This year, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House touted its "American Values Agenda." Apparently, those values don't include protecting underage male House pages from unwanted advances by Republican congressmen.

It has been just four days since Mark Foley's resignation, and already the all-male leadership of the House has been caught in what we will generously call two inconsistencies. On Friday, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., claimed that he hadn't heard until that moment of improper e-mails between Foley and at least one former page. Very quickly, however, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., said they had informed Rep. Hastert months ago. Rep. Hastert, a former wrestling coach, offered this lame escape-move of a statement: "While the speaker does not explicitly recall" talking with Rep. Reynolds, "he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution."

That's the second inconsistency. In fact, there was no "resolution." There was a coverup.

Late last year, the former page complained about inappropriate e-mails from the man who then represented Florida's 16th Congressional District. The complaint went to Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., in whose district the boy lives. Rep. Alexander first took the complaint not to Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who oversees the page program, but to Rep. Reynolds, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee. Eventually, Rep. Shimkus and a House staff member confronted Foley, who agreed to stop corresponding with the former page. But the Republican leadership didn't follow up, and allowed Foley to continue as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. The Democrat on the panel that oversees the page program says he never heard about the complaint.

In January, as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal threatened Republican control of the House, Foley called reports of congressmen taking bribes in the form of trips and gifts "shocking, and it's scary. But I want to tell you that these things are not what normal hardworking members of Congress or their staffs are involved with." Add Foley's name, if in a different context, to the roll call of disgraced and departed Republican members of Congress since 2005: Randy "Duke" Cunningham; Tom DeLay; Robert Ney.

Since 1995, when Foley arrived in Washington and his party took power, Republicans have turned the House into an institution that serves its members and its patrons, not the public. Bad as those earlier cases involving money and election laws were, the deplorable revelations about Foley have House leaders scrambling as never before to contain damage and avoid blame. Rep. Reynolds faces a tough reelection campaign, and a House staffer told The Washington Post that Rep. Reynolds took on the speaker because "this is what happens when one member tries to throw another member under a bus."

In that spirit, Republicans competed with each other to demand criminal investigations of Foley. To investigate themselves, however, House Republicans prefer the Ethics Committee, which gave Tom DeLay pass after pass before public pressure finally forced the committee to strip Mr. DeLay of his majority leader post. Remembering that, it's no surprise that the House Republican leadership can't issue a good explanation for why it worked in secret to protect Mark Foley. The only plausible explanation is that political values mattered more than American values.

Find this article at:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/10/03/m10a_foleygop_edit_1003.html