child-sex laws he helped to write.

Florida television station WPBF said Monday that Foley faxed them a letter saying that "events" leading to his resignation Friday had "crystallized recognition" of significant alcohol and emotional problems.

http://metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061002-011822-6019r

"President George W. Bush's Republican party..."

Ouch!

It's not like we've come to expect normalcy from Bush's GOP:

Turd Blossom is a Texan term for a flower which grows from a pile of cow dung. The term has gained notoriety in the United States of America, as reportedly this is one of President George W. Bush's terms of endearment for his chief political advisor, Karl Rove. In July 2005, several newspapers declined to run two Doonesbury strips portraying Bush addressing Rove by this nickname.