Only the Greek playwright’s manic disposition could correctly characterize the times in which we live when the semi-sex life of an obscure congressman leads to the downfall of an administration and the rise of Nancy Pelosi (!) as Speaker of the House followed by… what… impeachment hearings? Lysistrata anyone? Meanwhile, does anyone think it is ironic that so-called progressives who excoriated eavesdropping on terrorists are feasting on the publication of supposedly confidential email and IMs? You can forget about privacy. It no longer exists, if it ever did. The Patriot Act, if you think about it, is on some levels a joke, the Constitution a sideshow. The craven and rapacious stalk the corridors of power egged on by a loathesome media as hypocrisy rules and child abuse rears its ugly head with the age of consent debated by people whose only interest is their own ambitions. Meanwhile, lost in the shadows, an enemy whose “Messenger” married a nine -year old watches and waits.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, it’s a bi-partisan epidemic.
ONE MORE THING: In all the hullabaloo over the Sexual non-Healing of developmentally arrested congresspeople, I have been reminded once again just how bad we are at bringing our best into the political arena. I know when I rail on here about the weakness of our two party system, many attack me for casting aspersions on our big tents. But let me ask you one thing, if the best those tents can come up with to lead the largest deliberative body of the most powerful country on Earth are Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi, isn’t it time to start asking some serious questions?
I watched Brit Hume this evening and hopefully it will not be as dire as Charles Krauthammer seems to think. I don’t know that many people talking about this outside blogs and media.
I just can not believe that Gerry Studd’s party is passing judgment on Republicans here. It is absurd.
I guess we will soon find out.
Rush Limbaugh pointed out earlier today that a number of journalists seem unable to discern the difference between an e-mail and instant messaging. Once one realizes the distinction—it becomes abundantly clear that Dennis Hastert did nothing wrong. He was unaware of the more salacious instant messages. The Democrats and their MSM allies would have accused him of gay bashing had he dared pursue a so-called thorough investigation of Mark Foley. I can easily imagine Andrew Sullivan arguing that this proves gays can longer remain members in good standing in the GOP.
I knew it – See Drudge.
“A posting of an unredacted [sic] instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has apparently exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser…”
“ABC RELEASED TRANSCRIPT OF ONE CHAT BETWEEN FOLEY AND A MAN WHO WAS 18 AT THE TIME OF THE INSTANT MESSAGE EXCHANGE…. NETWORK STATED THE MESSAGE WAS TO ‘UNDER AGE’ TEEN… DEVELOPING… ”
“ABC ONLINE GLITCH LEADS TO IDENTITY OF FOLEY ACCUSER; FEATURED IM EXCHANGE WAS WITH 18 YEAR OLD”
Nothing illegal happened!
I’m not making a prediction here (well, maybe I’m making a qualified prediction), but no one should be surprised if, based upon timing and everything that seems to be coming to light, the ultimate effect is that: enough facts muddy the Dems for their role and mitigate against Foley and the House leadership; Reps maintain control of the House albeit with a slimmer margin; Hastert steps aside as Speaker for lack of support in the conference, and life goes on for the rest of us.
Roger, you’ve given me great comfort. The media onslaught has been choreographed and obvious, but the Republicans, especially some of the Evangelicals have been so anxious to prove that they are shocked, shocked that such things go on in Washington, even in the Republican Party, that they forget that Foley has resigned in shame, and seem to credit the murmurs by the press and the Dems that this must go back up and infect the Speaker.
What’s discouraging is that Republicans never seem to learn. There will always be bad apples in both parties. The real question is how the two parties handle them, but for some reason, Republicans seem to think that not only the miscreant, but everyone who knew him must fall on their swords. They remind me of those turkeys who are said to be so dumb that when it rains they look up with their mouths open and drown (Although I think that’s a bit of urban legend, like how to boil a frog).
Republicans need to keep their heads, cut out the cancer and then take vitamins. Democrats had Bill Clinton. They circled the wagons and fought for him, even to the point of throwing out all their claims to care about sexual harassment. All of a sudden, a sex scandal was just too unimportant to bother with, Clinton’s private life had been violated, and the one that always amazed me: The Republicans weren’t being bipartisan like they were during Watergate.
Well, now there’s a Republican in the dock, and everybody’s bipartisan in condemning him and supporting his resignation just like the good old days of Watergate. There is time still for this hypocrisy to sink in as all the Democrats who got wrist slaps are pointed out. The Democrats could easily turn this into a repeat of the Wellstone Funeral where their unseemly hatred of the Republicans took over and repelled even their own supporters.
I won’t mention Gerry Studds or Barney Frank. The ultimate conclusion is that Republicans just aren’t that good a coverups. They always give away the game and abandon the criminal. Democrats are the real masters. Nixon didn’t invent the idea of having a White House recording system, but JFK was way to smart to record himself having sex with his paramours. Nixon wasn’t.
The Democrats are now in thrall to the same crowd who led them in 1968 and 1972 to such glory. These people thrive on self-deception about how many Americans share their views, but they aren’t the real threat here. The press is the real opposition and they’ve never been more nakedly partisan than they are now. I think that ABC’s slow drip approach to this story may make people pretty tired on hearing about it, pretty fast, especially while they’re watching or changing channels from Desperate Housewives, look for an Aaron Sorkin pilot of Desperate House Pederasts next year.
I’m a chronic depressive so hope always evades me, but I’m always glad to hear that things may not be as bad as they seem.
Hugh Hewitt was bucking us up today too, arguing that the scandal is already losing its punch. He knows how politics works, and he’s been right before when everyone else was believing the early exit polling in 2004. I may just file an absentee ballot and go into hibernation until after November 8.
At this point, we don’t even know if Foley has actually had sex with *anyone* – let alone a page. There are celebate gay people in the world. Isn’t it strange that no one has yet come out with their “I had a wild night with Mark Foley” stories yet?
If Drudge is right, he may have not even spoken about sex with anyone underage.
Dennis Hastertís number one problem is that he is not an attractive man who comes across well on TV. Itís really that simple. Whether we like it or not, looks matter.
The Democrats should have waited until one week before the election. This manufactured scandal would have severely hurt the Republicans with their ìvaluesî voters. These people instantaneously abandon their elected officials who get into trouble. Only the Democratic Party allows a Ted Kennedy to survive Chappaquiddick. Thankfully, the ìMark Foley scandalî is backfiring on the Democrats. The proverbial crap is starting to hit the fan. Only moments ago I read a piece on Little Green Footballs explaining that Foleyís alleged victim was 18 years old—a full grown adult! Whatís next?
Mr. Simon, you put your reputation on the line by linking to a site that outs a victim in this matter. What intent is there behind this, other than to cause the victim harrassment from the Party’s true believers, an attempt you and Drudge are gladly aiding. This is despicable.
Sorry Vino, while I wont speak for Roger, if this turns out to be true we have another Mary Mapes at ABC.
Who told ABC this guy was underage? Did they assume it w/o checking it? Did anybody pass it be the lawyers? Who was the DNC liaison to ABC?
It does depend on the definition “underage” witch apparently someone has lied about.
“Who told ABC this guy was underage? Did they assume it w/o checking it? Did anybody pass it be the lawyers? Who was the DNC liaison to ABC?
Easy – it was too, too good to check.
We on this site can parse this many ways. We can defend Hassert, we can “slice and dice” ABC News and the media, we can hair split all we want but the long and short of it is it is a disaster for the GOP.
The party does not do scandal well. It counterpunches better than it did . . . but it a party of rookies when it comes to counterpunching during scandal and affecting coverups like the Dems.
It will lose the House worse than we think in our worst nightmares, and, then it can figure out to make love – in a governmental sense – with Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel and Alcee Hastings during these next two years.
A fake, but accurate?
Once again, Roger, you do a great job of expressing the frustrations of many of us. This whole scenario that is being played out is just way too much to swallow.
As to the Wino, WTF??
I liked AST’s thoughts. I hope he/she continues to post here.
Mark Levin has posted this interesting tidbit:
ìMichael Lux is president of a group called American Family Voices, which has both†a commercial and non-profit registration.† It is†now making a zillion recorded phone calls to Republicans telling them to call their Republican House members and urging them to ask for the resignation of the GOP leadership.††Numerous callers†to my radio show tonight, from different parts of the country, received the recorded phone calls.††
It turns out that Lux†served at the White House from Jan. ë93 toë95 as a Special Assistant to†the President for Public Liaison. In 1992, Lux served as the Constituency Director on both the Clinton-Gore campaign and the Presidential transition.î
http://tinyurl.com/mqgvw
PS: And yes Iíve learned to use Tiny URL. I am no longer messing up the page size of Roger Simonís blog.
The discovery of the one-arm man is near.
http://tinyurl.com/m895j
“Nothing illegal happened!–Lem
It matters not at all. Something distasteful clearly happened, and that is more than sufficient under the current circumstances.
Frankly I think Foley is a POS. Immoral, duplicitous,self-centered, hypocritical, and clearly unable to think with the ‘proper’ head. And for good measure I think that Hastert has but one major flaw(two if you count his ‘appearance) — he ‘seems’ to be as dumb as a sack of hammers. Can anyone think of anything ‘good’ to say about the guy? Oppositions don’t defeat the ‘rulers’. The ‘rulers’ defeat themselves.
But, in the end it will not be this tawdry little farce that causes the problems. It will be the visceral distaste that most people now have for Congress. Let’s be honest here folks, if the whole thing blew up and took each and every Representative with it, would that be considered a National Tragedy ? These clowns are a joke. This ‘scandal’ merely reinforces the contempt boiling not very far under the surface.
Because, and only because, the Republicans are the current ‘ruling’ Party, they will be the victims of the peasant revolt. And you know what —- they will deserve it.
When all you can say in your defense is that the other guys are ‘worse’, you need to go. Worse has become a very relative term in Washington. No Party can maintain itself on that thin gruel. Nor should we really want them to.
Oh wow, this is getting hysterically funny. I just found the following on the Drudge Report:
ìABCNews.com brought Mark Foley’s boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn’t the first website to flog the story. That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last weekóand whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle.
In other words, a blog whose sole raison d’etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.î
http://tinyurl.com/m895j
“When all you can say in your defense is that the other guys are ‘worse’, you need to go. Worse has become a very relative term in Washington. No Party can maintain itself on that thin gruel. Nor should we really want them to.”
Agreed, this Congress and the majority are close to worthless, except for the 700 mile fence, the detainee legislation, and a few other not so inconsiderable accomplishments. Voting for retreat and surrender Democrats during a time of war is gross negligence. Given that this scandal launched five weeks before the election and is burning as hot as it possibly can right now (i.e., at a rate unsustainable for the next four-plus weeks); Dems are clearly implicated in the gathering and distribution of the information in such a manner that its sole purpose was to hurt Reps rather than protect under-aged pages, it won’t likely materially affect the outcome nationally.
And the other guys are worse – measurably so. So while Reps really don’t deserve the majority, the country doesn’t deserve the Dems.
I could be wrong of course – but Foley resigned and there is no smoking gun of a Rep cover up. They may not have pursued the initial reports as aggressively as they should have, and that will probably cost Hastert his speakership post-election, but not Republicans the House.
David – that’s what I called the one arm-man.
Dougf ñ If “distasteful” acts are going to rise to the level of GOP resignations we are going to need saints.
Roger,
If I’m not mistaken the girl was 6 when the “messenger” to whom you refer married her, but, not to worry, he did not bed Aisha until she was 9. This wedding and its consummation must be the world’s best kept secret.
Dougf – If “distasteful” acts are going to rise to the level of GOP resignations we are going to need saints.–Lem
Well I sincerely do wish you well on the ‘saint’ front. I have the sneaking suspicion that the House would be virtually vacant were that a requirement.
Oh hell, let’s be frank — it would be COMPLETELY vacant. Permanently.
But that was not my point. I couldn’t care less about resignations. Essentially they are irrelevant, and the disdain I personally have for Congress is similarly not germane. What Foley has done is provide a simplistic face to the problem. A focal point where all the other inchoate feelings of the electorate can meet and have a doughnut and coffee.
Considering the feelings about Congress anything that promotes a cohesion of disdain is a BAD thing. This is a very bad thing and lament it all we want, it spells the end of Republican Control of at least the House. Maybe the Senate as well.
Were it not for the WOT it would be a complete bloodbath. It might be ‘irresponsible’ to have a Democratic Congress when they are so damned clueless, but the Republicans are totally responsible for the disaster.
Totally.
They need(badly) to go. For the sake of the country in the long-term it is better they go now than in 2008. Because sooner or later they are gone . It’s just the timing that is in doubt.
The risk of outing grows naturally out of curiosity over the mysterious “chain of custody,” that people like Brian Ross never disclose as eagerly as they disclose the dirt.
It’s good to remember, THIS is the entirety of what Hastert knew about, before last Friday:
——
email 1
do I have the right email
email 2
glad your home safe and sound…we dont go back into session until Sept 5….si its a nice long break…I am back in Florida now…its nice here..been raining today…it sounds like you will have some fun over the next few weeks…how old are you now?…
email 3
I am in North Carolina..and it was 100 in New Orleans…wow that’s really hot…well do you miss DC…Its raining here but 68 degrees so who can argue..did you have fun at your conference…what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do
email 4
I just emailed will…hes such a nice guy….acts much older than his age…and hes in really great shape….i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now, heading to the gym….whats school like for you this year?
email 5
how are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe….send me an email pic of you as well….
———
From:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/newsrelease.php?view=163
Dougf – Are you saying bring on speaker Pelosi, albeit the WOT may suffer, just so the republicans learn a lesson they are never going to learn anyway?
I rather the republicans NOT be good at managing scandals, that’s not what they are there for. If the democrats have a hand in this, it says more for what they are really all about.
Power at any cost.
BTW it’s not just the WOT, Wall St is breaking records, i dont want to chance it on Ways & Means Chairman Rangel.
I heard that the Chritisan Coalition is not calling for Hastert to resign. So far as I know none of the really well known Christian organizations are.
But that is not the point. People are always bitching about Congress, it has been that way all my life.
People like dougf can get as outraged as they want, but these people are put there by their consituents and it is the responsibility of those constituents to remove them. Just because they did not do what one group or another wanted them to do when and how they wanted them to do it, does not make them worthless.
In fact I would say that there are some very good and decent and intelligent people in this country who would never run for public office, because they do not walk on water. They have made mistakes, or they have things in their personal lives that would not look very good under the lights of the MSM. They do not want previous lovers harassed by media, they do not want people they do not even know passing judgment on them and calling them worthless. That is the way it is with most people. None of us are perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.
I am not defending Foley, this is a man with too many secrets and he should never have run for Congress in the first place. Should Hastert have demanded his resignation a year ago? I don’t think so, there was just nothing there that could have really been used to justify something like that. If Hastert had the IM’s he might have been in a position to go after the Foley but it seems someone was holding onto them.
Who knows? Maybe the Democrats promised not to sue ABC for Path to 9/11 if they would run this for them, I don’t know.
But I don’t hear people talking this about much outside the world of pundits and media. Believe it or not, some people have other things to think about.
If the Republicans go now rather than 2008, we will cut and run from Iraq and bring upon this nation a defeat and disgrace unlike anything we have suffered since Viet Nam.
The Demcorats will stop bothering with terrorists and will turn their attention to going after their real enemy, George Bush.
Two years of bs that would make the last week seem tame in comparison.
I will go right on supporting the Repbulicans just so long as Bush is around at least.
Any conservative who is willing to turn the House over to Pelosi at this point in time is no better than the people they are complaining about.
Does this mean gay activists are the new ‘puritans’?
“But let me ask you one thing, if the best those tents can come up with to lead the largest deliberative body of the most powerful country on Earth are Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi, isn’t it time to start asking some serious questions?”
Hastert is a solid, stolid, journeyman legislator. Walls don’t go up or stay up without competent bricklayers.
Pelosi is an airhead, who nothing solid ever could or would build.
To conflate the two demonstrates an appalling lack of discrimination.
Sorry, this is off topic but…
Every time I see “Aristophanes” I automatically think “Ridiculous!”
It seems to me like we’re dealing with bullshit from all sides. It seems to me that Conservative blogs are always more than happy to jump on any scandal that appears on the left and the Liberal Blogs are tickled pink to promote scandals from the right. This, apparently is what passes for politics and has passed for politics since Clinton, well, perhaps since Nixon… err, well I think maybe since John Adams and the XYZ Correspondence.
Why do scandals of imperfect men bring about the rise and fall of party popularity? In my opinion, it has power because most Americans have moral values. Moral values are an easy argument to win, they’re an easy handle to use in manipulation. When politics are decided by “the majority”, then scandal is good for offending the opponents supporters or mobilizing the attacker’s base (eg. Clinton and the Republican takeover of Congress).
People seem to be so easily manipulated, because they care. As much as you may hate anyone that votes from the other side of the aisle, they really aren’t that far from you in their views. We live in a cohesive, stable society where government and the populace are still balanced. Unlike many nations in the world, we don’t have REAL problems. We don’t have REAL dangers in the political system. Consider Palistine, there you have the choice between an ex-terrorist group that has recently renounced terror, or a terrorist group that has not renounced terror. In Lebanon you have the choice of an impotent secular government or a crazy religious militia. Afganistan, evn with our help, gives the voters the lovely choice between thug or warlord, or Religious Nutcase (if the Taleban were to regain power). In Hungary, a lie by the PM rocked the nation to its core and nearly destabilized the country. In Thailand there was a complete millitary coup.
We are nowhere near close to any of these issues. If the Democrats held all branches of government, we still wouldn’t be close to any of those nations in terms of instability or risk. If the republicans held all the sides with a strong majority, there still wouldn’t be the sort of problems we see elsewhere.
Suddenly the current scandal makes sense. It’s disingeneous politics to say Bush is Hitler and people, deep down (except for the few crazies) know that. It’s disingeneous to think that our nation would become a smoking crater if the Democrats took power, any sane person knows that.
So, the only thing we have left to differentiate the sides is who can score the biggest media attack on the other side.
All in all, I’m rather glad that our biggest political issue is a pervert, a lobbyist and some minor corruption, salted heavily with lying retoric from both sides. It gives me some level of confidence that our nation just might be ok.
Dougf
What part of “Foley has resigned from Congress” do you not understand?
I could see your point if Foley was still in office defending his lifestyle or pretending he ‘never had sex’ (which by the way in this case he didn’t have sex) that the ‘rulers’ were overstepping the power however, in light of the fact that Foley has resigned from office makes your argument meaninglesss.
But all this does not matter since the ONLY thing the opposition party really cares about is getting Bush.
Don’t shoot the piano player. He’s doing the best he can.
In light of the miscontructions of my position on this, I will merely throw myself on the judgement of history which is set to render its verdict very shortly.
The Republicans are going to get hammered, IMO. It matters not that Foley has resigned or that Hastert does not. It matters not that this might be a sort-of contrived scandal.It matters even less that “no sex” has been proven to have occured. What does matter is that Congress is held in disdain by the vast majority of the population, that recently polls have indicated that the distaste has spread to include even one’s own member of Congress, and that this is precisely the kind of ‘simplistic’ hook upon which all manner of discontents can be hung. And they will be, even if no-one fully acknowledges it.
Bearing bad tidings really does suck.
Who knew?
dougf,
It’s not that you’re the bearer of bad news (is it news if it hasn’t happened yet?), but rather you’re very likely wrong in your prediction.
Drudge returns with:
According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.
According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.
A prank gone awry, threatening the number 3 in line for the presidency of the United States. Despite the resignation of the principal, several days into the scandal doubts remain as to whether any laws were broken.
It’s a comedy.
Read up on the Civil War, and this doesn’t seem so unusual. We’ve been deluded by the combination of media monopoly and years of near one party rule by the Democrats of Congress. I grant you, it’s unusual for a major party to be dominated by the narcisstic, deluded, and paranoid.
We had four parties during the 1860 presidential election cycle, Lincoln won by a plurality, not a majority. Afterwards, the northern Democrats were nearly as viscious as the Democrats are now.
Things can be cleaned up, but that means campaining hard and long at the grass roots level to eliminate abuse and fraud in elections, all the way from local to national.
If you want to get radical, abolish elections for the House of Represenatives entirly, select them by lot from the voter rolls. We’d need to pick several names at once, because the voter rolls have people who have moved, are dead, or are otherwise ineligable. If you doubt that this is workable, I’ll point out that the British House of Lords is basicly a random cross section of Brits, the aristrocracy being only a memeory. The House of Commons, being full of professional politicians, keeps being shown up by the Lords, who actually try to solve problems.
Where have you been? Do you not work in corporate America? Have you not seen or at least heard about all of the video cameras watching you day and night? Have you not noticed that all of your email’s and everything you do on your work computer is monitored by the corporate geek squad?