Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Frozen Punditry

by digby

Jane Hamsher says I have a monkey named Chris Matthews on my back and I need serious help. Yes, my name is digby and I am a Hardball addict.

There’s a reason for it. Chris Matthews, to me, is the perfect embodiment of the delusional, millionaire DC courtier who thinks he is channeling the common man. The beltway is full of those guys apparently, but Tweety has a very special perch from which he dispenses all kinds of what he thinks are folksy observations about “Real Americans” but which are actually 50’s cartoon characters along the lines of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. He’s a fascinating case study in how the dysfunctional DC political media are completely immersed in rightwing bias and don’t even know it.

Here’s an exchange between Matthews and Howard Fineman today. Fineman runs down a list of various “deadly” poll ratings for Republicans in this week’s Newsweek poll:

Matthews: You didn’t give us the deadliest which is that Democrats are now trusted more on moral values

Fineman: I thought that was the next question

Matthews: (incredulous) I mean that is a stunning … the Democrats are the big city party, the tolerance party the … in many ways libertarian on social issues and moral issues and now they’re perceived to be more priestly, more honorable on moral questions … I guess that includes sexual questions … than the Republicans.

Fineman: In fairness to the Democratic … to everybody, that’s kind of a race to the bottom on that question, but it is a remarkable, it’s a turnaround. I think it’s about two or three months ago it was slightly in the Republicans’ favor, not overwhelmingly, because I think the accumulation, sort of the aura, of the money scandals on the hill, no one of which made a big impression, but overall they kind of did. The notion of government spending being out of control which, by the way, a lot of people view as a moral issue. The border’s not being protected …

Matthews: That’s something the Democrats don’t get and better damn get someday, which is, to Republicans having budget deficits is…

Fineman: it’s immoral.

Where do I begin? First, let’s take a look at Matthews’ incredulity that Democrats could possibly be considered more moral than Republicans. The definition of “moral values” is so vague that one could certainly call the Iraq war a matter of moral values and yet he seems to believe that the word applies only to sexual matters and that democrats are perceived to be less moral. (Indeed, he seems to think that tolerance itself is immoral, which would come as something of a surprise to Jesus Christ.) This idea about “moral values” is rightwing frame that goes completely unchallenged virtually all the time.

Fineman actually begins to spell out how the “moral values” issue might extend to corruption and greed and then makes the debatable point that government spending being out of control is also considered a “moral issue.” Let’s assume for the sake of argument that people do believe that. Why in the world would Chris Matthews then imperiously lecture the Democrats and say they’d “better damn get someday” that for Republicans having budget deficits is immoral?

O’Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush’s economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from “the corporate crowd,” a key constituency.

O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms. This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Are Matthews and Fineman so infused with GOP propaganda that after six years of Republican rule, the total consumption of a large budget surplus accumulated by a Democratic president, and now the biggest deficits in the nation’s history that they still believe that the Democrats are feckless with the economy while the Republicans are the good stewards? Still???

What does it take to shake these people out of their torpor? Cheney admitted it outright. The evidence is irrefutable. Republicans don’t give a damn about deficits except as a weapon with which to hit Democrats over the head when they are in the majority. Every time the GOP gets into power they loot the treasury like drunken pirates and run up huge debts for somebody else to pay. The record for the past 26 years is clear.

Democrats believe that budget deficits are sometimes necessary when an economy needs a boost or to fund long term projects that require borrowing money. It’s straight up Keynesian economics, nothing fancy. Otherwise, they believe in paying as you go. Republicans believe that deficits are “their due” and that “bridges to nowhere” are the spoils.

The 1994 revolution that gave Republicans control of the House produced a seismic shift in federal spending, moving tens of billions of dollars from Democratic to GOP districts, an Associated Press analysis shows.

Rather than pork-barrel projects for new GOP districts, the change was driven mostly by Republican policies that moved spending from poor rural and urban areas to the more affluent suburbs and GOP-leaning farm country, the computer analysis showed.

The result was an average of $612 million more in federal spending last year for congressional districts represented by Republicans than for those represented by Democrats, the analysis found. That translates into more business loans and farm subsidies, and fewer public housing grants and food stamps.

“There is an old adage,” said House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.). “To the victor goes the spoils.”

Yet, if Democrats ever gain control of the political system, guys like Matthews and Fineman will be out there tut-tutting and nit-picking, falling back on same the fetid, moldy slogans about Democratic “taxing and spending.” And I’m sure they’ll call them immoral even as they try to put the fiscal house back in order after the GOP criminal gang came through and destroyed the place. These deficits will not disappear like magic — and the punditocrisy will help the Republicans fight the necessary hard decisions every step of the way.

If the pundits can’t even get this one right, after all we’ve seen, then they are truly hopeless. Their knee-jerk criticism of Democrats under all circumstances is a major impediment to decent, competent governance and our democracy is in danger because of it. The Republicans would never have been able to get away with what they’ve done without the so-called liberal media regurgitating GOP platitudes and calling it analysis for the last six years. It’s only been in the face of such jarring cognitive dissonance as we’ve seen with Iraq and Katrina that that they’ve adjusted their robo-rhetoric at all.

If Democrats win in November, look for an immediate return to the standard critique of Democrats and an almost instant nostalgia for the “non-partisan” days of total GOP rule. They haven’t questioned their assumptions in decades and they aren’t going to start now.

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Faithful Republicans

by digby

It is taken as an article of faith (pardon the pun) that the evangelical base of the GOP is upset about this Foley scandal and will fail to turn up at the polls this November as a result. I wonder.

This article in the NY Times asks the question and finds that evangelicals don’t hold the Republican party responsible:

“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”

The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.

Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

[…]

But as far as culpability in the Foley case, Mr. Dunn said, House Republicans may benefit from the evangelical conception of sin. Where liberals tend to think of collective responsibility, conservative Christians focus on personal morality. “The conservative Christian audience or base has this acute moral lens through which they look at this, and it is very personal,” Mr. Dunn said. “This is Foley’s personal sin.”

To a person, those interviewed said that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois should resign if he knew of the most serious claims against Mr. Foley and failed to stop him. They said the degree of Mr. Hastert’s responsibility remained to be seen. Many said the issue had not changed their view of Congress because, in their opinion, it could not sink any lower.

But all also noted that the swift Democratic efforts to broaden the scandal to Mr. Hastert and other Republicans had added more than a whiff of partisanship to the stink of the scandal.

[…]

Brian Courtney, a Republican-leaning sales manager attending the concert, said the Foley affair had led to “the kind of mudslinging one would expect to see at an election time like this.” He added that he was paying closer attention to the “values and character” of the candidates, and that he would probably vote Republican again.

This is just anecdotal, but it rings true to me. These people have a faith based worldview and they have given over their faith to the Republican Party. And the Republican Party has found a way to have it both ways with these people — there is no “collective responsibility” for their party, but they are able to assign collective responsibility to Democrats, liberals and secularists for destroying the culture. It’s a good trick.

As for the election, a lot depends on the pastors and as far as I can tell, most of them are totally in the tank. Certainly the big ones are. And if this is any indication, the regular pastors are right where the GOP wants them:

David Thomas, a father taking his family to the concert, said that he, too, was leaning toward voting Republican and that the scandal only reinforced his conservative Christian convictions. “That is the problem we have in society,” Mr. Thomas said. “Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a ‘right’ to do whatever.”

In an interview on Friday, Pastor Anne Gimenez of the 15,000-member Rock Church here said the scandal “doesn’t change the issues we are voting on,” like abortion, public expression of religion and same-sex marriage.

The church has been actively registering parishioners and reminding them to vote. “Every Sunday already,” Ms. Gimenez said.

We can hope that the Christian Right finds this state of affairs just uncomfortable enough that they will be too busy to volunteer and forget to vote on election day. Those voices don’t give me a lot of hope that they will. Evangelicals are just as full of shit and able to rationalize the failure of their party as other Republicans are. They’ll do as they’re told.

If there is any group that may really abandon the GOP, I think it’s the suburban women, who are seeing a bunch of depraved middle aged politicians sending young men to Iraq to get killed for political reasons and looking the other way when young men are being preyed upon in the halls of congress — and suburban men, who are watching the out of control spending, the cronyism, the botched war and the loss of international prestige.

I’m basing this on nothing but my gut instincts so it’s about as meaningful as a ouija board, but I truly do have doubts that a group of people whose worldview is shaped by authoritarianism will abandon the party unless their leaders do. I see no evidence that the leaders of the Religious Right are ready to withdraw from worldly concerns.

Update: Here’s one reason why I don’t think the pastors are going to lead their flock away from politics:

In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.

[…]

As a result of these special breaks, religious organizations of all faiths stand in a position that American businesses — and the thousands of nonprofit groups without that “religious” label — can only envy. And the new breaks come at a time when many religious organizations are expanding into activities — from day care centers to funeral homes, from ice cream parlors to fitness clubs, from bookstores to broadcasters — that compete with these same businesses and nonprofit organizations.

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SOS

by digby

One of the things we all must be thinking about (if not talking about) as we go into the mid-term elections is whether the voting machines, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, are going to thwart an honest outcome. There is no doubt that in the last two presidential elections, the state voting apparatuses in Ohio and Florida made the difference between Democrats winning or losing. The former Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who is now considered a laughing stock and an embarrassment, was the person (supposedly) who made several key decisions about deadlines and statutory interpretation that ran out the clock on the Florida recount. The decisions about voting machines and voter roll purges are made by secretaries of state, across the country. These important decisions being in the hands of Republican hacks like Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell is a real problem.

If you don’t know jack about the Secretary of State race in your state, check out this handy web-site that will tell you what you need to know. Pass it on to your friends. It’s just possible that the office of Secretary of State (or other elections officials) may be the best political donation and the most important vote you cast this year.

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The PoMo President

by digby

Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington’s legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.

Here’s how he put it a couple of years ago:

“After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, ‘Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,’” says Woodward.

“And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

It would, of course, be preferable for him to avoid facing a Democratic congress but even then, he probably assumes he can hold them off long enough for him to leave office — at which point the debate will be about “ending the partisanship” and that will be that. The thing that moves most powerful leaders as they see the end of their reign, their place in history, is irrelevant to this man.

His mind is so immature, and he is so extremely irresponsible, that he truly doesn’t seem to understand the ramifications of his actions. His words indicate that he sees “history” as the ultimate get out of jail free card. (“I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma.”) Perhaps he truly does believe that he’s God’s instrument who has no real will of his own and therefore no culpability — or maybe he’s just a nihilist at heart. Whatever his reasons, he seems to have adopted a shallow PoMo-style philosophy that everything is debatable down through time so it doesn’t matter what he does. Missing the point as usual, he hears the old Keynes phrase, “in the long run we’ll all be dead” and finds solace in it.

Maybe Lynn Cheney should have a chat with him about this. After all, she wrote a book on the subject:

TWQ: Tell us about what you call the attack on truth in our schools and colleges?

CHENEY: That was really the underlying topic of my last book, Telling the Truth. It’s postmodernism, the notion that there is no such thing as truth. There’s only your version of events and my version and Charles’ version and Harry’s version, and the one that prevails will be that of whoever is the most powerful. This seems to fly in the face of the way scholarship has proceeded for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Uh huh.

“How can a democracy hope to choose its leaders wisely,” Lynne Cheney asked in her 1996 book [Telling The Truth], “if time and again what their campaigns offer us are artful fictions?”

The simplest way to understand Republicans is to use the quick rule of thumb that whatever they criticize Democrats for is what they are doing. Lynn Cheney and other rightwing “intellectuals” created an entire industry devoted to attacking Democrats for moral and epistemic relativism. It became an article of faith that liberals had no values and believed in nothing — an image that sticks to us like flypaper, even today. Yet nobody has practiced relativism more successfully than the modern Republican party. The Republican President of the United States believes that truth is fungible and history is debated like a highway bill on the floor of the senate — so it doesn’t really matter what he does. It’s a clever way to rationalize ignorance, incompetence and failure but it’s an extremely dangerous way for the most powerful nation on earth to conduct itself.

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The October Surprise

by tristero

Well! Rove certainly had me fooled, that’s for sure. I had no idea that the secret weapon Republicans were planning to deploy against Democrats was one made in North Korea. But there it is.

Get it? A nuclear North Korea requires an American party in power that is completely serious about national and international security. And up until around the start of the Foley scandal,* most Americans thought that was the Republican party.

Surprise, Karl. Ain’t gonna work this time. [UPDATE: Am I suggesting that US intelligence had advance warning from, say, this summer, that a NoKo nuke test was imminent? Yes, I think that is more than plausible and that the Republicans were counting on the alarm that would create in the US to accrue to their benefit. Can I prove it and would I be willing to admit I was wrong if it turned out that the nuke test took the US by surprise? No. Yes.]

Josh Marshall has a pretty good take on how hard it will be, post Foley, for most Americans to escape the obvious conclusion that NoKo was a monumental Republican/Bush fuckup :

Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But [Bush] wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.

So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.

Indeed, from the moment of the initial cave, the White House began acting as though North Korea was already a nuclear power (something that was then not at all clear) to obscure the fact that the White House had chosen to twiddle its thumbs and look the other way as North Korea became a nuclear power. Like in Bush in Iraq and Hastert and Foley, the problem was left to smolder in cover-up and denial. Until now.

Hawks and Bush sycophants will claim that North Korea is an outlaw regime. And no one should romanticize or ignore the fact that it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world with a history of belligerence, terrorist bombing, missile proliferation and a lot else. They’ll also claim that the North Koreans were breaking the spirit if not the letter of the 1994 agreement by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program. And that’s probably true too.

But facts are stubborn things.

The bomb-grade plutonium that was on ice from 1994 to 2002 is now actual bombs. Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Basically, I think Josh has it exactly right here. But I can’t help thinking – and this is not snark, ladies, gentlemen and Republicans, this is serious – that Marshall’s being overly optimistic. Let’s read that last bit again:

Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.

Not for the Bush administration.

Oh, I know Josh is talking about “any policy towards Korea’s nuke ambitions” but it doesn’t matter. Wherever you turn with Bush, it is always difficult to imagine a worse result from any of their policies. But they always seem to surprise us and manage ever more catastrophic outcomes.

Could anyone imagine that the Bush administration policy towards natural disaster would be so inept they would fail to respond with even minimal effectiveness to Katrina? Or that a US president would be so focused on bogus threats he’d receive a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US” and not put the entire country on high alert? Could anyone imagine a worse solution for the millions of patients that would benefit from stem-cell-based treatments than for the United States to cripple research with a policy that bans federal funds for new stem cell lines? Or a worse politics for an American democracy than pandering to the most ignorant constituency in the country – the true believers in the Dobsons, the Falwells, and the Robertsons? A constituency so fucking dumb that when their preachers tell them the most dangerous issue facing the country is two guys who love each other, they actually believe it, then propose and pass laws that advocate bigotry and hate? Could anyone possibly imagine an ideology so idiotic that it actually takes seriously the likes of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Ahmad Chalabi, Paul Bremer, or Richard Cheney?

It is a simple fact that the most creative people in the world are the incompetent. They find unique ways of making life hell which are far, far beyond anything the rest of us can imagine. And so, the kind of fiascos that Joshua Micah Marshall – and you, and I – find difficult ever to imagine are a piece of cake for George W. Bush to create.

If Josh really thinks this spectacular screwup on North Korea is the worst result imaginable from a Bush policy towards NoKo (or anything else), I’d like to remind him that Bush has 833 days left to generate far worse ones.** And I for one am certain that Bush and Co. can, and will.

* It truly is remarkable how often American politics is mediated by things like sex scandals which are far from central to the actual concerns of the time. If there hasn’t yet been one, there’s a doctoral thesis or two to be written on the subject.

**According to my Bush Countdown Keychain, a birthday gift from my daughter.

Bring It On, Carlson

by tristero

If Tucker Carlson has any information about any other congresspeople messing around with pages, it is his legal obligation to report it immediately to the appropriate authorities.

But until he does and action is taken, I call bullshit. I say Carlson’s merely trying to distract and confuse the American people.

Why? Because he’s a cheap Republican operative with a megaphone who obeys his overlords and puts their desire for power of all kinds -including sexual domination – far above the safety of American children, not to mention the duty of a free press to keep its citizens properly informed.

This is AN EXCLUSIVELY REPUBLICAN SCANDAL involving pedophilia, gay sex, cybersex, lying, spinning sexual harassment and statutory rape to make it seem unimportant , and illegal cover-ups at the highest levels of the government. (Let’s not forget what position Hastert holds: he is two heartbeats away from the presidency. )

Rather than spreading utterly baseless rumors, Carlson should be denouncing – unequivocally – the morality of a leadership that would try to minimize the seriousness of Foley’s behavior or place the blame on everyone but themselves. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that declares the unspeakable suffering in Iraq a comma of history. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that led to the failures of Katrina and the denial of responsibility. Precisely the same kind of sleazy behavior that led to the nelgect that enabled a group of lunatics to crash planes into the Pentagon, into the World Trade Center, and into a Pennsylvania field. And the denial of responsibility.

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Time Mag

by tristero

Open Letter To Right Wing Bloggers

by tristero

Dear Right Wing Bloggers,

Thank you very much for trying to focus the blogosphere’s attention on the cancelling of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo in Berlin out of fears that it would infuriate Muslims. You are absolutely right: It is an outrage for the opera company to have caved.

Now, here’s your next cause celebre which is conveniently taking place right here in the USA. I’m sure you will loudly join me in condemning Regal Entertainment Group for their inexcusable cowardice, their contempt for free speech, and their utter disrespect for Western ideals of artistic expression.

I can only assume that if you do not oppose the banning of “Death of a President” as forcefully as you opposed the cancelling of Idomeneo you are not serious about championing free speech but instead cherry-picking your issues for maximum political impact.

Love,

tristero

Divided Families

by poputonian

Anyone who missed Olbermann’s powerful chronicle about President Bush’s most recent spate of lies should visit Crooks and Liars for a look-see.
Olbermann said:

And lastly tonight, a Special Comment, about — lying.
…
The President of the United States — unbowed, undeterred, and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: The Democrats.
…
Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona Congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.”

The hell they did.

177 Democrats opposed the President’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.
…
Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind-reader.

“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the President said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”
…
It defies belief that this President and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

One of the things that bothers me about neo-Republicanism and its entire foundation of lies, is the division it has created within families. I can hardly speak to my wingnut brother anymore, and we can’t speak at all about politics. We had numerous heated debates in the first couple of years following the invasion of Iraq, but he would counter every sourceable evidence I put forward with a lie he had been fed by Fox News, Rush Phlegmball, or The President — people who really have no honor whatsoever.

When I informed an uncle (in his sixties) about PNAC as evidence of pre-meditation of the war in Iraq, he asked me with complete and genuine concern if I had been getting information from the Internet, as if the Internet was a big tub of lies, with no sources to back up any assertion. His source of information about Iraq? He admitted it: newspaper editorials and the aforementioned Mr. Phlegmball.

It seems every political debate conducted in the family setting ends in emotional turmoil. If you’re serious about the politics of death and dying, your own flesh and blood are the ones you most want to convince of how wrong and dishonorable the current administration is. But convincing the last thirty percent of deeply entrenched wingnuts, even if they’re family, isn’t going to happen given that the current Republican leadership is the most dishonorable lot of American politicians ever. They have institutionalized and legitimated the art of lying to where it is now an officially accepted practice. I really think they see lying as an important part of the political gamesmanship, the country be damned.

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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