Saturday, December 9th, 2006...8:17 am
Kolbe in Foley Report
The House ethics committee has released its official report into the Mark Foley matter. National media attention has focused on the involvement of outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert, but local media has focused on the involvement of long time Southeast Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe.
The committee’s findings on Kolbe’s involvement can be found on pages 27-32 of the report (PDF here). The committee’s conclusions about Kolbe’s conduct in the matter can be found on pages 77-78 and 81-82. The panel says that Kolbe, as a retiring member, will soon be out of their jurisdiction. They leave it unclear whether they would have taken action if he had been continuing as a member. The committee recommended no action against Dennis Hastert or John Boehner, who are still going to be members after January.
The report has ginned up more speculation about the “real” reasons for Kolbe’s retirement. Kolbe doesn’t look particuarly spectacular here: he denies any knowledge about how bad the e-mails were despite a staffer telling him so, he seems to be satisfied with a promise from Foley not to write this particular page again and then seems to tell the page to stay quiet about the incident. I don’t think that this thing had much to do with Kolbe’s retirement though.
Foley had evidently been doing this sort of thing for years, and there was no reason for Kolbe or anyone else to think back last November that it would break open this year. Given the lack of any action from the leadership on this matter (judging from the report, nothing happened until ABC broke the story), what reason would anyone have had to think there would have been consequences anyhow?
Kolbe had been in congress for a long time (his replacement was a ninth grader* when he was sworn in), he probably just saw this as time to go. Also, he had been in for this long with no big leadership posts and only a subcommittee chairmanship to show for it. I don’t know what was keeping him out of higher positions: his homosexuality or his relative moderation. He may have just realized that he had hit a celing.
The Grand Canyon trip that came under press scrutiny about a month ago was not a subject for the ethics committee. I have all kinds of thoughts about this one, but I’ll save them for later.
CORRECTION: My original post refered to Kolbe’s successor, Gabrielle Giffords, attending University High School as a freshman. An anal retentive nitpicker who had nothing better to do (my brother) called me to tell me that Giffords did not attend UHS in her freshman year. I called Giffords’s sister, Melissa, and she told me that Giffords attended Emily Gray Middle School. As a middle school, it was 7th, 8th and 9th grades. Students were then given the option of attending other Pima County high schools, since Tanque Verde School District did not have a high school. Giffords finished her high school career at UHS. Tanque Verde has since built a high school and Emily Gray is now a junior high.
R Cubed regrets the error.
1 Comment
December 9th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Interesting questions about Kolbe, Tedski.
The whole thing with Foley reminds me somewhat of what happened in the Catholic Church. For decades, a relatively small number of priests molest children, the heads of the Church are aware of it, the priests are transferred, counseled, etc… but most people never even knew it was happening. There was, in effect, a conspiracy of silence because the Church leaders decided that the institution would be irreparably harmed if it was revealed that children were molested by priests. And, the Church’s could moral authority could not be compromised. Also, the Church leaders believed that the bad priests could be cured by sincerely and devoutly praying to God for a cure.
This worked, as we know, until the times changed and society developed support systems for victims of sexual abuse. And so ended the conspiracy of silence that protected the great institution of the Catholic Church.
I can definitely see where Kolbe might have seen the writing on the wall. This Foley scandal was bound to break sooner or later. There were just too many people aware of it and sooner or later a victim will come forward.
Who knows? It may have been that and it also may be that Kolbe wanted to retire for the same reasons as everyone else. Only he can tell you.
Leave a Reply