I’ve got a really bad record when it comes to predictions, but there have been a couple things I’ve seen that today seem to indicate that the Foley scandal is going to get bigger. The first is the rumor that more Congressmen could get swept up into this mess (via Kevin) :

As the scandal over former congressman Mark Foley entered its sixth day, one Republican warned that there may even be further disclosures involving other politicians. “People are very, very concerned,” said Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican. “They think there are going to be more disclosures.”

On the other end of this scandal, it looks as if the cover-up could be bigger than we expected :

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s (I.G.) office today to ask for an investigation into why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has fabricated and disseminated a cover-up story as to why it never investigated the Foley emails sent to it by CREW.

CBS News has reported that according to the FBI when CREW gave the Bureau the original set of emails from Rep. Mark Foley to a former House page, they were “heavily redacted.” The FBI is also claiming that it came back to CREW and asked for more information so that it could follow up, but that CREW refused to provide anything further. Reporters from several other news organizations have repeated this allegation. The FBI is lying.

If it’s true that the FBI didn’t actively pursue the Foley emails and is now covering its tracks, the next question would be “Why?”. Was the FBI instructed to ignore the Foley emails? If so, by whom? If culpability in this cover-up reaches beyond the House into…say…the executive branch, all hell will break loose.

…and because the Republicans who brought this scandal upon themselves are desperate to deflect blame on someone else, let me just point this out for good measure :

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.

That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.
. . .
These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley’s improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.

This is a Republican scandal. They’ve treated this like a partisan political issue since day one, so now they have to live with the fact that they politicized the sexual harassment of minors. Live by the sword…

Like I said earlier, the Republican leadership is now so politically tone-deaf, they might as well join the Connecticut for Lieberman party.

The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, according to Republican sources on Capitol Hill.

Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.

“He begged them not to tell the page board,” said one of the Republican sources.

People familiar with Fordham’s side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
. . .
Capitol Hill sources say Fordham’s resignation was demanded by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose job is on the line because of his handling of the page scandal.

Of course he’s being used a scapegoat. That much is obvious. What’s amusing is how this fits into the larger GOP strategy. What Hastert and Reynolds have insisted over the past few days is that they didn’t know enough about Foley to take any action and that there’s nothing wrong with their lack of response to the “sick sick sick sick” emails. In the face of enormous public pressure, they decide the best way to react to a situation in which they haven’t done anything wrong is to fire Reynolds’ chief of staff?! Doesn’t seem like the best way to proclaim your innocence, huh?

The most politically inept part of this latest move is the fact that their sacrificial lamb isn’t likely to look fondly on taking the heat for House Republican’s indifference to Rep. Foley’s sexual harassment. If Hastert and company think this is going to calm down the calls for their resignations, they’re in for a shock. Not only does this serve as a tacit admission that the GOP leadership didn’t do everything in their power to protect House pages, but throwing a well-connected staff member under the bus only serves to further alienate one of the people whose cooperation they need if they ever want to calm this situation down. Don’t piss off they guy who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Since when is the “party of personal responsibility” so quick to find excuses for sexual misconduct? Mark Foley revealed that he was molested by a priest and that he’s an alcoholic, but does that absolve him of responsibility for his horrible behavior? No. It may explain why he did what he did, but it in no way excuses the exploitation of impressionable teenagers. Nor does it answer the overarching question of why the Republican leadership in the House did nothing to follow up on the reports that one of their peers was sexually harassing minors.

Whenever liberals point out such facts as “poverty increases the risk of crime” and “failure to understand terrorists breeds more terrorism”, we’re accused of coddling criminals and being deeply unserious about the threats that we face. Even the slightest hint of trying to understand the root causes of a problem is often greeted with the sight of conservatives decrying the left’s “moral relativism”. For their failure to see the world beyond “good & evil” or “right & wrong”, the right pats itself on the back for its “strong values”, but that moral strength quickly disappears when it’s time to protect one of their own.

I’m sorry to hear that Rep. Foley has gone through such hardship. For that he deserves as much pity as anyone in his situation (like the young men he’s been harassing). But let’s not forget that Rep. Foley has done some horrible things and should be punished for them. Likewise, the House leaders who through their inaction have acted as enablers for his sexual deviancy deserve to be punished as well. If you don’t agree, then maybe you lack the moral clarity to realize that fifty-two year old men shouldn’t be trying to fuck teenagers.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so callous and disgusting. Rep. Thomas Reynolds gave a press conference today to discuss his role in helping cover up Mark Foley’s lecherous behavior. Afraid of getting stung with embarrassing questions like “When did you find out Foley had a ‘cast fetish’?” , Reynolds decided to take out a little insurance :

Reporter: Congressman, do you mind asking the children to leave the room so we can have a frank discussion of this, because it’s an adult topic. It just doesn’t seem appropriate to me.

Reynolds: I’ll take your questions, but I’m not going to ask any of my supporters to leave.

. . .

Reporter: Who are the children, Congressman? Who are these children?

Reynolds: Pardon me?

Reporter: Who are these children?

Reynolds: Well, a number of them are from the community. There are several of the “thirtysomething” set that are here and uh I’ve known them and I’ve known their children as they were born.

Reporter: Do you think it’s appropriate for them to be listening to the subject matter though?

Reynolds: Sir, I’ll be happy to answer your questions, I’m still, uh…

Is every political strategist for the GOP smoking crack this week? I know reporters are usually timid and ineffective, but did they honestly think surrounding Reynolds with children would make people forget that he’s been covering-up for a sexual predator? This whole scandal keeps getting nuttier and nuttier with each passing day….

It’s strange how the recent revelation from Bob Woodward’s book about the July 2001 meeting between CIA director George Tenet and Condolleezza Rice has followed roughly the same script as the House GOP clusterfuck over the Mark Foley matter. At first, everyone involved (in this case, Rice, her staff, and the members of the 9/11 Commission) insisted that the meeting didn’t happen. Then somebody sticks to their guns and insists that there was a meeting. The blanket denials turn into “maybe there was a meeting, I don’t remember”. And now everyone agrees that there was a meeting after all. funny how being caught in a lie can jog the memory. The only question is, as TPM Muckraker asks, why weren’t we told about this before?

The meeting was first reported by Time magazine in August 2002, in its mammoth report, “Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?”

The meeting was an opportunity for Tenet and Black to brief Rice on the al Qaeda threat, Time said, something Tenet was reportedly very concerned about. The magazine said the DCI’s message was that he ” couldn’t rule out a domestic attack but thought it more likely that al-Qaeda would strike overseas.”

According to stories which appeared online last night, in January 2004 Tenet re-created the briefing for 9/11 panelist Richard Ben-Veniste, executive director Phil Zelikow, and professional staff for the panel. (Zelikow, who worked with Rice before joining the commission staff, is now a top aide to Rice.)

The meeting was reported again last week, this time by Bob Woodward in his new book, “State of Denial.” In it, he characterized Tenet’s message at the sit-down as: “First, al Qaeda is going to attack American interests, possibly within the United States itself. . . Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately.”

On the premise that Woodward’s book was the first time the meeting had been mentioned to him, 9/11 panelist Ben-Veniste told the New York Times that the meeting “was never mentioned to us.”

“This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about,” he told the paper.

When reporters confirmed Tenet’s January 2004 briefing with the 9/11 commission yesterday, the Democratic panelist changed his tune. “Ben-Veniste confirmed. . . that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004,” McClatchy newspapers reported. But he wouldn’t comment further, referring all questions about the content of the report to Philip Zelikow. Zelikow has yet to comment.

It’s clear that the commission knew. Even if they didn’t read Time magazine, even if they didn’t search for news clips before digging in, they received a detailed briefing — staffers as well as Ben-Veniste. To date, no one has explained why the meeting wasn’t mentioned in the final report. Why not?

Well, as Ben-Veniste let slip in a recent interview with Wolf Blitzer, the Republican members of the 9/11 Commission have been covering-up the messy details for the Bush Administration :

BLITZER: So you the asked the president in the Oval Office — and the vice president — why didn’t you go after the Taliban in those eight months before 9/11 after he was president. What did he say?

BEN-VENISTE: Well, now that it was established that al Qaeda was responsible for the Cole bombing and the president was briefed in January of 2001, soon after he took office, by George Tenet, head of the CIA, telling him of the finding that al Qaeda was responsible, and I said, “Well, why wouldn’t you go after the Taliban in order to get them to kick bin Laden out of Afghanistan?”

Maybe, just maybe, who knows — we don’t know the answer to that question — but maybe that could have affected the 9/11 plot.

BLITZER: What did he say?

BEN-VENISTE: He said that no one had told him that we had made that threat. And I found that very discouraging and surprising.

BLITZER: Now, I read this report, the 9/11 Commission report. This is a big, thick book. I don’t see anything and I don’t remember seeing anything about this exchange that you had with the president in this report.

BEN-VENISTE: Well, I had hoped that we had — we would have made both the Clinton interview and the Bush interview a part of our report, but that was not to be. I was outvoted on that question.

BLITZER: Why?

BEN-VENISTE: I didn’t have the votes.

BLITZER: Well, was — were the Republican members trying to protect the president and the vice president? Is that what your suspicion is?

BEN-VENISTE: I think the question was that there was a degree of confidentiality associated with that and that we would take from that the output that is reflected in the report, but go no further. And that until some five years’ time after our work, we would keep that confidential. I thought we would be better to make all of the information that we had available to the public and make our report as transparent as possible so that the American public could have that.

So that’s the bipartisan “compromise” of the 9/11 Commission. The full scope of the Bush Administration’s lack of interest in protecting the nation prior to 9/11 wasn’t completely swept under the rug, it was just made “confidential” until Bush is out of office. The remarkable thing about Bob Woodward’s book isn’t just the revelations it contains but the fact that the GOP has done everything in their power to make sure you don’t hear about any of them until 2009. I wonder what other incriminating details the 9/11 Commission has been hiding because Democrats like Ben-Veniste were “outvoted”?

Have you guys been watching Studio 60? I’m a big fan of Sports Night and the first three seasons of The West Wing, so I was really looking forward to Aaron Sorkin’s new show. On the surface, it seems to be an improvement over Sports Night it two respects : (1) it’s about the backstage antics of a far more interesting show than a SportsCenter clone and (2) the show is an hour-long, so it’s freed of the expectations of being a sitcom. While I expect Studio 60 to have more laughs than The West Wing, it’s really a show about comedy than an actual comedy itself. With that said, I’m trying to ignore the hype, avoid comparisons with past shows, and let the show stand on its own.

I’ve really enjoyed the first two episodes, but there’s something that isn’t quite clicking with me. I don’t love the show, but I’m really looking forward to loving it, if that makes any sense. I’m confident about the writing and cast that I’m sure the show will completely suck me in soon, but as it stands so far, I see a few potential problems with the series.

The Boss Looking Over Your Shoulder – Are Amanda Peet and Steven Weber’s characters going to be in every episode? It’s looking that way, but how are they going to explain why the heads of the network are constantly meddling with one of their, I’d assume, many programs. I wonder how hard the writers are going to have to work just to write them into the show week after week.

“Hello, I’m antagonist” – What’s the purpose of Sarah Paulson’s character? Based on what I’ve seen, it seems that she’s just there to provide dramatic tension. She seems to show up to make Matthew Perry’s character uncomfortable and to give monologues about Christianity. She seems like a one-dimensional character thrown into the mix to play devil’s advocate like The Went Wing‘s Ainsley Hayes. Please give her something better to do.

Show, Don’t Tell - What might be the biggest failing with the show if they’re not careful is the tendency to hype characters and situations without delivering. In the first episode we’re introduced to the three stars of the show within the show as “The Big Three”, but we still haven’t seen them do or say anything funny. If we’re to believe that these are comedic superstars, eventually they’re going to have to make us laugh.

Just as bad was the second episode’s obsession with the “cold open” for the main characters’ first episode for the show within the show. After brainstorming with their writing staff, which included a great scene of the writers shouting out hackneyed ideas like an episode of the Family Feud with the Bush and Clinton families, they’re finally struck with inspiration and come up with a great idea for the first sketch. The only problem was that the “great” idea sucked. A Gilbert & Sullivan parody is pretty weak, especially when the only good line (about the producer doing “blow”) was given away 15 minutes earlier.

Step Away From The Soapbox, Mr. Sorkin – I love The West Wing, but it’s a really preachy show. While I enjoyed the Network-esque opening of the pilot episode, the first two episodes focus on the Christian moral outrage factories like Focus on the Family is already beginning to wear thin. We get it. I just hope the Christian character on the show wasn’t just thrown in ad hoc to give Sorkin an excuse to call Pat Robertson a “bigot”.

Of course, those are relatively minor complaints from a show that I consider one of the best on TV. It’s really, really good, but it’s just not great yet.

Amid the ever more disturbing revelations about Rep. Mark Foley and the GOP conspiracy to keep his misdeeds a secret comes this pathetic twist :

Former Rep. Mark Foley, under FBI investigation for e-mail exchanges with teenage congressional pages, has checked himself into rehabilitation facility for alcoholism treatment and accepts responsibility for his actions, his attorney acknowledged Monday.

The attorney, David Roth, would not identify the facility, but told an Associated Press reporter in Florida that Foley had checked into a facility over the weekend.

“I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems,” Foley said in a statement, Roth confirmed to the AP.

I don’t know if Foley really does have a drinking problem or not, but the timing sure is convenient, huh? Didn’t Mel Gibson try that trick too? Apparently alcohol can turn you into an anti-semite and a sexual predator.

Andrew Sullivan is resorting to his usual “both sides are awful, but I’m above the fray” act with the GOP cover-up scandal.

Here’s Mark Levin with the Foley talking points from the RNC. Here’s another Republican argument that this is all about Democrat-MSM dirty tricks. Meanwhile, there’s some O-Reilly-esque harrumphing from partisan Democrats. Both sides’ eagerness to exploit this for political point-scoring make me a litte queasy.

The original post has two links, both to Republican defenses. I’d think if this was such a balanced situation (“both sides’ eagerness”), Andy could have provided at least one link to the “harrumphing” that’s making him so queasy. On the left, I’ve seen bloggers careful to point out that the age of consent in DC is 16, that Foley’s conduct may not be criminal, and that his sexual misconduct doesn’t fit the textbook definition of “pedophilia“. Is playing the devil’s advocate the sort of thing that Sully considers “O-Reilly-esque”?

But let’s go back and look at the record here. GOP leaders have know about Mark Foley’s specific misbehavior for almost a year, but made a point of informing only their fellow Republicans. That’s just in regards to the emails and IMs we’ve seen, but there are reports that they’ve been warning Congressional pages for at least five years and that the list of victims includes at least 3-5 other teenage boys so far. Through all of this, Democrats have been kept completely out of the loop, lest this be used to hurt Republicans politically. Yes, this situation has become “politicized”, but it was being exploited for political gain long before Democrats even heard about it.

And let’s not fall into the trap of thinking the GOP leadership’s new-found conscience is based on anything more than covering their asses before the election. Just as they’ve done in the Jack Abramoff scandal, the GOP is desperate to turn this into a “both sides are equally guilty” situation, which explains why Hastert, who desperately tried to sweep Foley’s sexual misconduct under the rug, is suddenly eager to cast such a wide net.

Therefore, I also request that the Department undertake an investigation into who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement. I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, or anyone outside the Congress.

If Hastert was so desperate to get to the bottom of this mess, he would have done something last year. This isn’t an attempt to find the truth, it’s a fishing expedition. The GOP is desperate to find Democratic complicity and they’ll use all the means at their disposal until they can find a Democrat who’s heard the rumors about Foley’s harassment and is willing to say so on the record. A statement as vague as “Yeah, I heard that guy’s a little creepy” would do. At that point they can unveil Talking Point 2.0, “the Democrats didn’t tell anyone either”.

If that doesn’t work, then they’ll settle for a variation of the “find the leakers” ploy by harassing the press to reveal their sources. They’ll insist that the “leakers” were Democrats who must have known something and were sitting on the information to use as an October surprise. That snipe-hunt just might work if it weren’t for the fact that releasing a politically-convenient bombshell isn’t morally-equivalent to hiding a sexual predator in your midst and doing nothing to keep them away from children. Even if both are intended to influence an election, there’s very little that can compare with the moral swamp that would see a group of powerful men protecting a man who, as we’re starting to learn, has a history of sexually harassing underage boys. It doesn’t matter how they spin it, what the GOP leadership has done to look after their own interests to the detriment of children’s safety is despicable.

Going back to Andrew Sullivan’s upset stomach, that someone would confuse outrage over this situation for political posturing is just a sad example of how far our country has sunk. There was a time when the right and left could find common ground on basic issues such as..y’know, protecting young people, but the anger on the left (and to be fair, parts of the right) isn’t an indicator of partisan hackery (even if it does bode well politically for some of the people expressing their dismay). The troubling signs are in the segments of the right that have instinctively defended Hastert et. al. for their indefensible behavior. Andrew Sullivan and others shouldn’t be asking why the lefties are acting with such righteous indignation, but why their outrage isn’t mirrored by many “pro-family” conservatives.

Regardless of party, this whole scandal is a sickening example of callous politicians valuing politics over people. Pointing out the depths to which the GOP leadership has sunk isn’t an election-year ploy, it’s a reiteration of basic human decency. What Denny Hastert and his fellow House members have done to protect Mark Foley is wrong. People should be able to point that out without having their sincerity questioned.