"...dead quiet and crickets chirping"

Bob Geiger

If there's one thing you have to concede to America's Religious Right, it's that these folks have an amazing media and public relations network and can issue press releases, get on television and radio and, when they really want to, mobilize their lemming-like flock faster than Jack Abramoff can bribe a Republican Congressman.

And yet here we sit, four days after it was revealed that Republican Congressman Mark Foley was using the Internet to go after teenaged boys, and all you can hear from our own little version of the Taliban is dead quiet and crickets chirping.

Odd, isn't it? The same people who can move their followers to boycott any company that believes gay people even have the right to exist, can't muster much outrage over one of their own preying on young boys and, more importantly, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives ignoring it to save their political hides.

So there you have it -- the true face of the Religious Right measured in deeds and not words.

They'll go out of their way to rally their followers to keep gay people from getting married, boycott corporations acknowledging that right, demonize legislators and judges who dare keep Church away from State and even attack children's-television characters.

But nary a word about a Republican Congressman, who is co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, trolling for teen sex partners among Congressional pages, and being protected via a cover-up by the House Republican leadership.

I'm sure the letter-writing campaign to House Speaker Dennis Hastert will begin the minute they've taken care of that Madonna situation.

Heh. I think Bob may be pointing out that the "religious right" is a lot more political than religious. If Foley had been a Democrat, they would have chopped down whole forests to make paper to write indignant letters calling for the expulsion of everyone in Congress who isn't an obedient little christian.

If it shuts up the wingnut christofascists, I think every Repug congressman should be issued their own page to molest. The pages are there to learn about politics, right? What better way to find out what the pols are really doing to the rest of us...