Well, it's the obvious question, I guess, but I'm not above obvious after a day of blogging that's left my brain fried and fingers bleeding...
How do you think the Foley scandal will play out over the next couple of weeks? Will Hastert resign? Will anyone else? Will the story die a slow death, or does it have legs? Should it? Will the Dems take one or both Houses of Congress? What are your thoughts on those and any other aspects I've left out?
UPDATE: Btw, this just in: Foley is not only an alcoholic, but he was molested by a priest when he was a teenager. Oh, and also...he's gay. And coming out is "part of his recovery."
Question of the Day
Meanwhile…
The Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) voted along party lines “to slash long-time federal labor laws protecting workers’ freedom to form unions and opened the door for employers to classify millions of workers as supervisors. Under federal labor law, supervisors are prohibited from forming unions… [T]he expanded definition of supervisors means up to 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others may be barred from joining unions.”
How big a deal is this? Big.
Preventing the ability to organize leaves workers vulnerable to a variety of injustices. Not being able to collectively argue contracts will make the nursing shortage in America even more dire, which will certainly be bad for our healthcare system and thus for us all. Not being able to organize against coercive management tactics will undoubtedly affect newspaper and television employees, as our media moves increasingly rightward, and that, too, will certainly be bad for us all. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
More from David Goldstein and Matt Stoller. And now I’ll turn it over to Colbert for a little perspective.
Love it.
While NRCC Chair Tom Reynolds rented out a daycare facility today, surrounding himself with children and families (via), Bush gave his remarks from an elementary school. And not just any elementary school, but the George W. Bush Elementary School, “believed to be the first public school named for a sitting president.”
Earlier, Hastert called the GOP the insulation to protect this country. It looks like the insulation is using kids to insulate themselves…from charges that one of their own exploited kids…and that, in not rigorously investigating it, they left kids unprotected.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Conservative Christians Blame the Gays
We are very concerned that the early warnings of Mr. Foley’s odd behavior toward young male pages may have been overlooked or treated with deference, fearing a backlash from the radical gay rights movement because of Mr. Foley’s sexual orientation. It appears that the integrity of the conservative majority has given way to political correctness, trading the virtues of decency and respect for that of tolerance and diversity.Yo, jackholes—respect for tolerance and diversity is a virtue of decency.
And, btw, having, or wanting to have, the support of the “radical gay rights movement”—something in which the GOP has been clearly disinterested—is a prerequisite for fearing a backlash from them. Otherwise, it's just lashing as usual.
Imagine having the kind of mind that allows you to assert, without a hint of irony or the merest suggestion of logic or ethics, that the “radical gay rights movement” would be more angry about taking action against a man who was soliciting underage boys than about trying to codify discrimination against them into the Constitution.
Final Thought: The conservative majority never had integrity in the first place.
(Hat tip Holly.)
Well La-Dee-Da—the Decider Finally Speaks
And he has decided that he’s in favor of an investigation. How gracious.
President Bush said Tuesday he was "dismayed and shocked" at disgraced lawmaker Mark Foley's behavior and supports House Speaker Dennis Hastert's call for a full investigation.Unless, you know, it’s anyone other than Mark Foley who violated the law. Like, don’t even think about going after Hastert, bitchez! He’s a father! And a teacher! And a coach, for crissakes!
"This investigation should be thorough and any violation of the law should be prosecuted," Bush said while campaigning for Republican lawmakers in California.
Some, including a Washington newspaper, have called for Hastert to resign, but Bush expressed confidence in the speaker's ability to resolve the matter, calling him a "father, teacher, coach."And lord knows no fathers, teachers, or coaches have ever done anything to hurt kids before. Honestly, that’s like saying “He would never do wrong by kids—he’s a priest!”
"I know Denny Hastert. I meet with him a lot. He is a father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country," Bush said.
"I know that he wants all the facts to come out."Yeah, you know what? I don’t think so.
Hastert Keeps Giving and Giving
When in trouble, race to Rush—and then whinge about how your own failings as a party leader is really a liberal conspiracy to “get to” you.
[T]his is a political issue in itself, too, and what we’ve tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism — and we’ve worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it — and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.LOL! How dare the nasty liberals (like Bay Buchanan) try to tear down the Tyrannosaurus of Turpitude and His Grand Old Perv Minions by pointing out that they’re totally freaking incompetent and put electoral success above protecting kids. How dare they try to “affect” an election—i.e. “win” it—by pointing out what manifest failures you are! Don’t they know the only ethical way to win elections is by attacking gays and women?! Sheesh.
Oh, and the GOP being “the insulation to protect this country”…? LOL. Nice one. “We’re all that stands between the liberals and the destruction of America!” Somehow, I think you’ve got that backwards.
Although, in fairness, most of you are pink and itchy.
(Hat tip Blogenfreude.)
Jeebus
New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote. Honestly, I don’t really give a flying flip when and where he did this stuff, but that’s the kind of headline that’s tough to ignore.
Hat tip to Chet.
Blame the Gays!
Instaprick, The Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, Ben Stein, Newt Gingrich, and I’m sure a bunch of other useless fuckwits I’ve missed have all been busily claiming that either: A) If the GOP leadership had investigated Foley after becoming aware of his “overly friendly” emails, they would have been accused of gaybashing; or B) That Foley’s conduct was the inevitable result of LGBT tolerance.
I’m sure I’m not the first, nor shall I be the last, to point out that the GOP has never been afraid of being seen as gaybashers whenever it suited them, so that pretty much takes care of A.
As regards B, I’m tempted to not even dignify that horseshit with a response, but I’ll just state the obvious and the move on: The assertion makes about as much bloody sense as suggesting that tolerance of heterosexuality made Clinton’s adulterous blowjob inevitable. In other words, none whatsoever. People of both sexual orientations make good and bad decisions; any one bad decision doesn’t discredit the notion that we should all be regarded equally.
And I think that’s about all that needs to be said.
Except maybe: Now fuck off, you pain-in-the-ass, dissembling, hypocritical turds.
North Korea says it will stage nuclear test
Oy. October’s just full of surprises this year.
North Korea said Tuesday it will conduct a nuclear test in the face of what it claimed was "the U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war," ratcheting up tensions amid international pressure to return to negotiations on its atomic program.Hear that? It’s the sound of a saber being rattled.
The United States warned a North Korean nuclear test "would pose an unacceptable threat to peace and stability." South Korea raised its security level, and Japan promised a severe response if the threat was carried out.
School Shooting Update
The man who shot and killed five girls at an Amish school in Pennsylvania told his wife that he had molested 3- and 4-year-old female family members 20 years ago, and that he was “dreaming about molesting again.”
"It's pretty clear to us, based on the actions that he took, that he intended to go into this school," said Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller. "Now we believe it had nothing to do with the Amish but it had to do with his victim (age) range, which was young female students ages 6 to 13. And we believe that he did not intend to come out alive."What to say? I’ve no idea.
Roberts also said he was mad at God for the death of his premature baby, Elise, born nine years ago, Miller said.
…Police said KY jelly lubricant was found in the schoolhouse where the assault occurred but there is no evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted in any way.
Good Lord
Hastert is still saying he won’t resign, even as more pages are coming forward to say that Foley’s “special interest in younger men” was widely known.
"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.Hastert retorts: “I understand that these are pages that have all left the program. This was after the fact. And you know — woulda, coulda, shoulda."
Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.
What an asshole.
You know, the thing that strikes me as completely bizarre about this whole situation is that it appears the Republicans actually started to believe their own spin about the “liberal” media. If Hastert “woulda” done the right thing and quietly opened an internal investigation when the emails were first brought to his attention, the media almost undoubtedly would have provided the necessary cover for them, as usual. In other words, not reported it—or dutifully minimized it by dismissing it as no big deal. Without the IMs to prove the case, any attempt to say the emails were indicative of a bigger problem probably wouldn't have gained any traction. But instead, the media uncovered the worst of it, the sexually explicit IMs, and the resulting cover-up, so now it’s a Big Story.
I predict, all his protestations to the contrary, Hastert will resign sooner rather than later. I imagine the only real reason he hasn’t is that his resignation will be a nightmare of its own, since most of the people likely to take his spot (I’m talking to you John Boehner) are neck-deep in all this shit, too.
Actual Headline
Bush says Democrats shouldn't be trusted. No, really. I swear. Here’s a picture:
Because the Dems are “weak-kneed” on national security (*cough* NIE *cough*), and because the Dems are reactive rather than proactive (*cough* Condi was warned about 9/11 *cough* August 6 PDB *cough* Bush waits for three school shootings in a week before calling for a school violence summit *cough*), the Dems “shouldn't be trusted to hold the reins of Congress” (*cough* quagmire in Iraq *cough* Jack Abramoff *cough* Tom Delay *cough* massive deficit *cough* pork *cough* torture bill *cough* corporate handouts *cough* dogshit oversight *cough* Mark Foley *cough* *cough* *cough*…).
Does anyone have a throat lozenge?
E-mail is for old people
Nothing terribly surprising in this report from the Chronicle of Higher Education...but it's a tad irritating just the same. Yet another digital divide:
College officials around the country find that a growing number of students are missing important messages about deadlines, class cancellations, and events sent to them by e-mail because, well, the messages are sent to them by e-mail.In response, some institutions require that students check their college e-mail accounts so they do not miss announcements, holding students responsible for official information that comes through that medium. Other institutions are attempting to figure out what technology students are using to try to reach them there.
A 2005 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project called “Teens and Technology” found that teenagers preferred new technology, like instant messaging or text messaging, for talking to friends and use e-mail to communicate with “old people.” Along the same lines, students interviewed by The Chronicle say they still depend on e-mail to communicate with their professors. But many of the students say they would rather send text messages to friends, to reach them wherever they are, than send e-mail messages that might not be seen until hours later.
They say the future belongs to the young. You know what? They can have it.
(Grumble, grumble, cross-posted...)
Fucker
I’ve been reading about the shooting in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, and I just keep getting angrier and angrier. Mainly, I’m just pissed to my bones that someone would do something like this to a community who’s never done fuck-all to anyone. It has the same sting of alarming injustice as someone who kicks a puppy. Apparently, the guy wasn’t specifically targeted the Amish, but that doesn’t make me any less infuriated. And I’m certainly not suggesting that some other community would have “deserved” this horror, but that it was an Amish community makes it somehow worse.
Then there’s the fact that this fucker did specifically target little girls, letting “about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with infants” go before he “made the girls line up along a blackboard and tied their feet together” and then shot them execution-style, motivated by a need to “[act] out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago.” The guy is 32, so when he was 12—what? some female classmate was mean to him, so now five little girls have to die? What a piece of shit.
And that’s really all I can say.
Did the NRCC chairman's chief of staff try to suppress publication of IMs?
It sure looks like it. Glenn Greenwald, responding to a dispatch by Howard Kurtz which reports that a strategist for Mark Foley tried to cut a deal with ABC's Brian Ross in which he was promised the exclusive on Foley's resignation if he withheld publication of the sexually explicit IM messages:
It has been reported, by Michael Crowley among others, that Mark Foley's former Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham, is currently the Chief of Staff for [National Republican Congressional Committee] Chairman Tom Reynolds...The GOP managed to withhold the relevant information about Foley's predilections from the Democrats and the public for years, and then tried to hide the full scope of it by bartering with the media (who wouldn't bite). The party is corrupt to its very core.
John Aravosis says that he has now "confirmed" ... that it was indeed Rep. Reynolds' Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham, who tried on behalf of Mark Foley to convince ABC to suppress the IMs. ... I think this is a huge revelation. It means that the Chief of Staff for the current NRCC Chair, a key GOP House leadership position, tried on behalf of Foley -- after he knew of the IMs -- to block the public from learning about the IMs by offering ABC an exclusive interview with Foley in exchange for ABC's agreement to conceal those messages.
That means that the top aide to one of the Republican House leaders, as recently as last Friday, tried to suppress the most incriminating and important facts regarding this scandal.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
They Get Letters
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - An engineer at a nuclear power plant has been charged with sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to a country club whereWhile this particular case isn't "believed to be" related to the 2001 anthrax mailings, this loop has been sending out this stuff since 2001. 51 mailings. At first, when I began reading this story, I thought we were starting to see a new wave of "white powder" threats... but obviously, this little elf has been very busy in his workshop for a long time. Glad they got him, but it does strike me as a little odd that it took this long to make an arrest. But hey, I'm not in the FBI, what do I know?
President Bush is scheduled to appear Tuesday for a Republican campaign event.
Michael Lee Braun, 51, was appeared in court Monday on two federal charges of sending threats through the mail. The FBI said he also is a suspect in mailing dozens of similar threats since shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The charges are connected to two letters prosecutors said Braun mailed on Thursday to the Serrano Country Club and Serrano Visitors Center in El Dorado Hills, a tony community in the foothills east of Sacramento. Bush plans to appear at the club Tuesday afternoon in a campaign event for U.S. Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif.
The letters contained threats to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Doolittle, according to an FBI statement.
The affidavit said Braun has a master's degree in radiological physics and a law degree. He has worked as a nuclear engineer at Rancho Seco since 1984 while practicing law part-time.Uh, yikes. I guess we should be glad he's just sending around baking soda.
Quote of the Day
Erstwhile Republican John Cole, bemoaning conservatives’ attempts to cast ABC news as the villain in the Foley Follies: “Maybe if Foley had been hitting on a fetus, these folks would get it.”
Awesome.
Condi was warned about 9/11
I’m shocked, shocked!
When details of the meeting emerged last week in a new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, Bush administration officials questioned Mr. Woodward’s reporting.Head over to Driftglass for your dose of righteous outrage. Related video here.
Now, after several days, both current and former Bush administration officials have confirmed parts of Mr. Woodward’s account.
Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about intelligence pointing to an impending attack by Al Qaeda that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff.
Washington Times calls for Hastert's resignation
Reliable GOP ally the Washington Times is not impressed with Speaker Dennis Hastert's performance in the Foley scandal:
House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.Indeed. The hat tip goes to dayvoe at Two Political Junkies, who rightly calls out the Wash Times on a glaring error. Responding to their assertion that this shouldn't be called a "Republican scandal," because Democrats have had their share of scandals, dayvoe notes that it's not "a 'Republican scandal' because Foley is a member of the GOP. No, it's a 'Republican scandal' because it looks like Speaker Hastert and the Republican house members worked to cover it up." Spot-on.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
