In case there was any doubt that former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is now performing the same role for the Republican Party on the Washington Post opinion pages, today's column should put it to rest.  Labeling former comedian turned Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken a "vulgarian," Gerson proclaimed the Democrat's satirical writing of the past the "Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism." As it turns out, Gerson not only has no sense of humor, he has no sense of balance: the legion of Republican vulgarians whose stench still taints Washington needless to say go unmentioned.

Many of us on dailykos have been wondering what happened to Mark Foley.  You remember him, don't you?  The Republican congressman/sexual predator who repeatedly preyed on young boys in the congressional page program and whose actions were covered up for years by Republican legislators, and whose scandal contributed to the downfall of House Speak Dennis Hastert.  THAT Mark Foley.  Well, it appears he's returned to being the "beau of the ball" of Republican high society in Palm Beach, according to ABC News.  Continue on if you think you can stomach it.

I’ve searched the Net comprehensively, however I can’t even get close to finding out what ended-up happening to former Republican congressman Mark Foley of Florida.

I’m simply wondering whether anyone know’s what happened to Mark Foley after the well documented scandal involving lurid (to say the least!) correspondence with underage male interns that lead to his resignation and panic-stricken damage control all-round for the GOP just before the mid-terms in 2006?

Has he been disciplined, investigated, prosecuted, put on bond...anything at all? Is there a web site, a newspaper or any record that anyone knows of that has followed this story. I mean, where is he now? Is he getting his congressional pension?...there seems to have been zero follow-up after the Dems won the mid-terms and control of the Congress & Senate.

The worst part of the whole "Spitzer Can't Keep it in His Pants" story is not that Spitzer slept with a prostitute, or that he paid huge sums of money for it, or that he got caught, or that his actions may for now derail reform in New York State. The worst part is the hypocritical, self-rightous chest thumping that Republican politicians and their media friends are engaging in.

Somehow, normal sex sets the right wing fanatics off in a fit of hysteria that would give Freud wet dreams. But if one of their own commits pedophilia, what do you hear from these people? Nothing! They cover it up if they can and circle the wagons if they can't. Let's keep this whole thing in perspective. Bill Clinton got a blow job, an act of consentual sex between adults, and the Republicans demanded impeachment. Eliot Spitzer hired an expensive whore and the Republicans are threatening impeachment. But a whole slew of Republicans on all levels of government engage in pedophilia and you hear nary a peep from the Republican noise machine. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

Facing growing pressure to renounce the anti-Catholic bigotry of End Times Pastor John Hagee, John McCain on Friday resorted to that most Republican of accountability avoidance tactics, the Unpology.  Desperate to reassure Catholic voters without alienating Hagee's evangelical voters, McCain offered only the façade of contrition by conditionally repudiating Hagee's inflammatory comments only "if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."

Cross-posted at Democrashield

Yesterday I wrote about the John McCain-Vicki Iseman scandal, and today I figured I would follow up with some of my thoughts.

A recent AP article highlighted the stiff arm that Florida law enforcement was getting from House lawyers in their attempt to access Mark Foley's computers.  The Multimedia widget in the sidebar includes a link to the July 24, 2007 letter from House counsel which states the DOJ allowed Foley and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House to conduct their own searches of Foley's computers and report back to the DOJ.  A novel investigative technique that I'm sure thousands would like to participate in.

Attorney General Mukasey is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for an Oversight Hearing on January 30.  I have a few questions for him, maybe you do too.  

She's among the very democrats we rallied to put into office and take control for this very reason.  The republicans had put the state of our Congress into utter chaos.

And Mark Foley's lewd emails to children working for the House of Representatives was just the beginning of an uninterrupted list of scandals.  And all we asked our representatives to do once they got into office was to stop it.

Raw Story reports that now that she's in control, Nancy's having none of it:

Not that the Speaker would necessarily be interested in a lap dance from the disgraced former Congressman from Florida.... Florida Law Enforcement is now appealing to Nancy Pelosi for help in investigating potential criminal actions Foley may have taken while a member in good standing....

So has Pelosi taken the prosecution of Mr. Foley off the table along with the impeachment of Dubya and Cheney?

Republicans named Congressman John Shimkus as the ranking member on the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  No, this isn't a joke.

Let's review a few facts that explain how completely ridiculous this is.  First, Shimkus uses his position on the Energy & Commerce Committee to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from polluters.

Does anyone else think that John Boehner, at least in part, engineered the ouster of Dennis Hastert from the speakership following the Mark Foley page scandal?

Was a chain of evidence ever established from Mark Foley to Scott Palmer, Hastert's Chief of Staff?  

The events I saw in the fall of 2006 following that scandal always struck me as a political coup d'etat within the Republican leadership.

This is a sequel to a video I edited four months ago entitled Republican Party Values, which cataloged some (not nearly all) of the criminal offenses of the Republican Party leadership since George W. Bush was selected president in 2001. For this project I decided to focus more on the Republican Party claim that they alone exemplify American morality and "family values" by putting together a short montage of some of their sexual indiscretions since the partisan witch hunt against President Clinton in 1998, as well as a few exceptions outside that time frame.  

Ultimately this is not a story about sex, but about hypocrisy. It is a story about a modern Republican Party obsessed with capitalizing on bigotry and human frailty to score cheap political points for lack of any positive political platform while they engage in the behavior they're so quick to demonize.

Feel free to pass it on and repost on other blogs. It is intended as a tool to educate your Republican friends about the true face of the leaders within their party. Use it well.

Shelley Moore Capito and Ginny Brown-Waite, both Repugnants, and both served on the  House Page Board have resigned their positions in 'protest'.

The House Page Board expelled pages that were found to violated guidelines set up for them, but some how Capito and Waite seem to think this is an opportunity will score them points in "the media" and with voters by resigning.

http://www.cnn.com/...

The charges that pages are 'out of control' and 'wild' have no basis in any facts: kids do stuff like this all the time. But the comparisons to what happened when people like Mark Foley
[that 'Democrat']

was caught actively trolling the House Page Pool for young boys minors to have sex with has been made. It's already burned into the narrative by these clowns. And my outrage is that not one challenge to this smear is in evidence in any news article, anywhere.

Looking for an ethical journalist to analyze the situation and call this out? You'll be looking for a long, long time. But they're happy to repeat the charges.

Would you drive a Ford Pinto to a Whitney Houston performance?
Would you sign up for Meridian satellite phone service, even if it was available at K-mart?

Probably not.  

Branding blunders cast a long and permanent shadow.  You know you are deep in the weeds when your product becomes a punchline -- especially amongst kids.  Kids reflect the culture around them, except they don't filter their content.  

I recently overheard a bunch of middle school boys discussing the Republicans.  You won't believe what kids are saying about Republicans these days....

We know money and several other factors have major effects on House races.  But after we account for these major factors, how much advantage does incumbency give a candidate?  A gerrymandered district?  Getting caught in a scandal?

Yesterday I showed some regressions for Republican performance in House races for the years 2002, 2004, and 2006 that take account of incumbent party, fundraising ratio, and district partisan makeup.

Using these, we can tell how well we expect a Republican to do given certain conditions.  However, the regressions are not perfect - the data don’t fall along the lines plotted.  There’s plenty of room for other factors to be involved.  We can use the differences between what we expect and what actually happened – the residuals – to tease out the effects of additional conditions.  Below, a pack of factors, from the most important – money, party, district – to the less important ones – incumbency, gerrymandering, longevity – to the more interesting ones – scandal and failure.

It's hard to believe that it has been just over a year since Mark Foley's "problem" came to light. And just over a year since Tom Reynolds (R, NY-26) decided he needed to hold a press conference to point out that he wasn't in the wrong for not doing anything about Foley's solicitation of children. The denial of any wrong-doing was not so surprising (he does have an R after his name, afterall, and denials are as free flowing for them as de Nile). What was bizarre was the number of children he surrounded himself with at the press conference. This was blogged by a number of people (see http://tpmelectioncentral.com/...
or http://www.americablog.com/...  if you want to see the pictures or clips from the event. This occured about a week after the Foley scandal broke on Sept 24, 2007.

Now, fast-forward one year and one day to September 25, 2007 and the roll call vote for the SCHIP bill in the House. Seeing that he is so pro-child, his vote on this bill? NAY. Do uninsured sick kids make better props?
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Here's a bit of news to add to the Larry Craig saga that will surprise absolutely nobody here on dkos but still deserves mention: it turns out Republican Senators knew about Craig's homosexuality and his toe-tapping bathroom pecadillos for years, but did nothing about it.  This comes from slimeball Robert Novak, who reported it on Bloomberg Television yesterday.  So, not only do we have a clear-cut, long-time pattern of closeted Republican politicians engaging in gay sex, illicit or otherwise, while they fight against any and all GLBT rights and wave the "family values" wingnut fundie Christian flag, but we have a clear-cut, longtime pattern of other Republicans covering it up or just looking the other way.  

The goal of this research is to alleviate the traumatic impact imposed by public persons, celebrities, preachers and politicians who appear to be good heterosexual, masculine role models that turn out to be part of the homosexual agenda.  This can be a shocking experience and I feel that these research tools can be useful to republican strategists, mega-church financial board members (I mean councils of spiritual guidance) and most other concerned citizens.  If you are interested in the results of this rigorous research, please follow me below.