From Washington Post
By Ruth Marcus

Soon-to-be-speaker Nancy Pelosi is fond of mentioning that she’s the mother of five, grandmother of six. The California Democrat should keep that in mind as she reviews the House ethics committee’s report on former representative Mark Foley and considers proposals for tougher ethics enforcement.

Pelosi should ask herself: What would she think if the pages whom Foley pursued with his smarmy e-mails and even worse instant messages were her own children?

Would she be satisfied with the ethics committee’s conclusion that no House rules were broken by any of the lawmakers or staffers who had ample warning of Foley’s problem and failed to do anywhere near enough to stop him? As a parent, does she think that their actions complied with the rule requiring members and staff to conduct themselves “at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives?”

Read More Fallout

From The Washington Post
Editorial

What, one has to wonder, would it take for the House ethics committee to hold a lawmaker or a staff member accountable?

A special investigative subcommittee convened to examine responses to Mark Foley’s inappropriate contacts with congressional pages found “a significant number of instances where Members, officers or employees failed to exercise appropriate diligence and oversight.” It found “a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Rep. Foley’s conduct.” And it found “a pattern of conduct . . . among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Representative Foley’s conduct with respect to House pages.”

The sum total of disciplinary actions the panel is recommending as a result? Zero.

In a report released yesterday, the panel did a good job laying out the disturbing facts of the case: how the Florida Republican’s inappropriate interest in pages manifested itself from his first days on the job and how lawmakers and staff failed to do nearly enough to find out about or fix the problem. It ably described the stakes involved: “The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a Member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment; it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House.” Then, all too characteristically, the committee declined to hold even a single individual responsible for any misstep.

Read more Buck Stops

From Vanity Fair
By Gail Sheehy and Judy Bachrach

The half-open closet in which Mark Foley spent his life was a recipe for disaster, say those few who tried to intervene. Investigating Foley’s pre-teen seduction by a priest, the “ladies’ man” mask he wore in Palm Beach society, and his love-hate relationship with the gay community, the authors uncover the ambition, delusion, and hypocrisy that corroded both the politician and his party.

Everyone knew Mark Foley was gay. Everyone. And everyone who had a stake in his success–party, press, parents, staff, supporters, and pages–conspired for their own purposes to keep the closet half closed.

Born at the peak of the baby boom, in 1954, he grew up near Palm Beach, in the scrappy little town of Lake Worth, Florida, which in recent years has become a popular refuge for gay retirees. That subculture most likely did not enter into the consciousness of his parents, Irish Catholics from Massachusetts. “One of the biggest psychological problems for him was he was never able to be who he was with his parents, and they were his No. 1 campaigners,” says Eric Johnson, the openly gay chief of staff for Florida congressman Robert Wexler and an old friend of the Foley family’s.

Read more Don’t Ask

From Forbes
By Anne Plummer Flaherty

Withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq? Won’t work. Beef them up? We’re stretched too thin.

As President Bush, Congress and a special commission seek new approaches for the unpopular war, warnings from the top American commander in the Middle East make clear there is no simple answer.

At the end of the day, military deployments will be up to President Bush, who has staunchly defended his handling of the war.

He said after last week’s Democratic triumph in congressional elections that he is open to fresh approaches. With pressure on him to find a different path, the only thing most experts agree on is that each idea presents considerable risk.

“There’s a big question right now on whether Iraq can be saved,” Kenneth Pollack, who served on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration, said Thursday.

Read More Few Options

From The Huffington Post

Appearing on Sundays Chris Matthews Show conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan spoke about the sworn testimony of the Mark Foley investigation. Foley has admitted to having inappropriate relations with teenage pages, and the House Ethic Committee is investigation whether Republican House Leadership properly addressed the problem. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and former NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-NY) have both been accused of ignoring or covering up information about Foley, but today on the Sunday talk show Andrew Sullivan added a new name.

Watch the Video Years

From AlterNet
By Nathaniel Frank

In the latest sign of rank hypocrisy among social conservatives, the president of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals has resigned amidst accusations that he had a relationship with a male prostitute. Ted Haggard, who is married with five children, is a frequent adviser to the White House, and a staunch advocate of banning marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

The news, of course, comes just a month after Florida GOP Congressman, Mark Foley, who had pushed legislation to protect youth from “exploitation by adults using the internet,” was revealed to be an internet sexual predator. And it adds to the sense among weary voters that their leaders, especially if they happen to be Republicans, cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Indeed, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee acknowledged he had been aware of Foley’s inappropriate emails for months, but took no steps to protect the children who were in harm’s way. Instead, he spearheaded a series of TV ads attacking a Democratic challenger for, yes, being soft on child molesters.

What are we to make of a reigning conservative regime that lists the following inglorious claims to fame: Strom Thurmond, a notoriously racist senator who turned out to have a black lover; a Republican indictment of President Clinton’s sexual license headed up by a team of philanderers; a Congress full of divorces passing an anti-gay law known as the “Defense of Marriage Act”?

Read more Vices

From The Daily Politics
By Ben Smith

Two senior aides to National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds participated in damage control conference calls concerning correspondence between Congressman Mark Foley and a former congressional page — two days before the scandal became public, and earlier than previously reported.

NRCC Communications Director Carl Forti and Reynolds then chief-of-staff Kirk Fordham both took part in the first call the evening of Wednesday, September 27, and one call the next day, Forti and other sources familiar with the call confirmed. Forti’s involvement and the NRCC’s role in the run-up to the Foley scandal add another link between the disgraced former congressman and Reynolds, who has said he knew only indirectly of questionable emails, and that he reported them to his House superiors. They also reflect another moment at which House GOP leadership was aware of concerns about Foley and pages.

Read More “Damage Control”

From CQ
By Steven T. Dennis

Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.

The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.

Ronald Garant and a second Appropriations Committee investigator who asked not to be identified said Van Der Meid engaged in screaming matches with investigators and told at least one aide not to talk to them. Van Der Meid also prohibited investigators from visiting certain sites to check up on the effectiveness of the work, the investigators said.

Van Der Meid oversaw Capitol security upgrades for Hastert, R-Ill., and worked closely with the office that was charged with implementing them, the investigators said.

K. Lee Blalack, a lawyer for Van Der Meid, said Friday that neither he nor Van Der Meid would comment on the matter.

Read more Hindering

From CounterPunch
By David Rosen

The Mark Foley scandal places in stark relief the moral hypocrisy that underscores the Bush administration’s attitude toward sexuality and power. Foley has rationalized his inappropriate (if not illegal) behavior with adolescent boys behind what some media pundits are calling a self-denier’s trifecta: being drunk, being sexually assaulted by a priest and being gay. Whatever the outcome of the Foley follies, it seems to have taken the proverbial wind out of the sails of the new puritans. Wedge issues that defined the 2004 election like gay marriage, abortion rights and stem-cell research seem to have lost their edge. Yet, as a House ethics committee and FBI investigations proceed over whether he committed any sex crimes, a deeper panic seems to be emerging–the fear that a Republican man-boy sex ring could be operating in Congress. Whatever the outcome, the momentary pause in the culture wars provides an important opportunity to assess a darker side of the Bush presidency, the perversion of power.

A peculiar sexual perversion marks George Bush’s presidency. The Bush administration began auspiciously when Attorney General John Ashcroft draped two semi-nude statues, “Spirit of Justice” (female) and “Majesty of Law” (male), in the Justice Department auditorium. It gained momentum with the obscenity scandal involving Janet Jackson’s now-infamous nipple, forcing a reluctant FCC to stand up for moral rectitude and slap a stiff fine on a contrite (if dumbfounded) CBS. It achieved its clearest absurdity in the scandal involving Jeff Gannon, the Republican White House blogger who, afterhours, turned out to be James Dale Guckert (aka “Bulldog”), operator of a gay website with U.S. Marine Corp. themes for the solicitation of male prostitutes.

However, no one will soon forget the disturbing photographs of tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England’s seductive leer to the camera–the moment when the perversion of sadism became the pathology of empire. Read the rest of this entry »

From ABC News blog
By Rhonda Schwartz

Top aides to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) are expected to testify this week in the House Ethics Committee investigation of the Foley page scandal.

Hastert may also appear, according to Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Lynn Sweet. Today Chief of Staff Scott Palmer entered the room to testify before the committee around 2p.m.

The investigation of how the Republican leadership handled the issue has provoked turmoil and finger-pointing in Hastert’s office, congressional sources say.

Read More Turmoil