Latest Newsweek poll: For the first time since 2001, more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror.
Late Update: The Newsweek story describing the poll results also contains this head-scratcher: "Americans are equally divided over whether or not Speaker Hastert should resign over mishandling the situation (43 percent say he should, but 36 percent say he shouldn’t)." Equally?
--David Kurtz
From the WSJ "Washington Wire":
State Department will award more than 20 grants of as much as $1.5 million for Iran-related democracy and human-rights work, most of it outside Iran. Since U.S. fears Iranian meddling, “don’t expect a lot of transparency” on who gets awards, a State official says.
Yes, but for those meddling Iranians we would have the otherwise high level of transparency from this Administration that we have come to know and love.
--David Kurtz
ABC has its own congressional staff source confirming what the Post reported in today's edition: that Hastert Chief of Staff Scott Palmer did meet with Mark Foley about his conduct with pages months before the "overfriendly" emails emerged last fall.
ABC reports that its source first became aware last fall of the earlier Foley-Palmer meeting, around the time Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), head of the House Page Board, and then-House Clerk Jeff Trandahl confronted Foley about those emails.
--David Kurtz
President Bush reserves the right to re-appoint "Heckuva Job" Brownie as head of FEMA.
--David Kurtz
Reporting the news always safer than predicting it. From the AP, last Saturday:
This time there were no tortured explanations, no heels dug in, no long, slow drip of revelation or fight for redemption. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., just up and quit after his e-mails expressing undue interest in a 16-year-old male page were exposed to the nation. Less than six weeks from a tough election for Republicans who control an already ethically tainted Congress, the more common stick-it-out approach to scandal was cast aside."Resigning leaves your attackers nowhere to go," said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant. "If this had dragged on, it could have sucked Republicans into the vortex of scandal."
Hmmm, is that a giant sucking sound I hear?
--David Kurtz
Of all the leading players in the Mark Foley saga, Rep. Tom Reynolds is the only one in a close race for re-election. That means that while others can hunker down and try to ride out the storm, Reynolds can't avoid it. He has to keep talking, and the more he talks, the deeper the hole he digs. Greg Sargent has the details.
--David Kurtz
Bam! Just like that, Duke Cunningham is back in the news.
He writes a scathing letter to the reporter who took him down (and who won a Pulitzer for doing so).
His wife concedes her own wrongdoing, but avoids prosecution if she applies her share of the proceeds of the sale of their ill-gotten home toward the hefty tax bill associated with all those bribes.
And, to top it off, apparently House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra has been in direct contact with the imprisoned former member of his committee, much to the alarm of Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the committee's ranking member.
Some background: The Intel Committee is investigating what other misdeeds, if any, Duke may have committed while on the committee, focusing specifically on whether and to what extent he was able to use the committee, its staff, and its cloak of secrecy to dispense favors to his bribers, and perhaps others.
The report of the investigation has been held up by a dispute over whether to subpoena Cunningham to testify. Harman is demanding it; Hoeksta says, unconvincingly, that there's no point in that because Cunningham will merely take the 5th.
Given that background, Harman is livid that Hoekstra has had direct contact with Cunningham without her knowledge, reports the NYT. And in a letter to Hoekstra this week she demands that Hoekstra not visit Duke in prison! “I believe this would be highly inappropriate,” Harman writes.
Now there's a scene for you. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee visiting his former colleague in federal prison. Then again, that's what retirement might look like for a lot of Republicans.
--David Kurtz
More on Susan Ralston's resignation. I don't want to paint her as an innocent bystander in all this. She was, as I understand it, The Brain's brain. You don't work as an assistant to Karl Rove and to Jack Abramoff without knowing your way around the block. She's a big girl.
That being said, you start to wonder if Republicans understand "The buck stops here" only in some literal sense. Accountability stops way down the chain of command, but the perks of office flow all the way to the top.
Karl Rove, at this point, looks untouched. But his assistant, well, we just can't stand for that kind of conduct, now can we? Here's a sampling of how the Bush White House ferrets out and punishes alleged ethical improprieties, according to the WP:
The White House counsel's office conducted a review of the report, but with Ralston's departure it closed its inquiry yesterday. "Nothing more will come from the report, no further fallout from the report," Perino said.A senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the counsel's office reached no conclusion about whether Ralston violated gift limits because her resignation made the point moot. But the official said there were "mitigating circumstances" in her case because she had a preexisting relationship with Abramoff, for whom she worked before joining the White House. The official said the White House made no criminal referral in her case. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Given the number of Bush Administration appointees with "preexisting relationships" in business and industry (and on K Street) that's a mitigating circumstance wide enough to drive a Brink's truck through.
--David Kurtz
The resignation of Susan Ralston late yesterday may have overshadowed National Journal's report on the failure of Karl Rove to pay for a bash at Jack Abramoff's restaurant, Signatures, for 50 of Rove's staffers until this year, more than two years after the fact--and well after Abramoff entered his guilty plea on corruption charges. Paul Kiel has more details on the NJ piece.
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader BC suggests a "meme neutralizer":
Don't you think that Republicans attacking Pelosi and CREW and bloggers over Foley is just like attacking Iraq when you know the crime was done by bin Laden? There they go again, Republicans attacking the wrong people when everyone knows who did the crime.
Not bad.
--David Kurtz
Jeb Bush was in Pittsburgh last evening for a Rick Santorum fundraiser. Unfortunately for Jeb, on his way to the venue he ran into a bunch of protestors assembling for the event.
Things got ugly from there. Here's how the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes it:
Mr. Bush had been walking in the area near the T-station and the incident happened spontaneously when about 50 pickets "tailed him and stayed with him and went into the Wood Street station.". . .
Mr. Grove said a Port Authority canine unit was called in to help with crowd control. Two officers used their tasers to stun two protesters who "were asked to leave, but did not go," Mr. Grove said.
The tasers he said were empty of the cartridges that supply a more powerful charge.
"It was a very tense situation. They were very close to the governor and shouting on top of him."
As a precaution, the governor was ushered into a T-station supply closet and stayed there until the crowd left.
When I said Republicans were on the run, this isn't quite what I had in mind.
--David Kurtz
The CNN view of the world:
Foley resigned last week after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning watchdog group, posted some of the e-mails he exchanged with the former male page in 2005, who was then 16 and had worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican.
Fox may be a joke journalistically, but at least it is ideologically consistent. CNN is just a joke.
Late update: CNN has changed the offending paragraph to read as follows:
Foley resigned last week after ABC news showed him it had some of the e-mails he exchanged with the former male page in 2005, who was then 16 and had worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican.
--David Kurtz
I love the sound of Republicans whining. It's a pleasant change.
Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory too many times for me to get my hopes up much. In my own defense, I came by my perpetual pessimism about the Democrats honestly. McGovern supporters caucused in my family's living room when I was but a toddler. We lived in the Deep South; our coat closet would probably have been big enough to accommodate the "crowd." I have no memory of that event, but if that doesn't imprint you with a certain political fatalism, I don't know what would.
The week before the Foley scandal broke, I first realized that Republicans were whining, not about some supposed cultural catastrophe to rile up the base, but about Democratic political attacks. It was the first time I allowed myself to believe that the Dems could actually win this year. Republicans were on the run.
Then the Foley scandal exploded.
The lingering image of the Foley scandal for me won't be Foley cruising to Morton's in his BMW convertible with a young male page or diddling himself during a floor vote (wouldn't want that image to linger).
It will be Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the NRCC, hiding behind children at a press conference in his district to avoid having to answer the hard questions about Foley. A reporter, concerned that the subject matter wasn't appropriate for kids, asked Reynolds if the children would leave the room. Reynolds--a small, scared man--refused.
Pundits fret that the Dems might "overplay their hand" and push too hard on Foley. Does anyone ever worry about the GOP overplaying its hand? Republicans, as the Foley case shows, will risk the entire pot on a bluff. They can be wrong on principle, wrong on the substance, and wrong on the politics, yet no one ever wrings their hands about the Republicans overplaying theirs.
That's not to say the Dems have been as aggressive as they should be. NPR had a report yesterday on New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid's effort to unseat Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM). The Madrid campaign hastened to explain that the ad it began running this week touting Madrid's record of fighting internet sex crimes was produced back in the summer and didn't have anything to do with the Foley scandal. Well, why the hell not?
Dems seem to be getting their sea legs though. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to throw Speaker Hastert a life preserver when he wanted to appoint Louis Freeh to investigate the Foley matter. What a refreshing surprise.
So let Republicans complain all they want about the timing of the Foley disclosures, the Clintons' supposed involvement, the mysterious hidden forces trying to do the GOP in.
I love the sound of Republicans whining. It is the sound of Democratic victory.
--David Kurtz
Did I say earthquake?
Here's another sign of the tectonic shift.
The NRCC dropped $7.8 million yesterday into 30 House districts.
But here's the thing. It's not just the size of the expenditure. Of the 30 districts in question, 27 are currently held by the GOP.
They're playing defense. But as the GOP playbook says, the best defense is a strong offense, so 98% of the $7.8 million is going to attacking the Democratic opponents.
--David Kurtz
Earthquake. The Cook Political Report changes its ratings in 14 House races--downgrading GOP chances in every one. Election Central has the rundown.
--David Kurtz
Looks like Denny Hastert's Chief of Staff, Scott Palmer, is in a heap of trouble.
Remember that Kirk Fordham, one-time Chief of Staff to Mark Foley (R-FL), resigned Wednesday as Rep. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) Chief of Staff and promptly announced that he had warned Hastert's staff about Foley's page problem as far back and 2003. Specifically, he said he repeatedly asked Hastert's Chief of Staff, Scott Palmer, to take action to deal with Foley.
Palmer promptly denied it.
Now, according to the Post, another congressional staffer has come forward to say that Fordham is telling the truth and Palmer is lying.
And the piece in the Post also touches on this topic we discussed back on October 1st. Jeff Trandahl, you'll remember, is the former House Clerk who, along with Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), had the sit-down with Foley in late 2005 ...
Trandahl's departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl's exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.Trandahl's departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.
"My one-hour Special Order changed to a five-minute Special Order, now to a one-minute," Shimkus said. "I just want to say thank you for the work you have done."
Lilly said: "He seemed to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke."
Pretty clear a lotta this story has yet to unfold.
But I guess that's what next week is for.
--Josh Marshall
One-time Social Security phase-out maven, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) sends out a flyer accusing his opponent of wanting to deep six Social Security. Anything to change the subject from Foley, I guess.
--Josh Marshall
When the House Republicans need a good liar to step up to the plate, no one better than Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA).
From CNN ...
Faced with fending off the backlash from the Mark Foley scandal, House Republicans took the offensive Friday, asking Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to testify about whether they engaged in partisan trickery by releasing Foley's messages weeks before the midterm elections.Top GOP leaders -- including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, and Majority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio -- have accused the Democrats of knowing about Foley's correspondences with teen pages, and waiting to release them until it was politically advantageous.
As noted earlier, the reporters on the story know the claim is false and that Kingston et al. know it's false. But they don't share that with their readers and viewers.
Late Update: Sharp-eyed TPM Reader AA noticed this line down near the bottom of the article at CNN ...
Top GOP leaders, including Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, have rushed to Hastert's defense. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote a letter supporting Hastert, saying it was inappropriate to ask for the speaker's resignation when similar scandals in the 1980s prompted a "dramatically different standard."Barton was referring to Democratic Reps. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Dan Crane of Illinois, both of whom were censured after having sexual relationships with 17-year-old pages. Crane lost his re-election bid, while Studds survived the scandal.
Yep, Democrat Dan Crane. Clearly a Democrat under the rule that Republicans who diddle congressional pages are transmogrified into Democrats. Like political transubstantiation.
--Josh Marshall
I think this may have been overlooked. That letter Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH) sent to the House Clerk is bad news for former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl, the one who had the sit-down with Reps. Foley (R-FL) and Shimkus (R-IL).
--Josh Marshall
27%.
That's the number of Americans who think Denny Hastert should remain as Speaker, according to SurveyUSA.
63% think he resign.
43% think he should leave the House altogether.
Late Update: Number of Democratic strategists who think Denny Hastert should remain Speaker through November 7th. 100%. That's my poll, not SurveyUSA. My methodology was to think about it for about 3 seconds. But I believe the margin of error is extremely low.
--Josh Marshall
White House aide resigns over Abramoff ties. (ed.note: Check the calendar. Yep, Friday around 5.)
--Josh Marshall
Oh boy. It's getting positively bicameral on Denny Hastert. Tom Kean, Jr., who's running for senate from New Jersey, says Denny should pack it in.
--Josh Marshall
Hmm. The FBI got copies of the "over friendly" emails that got Foleygate rolling way back in July. CREW, the good government group that turned over the emails, wants to know why they didn't initiate an investigation.
And this sort of thing makes it seem as if the FBI doesn't have a very good explanation.
--Paul Kiel
Who will call them on it?
Will you?
TPM Reader MW just sent us in this email ...
While you and the Hill report that Foley's IM's were given to ABC by a GOP aid, Newt G was reported on NPR last night saying that it is a Democrat election gambit and the assertion was not challenged in the report. Again last night on CNN they reported Hastert's comments that the Dems did it and on NBC's Today this morning, the same unchallenged reporting of GOP assertions were made. Eventually it will become the "truth" that the Dems did it unless the mainstream media do real reporting. This kind of stuff really irritates me.
On CNN and in the Washington Post yesterday, reporters duly noted that the Republicans who are parrotting this argument do so with no evidence and that there's no evidence to back it up.
But this is insufficient.
Every news organization that is aggressively reporting this story knows in basic outlines who the ultimate sources of these IMs were and how they made their way into the hands of the media. So they know not only that there is 'no evidence' for the GOP line but that it is actually false. Given that the Republicans who are spouting this line make no effort even to offer evidence, I think it is a fair conclusion that not only is the claim false but that these professional bamboozlers like Gingrich know it's false.
In other words, they're lying. And the news organizations publishing what they say know they're lying.
Saying there's 'no evidence' doesn't cut.
--Josh Marshall
My my my. Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we practice to bamboozle.
Way, way back on June 29th, frustrated that chronic Social Security bamboozler Mike McGavick, Republican senate candidate in Washington, wouldn't give a straight answer on his position on whether or not to phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts, we actually launched a special TPM Media contest to see who could get a straight answer out of the guy.
Then the next day, in response to our contest and general efforts to shed some light on the murky darkness of McGavick's bamboozlement, David Postman of the Seattle Times interviewed McGavick to find out what the deal was. McGavick gave a fairly poll-tested but still relatively straight forward response. McGavick, wrote Postman, "wants a phased-in system of individually controlled, privately managed retirement accounts that could provide a 
higher yield than the government-run system, but would come with a lower guaranteed payment."
McGavick also told Postman that on Social Security he wants "to get this out of the political world and into a thoughtful space."
Anyway, with the exception of a few moments of recidivist bamboozlement, that's where the matter stood for the past few months. McGavick didn't really want to discuss the issue. But when pressed he conceded he was for phasing out Social Security as it now exists and replacing it with a system of private accounts. McGavick never uttered a peep saying Postman got anything wrong. His campaign even excerpted Postman's piece on its campaign blog, as a pointer for understanding his position.. And that's where the matter stood.
That is, it stood there until this week when his opponent, Maria Cantwell, ran a radio ad criticizing the position he took in his interview with Postman.
Now suddenly McGavick says Postman got it all wrong. Now McGavick says he actually doesn't want the private account managed privately. He wants the government to manage the private accounts.
Says McGavick ...
I don't want it privately managed, either by Wall Street or that individual. What I want is a government-run program, with money going into an account. It would be managed by the government.
And now he says Cantwell has to take down her ad because it doesn't reflect his true position. At least after changing it for the tenth time. Can anyone take this dude even remotely seriously? And how am I supposed to run Social Security contests with any sense of predictability or finality when we've got serial bamboozlers like Mike McGavick out there constantly changing their positions?
I need Regis here to give McGavick one of those, "Is that your final answer?" lines.
(ed.note: In private McGavick is known for supporting hardline privatization of Social Security. He just fibs about his position in public.)
Late Update: Maybe give a holler to the Postman guy at the Seattle Times and thank him for braving the hot swamps of McGavick's bamboozlement.
--Josh Marshall
Mark Foley loved to talk about masturbating -- turns out, it's a common GOP trait.
--Paul Kiel
Denny Hastert told by Republican higher-ups to cut the half-brained conspiracy chatter.
--Paul Kiel
The grand Republican strategy for containing the damage from Foleygate: hunker down and hope. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Here at TPM we're putting out more and more material each day. And with the political news world more or less exploding or in meltdown (pick your metaphor), we've gotten an increasing number of readers asking if we can come up with some way to distill our best posts and the most important news of the day into a series of easy (and hopefully fun) digestible nuggets that we can send out to get each day started.
So starting next Tuesday we're going to be debuting the admittedly-none-too-creatively-named TPM Daily Digest.
Every weekday, a little before 9 AM on the East Coast, we'll send out a short email with a few key nuggets of news and quotes, what we think are some of our best posts from the last 24 hours that you might have missed and articles from the morning's papers you'll want to read. Think of it as a quick curtain-raiser for the news of the day and a heads up on what to expect. A primer for the day's news along with links to some news you might have missed -- all packaged together in the TPM style.
For the first four weeks, we'll obviously be heavily focused on the November election. So we'll start with a half dozen of what we think are the most important polls released in the past 24 hours, along with key dispatches on races around the country.
We'll try to make it fun. If you're interested, just sign up at the little email sign-up form at the top of the TPM post column on the right where it says 'TPM Daily Digest'.
(pub.note: We respect your privacy. So your email address will never be sold, rented, given away, shared or anything else. It will only be used to send you our daily update.)
--Josh Marshall
I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. That Drudge bamboozlement about the Foleygate cybersex IMs being a 'prank'. The kid's lawyer says Drudge's piece was "a piece of fiction."
--Josh Marshall
Let's not mince words: President Bush is a profound threat to the US constitution.
From the AP ...
President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.
But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”
His contempt for the rule of law needs to be ended.
--Josh Marshall
This is a treat.
Foleygate may be an added burden for the GOP to take into next month's election. But November 7th is really about the style of 
government the Bush administration has brought to this country and the war in Iraq -- two things that are very much intertwined.
Today, the American adventure in Iraq has settled down to a regular schedule of disaster and bloodletting, with routine deaths of American soldiers, escalating sectarian attacks killing Iraqis on a far larger scale and an atmosphere of paralysis at home over what to do about what Tom Ricks aptly calls a fiasco.
But there was an earlier period when the body counts were far smaller but the groundwork was being laid for the coming carnage and collapse: during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority under Jerry Bremer.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran was the Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Washington Post during 2003 and 2004. So he was there and probably saw as much of what happened as any American journalist. His book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone came out last month. And Monday through Wednesday of next week he's going to join TPMCafe's Table for One to talk about his book, describe what he saw in Iraq and answer your questions.
Join us.
--Josh Marshall
Just for future reference let's nip one pre-meme in the bud.
There are already a number of Republicans arguing that the election tide was beginning to turn their way before Hurricane Foley came ashore last Friday.
Not so.
At some point I'll write in greater detail about this. But I believe statistics, as well as observation, will show the claim is simply false.
Republicans and the president did get a modest but real boost in late August and the first couple weeks of September. By the middle of September it was reasonable to ask, as I think Charlie Cook did, whether the small GOP uptick was just a blip or the beginning of trend that would grow toward the November election.
From that point on though things began to change. It was observable in the polls. And it was most due, I believe, to the issue of Iraq moving back to center stage of news, with stories like the hidden NIE, the first hints of the Woodward and other stories. Also playing a role was the GOP infighting over the torture bill and the Ney indictment.
Even as bleak as things look at the moment for the GOP we don't know what will happen on November 7th. And it's important for everyone to realize that is not just rhetoric. It's the uncomfortable truth. We don't. But whatever happens on November 7th, the GOP wasn't on the upswing before Foley. They were back on the skids.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, we've got an answer for Rep. Dave Reichert (R) of Washington's 8th district. He says he doesn't want to take a stand on Hastert until after an investigation has been completed.
Reichert is a freshman and he's in a really competitive race. So as of now we're still looking for any rep. who's in any sort of real race who's willing to say that they're going to vote for Hastert as Speaker or Minority Leader.
Here's a picture of Reichert and Foley maxing and relaxing with Honeywell CEO Dave Cote back in happier days when everyone was still on speaking terms.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, we've found a member of the House who's going on the record saying he'll vote for Denny Hastert for Speaker next year if the Republicans retain the majority. Rep. Ray Lahood, of Illinois' nearby 18th district. Apparently he announced his support tonight on Hardball.
Now, anyone outside of Illinois?
--Josh Marshall
We've got a small staff at TPM, four full-time employees including me. So perhaps you can help us with something. Over at Election Central, I've tasked Greg Sargent with finding me that elusive quarry -- the Republican member of Congress who will say on the record that he's going to vote for Denny Hastert for Speaker next January if the Republicans maintain their majority. We were working on this and, surprisingly, we just couldn't get anybody to get back to us.
So we've started a list in this post over at Election Central of different campaigns and congressional offices we've called. As you can see, the only member we've been able to get a comment out of was Rob Simmons (R-CT). And his comment was 'no comment'. So you can see it's pretty slim pickings. All the rest have refused to return calls. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. Sweeney in New York. The Count in Indiana. Nancy Johnson in Connecticut. No dice. None of them are returning calls.
So if you'd like to lend us a hand, you can call them and see if you can get an answer. We'll be adding to the list tomorrow.
--Josh Marshall
Lieberman: Let's stand by Hastert in his hour of need.
Late Update: There's even video.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) two ideas for cutting runaway government spending: a) Cut farm subsidies and b) DHS funding for security measures at buildings which house Jewish organizations.
--Josh Marshall
Stung by the Foley scandal, Rep. Tom Reynold's (R-NY) already-faltering campaign is slipping into a hole. How deep a hole? He's calling on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to help pull him out.
--Justin Rood
One of the many funny things about Denny Hastert's silly lies about Democrats being responsible for his scandal is this: is this really their position? If the Democrats would have just focused on the real issues instead of blowing the whistle on our caucus pedophilia, we could have gone back to the real business of passing laws and molesting teenagers! Let's focus on the people's business! Oh, and also our funny business. If it weren't for George Soros I could be cranking out a few good IMs right now!
--Josh Marshall
Bye Denny?
No, please stay!
From Fox (of all places ...)
House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned."The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss."
I think that's about right. No matter what bamboozlement they try to feed to Drudge.
--Josh Marshall
We're pretty much all Foley all the time at the moment. But if you're still interested in the non-page-sex side of the political process, Tom Schaller is discussing his new book on whether or not the Dems really need to win in the South.
--Josh Marshall
Get the rundown on Hastert's press conference here. Apparently Pelosi put the kibosh on tapping Louis Freeh.
--Paul Kiel
We just watched Denny Hastert make his latest statement that he thinks will end the bonfire but won't. And whatever Denny Hastert may have done or not done on the page front, you at least have to say on his behalf that he's certainly one of the most dishonest and irresponsible Speakers in the history of the House. Asked if he had any evidence to back up his claims that ABC, Democrats and George Soros are behind this scandal, his answer was basically, 'Oh, all I know is what I hear.' In other words, I don't have any evidence at all. But I did see something like it on Newsmax. So I figured I'd go with it.
Reminds me of his sliminess back in 2004.
--Josh Marshall
It's a Foleygate investigation bonanza!
House Ethics committee announces that it's launched an investigation.
And this is apparently separate from the one that will be headed up by Louis Freeh, which Hastert will announce shortly.
--Paul Kiel
Still waiting for that press conference. But apparently Hastert is planning to announce that former FBI Director Louis Freeh will be leading an investigation of the House page program. No resignation.
--Paul Kiel
We'll find out in about an hour whether the House Ethics Committee will appoint a special counsel -- like they did the last time something like this happened.
Meanwhile, Denny Hastert is still saying that he won't resign.
--Paul Kiel
In a telephone interview last night, Hastert says he's not resigning -- and somehow the names George Soros, Bill Clinton, and Dick Morris come up in his explanation why. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Foley, er, Muck.
--Paul Kiel
A run-down on what tomorrow likely has in store in Foleygate. Including speculation about a possible resignation announcement tomorrow morning.
--Josh Marshall
Kirk Fordham, longtime Chief of Staff to Mark Foley (R-FL) and more recently to Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), moved to the center stage of Foleygate today. So I wanted to chart out a few things we know about his accusations and him.
Here are some key passages in tomorrow's story from the Post ...
A longtime chief of staff to disgraced former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) approached House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office three years ago, repeatedly imploring senior Republicans to help stop Foley's advances toward teenage male pages, the staff member said yesterday...
Fordham says his warnings to Hastert's office dealt with a different matter: reports of Foley's troubling interest in male pages working in the Capitol Hill complex. He says he implored the highest ranks of the GOP leadership to intervene to thwart behavior that he had been unable to stop after multiple confrontations with his boss. Sources close to the matter say a meeting took place between a senior Hastert aide and Foley before Fordham's January 2004 departure, probably in 2003, in a small conference room on the third floor of the Capitol.
The suggestion seems to be that this 
happened late in 2003, before his departure from Foley's employ in January 2004.
But let's go back further.
Fordham started working for Foley in 1994. He was his top aide through early 2003. And during his abortive campaign for the senate he was noted in the press as Foley's 'top advisor', though it's not clear to me whether he officially left the Hill to work on the campaign proper.
Foley's campaign was derailed by widely circulated rumors that he was gay -- rumors Foley denounced but also wouldn't deny. He eventually dropped out of the race in September 2003.
Here's a brief description of the end of the campaign in a piece in the Palm Beach Post from September 5th, 2003 ...
Foley made the final decision during a torturous weekend just days after ending a successful 30-day, 30-county campaign trip around Florida. On Tuesday night, he talked over the decision with his top adviser, Kirk Fordham. By Wednesday, the decision was hardening. On Thursday, he began telling his staff.
What is important to note is that the last four or five months prior to Foley's withdrawal from the race saw a rising crescendo of rumors and innuendos about his homosexuality -- rumors his opponents in the race for the GOP senate nomination played at least some role in circulating. A senior aide to Florida Republican Clay Shaw (R) was forced to admit that she had played a role in doing so.
Now, here's the thing. If you read back through the press clippings you see that Fordham, who himself happens to be gay, played the lead role in trying to beat back the rumors and keep them from sinking his boss's campaign.
With Foley making high-profile campaign swings through the state and political opponents trying to feed rumors about his sexuality, it is very hard to imagine that his seemingly intense attraction to young men didn't come up. And Fordham would have known because it was his job to keep those stories out of the press.
When we were first discussing Fordham today at TPM, it seemed hard to figure he would have been trying to get Hastert's office to crackdown on Foley's behavior while simultaneously acting as the lead force trying to propel Foley into the senate.
But the available evidence suggests a different scenario. Go back to 2003. Fordham's spent much of the spring and the summer trying to keep his boss's personal life from destroying his career. According to what Fordham is telling people now, he had confronted Foley several times about his behavior with underage boys -- a pretty standard story for political operatives with boss's who can't or won't control their self-destructive habits.
From what I can glean from the history, it doesn't seem like Fordham would have been trying to sabotage his boss while supposedly trying to keep him in the senate race. He appears to have left on good terms in early 2004, remained close to Foley and his sister and, perhaps most telling, he intervened for Foley on Friday in a last ditch effort to spare his old boss the humiliation of 
the release of those infamous IM transcripts. (Fordham offered to give ABC's Brian Ross an exclusive on Foley's resignation in exchange for not printing the transcripts. Ross said, no deal.)
Perhaps Fordham spent those months trying to keep the rumors of Foley's sexuality out of the press. But during that time he either learns of or has to focus more closely on Foley's issues with underage men. He tries but is unable to get him to cool it. And then after the campaign is over, perhaps in an effort to save Foley from himself, he goes to the leadership to try to get them to intervene to protect Foley from himself. Perhaps he'd just decided he couldn't let it go on any more.
I always try to be as clear as I can on this site in distinguishing between what is reporting and what is speculation informed by reporting. I hope I've done so here.
Certainly, there are other possibilities. When he spoke to the Times, Fordham only said that the meetings with Hastert's office were between 2001 and 2003. And he said he was prompted to do so after the House Clerk, Jeff Trandahl, approached him with accounts from pages who had come forward with complaints about Foley's behavior.
(Remember, Trandahl was the House Clerk who, with Rep. Shimkus, interviewed Foley about the suspicious emails in 2005. To the best of my knowledge, Trandahl has been entirely mum through this whole saga.)
I think it's hard to believe that it is a coincidence though that Foley's effective outing, the end of Fordham's tenure with Foley and the alleged warnings to Hastert's office all appear to have happened over a period of roughly six months. Something was happening.
--Josh Marshall
Percentage of voters in Rep. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) district who disapprove of his behavior in Foleygate? According to SurveyUSA, 66%.
--Josh Marshall
More and more and more. From Copley News Service ...
Long before Mark Beck-Heyman ever came to this town in 1995 to work as a congressional page, Congress had revamped the program in hopes of preventing the sort of sex scandals that had disgraced two congressmen more than a decade earlier.Regardless, the former resident of San Diego's North Park neighborhood learned almost from day one that there was one person to be careful of: Rep. Mark Foley.
“When I got there, I was warned about Foley from former pages and cloakroom Republican staffers,” said Beck-Heyman, who attended a Catholic high school at the time and was nominated for the page program by Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray, who then lived in Imperial Beach. “The warning was to watch out for him.”
Two years later Tyson Vivyan came to town ...
Tyson Vivyan was a congressional page from 1996 to 1997. Now 26, he tells NBC News that he knew Fla. Rep. Mark Foley somewhat during his brief Washington stay, but not well. It wasn't until after he finished the congressional program and returned home to Tennessee, he says, that Foley began reaching out to him. Vivyan says that he began receiving instant messages in 1997 from someone with the moniker "maf54," and that the messages were almost immediately sexual in nature.
I guess Denny Hastert was just the last to know.
--Josh Marshall
A blogger sorts through the Congressional Record for quotes about Rep. Foley's interest in the pages.
--Josh Marshall
Hastert Chief of Staff Scott Palmer tells TPM Election Central that Fordham's lying.
--Josh Marshall
Darker, darker and darker still. From Gannett ...
A senior House Republican has asked the House clerk to look into allegations that then-Rep. Mark Foley was turned away from the congressional page dorm on Capitol Hill after arriving there intoxicated one night.
Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH), chairman of the House GOP Conference, another rep who's election hangs in the balance.
--Josh Marshall
This is just a heads-up or perhaps an editorial note about what might be coming down the pike.
There have been a number of signals through the course of the day that the last gambit of the GOP House leadership will be to blame the Foley debacle on a cabal of gay staffers who hid and/or enabled Rep. Foley's behavior for years. The idea being that they are to blame rather than the leadership.
That may sound like a plot turn out of a bad novel. But with the times we're living in I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
Fordham, the staffer who just turned on Hastert, is openly gay, as is at least one other central player in the drama. Fordham's word now threatens to take down the whole House leadership. So they're going to throw everything at him.
As an editor, this sort of stuff is always complicated to deal with. You don't want to preview the hideous slur or give it publicity when you're trying to warn readers of what the wounded animal is capable of as it fights for its life. But I think the better part of wisdom in this case is to put the effort before people rather than let it bubble out only in the campaign of whispers and acidy newspaper columns. David Corn has some of the best details.
--Josh Marshall
Fordham's full statement to the AP ...
I've learned within the last few hours that unnamed sources have purported that I intervened on behalf of [Florida] Congressman [Mark] Foley to prevent a page board investigation. This is categorically false. At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries into Foley's actions or behavior. These sources know this allegation is false.Having stepped down as Mr. Reynolds' chief of staff, I have no reason to state anything other than the facts. I have no congressman and no office to protect. I intend to fully cooperate with any and every investigation of Mr. Foley's conduct. At the same time, I will fully disclose to the FBI and the House Ethics Committee any and all meetings and phone calls I had with senior staffers in the House leadership about any of Foley's inappropriate activities.
The fact is, even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges, I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley's inappropriate behavior. One of these staffers is still employed by a senior House Republican leader. Rather than trying to shift the blame on me, those who are employed by these House leaders should acknowledge what they know about their action or inaction in response to the information they knew about Mr. Foley prior to 2005.
I guess he's decided he won't take the fall for this.
--Josh Marshall
Dewey Beats Truman Watch ...
Headline from this afternoon's US News: "GOP Senses Cooling of Outrage at Hastert"
Dip your hands back in the water, guys.
--Josh Marshall
Well, some stories develop pretty quickly, don't they?
So let's take stock of where we are. For the last four or five days Speaker Hastert and the entire House GOP leadership have been staking their positions on this story: They were notified of some inappropriate but ambiguous emails in late 2005. They addressed the matter with Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL). They had no idea that the underlying truth was as scandalous as what was revealed last Friday. Whether Hastert himself knew about that individual incident or his staff is sort of sub-codicil of the basic line.
Now, one of key figures in the scandal, Kirk Fordham, who was Foley's longtime Chief of Staff and until today Rep. Tom Reynolds' chief of staff, has been fired. And he's come out and said, no, the whole leadership story is a lie. Fordham says he repeatedly told Hastert's then-Chief of Staff Scott Palmer as far back as 2003 that there was a problem with Foley and the pages. And nothing was ever done.
So, two years before the date everyone's been focusing on back in 2005. We're not at parsing little details.
They staked everything on a story. And the story was apparently pure fiction.
Unless Hastert and Co. can thoroughly discredit Fordham in the next few hours (and oh are they going to try) I'd figure Hastert is gone by this time tomorrow if not sooner. And just as a capital ship generates a giant whirlpool as it founders and disappears into the sea, I'm sure he'll be taking several with him.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, I think it's over. Tom Reynolds' fired chief of staff now says he told Hastert's office about the Foley problem two years ago.
He also says he's ready to talk to the FBI and spill the beans.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Ron Lewis (R-KY) cancels a fundraiser with Denny Hastert.
Look out! He's coming!
Face it, the guy's radioactive.
--Josh Marshall
It really is just like rats from a sinking ship.
President Bush is out in Arizona today attending a fundraiser for Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ). All the local Republican officeholders were there. And after the event Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) took some questions about Foleygate.
Franks said he supported Denny Hastert and then (quoting from the pool report) ...
Franks said he did not know Foley personally, and did not know about his conduct with congressional pages, but he believes leaders of the Democratic party knew about it 10 months ago. He said he does not think the Foley scandal will impact his campaign, but it is likely to hurt other Republican incumbents.
Truly through the looking glass. No one in the GOP leadership caught word of it. But the Democratic leadership knew. Quite a place they're running up there.
--Josh Marshall
So the latest news out of the Capitol Hill Hot House is that Rep. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff Kirk Fordham has resigned over his role in allegedly trying to keep the lid on Foleygate. The Hastert people are saying that Fordham's even more deeply implicated in covering for Foley. But Fordham's people are saying he repeatedly warned Hastert's staff. But they did nothing.
--Josh Marshall
New issue for Katherine Harris (R-History): Getting to the bottom of the Dem/Media conspiracy behind Foleygate.
--Josh Marshall
Good Old Associated Press ...
[Dobson] touched on the uproar over former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, D-Florida, who resigned Friday in a scandal over electronic messages he sent to former teenage male congressional pages.
The party affiliation that dare not speak its name.
Late Update: As of about 12:18 PM, the version of the AP story I linked to at the San Jose Mercury News has been corrected. But it must have been what the AP sent out over the wire. So I'm sure there are million more examples of it still out there.
--Josh Marshall
Pre-dropping like flies: CQ moves CA-11, the Pombo race from Republican Favored to Leans Republican.
--Josh Marshall
This deserves more attention. A man walking with his young son goes up to the Vice President at a public appearance and tells him his Iraq policy is "reprehensible." He's later arrested for "assaulting" VP Cheney. Now he's suing. The guy's name is Steve Howard.
Here's a snippet from the Rocky Mountain News ...
Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.
Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.
Can we find out more about this incident?
--Josh Marshall
Top Ten Foleygate Silver Linings for GOP ...
1. Gets George Allen out of the News.
2. Can Potentially Be Spun As Outreach to Young Voters.
3. New Hook for Discussing Monica.
We need seven more. Anyone got any ideas?
From readers (with some editing) ...
4. Foley May Share Some Credit with Gore for Inventing Internet. (TPMR CG).
5. Katherine Harris No Longer FLA GOP's Most Embarrassing Pol. (TPMR DP)
6. GOTV Money for Values Voters Now Freed Up for Other Purposes. (TPMR SR)
--Josh Marshall
It looks like the FBI is heading towards opening a full-blown investigation into the Foley scandal. Where will it lead? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
I was just reading this post at the Chicago Trib's blog about John Boehner's latest flip-flop on Denny Hastert. (Atrios has this thing of naming intervals of time after certain individuals based on their predictions about Iraq. At this point, a 'Boehner' should be about 10 hours.) And I note that now Boehner too -- in an apparent effort to distract attention to his nine different recollections of what he told Hastert -- is now trying to say Foleygate is all the product of a grand nefarious dirty trick.
From everything I've learned from our reporting on this, I don't think there's anything to the charge. But what strikes me is what the charge would even mean. Is this really a winning argument or is it, as it seems to me, a sign that the House GOP leadership is currently exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy of desperation?
I mean, is it a diabolical plot to reveal that one of members of the House leadership (Foley was a deputy whip) spent the last decade hitting on teenage pages and passed the time between votes having cybersex with them?
Is he like a plant? A pervy Manchurian candidate hived into the 1994 Republican Revolution by the Dems?
I just don't see how this one plays.
--Josh Marshall
The old days (Miami Herald, July 7th, 2003) ...
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps - except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
The article concludes by noting that "The naturists plan to invite Foley to visit the camp and judge it for himself" but that it was "an invitation Foley said he plans to refuse."
--Josh Marshall
Back to day one. From WaPo ...
In 1995, male House pages were warned to steer clear of a freshman Republican from Florida, who was already learning the names of the teenagers, dashing off notes, letters and e-mails to them, and asking them to join him for ice cream, according to a former page.Mark Beck-Heyman, now a graduate student in clinical psychology at George Washington University, and more than a dozen other former House pages said in interviews and via e-mail that Rep. Mark Foley was known to be extraordinarily friendly in a way that made some of them uncomfortable.
And then from the Times ...
Federal investigators who have interviewed several former pages have unearthed instances of conduct by Mr. Foley that will almost certainly lead to a full criminal investigation, including grand jury testimony, to determine whether the former lawmaker violated federal sex crime laws, government officials briefed on the matter said Tuesday. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing details of an investigation.Prosecutors have yet to issue subpoenas or search warrants but have discussed ways to safeguard evidence in the case, the officials said, possibly issuing what are known as preservation letters, directing government agencies or private entities, like Internet providers, not to destroy any electronic data that might be relevant.
And so on ...
--Josh Marshall
In case you missed it, we've just posted the video of Mark Foley's lawyer's press conference.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, in case you haven't heard it, the Foley 'bombshell' is that, according to Foley, he was molested as a child by what his lawyer referred to as a 'clergyman'. Foley's lawyer wouldn't identify the denomination or name of the clergymen. But we've looked it up, and earlier press reports state that Foley was raised as a Roman Catholic.
--Josh Marshall
"I mean, I don't know what he counseled him on. You'll have to ask him."
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) says that he didn't give his chief of staff permission to advise Mark Foley last weekend.
--Paul Kiel
Just not a good day for GOP message meisters. I'm looking on the CNN page right now and you've got these two headlines right atop each other ...
Report: Foley had cybersex before vote
Bush: Dems shouldn't be trust to run Congress
I think I'll let that one stand on its own.
--Josh Marshall
Alas, I think we have another in our series of 'Web Pages That Aren't Long for This World."
In this installment, we feature this page at the House website site of Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), the featured photo of which you can see here, in which former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) presents Ehlers with the coveted "Rough Rider" award.
Ahh, happier days. Happier days.
(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader BL.)
--Josh Marshall
Boehner does Schroedinger's Cat.
Actually, given recent events, maybe I should choose my words more carefully ...
--Josh Marshall
Great moments in parody during free-fall ...
Hastert: If I have to resign over Foley, the terrorists will have won.
--Josh Marshall
Did Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), head of the NRCC, authorize his chief of staff to try to cut a deal to keep the infamous Foley IMs from being published? The Chief of Staff tried. But did Reynolds know? We've got our question in to Reynolds' office. More here.
--Josh Marshall
Is that a threat?
Denny Hastert told Rush Limbaugh this afternoon that he's planning to campaign for Republican reps in "thirty something districts" before election day.
Who are the lucky thirty?
--Josh Marshall
There are a number of differing accounts of the intelligence briefing given to Condi Rice in July 2001 about Al Qaeda -- but one thing is for sure: the 9/11 Commission knew about it, but omitted any mention of it from their report. So what gives?
--Paul Kiel
GOP leaders go into crisis mode over Foley scandal's aftermath. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
I'm dying to get a hold of a transcript of Foley lawyer David Roth's press conference today after seeing this squib in the Times ...
At the news conference Monday night, Mr. Roth, Mr. Foley’s lawyer, denied that Mr. Foley had ever had inappropriate physical contact with minors. “Mark Foley has never, ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor in his life,” Mr. Roth said. “He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile.”
No inappropriate sexual contact with a minor? That's a great line. I guess the idea is that he does it strictly by the book. Straight missionary, no chaser.
I'm waiting for tomorrow's press conference when this joker announces he's suing himself for malpractice.
--Josh Marshall
WSJ: House GOP's real sin was coddling gays.
Nut graf, for lack of a better word ...
But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?
Hard being a Republican in today's PC world.
--Josh Marshall
Is it the curse of Ron Bonjean?
Bonjean is Denny Hastert's spokesman. He was spokesman for Trent Lott during the Strom Thurmond debacle.
Like a one man Bermuda Triangle ...
--Josh Marshall
Is it over for Denny Hastert?
I've thought since late Friday night that Hastert and probably other members of the House leadership were finished. And you've likely seen now that the Washington Times has called for Hastert's resignation.
My take is that Hastert cooked his own goose in the first half dozen or so hours of this scandal. At one level, he's Speaker. So by definition, anything that went wrong in the House is his responsibility. And with the amount of voltage coursing through this story, he was always going to be in a very tight spot.
But when this thing broke, most of the key House leaders were in some sense or another saying, 'Yeah, I heard about it. I did X. Clearly that wasn't enough.' Denny Hastert was the only guy, as this thing exploded Friday night, who was obviously lying.
Pretty much everybody in the leadership knew something about it. And most of them remembered telling Hastert. But he'd never heard about it. He was out of the loop. John Boehner just made up remembering telling him. Rodney Alexander contacting Hastert's office. He never heard. Tom Reynolds was lying too, until it was clear Reynolds wouldn't eat his words like Boehner.
The scandal -- to the extent we are talking not about Foley as an individual but the leadership's role in enabling him -- is about accountability. And at the gut check moment, Hastert lied to duck responsibility.
Everyone could see it. And from that moment on he couldn't, and I suspect he can't, shake that defining impression.
On Friday night Hastert could have said, 'I heard about this. I thought we'd taken care of it. Clearly there was much more there than we realized. Now we're going to get to the bottom of it.' If he had, I don't think we'd be hearing those calls for resignation, at least not yet.
Yet all of us can only be who we are. He could have said that. But he didn't. I suspect because he's the same guy who let Foley run unchecked for years, presided over a regime that enabled him, like so much else. It was in character.
--Josh Marshall
Is it me or is all hell breaking loose in this country's politics? We're in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once. You've got the Foley debacle. The revelations in the Woodward book. The NIE revelations that almost seem like old news now. A major part of the pre-9/11 story that somehow never saw the light of day and may bring down Condi Rice. And did I mention the election?
--Josh Marshall
Sign of a campaign that's clearly in great shape.
Tennessee senate candidate Corker (R) replaces his entire campaign staff.
--Josh Marshall
Dobson on Foleygate: The fault of an 'oversexualized' society, not House leadership.
--Josh Marshall
Hastert on whether pages were warned in advance about Rep. Foley ...
Q Some former pages have said to the media that they were told that to, you know, sort of watch it or not get too, you know, hung up with him.Mr. Hastert. You know, I had no knowledge of that, and that was not something that this leadership said.
Everybody is on their own.
--Josh Marshall
Speaker Hastert from this afternoon's Q&A on whether he thought the Shimkus/Trandahl investigation was adequate ...
Q Mr. Speaker, on that question, I mean is it sufficient that they just went and asked Foley, hey, we have this e-mail that has set off some worries with the parents, is this a problem or not? And he says no. So should it have stopped there? Mr. Hastert. Well, let me say this, and again I want to refer you to the report, but what I want to say is that the parents didn't want to -- I mean, first of all, there was nothing explicit in this e-mail that I understood. And the parents didn't even want -- I don't even know if they showed the e-mail -- actual e-mail to Mr. Shimkus. I don't know. But his parents were protective of this thing, and what they wanted was Mr. Foley, and my understanding was, Mr. Foley to stop contacting their son. I think that is what the purpose of it was and I think the reports that I got back recently is that is what happened.
Back to the excuse about the parents' privacy, right?
--Josh Marshall
Whammo!
Just out from McClatchy ...
The independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission was given the same “scary” briefing about an imminent al Qaida attack on a U.S. target that was presented to the White House two months before the attacks, but failed to disclose the warning in its 428-page report.Former CIA Director George Tenet presented the briefing to commission member Richard Ben Veniste and executive director Philip Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters on Jan. 28, 2004, said three former senior agency officials.
Tenet raised the matter himself, displayed slides from a Power Point presentation that he and other officials had given to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, and offered to testify on the matter in public if the commission asked him to, they said.
Very hard to say what would be behind the decision to leave it out considering that Ben Veniste was one of the Dems on the Commission.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT) donating tainted Mark Foley money to Mark Foley.
--Josh Marshall
Frist: Taliban too strong to be defeated militarily. They should be welcomed into the Afghan government.
--Josh Marshall
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO): I was out of the loop on Foleygate.
--Josh Marshall
On the phone calls to members of Congress to see if they still support Speaker Hastert, it's probably important to keep calling or repeat the calls since, from what I can tell, the answers seem to be changing from moment to moment as the story progresses.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader MM called up Rep. Tom Davis's office. No comment on Hastert, but Tom supports the investigation.
TPM Reader CS called Rep. Sweeney (R-NY): "I just got off the phone with the DC office and his staffer said he was not taking a position regarding the House leadership in this matter yet, but I should check back in later in the week."
--Josh Marshall
This has to be one of the choicest nuggets bubbling out of the GOP Foley meltdown. While House Republicans are lining up announcing how they believe Rep. Foley should be sent to Gitmo and immediately waterboarded, the House Republican campaign committee appears to be angling to get him to cough up his $2.7 million warchest so they can give it to other GOP members of Congress.
From the Times ...
Carl Forti, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Sunday that the committee would gladly accept Mr. Foley’s money or part of it to devote to House races. Mr. Foley already gave $100,000 to the committee in July, campaign records show, as part of the party’s Battleground Program, to which members are asked to contribute.“The money is in the control of Mr. Foley,” Mr. Forti said. “Whatever he decides to do with it is up to him.”
Money can't buy ya love?
--Josh Marshall
Missouri press takes a pass on asking Rep. Blunt (R-MO) what he knew about Foley.
--Josh Marshall
Last night I was browsing around looking for Foley pics. Sounds kind of sordid now that I write it out. But hopefully you know what I mean. Anyway, I found a couple pictures of Foley spending the some quality time with Rep. Dave Reichert at Reichert's website. I snagged copies of the two pictures. And apparently the folks at horsesass.org did the same thing. And they've posted them to their site -- just before Reichert's staff scrubbed the site and removed the pictures.
--Josh Marshall
So a quick run-down on what some Republican reps are telling TPM Readers about Denny Hastert ...
Rob Simmons (R-CT): Anyone involved in a cover up should resign. But no answer on the Hastert hypothetical.
Dave Reichert (R-WA): No position yet.
John Kline (R-MN): 100% with Hastert, doesn't believe he knew.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): 100% with Denny.
Ray LaHood (R-IL): Sticking with Hastert.
Eric Cantor (R-VA): Preparing a statement.
Jim Gerlach (R-PA): Too early to say.
Steve Buyer (R-IN): Staffer not at liberty to answer.
Sue Kelly (R-NY): Supports "the investigation", will be sending a letter to constituents.
Ric Keller (R-FL): "Supports a full investigation into this matter", staffer "could not comment" on whether Keller has lost confidence in the leadership.
Brian Bilbray (R-CA): "Bilbray's office gave me a bunch of stuff about not all the facts being in.
They said he was in a meeting right now concerning the situation. I said I'd call back in a few hours to find out how the meeting went."
Mike Turner (R-OH): No position on Hastert.
--Josh Marshall
Hastert's statement. Dissect it yourself. And while we're on the topic, why hasn't he agreed to take press questions yet?
"The instant messages, reportedly between Congressman Foley and a former page sent in 2003, are vile and repulsive to me, and to my colleagues. No one in the Republican Leadership, nor Congressman Shimkus, saw those messages until last Friday when ABC News released them to the public. When they were released, Congressman Foley resigned. And I'm glad he did, if he had not, I would have demanded his expulsion from the House of Representatives."The page program is an important part of this institution. It has inspired many generations to enter public service. It is a trust, and as a parent and as the Speaker of the House, I am disgusted that Congressman Foley broke that trust. Anyone who had knowledge of these vile instant messages should have turned them over to authorities immediately so that kids could be protected.
"I repeat again, the Republican Leaders of the House did not have them. We have all said so. On the record. But someone did have them. And the ethics committee, the Justice Department, the news media - or anyone who can -- should help us find out who.
"Yesterday I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting he investigate to what extent any federal laws were violated by Congressman Foley, and also to find out who might have known about the sexually explicit instant messages. I was pleased to read in the newspaper this morning that the FBI has begun to investigate.
"I also sent a letter yesterday to Governor Bush, requesting an investigation to determine what state laws were violated. And I am certain the state of Florida will take my request seriously.
"Today I have met with Congressman Shimkus who is the head of the page board to discuss what we can do to make sure this never happens again. This will not be my last meeting on this subject. I intend to get advice on how we can make this program as safe as possible.
"Since I've been Speaker we have moved aggressively to insure the safety of these kids. We constructed new living quarters with state of the art security systems. We have added even more adult supervision. But we obviously need to do more, including providing assistance to these kids after they return home. After all, this vile instant message exchange reportedly took place after the page had returned home. Moms and Dads all across America know what a challenge it is to monitor contact with their kids in this new world of instant communication and cyberspace. That is our challenge too.
"Over the weekend I asked the clerk to move aggressively to set up a hotline. So parents, grandparents, pages, former pages...anyone who has a concern about improper contact...can confidentially report improper contact. Our pages are already taught to bring any concerns to their adult supervisor; but this will be one more opportunity, especially for them after they leave the program.
"Before I turn over the microphone to Mr. Shimkus for his statement, let me add this.
"Congressman Foley duped a lot of people. He lied to Mr. Shimkus and he deceived his instate newspaper when they each questioned him. He deceived the good men and women in organizations around this country, with whom he worked to strengthen our child predator laws. I have known him for all the years he served in this House. He deceived me, too."
--Josh Marshall
Majority Leader Boehner (R-OH) is doing a fundraiser for Rep. Jim Gerlach today in West Chester, PA. 4:00 PM. A chance for Gerlach to ask Boehner about whether he told Hastert about Foley.
--Josh Marshall
Just watching Hastert's press conference here. It's great how he's trying to shift this all of this off the House leadership and to unnamed people outside the House. The Hastert line seems to be: Hey, We Ignored it. So We're Off the Hook.
Late Update: Seems they may be trying to shift this over to Rep. Alexander and former Clerk Trandahl.
Later Update: Needless to say, Hastert and Shimkus refused to take questions. And keep an eye on their new line, trying to dodge blame by saying that Foley waited for the pages to leave the program before he pounced.
--Josh Marshall
In my post a short while ago, I wrote: "And what happens when Joe Sestak asks Curt Weldon whether he's lost confidence in Denny 
Hastert? How does that conversation go?"
Let's make this more than hypothetical. What does your member of Congress think? It's no mystery what Dems think. But what about Republicans? Does the Republican candidate in your district believe that Denny Hastert should remain as Speaker? If they're elected on November 7th and the Republican retain their majority, will they vote for him for Speaker?
It seems like a pretty fair and germane question.
Ring up your Rep. Let us know what you hear. We'll share your results with the rest of our readers.
--Josh Marshall
Foleygate is front and central now, as it must and I suppose should be. But let's not forget the Woodward book revelation about Condi Rice. So much of what is reported to be in Woodward's book (I haven't read it) merely confirms the tragic and scandalous tale most of our already know. The significance is the establishment imprimatur. But if Woodward is right, Condi Rice not only flubbed an opportunity to disrupt the 9/11 plot but she also fibbed on a very material point to the 9/11 Commission.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JM gets it ...
There's a weak excuse emerging from Republicans for Foleygate - they might have known about the e-mails to Rep. Alexander's page, but they never knew about the explicit IMs. Too much of the media coverage right now is centering on that question, as if knowledge of the IMs is the only way to show the leadership was remiss.But that's irrelevant, and here's why: Once ABC got hold of the e-mails, it took them one day to flush out the IMs. That's what an actual investigation looks like. The Republican leadership simply didn't want to know how bad the Foley situation was. That's just as morally negligent as if they had started digging and found the IMs.
Exactly. Hastert's et al.'s defense here seems to be that their hands were firmly clasped over their ears. They never knew.
--Josh Marshall
Here at TPM, as well as at TPMmuckraker and Election Central we're going to be devoting a lot of resources over the coming days to covering the unfolding Foley scandal. But I've gotten a lot of questions about the larger political impact of this debacle. So I'd like to draw back for a moment to take stock of that question.
I think it's a pretty safe assumption at this point that Democrat Tim Mahoney will win Mark Foley's seat on November 7th. But I'd say that'll be relatively far down the list of eventual consequences.
The simple fact is that Foley's downfall has pretty nearly decapitated the leadership of the House GOP with just five weeks to go before election day. And that's devastating.
What do I mean by decapitated? Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that nothing else really comes out about how the House leadership handled this. No more shoes drop. Not a safe assumption from what seems to be in the reporting pipeline. But let's assume it.
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is in a tight race for reelection and he's chairman of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign committee. He's in charge of the effort to keep the majority.
What's the number one thing on his mind right now? I doubt it's the NRCC or even his race for reelection. I think Reynolds is, to put it mildly, distracted right now.
How about Denny Hastert and John Boehner? I don't see them going on shows or making any public appearances for a while. They'll get asked awkward and possibly unanswerable questions about Foleygate. I'd say they're out of commission for fundraisers too.
And pretty much any campaign joust or jab at the Democrats from one of these guys, on whatever issue, will be instantly transformed into some sex-with-pages snark. "How can we trust them to protect America when they can't even protect the summer interns on Capitol Hill."
Just to give some sense of how these interviews are going. Yesterday, when Tom Reynolds was asked by the local paper how Rep. Rodney Alexander had characterized Foley's emails when he told him about them, he said "I'm not going to get into all that . . . I'm not into a grand jury witness thing here, or whatever." Well, don't be sure, Tom. The night is still young.
The one thing a pol can't brook is being the object of ridicule and derision. And at the moment that's about the best these characters can hope for.
Add to this the fact that in the final weeks before an election it's critical for each side's leaders to work together seamlessly. And what do you think the Haster-Reynolds relationship is like at the moment? Or how about Boehner and Hastert? They still trust each other?
And what happens when Joe Sestak asks Curt Weldon whether he's lost confidence in Denny Hastert? How does that conversation go?
The simple fact is that to the extant campaigning determines the outcomes of elections, the race goes to the side that can remain on the offensive most consistently and define the national debate on its own terms. Foleygate has made it very hard for the leaders of the House GOP to go on the offensive on anything relevant to the election. For political purposes they're basically out of commission. And they've given Democratic challengers in every district around the country a slew of questions with which to pummel GOP incumbents or any Republican, for that matter, who puts his head up on television. This is in the context of an election that was already going very badly for House Republicans. Foleygate has now made them all but politically defenseless in the final stretch of the campaign. And that is a very big deal.
--Josh Marshall
Let's try to make one thing clear about Speaker Hastert's call for an investigation. The way he specifically worded it. It's an attempt to get the spotlight and investigation off of him and his key subordinates and on to someone outside the institution or someone who works for it in some junior capacity who may have had knowledge or possession of the IMs and emails prior to last Friday. In all likelihood some of the ex-pages or staffers.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (WV), the other Republican member of the House Page Board, says she wasn't told either. And the White House has a new line: Foleygate is just about "naughty emails".
--Josh Marshall
Republicans join Dems calling for more resignations over the Foley page scandal. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Ahhh, once again, the last refuge of the disgraced House Republican: rehab.
If Drudge is to be believed, a local station in Florida is reporting that Foley is checking into rehab: "I strongly believe I am an alcoholic. On Saturday... I made arrangements to enter a renowned in-patient facility." There seems to be some question whether the faxed message allegedly from Foley was a hoax. But presumably we'll find out soon enough.
--Josh Marshall
Headline press release on Denny Hastert's website: "Hastert Drives Effort to 'Keep Kids Safe in Cyberspace'"
--Josh Marshall
The NRCC wants Rep. Mark Foley's $2.7 million campaign chest for use in other congressional races.
Hate the sin but love the sinner's money?
--David Kurtz
I took Hastert's call for an investigation of anyone who may have been aware of the Foley matter, specifically the part about "anyone outside the Congress," as a reference to former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl.
Once again, I've been busted for not being cynical enough. From TPM Reader B:
Seems reasonably clear to me. The reptiles want the FBI to investigate ABC’s sources and see if they can find any Democratic Party and/or liberal interest group involvement in the IM leaks. A probe would also help intimidate any other potential whistleblowers who might be out there . . . (“If you know what’s good for you kid, you’ll keep your old emails to yourself.”)It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with going after Trandahl, who after all is one of the House officials the Republicans claim never saw the sexually explicit messages. If the FBI were to find out that he DID see them, it would bring the nasty stuff closer to Hastert and Co.
I'm afraid this is probably right. Also a good excuse to start issuing subpoenas to reporters again.
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader AL makes a good point about Hastert's letter to the Attorney General:
Hastert still maintains the focus on just one of Foley's emails:“As I am sure you are aware, there are two different and distinct communications at issue here. First, Mr. Foley sent an email to a former page of Representative Alexander in the fall of 2005. This email was determined to be "over friendly" by Representative Alexander's office but was not sexual in nature."
. . .
Hastert separates what he still maintains is one "overfriendly" email and the "investigation" of it from the existence of the explicit IMs. On the face of it, that is defensible. There has not yet been any evidence that he or anyone in Congress knew of those IMs. We'll see how far that lasts.
But his request for an investigation is directed SOLELY at those "sexually explicit communications," and who knew of them, when, and what they did.
“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."
That has NOTHING TO DO with how the Leadership dealt with the emails from Foley to the Page from Louisiana.
Just more of the same obfuscation and deception. For them, this is not about the pages. It's about winning. They will do anything to win.
--David Kurtz
Speaker Hastert's letter to the Attorney General, via Roll Call:
“Former Representative Mark Foley resigned from the House of Representatives on Friday, September 29, 2006, after improper and illicit communications between Mr. Foley and former House pages were made public. While the House of Representatives on that day voted to refer this matter to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct for investigation, they do not have jurisdiction over federal law or over him upon his resignation from office.“As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley's conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated federal law.
“As I am sure you are aware, there are two different and distinct communications at issue here. First, Mr. Foley sent an email to a former page of Representative Alexander in the fall of 2005. This email was determined to be "over friendly" by Representative Alexander's office but was not sexual in nature. Second, based on media reports, there is a different set of communications which were sexually explicit instant messages which Mr. Foley reportedly sent another former page or pages. These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge, reportedly were sent sometime in 2003.
“According to an Editor's Note that appeared on the St. Petersburg Times' website yesterday, the Times was given a set of emails from Mr. Foley to Representative Alexander's former page in November of 2005. (See "A Note From the Editors" located at http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz /, visited on September 30, 2006). The editors state that they viewed this exchange as "friendly chit chat" and decided not to publish it after hearing an explanation from Representative Foley. Acting on this same communication, the Chairman of the House Page Board and the then Clerk of the House confronted Mr. Foley, demanded he cease all contact with the former page as his parents had requested, and believed they had privately resolved the situation as the parents had requested.
“Unlike the first communication, the second communication was a set of instant messages that contained sexually explicit statements and were reportedly generated three years ago. Last week, ABC News first reported these sexually explicit instant messages which led to Representative Foley's resignation. These sexually explicit communications warrant a criminal referral in two respects. Initially, since the communications involve interstate communications, there should be a complete investigation and prosecution of any federal laws that have been violated. In addition, since the communications appear to have existed for three years, there should be an investigation into the extent there are persons who knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the appropriate authorities. It is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now.
“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.
“Your attention to this serious matter is appreciated. I am also sending to the Department of Law Enforcement for the State of Florida a request to investigate whether or not any state laws were violated by Mr. Foley or anyone else with respect to this matter.”
--David Kurtz
Will she stay or will she go now?
Laura Bush scheduled to be keynote speaker at luncheon honoring Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY).
For those of you who have been away this weekend (and in a cave), that would be this guy.
--David Kurtz
Hastert calls for federal criminal investigation of Rep. Mark Foley . . . developing
Update: Does calling for an investigation after one is already underway count for anything?
Late Update: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had already called this afternoon for immediate action by the House Ethics Committee. By calling for criminal investigation, does Hastert hope to keep the genie in the bottle through Election Day?
Later update: Haven't seen the letter yet, but here's a key part, according to AP:
The scope of the investigation, Hastert wrote, should 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."
"Anyone outside of Congress"? That seems like a pretty direct reference to Jeff Trandahl, the Clerk of the House at the time who helped with the "investigation" of Foley, the one no one told the Democrats about.
--David Kurtz
ABC, which has led the way on the Rep. Mark Foley story, now reporting that GOP congressional staff was warning pages about Foley five years ago:
A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk's office.
Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff."
--David Kurtz
Foley now in FBI crosshairs, ABC News reports:
The FBI has opened a "preliminary investigation" of disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley over the sexually explicit Internet messages he sent to congressional pages, all male high school students under the age of 18.Agents in the FBI's Cyber Division have already begun to examine the texts of some of the messages, according to a FBI spokesperson.
--David Kurtz
Sen. Reid (D-NV) releases a statement ...
Date: Sunday, October 1, 2006REID DEMANDS ATTORNEY GENERAL INVESTIGATE FOLEY SCANDAL
Washington, DC—Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid today released the following statement on the developing scandal involving Congressman Mark Foley and the House Republican Leadership.
“The American people have a right to feel confident that their Congressional leaders are committed not just to the best interest of the nation as a whole, but also to the safety of the young people who every year travel to Washington to work on Capitol Hill. The allegations against Congressman Foley are repugnant, but equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives knew there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a Congressional seat this election year.
“Under laws that Congressman Foley helped write, soliciting sex from a minor online is a federal crime. The American people expect and deserve a full accounting for this despicable episode. The alleged crimes here are far outside the scope of any Congressional Committee, and the Attorney General should open a full-scale investigation immediately. We have a responsibility to the long-term safety of every child who will work in Congress that must not be sacrificed to the short-term interest of any one political Party.”
Ignored it to save a seat.
--Josh Marshall
Let me touch on one aspect of the Foley scandal that a lot of readers have been emailing about--Foley's financial contributions to the NRCC.
The role of NRCC chair Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) in the scandal is important. Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) told Reynolds about the page emails from Foley, and Reynolds says he talked to Hastert about it. As head of the NRCC, which is charged with getting Republicans elected to Congress, Reynolds does seem like a strange choice of people for Alexander to alert. Add in the fact that Reynolds' chief of staff used to be chief of staff for Foley, and the connections deepen.
But there is also a campaign finance connection between Reynolds and Foley. Foley was a big contributor to the NRCC. We got a tip on this yesterday, and after looking into it, concluded that while Foley's campaign committee has given significant sums to the NRCC in the last 2-3 years, the amount involved is what you would expect veteran GOPers like Foley to be contributing. By themselves, Foley's donations don't stand out.
Let me explain.
Foley has given more than $300,000 to the NRCC in the past two years or so. He gave another $15,000 the year before that. You'll see that $100,000 of those contributions came in one donation from Foley this past July.
No question that's a significant amount of money. But in the 2004 election cycle it doesn't place Foley among the top 20 contributors to the NRCC. Most of that list consists of Republican congressmen other than Foley. The July donation just barely qualifies Foley as top 20 contributor to the NRCC in the 2006 cycle.
The other thing to note is that senior members of the House GOP caucus, including committee chairmen, are required by the GOP, at least implicitly, to meet certain fundraising thresholds for the NRCC in order to maintain their committee positions. This is especiallly true of those who occupy safe seats, like Foley did.
Foley was not THE go-to guy for the NRCC. He was one of many go-to guys. That's not to say campaign cash didn't play a role in the kid gloves treatment Foley received from the GOP leadership. It's just that those campaign contributions alone don't add up to that conclusion.
--David Kurtz
A reader asks, why not call Rep. Mark Foley a pedophile based on what we now know? Glenn Greenwald offers an explanation:
For now, I will just note what seems to be the bizarre and incoherent contradiction in the law, noted by Atrios yesterday, that in-person, actual sex between Foley and a 16-year-old page would be perfectly legal in D.C. and in most places in the U.S., but it seems that it is a criminal act for Foley to discuss or solicit sexual acts with the same page over the Internet. Despite all the irritatingly righteous (and overheated) "pedophile" language being tossed around, in the overwhelming majority of states, and in Washington DC, the legal age of consent for sex is 16 years old. That means that actual, in-person sex between Foley and a 16-year-old page in D.C. would not be criminal at all (though it likely could have other legal implications).But under the so-called "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006" (of which Foley was a co-sponsor), along with 18 U.S.C. 2251, discussion or solicitation of sexual acts between Foley and any "minor" under the age of 18 would appear to be a criminal offense (see Adam Walsh Act, Sec. 111(14) ("MINOR.--The term 'minor' means an individual who has not attained the age of 18 years") and 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2256 (1) (“'minor' means any person under the age of eighteen years").
But those are just the criminal aspects. It goes without saying that having a predatory Congressman sexually solicit teenage Congressional pages is a serious problem and the House leadership had a responsibility to act when they learned about it. And here, they clearly appear not to have taken action due to the political desire to protect Foley's seat.
--David Kurtz
The Rep. Mark Foley M.O.: wait until after pages returned home to contact them?
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader JA asks: "If the GOP can't even keep a bunch of 15 year olds safe, how can they keep America safe?"
--David Kurtz
From the AP (emphasis mine):
White House aide Dan Bartlett said the allegations against Foley were shocking and that President Bush had not been informed previously about the e-mails. Bartlett said there was no need for an independent outside investigation."The leadership appear to be very aggressive in pursuing this investigation," he said. "I think that's the best place for this investigation to go forward."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said at first he had learned only last week about the e-mails Foley sent to a page. Hastert later acknowledged that aides referred the matter to the authorities last fall.
First off, this White House wouldn't know an aggressive investigation if it slapped it upside the head with a subpoena.
That being said, what about Hastert aides referring the matter to "authorities"? That makes it sound as if law enforcement were notified, but in the context of the piece, the AP apparently only means that Hastert's office sent the matter over to the page program board. That leaves the completely inaccurate impression that somehow Hastert doesn't have oversight over the whole dang operation. He is the Speaker of the House! He IS the authority. Mr. Magoo indeed.
--David Kurtz
More on that Palm Beach Post article from yesterday. It has been reported elsewhere that the chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) used to be a staffer for Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL). Reynolds, you will recall, heads up the NRCC and one was of the GOP leaders who knew about the emails from Foley to the congressional page.
The Palm Beach Post reports that the staffer has been very involved in recent days:
Kirk Fordham, who worked as Foley's chief of staff for 10 years, returned to Foley's side to advise him during the past couple of days."He has the ability to look forward and see how things play out," Fordham said. "He wanted to do what was right for his family and for his district."
I don't necessarily fault Fordham for his loyalty, but it is a little odd that the head of the NRCC would loan out his chief of staff to the disgraced former congressman in the midst of what is shaping up as a political crisis for the GOP.
--David Kurtz
A reader points us to an article in yesterday's Palm Beach Post:
Congressional staff members who asked not to be identified said it was widely known among Hill staffers and some House leaders that Foley had been engaging in inappropriate conduct and language with young aides.One highly placed staff member said Foley's abrupt resignation may have been demanded by Republican leaders who have been aware for some time about allegations of inappropriate behavior.
It's not clear to me from this piece whether the reference to "Hill staffers and some House leaders" is a broader circle than the one we already know about. Stay tuned . . .
--David Kurtz
The St. Petersburg Times explains why it didn't run with the Rep. Mark Foley story last fall. An excerpt:
[W]hat we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn't go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today's paper, our policy is that we don't make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn't meet our standard for publication.
That's a judgment call, and one that could go either way. Other news outlets apparently made the same call. Go read the whole explanation and decide for yourself. But in the course of explaining the decision, the editor writes:
The conversation in those emails was friendly chit-chat. Foley asked the boy about how he had come through Hurricane Katrina and about the boy's upcoming birthday. In one of those emails, Foley casually asked the teen to send him a "pic" of himself.
I don't know how you can read those emails and come to such an innocuous conclusion. Now in fairness to the paper they put two reporters on the story before deciding they didn't have enough to publish. So maybe the editor didn't consider it all that innocuous either.
The one thing the editor doesn't describe the paper trying to do was talk to anyone overseeing the congressional page program. Given the leadership's track record, a call from reporters might not have gotten much of a response. But given that we're talking about minors here, it seems like a call that should have been made. Which makes me wonder--did any news outlets contact the page program when these emails started surfacing last fall? Anyone get a response?
--David Kurtz
We've got a working timeline going of Foleygate. Take a look. And if you have additions we haven't thought of, send them along and we'll keep updating.
--Josh Marshall
This just gets better and better.
Last night we posted about an interview that Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), chairman of the board which oversees the congressional page program, gave yesterday to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In the interview, Shimkus said that both he and the Clerk of the House saw the actual emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) to a congressional page when they conducted their "investigation" of Foley last fall.
That contradicts the official version of events put out late yesterday by his fellow Illinoisan, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose internal investigation found that Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) declined to provide the emails in question out of respect for the page and his family, who desired privacy.
Still with me? It's about to require a flow chart to keep this all straight.
While Shimkus is telling the St. Louis paper that, yes, he saw the emails, his spokeman is telling another local paper that, no, he didn't (emphasis is mine):
Shimkus was unavailable for comment, but through his spokesman, Steve Tomaszewski, he acknowledged speaking to Foley last year after being notified about one of the e-mails that Foley had sent to a page assigned to the office of a Louisiana congressman.Shimkus "did not see personally any e-mail a year ago when he dealt with the issue," Tomaszewski said. "He was only told of the one e-mail that came out first, which references, 'How are you doing after the hurricane?' and, 'Send me a picture.'"
Got that?
Hastert's internal investigation says Shimkus never saw the emails. Shimkus says he did. Shimkus' spokesman says he didn't.
Whew, glad we got that cleared up.
--David Kurtz
Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was known for--indeed prided himself and built his power upon--his encyclopedic knowledge of the House GOP caucus: members' likes and dislikes, their personal and political strengths and weaknesses, their pressure points.
Delay was Majority Leader until February 2006. So when the emails between Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) and a congressional page first came to the attention of the House leadership last fall, Delay was still majority leader. (Ironically, Delay's successor as majority leader, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), came to Congress as a result of a sex-with-a-minor scandal involving the then-incumbent Buz Lukens, whom Boehner defeated in the GOP primary in 1990.) So what did Delay know, and when?
Now the broad version of events being put out by Hastert and Company is that this all came to their attention when Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) brought the concerns of the page and his family to the leadership. No one can get their story straight about what happened after that, but that is the starting point for the story, or so we are told.
But if Foley already had a "reputation" among congressional pages, you can bet his reputation extended to staffers and probably to congressmen themselves. One thing that seems to be missing from the GOP reaction is shock or surprise. Maybe I've simply overlooked them, but I haven't seen any quotes along the lines of what you usually expect when something like this breaks: the befuddled reactions of those who knew the alleged perpetrator but had no idea he was even capable of what he is being accused of. I'm thinking of those standard quotes from serial killers' neighbors: he was quiet, kept to himself, seemed completely normal.
It's a small world up there on the Hill, and you just don't get the sense that this is a bolt from the blue. I'd be surprised if some reporters didn't already have the low-down on Foley's "over-friendly" ways.
The peccadilloes of congressmen is the black market currency on the Hill. Gossip is golden. And Tom Delay was the leading broker. So what did he know and when?
--David Kurtz
Open secret watch (from Scripps-Howard)...
Sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday.While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage boys who once worked in the page program, said Matthew Loraditch, a Maryland college senior who runs the U.S. House Page Alumni Association's Internet message board.
...
Loraditch said during his time on Capitol Hill, Foley was one of the members of Congress who expressed what appeared to be a sincere interest in the young pages, often visiting the areas where they congregate in the corner of the House of Representatives chamber to chat or offer stories and advice.
Loraditch said he and other pages viewed Foley as gregarious and "flaky" at the time, and that he offered several of them, not including Loraditch, his personal e-mail when they were graduating from the program and saying goodbyes.
After Loraditch returned to Maryland and began attending college at Towson University, several male former pages told him they had received Internet messages that were similar to the graphic messages first reported by ABC News last week.
More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Last Days of Pompeii Watch or Great Moments in CYA parody.
From joint statement released today by Reps. Hastert (R-IL), Boehner (R-OH) and Blunt (R-MO) ...
We have also asked for the creation of a toll-free telephone number for House Pages, parents, grandparents, and staff to confidentially report incidents of concern.
I'm sure this will inspire a lot of confidence in the operation they're running, that the leaders of the House have set up a toll-free number for pages to report sexual advances by members of Congress.
--Josh Marshall
Florida Department of Law Enforcement conferring with FBI over who has jurisdiction in Foley probe.
--Josh Marshall
Foley: "If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail."
Rep. Mark Foley and America's Most Wanted's John Walsh discuss Foley's new anti-child predator legislation.
Rep. Foley remained as Co-Chair of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus for almost a year after the email issue came to light.
--Josh Marshall
I mentioned this earlier. And I think it deserves 
more attention. We continue to hear that the initial conversations about Rep. Foley's (R-FL) emails occurred in 'late 2005'. The House Clerk, who played a key role in what happened and interviewed Foley along with Rep. Shimkus (R-IL), was then Jeff Trandahl.
Trandahl resigned from his position as Clerk around the time this was all happening. He left the position on November 18th, 2005. And the first public mention I can find of his departure was in statement released by Speaker Hastert on September 30th, 2005. The suspect emails reportedly were sent in August 2005. And copies of those emails later forwarded to a staffer in Rep. Rodney Alexander's (R-LA) office suggest the page first contacted Alexander's office on August 31st.
Trandahl became Executive Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
More clarity on just when these events occurred could quickly rule out his departure being tied in some way to the Foley imbroglio. But it seems quite probable the events in question took place early in September 2005.
Regardless of the reasons behind his leaving the Clerkship, Trandahl is probably in a better position to shed more light on this matter than almost anyone. I believe the Clerk is given a large degree of responsibility for the pages under House Rules. And of all the players in the drama he's the only one who is at least notionally independent. That is, not a member of the House nor a staffer working for a particular member.
To the best of my knowledge no one has yet gotten Trandahl on the record. We haven't heard his story.
--Josh Marshall
Early this evening I was starting to think that Foleygate might truly be the scandal that dare not speak its name. I don't mean whatever Mark Foley himself did. He's apologized, resigned and, I imagine, will soon face criminal indictment under laws he helped write. In a sense, that scandal has run its course. The scandal I'm talking about is the mix 
of cover-up and enabling that reached its way through the highest reaches of the House Republican leadership. Early this evening neither the Post nor the Times had devoted a story specifically to the contradictory stories coming out of the House leadership. Now, though, that seems to have changed.
I've been at this blog racket for almost six years. And usually you've got to really pore over the details to find the inconsistencies and contradictions. So I'm not sure I've ever seen this big a train wreck where leaders at the highest eschelons of power repeatedly fib, contradict each other and change their stories so quickly. It's mendacity as performance art; you can see the story unravel in real time.
Just consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn't know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership -- Boehner and Reynolds -- say no, they warned him about it months ago. Hastert got Boehner to recant; Reynolds is sticking to his guns.
Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker's office. And Hastert's office tonight put out the results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership -- not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk -- had actually laid eyes on the emails in question.
Only Hastert's office apparently didn't touch base with Rep. Shimkus, since as Hastert's crew was writing out their statement, Shimkus was over giving an interview to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which he described how he and the Clerk had read the emails.
(ed.note: 2:19 AM, 10/1/06 ... What makes this even more comical is that, according to the AP "Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker Dennis Hastert's office." Didn't seem to help.)
So the centerpiece point of the Hastert statement this evening appears to have been a fabrication.
It stood up for maybe three or four hours.
At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We're supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him.
These fibs and turnabouts amount to a whole far larger than the sum of its parts. Even the most cynical politicians carefully vet their stories to assure that they cannot easily be contradicted by other credible personages. When you see Majority Leaders and Speakers and Committee chairs calling each other liars in public you know that the underlying story is very bad, that the system of coordination and hierarchy has broken down and that each player believes he's in a fight for his life.
--Josh Marshall
