It’s getting harder to believe House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s story that he first heard about former Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s predatory behavior toward teen pages only last year in relation to Foley’s “over-friendly” e-mails. As the Washington Post reported Monday, as far back as 2000, Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., knew that pages were complaining about Foley’s creepy attentions, and he had confronted Foley about it.
According to Newsweek, two congressional sources confirm that in 2002 or 2003, former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham informed Hastert’s office about his boss’s reckless behavior after an incident in which an inebriated Foley showed up at the pages’ dorm.
That didn’t get Hastert’s attention?
Meanwhile, a Newsweek poll now shows that 52 percent of Americans think Hastert was aware of Foley’s misbehavior and tried to cover it up. And 42 percent now say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to uphold moral values; 39 percent still favor Republicans.
Bad news for the GOP.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Last week, a U.S. special envoy delivered a tough statement to Pyongyang: “We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea.”
Sunday, Kim Jong Il gave his answer. The nuclear test North Korea announced Monday expands to eight — nine if you count Israel — the number of countries to openly test a nuclear weapon. As the international reaction shows, Kim’s paranoid, bellicose North Korea is the very last nation anyone wanted in that particular club.
So how did it come to this? Some will say the Clinton administration was snookered when it traded aid for an ostensible shutdown of the North’s nuclear program in 1994. Others will point out that Bush’s “axis of evil” remarks in 2002 — and hard line since — have left Kim desperate to save face.
But it’s also a time of soul-searching for North Korea’s neighbors: Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, who have generally shrugged off each new provocation as something for the Americans to deal with. Now even China — Pyongyang’s source for nearly every necessity — is expressing condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council is considering a resolution for sanctions. But any punishment must now be weighed against the North’s response. Kim pushed things this far because he calculated he had little to lose. What might he do with nothing to lose?
Posted by Dave Knadler
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., has been a fierce defender of President Bush’s judicial nominees in the past. And the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Brownback serves, already has approved of the nomination of Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Janet T. Neff to the federal bench. So Brownback should stop grandstanding about Neff’s participation four years ago in a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony, which he inexplicably thinks might have been “an illegal marriage ceremony.” We get it — Brownback doesn’t want gays to be lawfully wed. Lucky for him, gay marriage is already banned in 45 states and by federal law. Letting Neff’s nomination go through won’t change that.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan is no fan of Bob Woodward’s books, which she describes as slipshod and opportunistic. But she praised his latest book, “State of Denial,” which she describes as “serious, densely, even exhaustively, reported, and a real contribution to history.” She agrees that the Bush administration made huge mistakes in Iraq, such as disbanding the Iraqi army. But she is more forgiving than Woodward about the motives. She wrote:
“Was the White House, from the beginning, in a state of denial? I doubt denial is the word. They were in a state of unknowingness. (I have come to give greater credence to the importance, in the age of terror, among our leaders, of having served in the military. For you need personal experience that you absorbed deep down in your bones, or a kind of imaginative wisdom that tells you even though you were never there what war is like, what invasion is, what building a foreign nation entails.) They were in a state of conviction: They really thought Saddam had those WMDs. (Yes, so did Bill Clinton, so did The New Yorker, so did I, and so likely did you. But Mr. Bush moved on, insisted on, intelligence that was faulty, inadequate.) They were in a state of propulsion: 9/11 had just wounded a great nation. Strong action was needed.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Convicted terrorists housed in federal prisons can still conduct business around the world because of a lax system of reviewing inmate mail. In a report by the Justice Department, inspector general Glenn A. Fine of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons stated that federal prisons are understaffed and untrained to analyze mail coming in and out of prisons. The three terrorists responsible for the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center apparently were able to recruit the alleged terrorists for the Madrid bombings in March 2004.
The report reveals the limitations of the penal system in handling this type of criminal, especially when no one can read Arabic.
Posted by Angie Holladay
The following satirical headlines some from borowitzreport.com:
FOLEY BLAMES BEHAVIOR ON POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION; Latest Excuse Raises Eyebrows, Doubts
BUSH URGES USING WOODWARD’S BOOK AS ALTERNATIVE FUEL SOURCE; Burning Book Could Wean U.S. From Middle Eastern Oil, President Says
LEWINSKY MULLS ‘08 RUN; Former White House Intern Offers Self as Alternative to Hillary
BUSH ACCUSES SADDAM OF POISONING AMERICA’S SPINACH; Calls Vegetables the New Front in War on Terror
MEL GIBSON APOLOGIZES TO DOOMED MAYANS FOR LATEST REMARK; Embattled Actor Reaches Out to Doomed Mayan Community
POLL: IN MATCH-UP BETWEEN HILLARY AND KERRY, MOST DEMOCRATS WOULD CHOOSE SUICIDE; Survey Spells Trouble for Dems, Pollster Says
FOX NEWS OFFERS POPE HIS OWN SHOW; ‘The Pope Benedict XVI Factor’ to Debut Next Week
ROCKET SCIENTISTS NOT AS SMART AS ORIGINALLY THOUGHT; New Findings in Study Commissioned by Brain Surgeons
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
