Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Out Of The Woodwork

by digby

I know this will come as a great shock to everyone, but it appears that Hastert may have lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley’s behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

Hastert and his chief of staff Palmer are very close; they are roomates during the week in Washington. It just doesn’t seem to be to be too likely to me that Palmer never mentioned all the warnings he received about Foley. I know the Speaker is a busy fellow and all, but somebody preying on the pages just seems like something that would come up, if only as gossip. Which is probably how it did come up because they didn’t seem inclined to do a damned thing about it.

And then there’s this:

The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public’s understanding of Foley’s undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

Pages apparently saw Trandahl as a strict disciplinarian. In one instant-message exchange obtained by The Post, a former page, on his way to his first annual reunion in Washington, told Foley in January 2003 that “everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc.”

He then added, “well we dont have the [expletive] clerk to fire us anymore. . . . we didnt like trandahl that much . . . he isnt a nice guy . . . and he gets really scarey when he is mad.”

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.”

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What’s up with that, do you suppose?

Update: I hear on the grapevine that the next hilariously lame GOP excuse is that — you guessed it — the emails are forgeries. I’m not kidding.

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Another One Bites The Dust

by digby

More e-mail shame and exposure. Where does it end with these Republicans?

A top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove passed along inside White House information to superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a time when she was also accepting his tickets to nine sports and entertainment events, according to e-mails released yesterday in a bipartisan congressional report.

The e-mails, released by the House Government Reform Committee, show that Susan Ralston also on occasion discussed possible business ventures with Abramoff. Ralston had worked for Abramoff before joining Rove in the White House in 2001.

White House contacts with Abramoff have been the focus of heated interest in Washington since he pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges earlier this year. Although the committee report documents that Abramoff’s lobbying team billed their clients for more than 400 contacts with White House officials over three years, it remains unclear what results Abramoff obtained.

I can’t help but wonder if Ralston will be persuaded that it’s in her best interest to tell the feds everything she knows about Karl Rove’s dirty dealings. She’s ripe for the big squeeze.

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Focus On The Hucksters

by digby

James Dobson is not just an average run of the mill preacher. In fact, he’s not a preacher at all — he’s a child psychologist:

Dobson holds a doctorate in child development from the University of Southern California (1967). He was an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for fourteen years. He spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

His organization, Focus On The Family, is allegedly based on an amalgam of Biblical precepts and psychology and he dispenses his child rearing and marital advice in modern psychobabble terms. He’s more than a religious leader — his followers look to him as a doctor, particularly in the field of child psychology.

He has often been critical of modern popular culture not just because of its supposed anti-Christian message but because of its effect on young, developing minds. You’ll remember this, I’m sure:

In truth, this tale has very little to do with SpongeBob himself, and everything to do with the media’s ability to obscure the facts and to direct lies and scorn toward those of us who care about defending children. It all began on an evening in late January, during Inaugural Week in Washington, D.C. At that time, I spoke briefly to 350 guests attending a banquet hosted by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Gary Bauer’s American Values. I concluded by sharing a word of concern about a video that will be distributed to 61,000 public and private elementary schools across the nation, for use on the proposed “We Are Family Day,” March 11.

[…]

Imagine a classroom full of wide-eyed five-year olds, sitting in a circle in front of the teacher. These kindergarteners will believe anything they are told, from the notion that reindeer can fly on Christmas Eve to the idea that bunnies lay candy eggs during “Spring Break.” They are vulnerable to whatever adults tell them. In this instance, the kids are not learning about the alphabet or about exciting fairy tales; they are potentially hearing incomprehensible references to adult perverse sexuality. And the rationale for this instruction is “tolerance and diversity.” Generations past would have been shocked and outraged by the very thought of such nonsense. Yet many parents either don’t know of the teaching or are passively willing to go along with it.

[…]

Parents, I urge you to keep a close eye on your sons and daughters. Watch carefully everything that goes into their little minds. Monitor their textbooks and the words of their teachers. Do not turn them over to harmful television programs. When God’s name is used in vain, or when sex and violence come on the screen, turn off the tube and then read and discuss together the scriptures found in Psalm 101:3: “I will set before my eyes no vile thing”.

Here’s James Dobson today on the Foley scandal:

DOBSON: As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages … By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I’ve heard in seven days…

Spongebob holding hands with Big Bird on a video about tolerance is shocking homosexual brainwashing. Exchanging lewd e-mails with Republican congressman is good clean fun.

That’s an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge’s GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let’s have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can’t be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright.

Please do not ever tell me again that I have to respect this man’s religious beliefs or his professional analysis of human behavior. They are clearly just disposable political garbage to be used to bilk his followers and empower himself. I don’t want to hear about morals from any of these people anymore. They are just cheap political operatives and deserve no more polite consideration than Karl Rove or Dick Morris. Less actually, Karl Rove and Dick Morris aren’t making the huge profit that Dobson and Perkins and the rest of these Jesus hucksters do. They should retire and go into the Republican religion business. But I suppose it might be too low and unprincipled, even for them.

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“Sure I Slept With Her”

by digby

… but I swear I didn’t try to kill the lying bitch. Vote Republican!

In other races, the Foley case has created an unfavorable backdrop for Republicans. In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress.

Hello?

And then there was this bizarre statement by David Brooks on last night’s Newshour:

I don’t want to minimize the Foley thing because the way kids are raised is a voting issue.

Who’s talking about the way kids are raised? No matter how you slice it, the kids behaviors are not the issue. It’s the 52 year old man trying to seduce them and his bosses and pals knowing about it and covering it up. Am I missing something here?

Why is this stuff so hard for the black and white morality crowd? Consensual sex between adults — nobody’s business. Marrying member of the same sex — nobody’s business. Choking mistress — wrong. Sexually preying on 16 year-olds — wrong.

Maybe we could make up some flash cards so the moralizing rightwing could carry them around and consult them whenever they get confused.

Update: Roy tries to point out to David Brooks the difference between reality and fiction. Good luck with that.

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Zombies

by digby

John Amato has uncovered another rather nasty move into major media by wingnut cranks. The new LA Times publisher rudely installed by the the Tribune company is none other than a long time, high level Republican operative. This is bad news for LA.. This is not a conservative city and we don’t want a conservative paper.

It’s quite a story — check it out.

And check out Nikki Finke’s follow-up in the LA Weekly. Something is rotten in LaLa land.

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Freedom Rider To Torture Apologist

by digby

This is exactly why so many Democrats want to defeat Holy Joe Lieberman:

Student Kevin Miner, who said he’d voted for Lieberman twice in 2000, said one question had been eating him up for a long time: “I want to know what the moral reasoning is from a man who went from being a freedom rider to a torture apologist. I want to know what happened.”

[…]

Echoing Republican arguments, Lieberman told the student: “We’re at war. It’s hard for a lot of people to understand this, because it’s a different kind of war.” The people we are capturing are “enemy combatants,” and in many countries are given fewer rights than prisoners of war. “We are now giving them more rights than prisoners of war get in most countries of war.”

“I know it’s fasionable to say what you’re saying,” Lieberman told the student. But ” And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t human beings … But they don’t deserve the same rights that citizens of the United States do.” The comment garnered a smattering of applause.

He echoes George W. Bush’s talking points perfectly, talks down to his constituents as if they are idiots and says the constitution and unalienable human rights are merely “fashionable.” Apparently, Holy Joe and his child predator friends get to decide which people “deserve” them and which ones don’t. (Big of him to acknowledge that the prisoners are human beings, though.)

But just in case some blowback happens — you know, a few innocent people get tortured and locked up forever, Holy Joe issues a little disclaimer with his mindless fearmongering: “these are people who people working for us suspect of wanting to kill us. All of us! Any one of us!”

He knows exactly what he’s saying and that’s more unforgiveable than some wingnut rube who says outright that all the people in Guantanamo are terrorists. Joe’s not actually making the decision to torture and imprison potentially innocent people, you see. “Somebody who works for us” is. And like the immoral Republican he is, that means he isn’t responsible if that person captures somebody who had nothing to do with anything and then uses torture to extract a confession for which the prisoner has no legal recourse to protest or recant.

It’s always somebody elses fault.

Perhaps Lieberman should hear from a Democrat who actually knows what he’s talking about regarding the war on terror beyond this puerile, pants-wetting nonsense about people trying “kill all of you!” Wes Clark was in Connecticut today with Ned Lamont.

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I Know You Are But What Am I

by digby

I just heard two wingnut congressmen on Hardball advance the new GOP talking points and they are doozies:

“The issue is not Denny Hastert. The only issue now is what did the Democratic leadership know and when did they know it? Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel need to go under oath before the ethics committee and clear their names.”

It’s such a wild Hail Mary that you almost have to admire it.

Here’s more on this:

House Republicans sought to put Democrats on the defense over the Foley House page scandal Friday, asking House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Illinois, to appear before the House Ethics Committee investigating the matter.

Vice Chairman of the Republican Conference Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Georgia, along with several of his GOP colleagues, said the page scandal “should not be a partisan issue,” in a letter to the top Democrats.

“Just as it must be determined whether any Republican Members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal Mr. Foley’s activities, it must also be determined whether any Democrat Members or political operatives were aware of, and attempted to conceal these same activities,” Kingston wrote in the letter.

(This reminds me of a post I did a long time ago called “Projection Politics.”)

I’m listening to Chris Cannon on CNN now try to explain why he said that the “kids are precocious.” As he digs himself ever deeper with this “hoax” excuse, he seems to be saying that kids “know more today” and that parents should help them understand what their boundries are. I love Republican moralists, don’t you? The precocious kids are the ones who should be taught to draw the line. What more can you do?

Meanwhile, Cannon is hedging on Hastert — it’s “highly premature” to suggest that he should resign. Oh my.

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Accidental Truth

by digby

“If they throw Denny Hastert off the sled to slow down the wolves, it won’t be long before you’ll be crying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to throw somebody else over because they knew about it too,'” Baker said.

Out of the mouths of poohbahs. Just how many of these guys knew about it, Jim?

Maybe we could save some time here if all the members of the GOP who knew that a congressman was preying on teenage boys and covered it up just took responsibility for their massive error in judgment and resigned. I have little doubt that would mean the Democrats would have a majority before the first vote was counted — but maybe it would be better for them to take the high road after rolling around in the gutter like this.

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Wingnut Kumbaaya

by digby

Following up on this Beinert nonsense to which Ezra and Atrios link today, may I just point out that while the right is outraged about a German opera company omitting a scene offensive to Muslims, they don’t seem to be in the least bit concerned about a similar issue quite a bit closer to home:

American Family Association Chairman Donald E. Wildmon says NBC will not air the scene showing Madonna being crucified in the upcoming November special.

“NBC does not want a fight with AFA and the Christian community,” said Wildmon. “NBC may wiggle and wobble, but in the final analysis, they will not show that scene. We expect a public announcement from NBC canceling the scene within two weeks.”

According to New York Daily News, the NBC network is retreating from an earlier announcement of its plan to air a two-hour concert special featuring Madonna hanging on a cross wearing a fake crown of thorns.

NBC Entertainment chief Kevin Reilly had said earlier Madonna considered the scene mocking the crucifixion of Christ the highlight of her show. “We (NBC) viewed it and didn’t see it as being inappropriate.”

Beinert says:

Many liberals seem unable to conceive of a struggle in which the Republican right is not an enemy but an ally. But there are such struggles, and, without today’s activist liberals, they will be harder to win. Free speech is under threat, and Idomeneo should be the last straw.

No, we are able to concieve of a struggle in which the Republican right is an ally, but we’re not morons and know exactly what these people are about and it isn’t free speech. That’s hilarious.

Their willingness to support similar repression in their own backyard proves that this sturm und drang over the Duetsche oper is plain old wingnut anti-muslim bigotry. As Ezra puts it: “They’re doing it because it furthers their other political ends.” (And he’s right in saying that to join this particular free speech crusade is to also advance a foreign policy goal that’s extremely dangerous.)

But were it simply a matter of principle as they say it is, if they were to condemn NBC (if they do choose to cut the scene) — or dozens of other instances of corporate repression of speech deemed offensive to Christians because of pressure from the Christian right — perhaps I’d be more inclined to link hands and welcome them as members of the ACLU. Until then, I tend to think that a coalition of right and left to defend free speech is going to be defined as forcing Europeans to engage in inflammatory speech against Muslims even if they don’t want to. Maybe we could start closer to home with a project to protect free speech from Donald Wildman and James Dobson, build up some wins, and then work our way toward free speech repression in foreign countries after that. I’m ready if they are.

Update: I’m reminded in the comments of the uproar over the play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” last year in which the right wingers took the other side:

The play opened last year in London to rave reviews and sold out audiences. It was scheduled to come to New York and open tonight at the celebrated off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop.

But there will be no opening night.

In late February, the theater announced it was indefinitely postponing production of the play due to the current political climate.

The theater’s artistic director James Nicola told the Guardian of London: “In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon’s illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation.” Nicola went on to say, “We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn’t want to take.”

But the theater has been accused of political censorship. The co-creator of the play, Alan Rickman responded by saying, “This is censorship born out of fear” and that the theater had effectively canceled the play.

I’m sure Peter Beinert will be shocked to learn that free speech advocates, Little Green Footballs, didn’t step up to protest this kind of political pressure. After all, he may not know that Rachel Corrie is called “pancake girl” by the LGFers and any play that might show her in a good light would be considered treason.

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Bad Teens or Bad Adults?
by poputonian
From today’s NYT:

Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers

Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual “hooking up” approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.
…
The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing 60 denominations and dozens of ministries, passed a resolution this year deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.”

Among the leaders speaking at the meetings are Ted Haggard, president of the evangelical association; the Rev. Jerry Falwell; and nationally known preachers like Jack Hayford and Tommy Barnett.

They passed a freakin’ resolution?
John Adams speaking of the Clergy in 1765:

… they even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure; with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality; with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes; with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects from allegiance; with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude to him, and his subordinate tyrants, who, it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God, and that was worshipped.