Something less creepy about former Rep. Foley

It's international news that the FBI is examining e-mails between former Republican Rep. Mark Foley and teenage Congressional pages. Democrats are calling for hearings, we're learning other Republicans knew of these e-mails for some time, and Bush denies having known anything until now (which, as usual, is either hard to believe or completely believable).

What you may not know about Foley is that he was the guy who repeatedly introduced the ADA Notification Act to the House, hoping to weaken the ADA by requiring disabled people to notify any business of noncompliance and then wait 90 days before seeking legal redress. Well, 90 days plus all this time since 1990 when the ADA was passed and businesses everywhere went on notice that they should figure out if they were meeting the standards of the law.

Kara Sheridan wrote in 2005 for Audacity magazine:

Under Foley’s sponsored act, our role as the sole enforcers of the ADA would expand even further to include properly notifying those that deny us basic access to their facility and then waiting to see what happens. It’s difficult to understand that more waiting after fifteen years is a solution to anyone’s problem. Mark Foley’s ADA Notification Act is blurred behind the mask of protecting the vulnerable people with disabilities from "shiesty lawyers" who seek to take advantage of small business owners.

This paternalistic attitude that we are somehow less capable of protecting ourselves compared to the average citizen is more evidence to Foley’s underlying principle that the burden upon small businesses to comply is more valuable to consider than our rights as equal citizens.

While he has definitely been briefed and is well practiced in using politically correct terms and carefully shying away from outright stating that he believes many ADA standards are not truly necessary and expensive trivialities, he still makes it clear with his statements in interviews with the media.

Instead of sharing the perspective of a person with a disability who has been denied access to any public place he/she wishes to go, Foley instead shares stories of those that file lawsuits against strip clubs or those that file complaints based on the difference of a few inches from the standard disabled parking place.

The Ragged Edge covered Foley's ADA Notification Act back in 2000 when Clint Eastwood helped spread disinformation at a Congressional hearing.

It's good reading, though not as juicy as the current Foley news.