Sun. Oct 08, 2006
Speaker Hasbeen Anchors the GOP
What an interesting week or so it has been in that altered dimension known as “US politics.” And I call it an altered dimension because it does not seem to operate under the same laws of physics and rules of reality that you and I must. In fact, right now, many within the sphere of “US politics” appear to live in the same altered dimension that Wiley Coyote does just after he runs off the edge of a cliff, in that couple of seconds when he just hangs there, feet still moving … just before he looks down. And then turns into a puff of smoke with a muffled thud on the canyon floor far below.
Let’s ponder this moment, before the free fall becomes clear even to the coyote.
Faced with a Republican representative engaging in actions that definitely do not jive with the party platform, so much so that he went straight from the US Capitol to Rehab Mansion with hardly a peep of self-defense, a host of people deeply invested in the Republican Party have risen to his defense. Um, while pointing out what Foley did was mostly indefensible.
Not all of them, it should be noted. Many Republicans are rightfully angrier than your average bear, because they supported the Republican Party based on it waving the flag of family values, and now feel “FoleyGate” has burned that flag in a fire of hypocrisy. Tangentially (and Dennis-Miller-ish-ly), these rightfully angry Republicans remind me somewhat of the remains of humanity living in slavery under the control of Cylons on New Caprica in Battlestar Galactica. They’re “the Last Hope.”
Anyway, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about a surprising number of Republicans, primarily the partisanistas who are elected representatives or self-selected right wing pundits, who have tried to spread blame far and wide. They’ve blamed the Democrats, they’ve blamed the media, they’ve blamed the pages, they’ve blamed a coterie of gay Republicans in DC, and my favorite excuse, they were afraid coming down on Foley would look homophobic (One, since when has the party of the Marriage Amendment worried about gay bashing, and two, assuming gays would rise to Foley’s defense if the party had censured him is in itself an assumption based on homophobia).
If only the Democrats hadn’t tried to set up Mark Foley. If only those pages hadn’t played a mean computer prank on him. If only the media had delivered these warnings privately months ago instead of broadcasting them publicly now. If only the bartenders at Bullfeathers bar in DC hadn’t taken advantage of a clear alcoholic by serving Foley and fueling this Jekyl/Hyde behavior. If only those things had not been done by those people, then ... Mark Foley would be on his way to re-election right now.
This, from the party of personal responsibility.
Others have noted that this is a sex scandal with no sex (though there’s a hint of that now), that there weren’t actually “minors” involved (or even more weasely, that the age of consent in DC is 16), and that there’s only some innocuous emails and some IM chat transcripts for evidence. There’s no crime here.
Let’s put aside the law Foley himself sponsored that makes it a felony to entice a minor over the Internet. Let’s also put aside the seemingly premeditated behavior of innocuous emails when in the page program followed by more “intimate” IM contact after leaving the page program.
Have you watched Dateline on NBC lately? I normally dislike that kind of show, but they’ve had a continuing segment for what seems like months now, that has become fascinating to me in the way that a snipe hunt is. As in, it’s amazing these guys keep falling into the same well publicized (hell, it’s on TV every week!) deep deep hole.
It’s an “investigative” segment that goes after online predators. Quite successfully and salaciously. They start in an Internet chat room, with someone posing as a teen girl, i.e., not an actual minor, and seeing who tries to “engage” her. Various forms of documented nasty talk ensues online, along with an invitation from the “teen” to “come over.” When they guy shows up, he’s briefly greeted by the alleged teen, just enough to lure him indoors, and then the reporter comes out and grills him on camera. When the guy leaves the house, each and every one of them is given a felony takedown courtesy of officers standing by, and taken away for an extended stay at the Big House.
No actual sex occurs. No actual minor is involved. The only evidence is some IM chat transcripts. And yet, they go to jail. And no one sings even one note of a sad song for them, nor is there an angry word against those who “did them wrong.”
That’s the dimension that you and I live in. Our representative overlords? Not so much.
Theirs is an altered reality in which the best “leader” among the couple hundred Republicans in the House is Speaker Dennis Hastert, a man who was apparently never told he’d have to be in front of a microphone or camera some day. Or that his appearance and demeanor might have some importance, some bearing on the matter at hand. It’s not that he has no charisma (nor, perversely, any obvious potential successor), he is a Charismatic Black Hole, sucking the remaining latent charisma out of those around him. There isn’t even any air of authority or … calm. Never mind leadership. There is only a sneaking suspicion that in a pork-filled “Do Nothing” Congress, he is indeed the perfect visual representative for such a … body.
On one hand, “Hastert maintains that he knew nothing of Foley’s actions until last week, when the story first broke and Foley resigned. His stance contradicts that of House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), both of whom said they had informed Hastert this spring.”
On the other hand, “House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff met with disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley to discuss the time and attention Foley was giving House pages years before the speaker’s office admits becoming aware of the issue, a current House staffer told ABC News.”
But it seems events and revelations won’t even slow down enough for them to meet at the center of their circled wagons and get their stories straight:
On one night in 2002 or 2003, an allegedly inebriated Foley showed up at the pages’ dorm after a 10 p.m. curfew and tried to gain entry, according to an account provided by two congressional sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. Foley was turned away by a guard. It is not known if the pages were ever aware that Foley lurked outside their door, but word of the incident reached the House Clerk, who notified Foley’s chief of staff, Kirk Fordham.
This was not the first time that Fordham had learned of his boss’s behaving, in that modern all-purpose euphemism, “inappropriately.” Fordham decided that it was time to go to a higher authority, so he went to see Scott Palmer, chief of staff to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
Newsweek: A Secret Life: How Foley Scandal Could Cost Bush Congress
I expect that even now Speaker Hastert is growing his fingernails so that he may more tenaciously cling to his post. I expect that he and those who support him will continue to build on the amazing complexity of their entirely Clintonian “defense,” weaving in whatever new revelations may come.
It’s really perversely entertaining. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m no Victorian moralist. If a 52 year old man wants to pursue and have a “relationship” with an 18 or 19 year old young man, or young woman, that is legally and morally a private issue between two “adults,” and therefore none of my business. There’s no impact on me.
In my personal opinion, it’s a doomed relationship based on primarily sexual motivations between two people who otherwise only have in common their mutually unrealistic expectations. And I put quotation marks around “adults” for reasons other than age. But that’s just my opinion about something that has no impact on me. Now, if the 18 or 19 year old was my son or daughter, well … let’s not even go there.
In fact, a presidential term or two ago, I felt that if a married 50-ish man had an, um, oral adventure with a 22 year old young woman, that was between those two consenting “adults” ... and the non-consenting wife. I truly want no part of that.
But in both cases, where it does begin to impact me, and any American, is when the public spin begins. When there’s even the perception of a coverup, never mind outright lies. When personal scandal impacts public policy capabilities and options (“He’s just trying to ‘wag the dog’ and distract from his scandal!”). When people seriously spend time parsing the context and meaning of the word “is.” Or “minor.”
When acts that are clearly wrong in the dimension in which you and I live become a “they-said-we-said” in that Altered DC Dimension, in which some sliver of partisan logic can be found that makes all actions quite defensible.
In other words, all the public hub-bub, but-buts, and tut-tuts from both sides are just actions on a stage before the Big Show on November 7, not steps leading to a conclusion or solution crafted by the actors on that stage. It’s the audience of this Big Show, you and I, that will largely determine what happens next. Maybe even before the curtain goes up next month.
Because even the most blindered partisan can’t deny which way the wind is blowing when they’re being blown away in a hurricane.
As one anecdotal example, let’s take the case of Rep. Thomas Reynolds, a New York Republican who has been near the center of this Congressional Charlie Foxtrot. He held a two point edge in a poll conducted September 25-27, 45% to 43%. Ten days and one FoleyGate later, he’s down by 15 points, 48% to 33%.
A seventeen point swing in the polls in less than two weeks. But it’s not just one race, or one Republican:
For the first time since 2001, the NEWSWEEK poll shows that more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror. Fully 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win control of Congress next month, including 10 percent of Republicans, compared to just 35 percent who want the GOP to retain power. If the election were held today, 51 percent of likely voters would vote for the Democrat in their district versus 39 percent who would vote for the Republican.
While 52 percent of Americans believe Hastert was aware of Foley’s actions and tried to cover them up, it’s part of a larger loss of faith in Republican leadership, thanks mostly to the war in Iraq. For instance, for the first time in the NEWSWEEK poll, a majority of Americans now believe the Bush administration knowingly misled the American people in building its case for war against Saddam Hussein: 58 percent vs. 36 percent who believe it didn’t.
Democrats now outdistance Republicans on every single issue that could decide voters’ choices come Nov. 7. In addition to winning—for the first time in the NEWSWEEK poll—on the question of which party is more trusted to fight the war on terror (44 to 37 percent) and moral values (42 percent to 36 percent), the Democrats now inspire more trust than the GOP on handling Iraq (47 to 34); the economy (53 to 31); health care (57 to 24); federal spending and the deficit (53 to 29); gas and oil prices (56 to 23); and immigration (43 to 34).
Newsweek: Poll: GOP in Meltdown
The majority of those polled don’t believe Hastert on Foley. And an even larger majority don’t believe Bush on Iraq. In fact, pick your issue, and Republicans are under water. Can you say “tipping point”?
Today on ABC’s This Week, Rep. Adam Putnam spun valiantly, and echoed a refrain I’ve heard a lot in the past day or three: “A month is an eternity in politics.”
You guys sure make it feel that way. But lately when I’ve heard that phrase, it comes with a tone and body language that reveals it to be more of a prayerful mantra, one they believe may actually come true if they repeat it enough.
After all, that’s been the way the Bush administration has handled policy in Iraq for years now. Maybe it will work for Congress as well.
“Stay the course.” Lash Speaker Hastert to the wheel of the ship. Drive it straight into this storm. And hope that the GOP base [1] still shows up the polls next month, and [2] are gullible enough to vote for “more of the same.”
But outside of the expected sources, on the Hill and on the web, the ones that profit from “more of the same,” I sure hear a whole lot of “had enough.” The polls echo that. It seems obvious that, one way or another, Speaker Hastert will be Speaker Hasbeen by the end of January. In the meantime, he will indeed anchor the GOP. Like a lead weight dragging them down further.
Me? I’m well past “had enough.” I’m trying to salvage whatever entertainment value I can from the next month. I’d guess this is not quite the “October Surprise” anyone had in mind, and it’s hard to imagine what might top it … but I have great confidence that our current leadership in the White House and in Congress will somehow find a way.
And when they do, I’ll try to laugh. For my own health, if nothing else.
Published 06:03PM, Sun, Oct 08 2006
Category: Politics
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Peanut Gallery
The comedy, if you want it, is the idea that all manner of Republicans knew all about it, yet for some reason there wasn’t a Democrat in the whole country who didn’t know, until the news media told everyone. Riiiiiight.
Are the Democrats going to really act that stupid? Is everyone else going to believe that only Republicans have access to pages and only Republicans are invovled in the page program?
Come on- if it’s such common knowledge, dating back YEARS, then there’s more blame here than can be contained by a political party. This is nothing but theatre.
So, the actions of a Republican Representative, and the lack of oversight of his actions by his Republican leadership (including the Republican controlled committee that oversees pages), somehow places blame on Democrats who did nothing.
I did nothing. And, somehow, I’m sure I should have known (as you’ve said before, with the mixed bag of nuts among those 535, we all had to know). So it’s my fault, too. My cats also stood by (well, “laid by� would be more accurate) and did nothing. They victimized Mark Foley as well.
We are all collectively to blame, with each of us getting a socialistically equal share of it. Hastert and other Republican leaders deserve no more blame than that, their thin slice of our collective share. Right?
After all, it’s not like Republicans controlled all the levers and committees of the House for the dozen years Foley has been in the House. It’s not like they have the first responsibility to police their own backyard. Not in our society of victims.
They’re supposed to wait for Democrats to sling the mud into their backyard, and only then think about cleaning up the mess. Obviously those wascally Democrats didn’t hold up their end of the bargain this time. Republican leadership would have surely welcomed them outing Foley as a potential page predator.
And there was simply no way they could act on their own until the Democrats stepped forward to do their part.
I will agree with you that someone should have acted more strongly long ago, like maybe when Foley apparently showed up drunk at the page’s dorm. Personally, I look first to the leadership of the body in which he is a representative. So did the (Republican and gay) Clerk of the House, who, after learning of the dorm incident, went to Foley’s (Republican and gay) chief of staff, who then went to Hastert’s (Republican and straight) chief of staff. I have no idea why they did not alert any straight or gay Democrats they encountered along the way.
All I know is that was over three years ago. And while you may be right that there is plenty of blame to go around, I think it is only fair and appropriate that you start with those who apparently knew first, those at the top (you know, with authority comes responsiblity), like the Speaker who has himself said “the buck stops here�?
I’m just taking him at his word. Personally, I hope he clings to his office with every ounce of his strength. I think, long term, it’s best for the country.
You’re missing the point. These days the story I’m hearing is that this guy’s behavior was so commonly known that even the janitors knew about it. But then I hear the only Republicans knew, but somehow all of them seem to have known. There’s talk that pages were warned to stay clear of Foley- if it was that well known, it’s just beyond imagination to think that it managed to be kept a secret from Democrats.
Behavior of this kind can’t be painted on one party. It’s deplorable, and everyone knows it. I just can’t buy the baloney these days though- if it was common knowledge, then everyone knew. I’d be a fool to think that the Republicans are wily enough to hide something like this for so long from the Democrats, yet stupid enough allow it to hit the national press just a few weeks before an election.
I disbelieve the reports one way or the other- either it wasn’t that well known, and I can believe Hastert didn’t know the extent of it, or it was well known, and I can lay as much blame to the Democrats who had to have known. What I can’t buy is that a ton of Republicans knew, and not one Democrat knew, which is the picture being currently painted.
Todd: You’re missing the point. These days the story I’m hearing is that this guy’s behavior was so commonly known that even the janitors knew about it.
Respectfully, you are missing my point. Yet making it at the same time.
Is it the janitor’s responsiblity to act on this guy’s well known behavior? Does the janitor have the authority? Who has that first primary reponsibility to act? Who has primary authority over a Republican member of the House?
With authority, i.e., a leadership position, comes responsibility. You do recall that the Republican Party is the party of personal responsiblity, don’t you?
Sure, you can blame the janitor. Or the receptionist. Or the executive vice president, all of whom knew, but did nothing. But when the CEO and the board also knew and did nothing, that’s where logic dictates you start.
Politics dictates other places you can point the finger. It was true in 1998 (remember the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in the wake of Clinton’s actions?). And it’s true today. In both cases, the responsiblity is with those actually in power.
But to hear it today, there’s simply no one responsible here. Not Foley, the Demon Rum made him do it (just like poor Mel Gibson’s alcohol induced anti-semitism). Speaker Hastert and Republican leadership are off the hook, simply because no one else stopped Foley either. They are exactly like those other (often Democratic) “do nothings.”
If so, our country has officially become a three dimensional conundrum. We have a largely lawyer fueled culture (both in and out of politics), which has become a society of victims, yet also a land where there is no accountability. For anything.
I suggest you buy lots of insurance. It has truly become the only way to be sure that someone will pay.
Christian Political Leadership, Hypocrisy, Duplicity, and Purposeful Evil
Hello ,
This Foley fiasco has given people the chance to change the make-up of this government, which will ultimately lead to the end of the Bush-Cheney reign. It may not be pretty, but it is a gift, nonetheless. Don’t waste this advantage, and use it wisely to end the more pressing problems that face us all.
Want to better understand some of the desperation among top Christian politicos? Want to know what else they are pretending not to know about? Follow the links and read about who I am and what I have to say. Notice that my last name is Page? Think this “page” scandal is a mere coincidence? The timing and ramifications are much worse than most realize yet.
If Christian political leaders are going to go around attacking others for not living up to their professed values, it’s a damn good idea to be truthful and actually walk the walk. Logs and motes in the eye, camels through the eye of a needle, glass houses, kettles and pots, and what goes around comes around, et al. Karma’s a bitch when She finally decides enough is enough! This wouldn’t have been so bad on Republicans if they hadn’t been such arrogant hypocrites in order to corner the so-called values voters! Now the “Two Candlesticks” and “Two Witnesses” (Truth and Justice) are “breathing fire” and “raining hailstones!”
The current scandal involving Congressman Foley is merely the latest in an amazingly long list of blatant deception and duplicity by Republicans and the Christian Right in recent years. While bedeviling us all with their holier-than-thou pretenses, they consistently support and/or perform blatant greed and abominable evil. Never forget the extent of their arrogance over the last two decades and especially the last 6 years. It is beyond amazing that Christians continue to blindly support such obviously blatant scoundrels, even as they are repeatedly exposed going against the most basic of human values. The level of hypocrisy and duplicity boggles the mind. There is no longer any doubt, whatsoever, that Christianity is little more than a purposeful deception used by political and religious leaders to dupe, manipulate, and coerce entire populations into giving them wealth and power, which they always use for greed, injustice, and abominable evils.
The actions of Foley and those who covered up for him directly parallel the actions of scores of priests that have raped innocent children, preyed upon others for centuries, and had their actions hidden and abetted by the Vatican. Now, in eerie repetition of Vatican history, we have a power hungry Christian Emperor (GW) working closely with the Vatican and Judeo-Christian aristocrats to lead crusades in the so-called Holy Land. Furthermore, to leave little doubt about the reality of this assessment, the USA, as the new Holy Roman Empire, is about to legalize the torture it has perpetrated in recent years while steadily reversing many of the democratic and civil freedoms that people gained when the Vatican and royalty lost control of their European empire at the turn of the nineteenth century. Now we see them following the same old path of evil as they strive to cement the status of the USA as the latest proxy Vatican empire. Make no mistake about it, the new dark ages are looming on the horizon unless we do something proactive to prevent it.
Remember that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it!
Read More:
http://exposing-religious-deception.blogspot.com/
Peace…
You know, I’m hardly a fan of Big Organized Religion, but I just wanted to point out precisely where you jumped the shark:
“There is no longer any doubt, whatsoever, that Christianity is little more than a purposeful deception”
Thank you for omnipotently condemning the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years as identical and of no moral consequence. Who will you move on to next? The Jews? The Muslims? Or is it only Christians who have this “problem”?
Wait. Don’t answer (don’t even try). I just went to your site and found the answers: “The three Faiths of Abraham are purposeful deceptions used to hide the activites and true nature of the Vatican and the aristocrats, plutocrats, politians, and world leaders that conspire with it, precisely as they have done for centuries [...] The Christianized Book of Revelation is a fraudulent and deceptive rewrite of a Hebrew symbolic wisdom text authored by the Teacher of Righteousness.”
Well, alrighty then. Thank you for sharing your opinion. No further input is necessary.
Haha.. it couldn’t have gotten better than that, Reid. Platform for anti-Republican spammers. Nice. :)
In any case, my point is and always has been that responsibility to clean up stuff like this isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing. It’s a human being thing. Seeing wrong and saying ‘it’s not my job, man’ isn’t going to cut it, and I’m totally convinced there was a lot of that going on, on BOTH sides of the aisle.
I’ve grown tired of the media spinning this to someone’s advantage, when I’m sure it was a difficult situation, made more difficult by the attitudes of everyone that each person is a victim when it suits them.
Here’s how I see it happened, using the Occam’s Razor theory:
1. Foley, being a weirdo, started his nonsense some time ago.
2. It became apparent to a few folks, close by, that he was behaving in a way that could become a problem. They noted that he carefully did not break a single written rule, nor did he break a single law.
3. These folks (I see a congressman named today, probably the rest were functionaries) conversed with lawyers and such, to see what their options were. Given that he’d only broached common sense and decency, and given that this historically isn’t a reason to throw anyone out of public office (see: drunken Kennedy driving woman off a bridge and letting her drown, see also Clinton stuffing cigars in intern’s privates in the Oval Office, see also.. oh you get the idea), the people decided that they had a very limited set of options- they could confront him directly, or… nothing. I see today that the congressman did confront him directly.
4. At this point the functionaries know that they have no legal or procedural standing to do anything about this guy, and they also know that bringing it to the attention of Hastert and such will only put him into the same bad situation they’re in. So, they hope for him to lose an election, and wait.
5. Someone on the other side of the aisle hears it, as it isn’t exactly the best kept state secret. At this point they do realize that he’s not breaking laws, rules, or anything else. He’s actually not being any more immoral than our former president- it can be argued much less so. In any case, they file it away and wait for the most damaging time to present it in the most damaging way.
6. Now- they drop the bomb in the press, and the feeding frenzy begins.
Just so you know it, I’m not defending Foley. But ask yourself what you’d have done, and consider how tough it’d be to ‘out’ a homosexual without getting yourself tarred in this day and age. Consider how you’re going to get him removed when he hasn’t broken a rule or a law. I personally would have tried, had I been in a position, but I don’t think I’d have been all that successful unless I loosed the press on him- the court of public opinion doesn’t work by rules and laws, they’re above all that.
This has been coming for a while, so long as we’ve tolerated the complete lack of good sense among our elected officials- we let them assault police officers we let them drive drunk – we basically let them get away with an amazing number of things us ‘peons’ can’t get away with. Suddenly the public sees immorality and wants to grow a conscience, just in time for an election.
There’s no lack of truly despicable things that went on here. What you need to admit is that only a fool would believe that someone in the Democrat camp knew of this long ago, and squirrelled the information away to use as a media car-bomb late in the election to win it. They traded these kids for a scandal, and that’s nothing but pimping.
I note your list and links only includes refernce to DemoScandals. So I get your point. You and I will just have to disagree. Unlike me, you clearly have not “had enough” yet. But as for your last claim “that someone in the Democrat camp knew of this long ago, and squirrelled the information away to use as a media car-bomb late in the election to win it ... sorry, Todd, that claim was well refuted days ago:
Quote:
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.
But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.
:End Quote
But I will give you this, from the same report: “That Foley’s scandalous communications came to public light during Congress’s final week in Washington was largely determined by the media outlets which obtained the suspicious e-mails in the middle of the summer, said the person who provided them to reporters several months ago.”
See, there’s always someone to blame. It was that Olde Standebye, The Liberal Media, that did in Republicans. Not anything Republicans actually did.
Reid, thank you, that was a very well written piece (great metaphor!). The oddest thing is indeed the handling of this whole issue, which really makes my jaw drop and wonder “why?�, and I asume the answer is either, because they don’t know how else, or they found it worked so well on all the other issues, that the had no dubt, it would here either – though it was the exact opposite. See also:
Does the Foley scandal prove the existence of a God?
(nevermind the presumptous title)
Heres some quotes about more folks who blame, not the Democrats, but the GOP … and the blamers appear to be Republicans.
Starting with Repub Numero Uno: “While publicly embracing House Speaker Dennis Hastert, sources close to Bush say he thinks Hastert and other GOP House leaders have bungled their handling of the Foley affair and look like they’ve been engaged in a coverup.”
Others agree: “A frustrated GOP strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity essentially agreed, saying his party’s mishandling of Foley ‘speaks to our inability to govern and do the right thing. It says everything about who we are as a party.’”
And as for specifically blaming Democrats: “Sighed one of the younger House Republican aides who sits in on key meetings: ‘Foul play on the Democrats’ side? If that is the only card left to play, then we are in serious trouble.’”
Then there’s the fact that not only did Republican leadership not stop Foley, they convinced him to run again: “Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley had two excellent job offers in the private sector this year when Rep. Tom Reynolds, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, talked him into seeking a seventh term.”
As Sencer’s link above points out, this scandal “has evolved so flawlessly (like the most brilliantly coordinated symphony), that one is almost inclined to believe that it was divinely inspired. It is difficult to believe that human beings (let alone Democrats) could create something so perfect (as Billmon wrote in comments here the other day, the relentless efficiency of this scandal is proof positive that Democrats had nothing to do with it).”
On Iraq, Foley, Terrorism, Healthcare, and any number of issues, we’ve seen a ton of denial. A nearly religious devotion to a political party. Even Job might have had enough by now.
Looks like it’s easier to hang the first commandment up at the courthouse than it is to actually obey it.
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But now the Rovians have turned the timeline completely on its head, and are claiming Hastert demanded Foley’s resignation because of something the Speaker himself says he knew nothing about.
This may seem a trivial matter, given all the other lies, big and small, that have come rattling down the propaganda assembly line over the past six years. Foley himself is just a sideshow geek compared to the three-ring circus that gave us the war in Iraq. But if there’s been a more brazen attempt to rewrite history—last week’s history!—I can’t remember it.