Panel Finds No Rules Broken in Foley Case

Talk about doublespeak here! This is off the New York Times:

WASHINGTON -- The House ethics committee has concluded that Republican leaders were negligent in protecting male pages from ex-Rep. Mark Foley's improper advances but did not break any rules in handling the Foley case.

The committee was releasing its findings Friday.

The aide, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, was made aware of the committee's findings.

"The Republicans did not break rules but were negligent in protecting the pages," the aide said.

A four-member investigative subcommittee interviewed dozens of witnesses, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to determine whether majority Republicans took strong enough action against Foley when they learned of his questionable e-mails and other computer messages.

[....]

The ethics committee, evenly divided by party, had to resolve several conflicts in the case.

Hastert's aides could have learned of Foley's inappropriate e-mails as early as 2002 and as late as 2005, depending on who is recounting the events.

The speaker said his aides first learned in the fall of 2005 about questionable e-mails between Foley and a former page from Louisiana. Foley's former top aide said he told Hastert's chief of staff about the Florida lawmaker in 2002 or 2003.

Also, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Republican campaign chief Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., said they told Hastert about Foley's inappropriate behavior last spring. Hastert said he could not recall those conversations, and did not learn of Foley's conduct until late September when the matter became public.

In other words, this whole "ethics" report is just another sham--a major CYA for the incompetence of this Republican-controlled Congress regarding this scandal. In this case, it was party politics over ethics, as the Republicans wanted to keep Foley in the House as a means to maintain Republican control of both the House and Congress--just as Iraq is exploding, the Abramoff and DeLay scandals are making headlines, and the image of the Republican's "culture of corruption" was dragging down the Republican-controlled Congress' poll numbers. The Foley scandal really showed the dirty underside of this new 110th Congressional Republican House leadership--a Republican House leadership which will now containJohn Boehner as the House Minority Leader. You can bet that the last thing the current 109th Congressional Republican leadership will want to do is to open their new House Minority Leader to charges of ethics violations. So we get this slap-on-the-wrist excuse of, "Well, technically they didn't break any laws, but they really should have known better."

What do you expect from a corrupt Republican congressional leadership investigating their own political party members in this scandal?