Roy Blunt makes his move

Missouri's Roy Blunt, who's managed thus far to evade the glare of the Mark Foley scandal, now smells blood and comes out with harsh words for the guy he praised just a few days ago, Denny Hastert:

As conservatives debated whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert should resign over his handling of the complaint, the House majority whip, Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he would have done things differently if he'd known about it. He was the acting majority leader when the complaint was raised.

"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is you have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of," Blunt said. "You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to."

A little cocky, no? And pretty far removed from this bouquet he tossed to Hastert just a few days back:

Blunt said Hastert "has the support of the conference he has led so ably for so long."

Hey, if I'm Roy Blunt, I've got every reason to be pleased these days. This Mark Foley firestorm is burning everything in its path. Denny Hastert's hanging onto his job by his fingernails. John Boehner's flip-flopping every other day on who knew what and when. Ditto Rodney Alexander. God only knows what he'll say tomorrow. Poor John Shimkus, he's just screwed. Tom Reynolds is hiding behind children, for crissakes. And now Tom's chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, either quit or got himself fired. Whichever. Guess he shouldn't have tried to get ABC to not release those IM transcripts. He's blaming Denny too. Poor Denny. Wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

If I'm Blunt, I'm taking care of number one. First, I don't say a thing. I don't have to worry about the local press, they're all asleep at the switch. Then I stand up with the boys - just for a moment - to denounce Foley. I send out an email saying I don't know nothin' about nothin'. I offer some nice platitudes about Hastert (though I'll stick the knife in later) and go right back to laying low. Nobody's looked in my direction, even though I'm majority whip and Foley was a deputy under me. Even though I gave campaign money to Foley, and he donated to my kid's campaign for governor. Even though I was interim majority leader when word of Foley got out. Even though I'm the number three guy in the GOP House leadership. Even though Foley was my friend.** I didn't know anything, didn't hear anything, didn't see anything. It's all news to me. I didn't find out until last week.

And now that it's all coming down, I'm in a great spot. Hastert's done, he's toast, and there's no way Boehner's going to succeed him. He's in this up to his lapel pin. No, the other guys are going down like tenpins and when the dust clears, the membership's going to need a new Speaker. And that's me.

The man - the only man - who didn't know anything.

If I'm Roy Blunt, that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.

**Friends indeed, as Roy Temple points out at Fired Up! Missouri.

Related posts:
Ask Roy Blunt about the Mark Foley scandal
Where is the Missouri press on Roy Blunt and the Mark Foley scandal?
The man who knew...nothing?
Plots and intrigues within Foleygate

(Cross-posted to the max, pretty much...)

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More Kidnapping Parents

This duo isn’t quite as bad as the couple in Maine who abducted their own 19-year-old pregnant daughter and tried to force her to get an abortion because her baby’s father is black, but they’re still nuttier than a sack of Planters:

The Redds told their daughter they were taking her on a shopping trip Aug. 4 and then drove from Provo to Grand Junction, Colo., according to Provo police Capt. Rick Healey. Myers, 23, called police when his bride didn't attend a pre-wedding dinner with his parents that night.

The Redds spent the night in Colorado and drove back to Provo, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, the next day, Healey said. They arrived after the young couple was supposed to have been married in a ceremony that day at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City.

"I was totally confused and manipulated," Julianna Myers told KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City. She said she supports the charges and hopes her parents get help.

Yeesh. As far as I know, we haven’t passed any federal laws decreeing adult women their parents’ property.

Yet.

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Caption This Photo

Accuracy in Media.



Via BradBlog.

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Scrubs

In the wake of any political scandal, I like to check out which websites have frantically scrubbed images that are suddenly rich with an unintended context. As you can imagine, there are lots of images of Mark Foley that are suddenly “no longer available.”

This page, which now advertises the office vacancy Foley left, apparently used to be a gallery of images highlighting his work with young people. Photos that used to be there, but are no longer:

Churches, youth sporting groups, the government—they’re all scrubbing. Scrubbing away every image of Foley with a kid that a week ago they were boldly displaying as evidence that they’re the real moral paragons in America.

Some sites aren’t so quick up on the uptake, like the Red Cross, which still features this:


And here’s another good one from a school in Florida:


I’ll bet he does.

I actually feel a bit bad for the groups who had no idea what was going on with Foley. It's the government sites that now want to remove all trace of a man whose predatory nature they conspired to hide that is truly pathetic.

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*Snort*

Court Temporarily OKs Domestic Spying

CINCINNATI - The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers.

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional because it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers in the Constitution.

The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm." The appeal is likely to take months.

"The country will be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the government motion said.

As if anyone in the Bush Administration, at any time, felt they needed permission from a judge to spy on Americans without a warrant.

"Sure, it may be illegal, but go ahead and do it anyway while we make up our minds!"

This should come in quite handy when finding "terrorist sympathizers" in "leftist organizations."

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Step Away from the Bills!

Every time he signs one, the country hemorrhages money, or we look even worse. Sometimes both.

Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill

That would be the "Homeland Security Bill" that paints us all as racist xenophobes. Just so you know.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - President Bush on Wednesday signed a homeland security bill that includes an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $1.2 billion for fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border to stem illegal immigration.

Standing before a mountainous backdrop in Arizona, a state that has been the center of much debate over secure borders, Bush signed into law a $35 billion homeland security spending bill that could bring hundreds of miles of fencing to the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexican border.

[...]

"It's what the people in this country want," Bush said. "They want to know that we are modernizing the border so we can better secure the border."

Funny, it's not what I want. And how exactly is simply throwing up a few hundred miles of fence "modernizing" the border?

And, once again, all together... what about the other borders?

Outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, who has spent his six-year term lobbying for a new guest worker program and an amnesty for the millions of Mexicans working illegally in the United States, has called the barrier "shameful." He compares it to the Berlin Wall.

Some Democrats criticized the homeland security spending bill as too meager.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the homeland security spending bill does not improve screening of cargo carried on passenger planes, does not provide money to buy and install advanced explosive-detection equipment and does not include strong enough security requirements to protect against a terrorist attack on chemical plants.

Yeah, but at least we're keeping those Mexicans out, and keeping them from stealing our jobs.

(Stop me before I cross-post again!)

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Fordham will not go gently into that good night.

Unlike Powell and Brownie, he refuses to play scapegoat and has started rolling while it still matters:

A senior congressional aide said Wednesday that he alerted the House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office in 2004 about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages -- the earliest known alert to the GOP leadership.

Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.

Let’s hope he’s got some written evidence to back it up. I can assure you, had I been in his position, sounding alarms about a possible sexual predator that were falling on deaf ears, I would have saved copies of all written and electronic communications and kept detailed notes on face-to-face and phone warnings.

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Assvertising

Part whatever in an ongoing series.

I hate this commercial, the concept of which seems to be, “Let’s make the advert so irritating that people will actually need our project after watching it!”

All they've managed to sell at Shakes Manor is more Aleve.

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out of the door, one cross each, line on the left

A church in Florida has decided to go all out for the Largest Unnecessary Religious Display Ever award (competing with people like these):

The First Baptist Church of Central Florida will soon have a 199-foot-tall cross at its west Orange County campus.

Orange County commissioners on Tuesday approved construction of the cross -- which is 51/2 times higher than zoning allows in that area -- by a 6-1 vote.

199 feet tall?! WTF. So how did they get around the zoning laws? Well, two ways. One, they argued "it is a symbol, not a sign":

"The cross is not a sign; it is a symbol. A sign identifies; a symbol expresses," Cloer [Rev. Clayton, of the church] said. "To compare the cross to a Wal-Mart sign or a McDonald's sign . . . is what we believe would be an incorrect comparison."

And how much is this thing costing you people? Can't you come up with something better to spend money on? You know, like helping the poor? Or is that not self-masturbatory enough for you?

Two, they had this guy (emphasis mine):

Cloer's sentiments were echoed by state Sen. Daniel Webster, a member of the church.

"It's not a flagpole; it's not a cell tower; it's not a building; it's not a sign," Webster, R-Winter Garden, told the board. "You bring issues to me, and you know I deem them important because I know you wouldn't bring them to me if they weren't very important . . . . If I come to you, I only come to you because I believe it's very important."

Uh-huh.

The lone hold-out was Commissioner Teresa Jacobs, who didn't buy into how this could work with the current regulations on the books. She suggested rewriting the regulations to clearly define what is a symbol and what is a sign (she is the one who will have the monstrosity in her district). She also said:

"We cannot single out Christianity . . . without providing that opportunity to all other churches, mosques and synagogues."

Two other commissioners dismissed her notion to add clarity to the definitions saying that "the cross is clearly a religious symbol". Anyone see the trainwreck coming with that? I bet these same people would object to, oh, a 199-foot pentagram or a 199-foot Yab-Yum.




(hat tip to PSoTD)

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America 2.0

Welcome to the New America, where you can be arrested for speaking out against the war to the Vice President:

In his suit, filed in Federal District Court in Denver, the man, Steven Howards, an environmental consultant who lives in Golden, Colo., says he stepped up to the vice president to speak his mind in a public place and found himself in handcuffs — in violation, the suit says, of the Constitution’s language about free speech and illegal search and seizure.

…Mr. Howards, 54, said at a news conference here that he was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson on June 16 at the Beaver Creek Resort about two hours west of Denver when he saw Mr. Cheney at an outdoor mall. Mr. Howards said he approached within two feet of Mr. Cheney and said in a calm voice, “I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible,” or as the lawsuit itself describes the encounter, “words to that effect.”

Mr. Howards said he then went on his way. About 10 minutes later, he said, he was walking back through the area when Agent Reichle handcuffed him and said he would be charged with assaulting the vice president. Local police officers, acting on information from the Secret Service, according to the suit, ultimately filed misdemeanor harassment charges that could have resulted in up to a year in jail.

A June 16 article in The Vail Daily quoted a spokesman for the Secret Service, Eric Zahren, as saying that Mr. Howards “wasn’t acting like other folks in the area,” and that he became “argumentative and combative” when agents tried to question him. Mr. Howards said Tuesday that he was never threatening and did not become upset until his arrest.

“This was not about anything I did — this is about what I said,” he said.

Mr. Zahren declined to comment on the suit or on his original description of the event.

I’ll bet he didn’t. Especially since the Secret Service originally indicated he had “pushed” the Vice President, then later changed their story to reflect he had just “spoken to him.”

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Recommended Reading

Attacking Tolerance.

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Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

39%

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Reynolds’ Chief of Staff Resigns

Kirk Fordham, NRCC chair Tom Reynold’s chief of staff (and Foley’s former chief of staff), who was “loaned” back to Foley to try to save his sorry ass, has resigned. (Confirmed by CNN.)

FYI, prepare to watch Blame the Gays get even uglier, because Fordham is gay, too.

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But what about my needs?!

A bunch of people have emailed me about this story out of Texas, in which an elementary school art teacher lost her job because her fifth-grade students saw a nude art sculpture on an approved field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. (I first saw the story at Konagod’s place on Sunday, and I’ve been meaning to write something about it, but hadn’t gotten around to it.)

The scariest thing about this is that this woman, who had been teaching for nearly three decades and won a teaching award, had her contract discontinued because one parent complained—a parent who, by the way, signed a permission slip for the trip, which was encouraged by the school principal. And that doesn’t even begin to address the wholesale absurdity of objecting to the naked human form in art.

Meanwhile, Blogenfreude emailed me this story out of Virginia, in which the school superintendent has ordered a display of books banned throughout history (in conjunction with Banned Books Week) be removed from the high school library, because “would encourage students to read banned books because they are on a controversial list and not because of their content.”

Books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Fahrenheit 451, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Bible.

Aside from the stupid suggestion that there’s no association between banned books and their content, which is precisely what got them on a “controversial list” in the first place, who the hell is this knob-end to decide that it’s a bad thing if kids want to read a book specifically because it was banned at one time? Quite frankly, those are the books which are most informative about our history and culture—they should be read.

One parent ends a teacher’s career. One school official halts a school from participating in a nationally recognized annual tradition at his whim. It’s all about me.

Well, fuck you.

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Foley

So, the one person about whom I haven’t directly spoken much throughout all the Foley news is Mark Foley. There’s some reason for that—as soon as the story broke, Foley whisked himself tout de suite to alcohol rehab and has been thusly cloistered away from the epicenter of the shitstorm he created, while Hastert, Reynolds, et. al. dance in the spotlight.

Late yesterday, Foley’s lawyer made a statement conveying two new admissions by Foley, in addition to his recently revealed alcoholism: 1) He was “molested between ages 13 and 15 by a clergyman.” 2) He’s gay.

And why didn’t he disclose this information before now? “Shame.”

Drunk, abused, gay, and ashamed. Are you feeling sorry for Foley yet?

That may sound like I’m being flippant. I’m not. It’s not easy to be an addict, or a sexual abuse survivor, or a gay man in America (thanks in large part to Foley’s own party). And the obvious and easy comments are being made that most addicts, sexual abuse survivors, and gay men don’t prey on underage kids, making Foley’s excuses pretty damn weak. True enough. I don’t need to drive that point home any further. I will point out, however, that there are addicts, sexual abuse survivors, and gay men and women who are honest and brave enough to openly discuss being addicts, victims, or gay—and Mark Foley, in hiding in his big, boozy, molested, gay closet of shame until his ass got busted doing something most people, no matter what their experience, never do, and wheeling out this information as some sort of defense, has shit all over all of them.

Every addict who has courageously admitted addiction, every sexual abuse victim who has fearlessly discussed his or her molestation or rape, every LGBT man or woman who valiantly stepped out of the closet, without the impetus of a public disgrace, has done their part, consciously or not, to remove the stigma of addiction, surviving sexual exploitation, and homosexuality. They put themselves out there—for judgment, for ridicule, for condemnation—and not only did Mark Foley not do the same; he now feels no compunction about associating addicts, survivors of sexual abuse, and gay men with his criminal predilections, in order to excuse his inexcusable behavior.

If there were something about which Foley should feel shame, it isn’t being an addict, a sexual abuse survivor, or a gay man. It’s about being a cowardly, disingenuous shirker of his own responsibility, who never sought the solace uncoerced admitted membership in these groups provide, but instead uses his reluctantly admitted membership as an explanation for why he’s a dirtbag. And in so doing, he has cast dispersion on every other member.

I’m sorry, truly sorry, that Foley is an alcoholic. I’m sorry, deeply and sympathetically sorry, that Foley was a victim of sexual abuse, in a way only another victim can be. I’m sorry, so sorry, that Foley lives in a country where coming out can still be an intimidating proposition. But I do not feel sorry for him in the way he so clearly wants me to. I have not one single, tiny, infinitesimal speck of sorrow for a man who cravenly endeavors to repackage the cowardice of justification by association as the brave admissions of a man who has overcome his shame.

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Reynolds is Toast

Not Toast. Just toast. Small t. Allegedly, he convinced Foley to run for reelection in spite of knowing about his “overly friendly” emails.

That noted, I’ve also read somewhere (and have now forgotten where) that Foley was considering a Senate run—in the spot now being filled by Katherine Harris. Obviously, he didn’t make that move, so I’m wondering if this report about Reynolds (via Bob Nofacts), as damning as it appears, is actually less damning than a potential alternative—that the GOP promised Foley support in a House reelection bid if only he’d stay out of the Senate race. And then there’s the issue of Foley having given the National Republican Congressional Committee, which Reynolds heads, $100,000 of the campaign funds he’d raised.

(Donating campaign contributions to one’s party, or other candidates in need of cash, is not unusual. A donation as large as $100k is.)

In light of the possibility that Foley bought the continued support of the GOP, who agreed to give it only if he stayed away from the Senate race, a report that Reynolds merely encouraged him to run again may only be a misdirection from an even uglier truth.

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The AP...

...labeled Foley a Democrat, too.

It's since been changed, without any acknowledgement, of course.

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No One Should Have Access to Anything!

It's that time of the year, Shakers... the leaves are changing, there's a chill in the air... the mold count is sky high, making my fellow allergy sufferers miserable... grocery stores suddenly are buried in pumpkins, and the Fundies are banning everything in sight!

GA Mother Seeks Harry Potter Ban

At first, I read it as Harry Potter Band, and I thought, "Awesome! Hagrid and the Angry Inch!"

ATLANTA - A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series is an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."

Blah, blah, fucking blah. You've heard it all before. It's not enough that their kids aren't exposed to eeeeevil witches, no, everyone has to conform to their narrow-minded idea of what should and should not be read by children. I feel like I keep writing the same post every time something like this pops up in the news. Why do they feel the need to impose their values on others, separation of church and state, yadda, yadda, yadda. Someone should just create a template post that blogs could cut and paste when one of these Fundies get bunchy panties. And just to give you an idea of the mindset of these people:

In June, the county's library board eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. One board member said the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayer dollars to entertain readers who might be illegal immigrants.

Nice.

And, of course, as October 31st quickly approaches, I'm sure we can expect to start seeing the "Halloween banned from schools" stories. Steel yourself now.

After all, as soon as Halloween is over, it's "War on Christmas" season!

(Grim grinning cross-posts come out to socialize...)

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Lies and the Lying Liars…

This is totally unbelievable. BradBlog posts a truly appalling screen capture from Fox’s O’Reilly Factor which labels Mark Foley as a Democrat:

In two different segments, “one of them which a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter,” there were three different cutaways to video of Foley, each around 15 seconds, and “he was labeled at the bottom of the screen each time as “(D-FL).”

Maybe that’s just O’Reilly’s idea of a little joke, like telling al-Qaida to bomb San Francisco.

UPDATE: Apparently, the later editions aired with the misidentification removed. There was no explanation, and Foley was simply not identified by party at all. Brad's got the updated screen capture at the link.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Electric Company

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