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The St. Pete Times is one thing, but the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is another. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert knew about some of Mark Foley's shady e-mails months ago, Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett reports. Covering up for a sexual predator in their midst? That's baaaad. We'll see how it plays out.

There's a lot to say about the daily newspaper coverage of Mark Foley's disgraceful exit from politics over his instant messages about giving instant massages to underage Congressional pages. Start with Anthony Man, the new political reporter in the downtown Fort Lauderdale office of the Sun-Sentinel.

Man, who I like and respect, has been a disappointment in the job so far. In his Foley story this morning, he reports: "In May 2003, as Foley was seeking his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate, he accused Democrats of trying to damage his campaign by spreading rumors about his sexual orientation. During a news conference, Foley would not say if he was gay, calling the question 'highly inappropriate.'"

This is, at best, some of the sloppiest reporting imaginable. At worst, it's a dishonest

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In the St. Petersburg Times' article by Bill Adair on (former) Congressman Mark Foley's e-mailings with underage Congressional pages, there's a very curious passage:

The boy, who is not being identified because of his age, told the St. Petersburg Times in an interview last November, when the Times first learned of the e-mails, that he cut off correspondence with Foley.

"I thought it was very inappropriate," the boy told the Times. "After the one about the picture, I decided to stop e-mailing him back."

But the boy said he was not seeking publicity. "I don't want to get involved in any big thing," he said.

Oh boy. Is there no daily newspaper in this state that has any guts left? The St. Pete Times had the story in November and didn't run with it until ABC News showed the fortitude to break it? What an embarrassing display of that newspaper's lack of journalistic instinct.

UPDATED: So what does the St. Petersburg Times have to say? Well, this (Saturday) morning, the newspaper published this post on their political blog, The Buzz:

We've had a number of e-mails and blog posts from people who read our Foley coverage yesterday and today and see that we had looked into some of these matters nearly a year ago but never published a story. Why didn't we? Here's what Government & Politics Editor Scott Montgomery told someone yesterday:

"Adam sent me a copy of your email seeking comment. Here's what I can tell you. As a matter of policy, the St. Petersburg Times doesn't publish stories that make accusations based upon sources we can't name. At the time we first looked into this, the information we had simply didn't meet our standard. But when Tim Mahoney went on the record on the matter, we felt we should tell readers what we knew."

This explanation is incredible. They didn't print the "accusations" because the underaged Congressional Page who was complaining that a Congressman was flirting with him on-line didn't want his name published? I can't tell you how pathetic is. They had the e-mails, they knew who the Page was, what his name was, and verified he worked on Capitol Hill. But because the kid didn't want his young life thrown into absolute turmoil and chaos, they wouldn't go with the story and they let an obvious sexual predator continue to stalk the halls of Congress.

Thank God that Brian Ross and ABC News had more sense.

After the jump: Clay Shaw Throws Foley Under The Bus and McClatchy's Lesley Clark Misses Mark

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Turns out former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley was sitting around in his underwear sending e-mails to teen boys about masturbation, or "spanking it" as the Republican Congressman calls it. Brian Ross at ABC News got hold of the messages and when Foley found out, he quit almost on the spot.

The truly sad thing about this is that Foley has only confirmed the worst Christian Right stereotypes about gay men, stereotypes that of course are largely untrue. But then again he's never represented or embodied the larger gay population. He's a gay man in the closet at the age of 52 -- and a Republican, no less. We should have all expected this kind of thing.

Interesting information in those e-mails, though. Foley, for those inquiring minds that want to know, likes to masturbate with lotion and a towel and considers 7 1/2 inches

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Nisenbaum (at left) with Foley

Why did Mark Foley resign so quickly? He was finished. A Congressman simply can't be caught baiting a 16-year-old boy, especially when the boy is a Congressional page.

Foley said he let down his family, which you would assume would include the (former) Boca Raton rep's own long-term companion, Layne Nisenbaum, who is described on his medical practice website as a "nattily dressed doctor, whose flawless complexion is his best advertisement." Nisenbaum is a dermatologist/plastic surgeon and Palm Beach social figure who I'm guessing

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Jose Lambiet reports in the Palm Beach Post today that a reality show called America's Hottest Mom may have found a winner in Palm Beach County. Her name is Kelly Heyniger (tricky pronunciation there, I'm sure) and she lives "with her two children in a tiny WPB suburban home in Lake Clarke Shores." There she is in the picture. I like the way the shot, which was a given to the Post, gets in a little nip action just to make sure everyone gets good and, um, titillated.

Heyniger is hot as an alligator's back in August. No doubt about it. But she's obviously got a fake rack. A well-made fake rack, maybe, but fake nonetheless. Just helps show there's nothing much real in reality TV and it's reminiscent of the recently chosen hottest newscaster in America, Elita Loresca, who works for WSVN, the Fox affiliate in Miami. Those are some seriously made-over melons, there. Looks like they might have needed a crane to do that heavy lifting. The Pulp's not into that, as you can tell, if you look close enough, from the stunning model on the book cover.
Loresca's photo after the jump.

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All right, I just don't have the time or energy for reporting this, so I'm going to spill the scuttlebutt I'm hearing from the Palm Beach Post, which I've been holding for a couple of weeks with hopes that I would flesh it out. But that's not going to happen, so here goes.

What I've heard is that Post investigative reporter Tony Doris was working on some super-secret story. I don't know what it was. Then Channel 25 scooped Doris on aforementioned super-secret story. Then some folks at the Post got paranoid, believing there was a mole

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Damn strong news day. Some of the better stuff:

-- Both the Sentinel (Jerome Burdi and Mike Clary) and the Palm Beach Post (Stephanie Slater) have the barn-burner about the arrest of a couple of thieving, high-living, Vegas-loving, skirt-chasing priests. These dudes, John Skehan and Francis Guinan, were out of control, stealing $8.6 million out of collection plates to finance their freak-ons. I almost admire the old crazy bastards -- from St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach -- just for their nerve.

After the jump: An Anti-Semitic DCF Investigator, A Homicidal Fort Lauderdale cop, No Christmas in Port St. Lucie, and Hanley's Charge

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Working on deadline right now, so here's the news quickly: Boca Raton Congressman Mark Foley is a creep.

The gay Republican, who is supposedly in a long-term committed relationship, has been sending weird e-mails from his private AOL account to a 16-year-old Congressional page, according to ABC News' Brian Ross. The page, who hasn't been named, was "freaked out" when Foley started getting a little too personal in his communiques. From Ross's Blotter blog:

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The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal AOL account, and the exchange began within weeks after the page finished his program on Capitol Hill. In one, Foley writes, "did you have fun at your conference...what do you want for your birthday coming up...what stuff do you like to do."

In another Foley writes

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The Bitch down at MNT went after Leslie Abravanel in her column this week. She wrote that Abravanel claimed to have seen Madonna and witnessed a "cat fight" that she couldn't possibly have seen or witnessed. The piece was pimped to Jossip -- but the NY gossip blog wound up siding with Abravanel. Look, this stuff is about as substantive as cotton candy, but if you have nothing better to do, it's sort of entertaining.

The brain drain at the Sun-Sentinel -- apparently any news judgment among brass is being sucked up by the market-driven scheme I won't name today -- continues. Today, the top of the sparse, weakly designed Sentinel front page has this headline: "7-Eleven drops Venezuela's Citgo; politics part of the reason."

No other credible newspaper in America took this story seriously. Why? Because 7-Eleven had the plan in the pipeline for months -- and it had nothing to do with "politics" -- and used the recent rash of news concerning Hugo Chavez as a way to get free publicity. It was the business equivalent of Adam Hasner's shameless political stunt on the same issue. Even the lame AP story published by the Sentinel had this graph buried deep in the story:
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But 7-Eleven had been considering creating its own brand of fuel since at least early last year, and some analysts suggested 7-Eleven may now be hyping the political angle a way to curry favor with U.S. consumers. "This has nothing to do with Chavez," said Oil Price Information Service director Tom Kloza. "They [7-Eleven] just didn't want to be tied to one supplier."
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It's a sham, only the Sentinel -- unlike the NY Times, LA Times, Palm Beach Post, Miami Herald and every other respectable rag in the country -- didn't catch it.

After the jump: Guiness games, Defede's dough, and Clematis blues.

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The illustrious John DeGroot sent me another missive this morning, this one savaging Scott Wyman's story this morning on tax cuts approved by the Broward County Commission. Whatever you might think about DeGroot's words, that lede, man, is no doubt clunky. Do editors even care over there care anymore? Or has the paper become such a joke with the Help Team that they've just given up altogether?

Whatever. Here's the rant:

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"The Sun-Sentinel once again has shown itself to be a journalistic vacuum of critical thought.

This time in County Beat Report Scott Wyman's 1-B coverage of Broward's $3.2 billion budget Commissioners approved at a stormy hearing last night.

Shame on them for (a) their total failure to get it and (b) their equally total failure to tell their readers what they need to know.

Consider the lack of intelligent journalism in Wyman's lead:

"Homeowners will receive the largest tax rate cut in 25 years this fall on what they pay to run Broward County government after county commissioners trimmed expenses further than initially planned Tuesday."

Okay.

Forget the clunky syntax caused by Wyman's attempt to cram 10 pounds of information into a five-pound bag.

Instead, ponder the key idea Wyman should have offered

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I grew up reading John Ed Pearce in the Louisville Courier-Journal's Sunday magazine. He was basically the man when it came to telling Kentucky tales. That picture there might as well be hanging on my wall, it seems so familiar to this day. I never met John Ed, but my dad, Phil Norman, worked with him and had a great admiration for him. That's not why I'm putting this link to his obit on the Pulp, though. It's this little paragraph here:

"Pearce's relationship with [then-Ky Gov. Bert] Combs once got him into trouble with his boss, the late Barry Bingham Sr., who disapproved of a Florida real-estate venture that the two were involved in and demanded it be dissolved."

Can you imagine the field day this blog would have had with that one?

Below is a letter sent out by Susan Kang Schroeder, the spokeswoman of the Orange County District Attorney's Office in California might be of interest. Seems the L.A. Times reporter slurred in the missive is doing an investigative piece on ... the letter's writer herself, Orange County D.A. spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder. (I just like that name, Susan Kang Schroeder). Almost makes you grateful for Michael Satz's ol' mother hen, Ron Ishoy. Almost.
Here it is:

"Dear colleagues:
We are lucky in Orange County because the Orange County press corps, for the most part, sets the gold standard. They are ethical, hardworking people who have an important job to do. The media often helps us find witnesses, solve crimes, and help inform the public that justice is done.

Unfortunately, in every profession there are bad apples. Christine Hanley is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She was recently assigned to cover our office. She used to cover our office four years ago. She has engaged in repeated unethical behavior including

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The American Journalism Review has an interesting and exhaustive story on the behind-the-scenes wrangling of reporters who tried to cover the Castro-to-Castro transfer of power. Authored by Lori Robertson, it starts with several newspaper f0lk -- including Sun-Sentinel photographer Angel Valentin -- trying to enter the country but getting turned away at the Havana airport because they didn't have special journalist visas.

Here are some highlights:

-- The Miami Herald's Juan Tamayo plays a major role in the story and describes how Herald reporters routinely sneak into the country without the required visa ("We've gotten in, I would say, probably most of the people that we sent, a very high percentage that we sent"). He also shares his thoughts on how Castro and the Cuban government views his newspaper: "As far as they're concerned, we're not an independent newspaper; we're just part of the Cuban mafia

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