I just love this cartoon! The way you draw the false analogy between two very serious issues serves to effectively belittle legitimate concerns about both. And thus lessens the chance that serious discussion will take place about either.
Those silly donkeys! What dopes to have any concern for civil liberties. Of course it's not possible to want to defeat the terrorists and also be concerned that we remain true to our American traditions. They must be traitors and appeasers. No need to ask any questions of your government. Be good little children and be quiet.
And anyone concerned to find child predators in public office and positions of public trust and wishing to get at the facts simply wants to satisfy their prurient interest or has a partisan bias. No one could possibly be appalled by this simply because it is appalling and feel that it has nothing to do with politics.
This cartoon is not a false analogy, as much as you might wish it to be so.
It is a clear cut demonstration of the Democrat's hypocrisy on civil liberties AND privacy issues.
Had Foley been a Democrat, the Democrats would have SCREAMED homophobia and privacy violations if there had been an investigation based on just the e-mails.
Are we serious here? The President broke the FISA court’s law to poke around people’s phone calls and emails. It would have been remarkably easy for him to have not done so and still acquire the much-needed intelligence.
In the Foley case, no Emails were unearthed by the government. A creeped out teenage Republican exposed them. Should he not have? Should your kid keep mum when some 52 year-old freak from mySpace wants to take him or her for a ride in his “BMW convertible?”
Do neocons ever ask themselves at what point their team-playing, mercenary behaviors are just plain anti-social and treasonous? Seriously, shame on you guys.
Exactly. Those emails were placed in the public domain by one half of the parties involved in the exchange, to expose a potential abuse of governmental power. No privacy laws were broken. The Democrats didn't have go rooting around for them to screw the GOP. I love the fact that it was a Republican that blew the whistle on this pederast. No how much the GOPiggies squeal, the FACTS of this case will expose their squealing for the dishonest, cynical ploy to obfuscate the real issues that it is.
Republicans have it wrong in thinking that Foley's being gay is the critical element here. The key element is that the guy's a CREEP. He'd be just as much of a creep if he were heterosexual, only he'd be a perv towards female pages, rather than male pages.
You can bet there are members of Congress who fit that description. Remember Bob Packwood? Republican heterosexual pervy creep extraordinaire.
I think most Democrats understand that the issue is not that Foley is gay, but rather that he was coming on to teenagers. "Can I take you out for ice cream?" Yuck!
The Republican leadership was informed that Foley was making inappropriate requests of pages via email ("send me a picture of you" ... and refering to another page as being in good shape--YUCK!).
This should have been enough to alert them that something was wrong with Foley, and that serious action needed to be taken to figure out just how bad the situation was. This is workplace harassment 101.
I don't know why the House Republican leadership didn't recognize Foley for what the harraser that he is. As soon as I heard about the email I referred to above--before I saw any of the IM exchanges--I could see that Foley was out of line. Total creep.
Republican House leaders says they aren't responsible because they didn't see the sexually explicit IM's. I think that's lame b.s. The emails were enough. As for calling the messages merely "overly friendly," that's just astounding. If that's what the Republican leadership thinks is merely "overly friendly," I'd hate to be a female page in one of their staff offices. Maybe they're all a bunch of creeps.
