That's what I'm guessing . . .
There's
1) the Foley e-mail scandal,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/wa...syahoo&emc=rss
2) Woodward's book showing Bush and his war to be a huge mess
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit...ard_10-04.html
3) and the usual pile of stuff.
I'm guessing that November will bring a change in congress . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/wa...syahoo&emc=rss
Conservatives Fear Foley Scandal Will Cost Votes
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
Published: October 8, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — Conservatives struggled today to turn back criticism over the Congressional page scandal involving former Representative Mark Foley of Florida, but some said they expected it to prove costly for Republicans in the midterm elections on Nov. 7 and others hinted that Representative J. Dennis Hastert’s future as speaker of the House was unsure.
“You’re going to have marginal candidates who will suffer at the polls,” said Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, on “Fox News Sunday.” But he said he thought it was “premature” for Mr. Hastert to resign, even as Democrats kept up their criticisms that he had acted far too slowly in the matter.
David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United, disagreed with Mr. Perkins, saying, “I just say Dennis Hastert is going to end up not being the next speaker” because he appeared not to heed early warnings about Mr. Foley’s interest in teenage pages.
Taking the offensive, some Republicans sought today to shift blame for the scandal to Democrats who, they suggested, might have known about Mr. Foley’s behavior for months.
“I hope we don’t find out that people sat on information just so they could leak it here a month before the election,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas said on CNN. But he acknowledged that he had no evidence of this.
Some Republicans argued that Mr. Hastert’s resignation would be an extreme remedy.
“Give me a break on this resignation stuff,” Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina said on CNN. “President Bill Clinton actually had sex with an intern in the White House — he didn’t resign.”
Other conservatives were hoping the matter would simply die out — at least in local newspapers.
Such scandals “have to be fed daily,” said Patrick Buchanan, the conservative commentator and former presidential candidate, adding that this one could fade within a week. But if new information emerges, Mr. Buchanan said on CNN, “it will continue, it will deepen and it will worsen.”
The scandal has jolted Republicans battling to retain control of the House and Senate. Political analysts from both parties say the scandal has placed at least five more Republican Congressional seats into serious contention, undercutting Republican support among elderly voters, women and religious conservatives.
It produced the extraordinary scene over the weekend of another Republican leader involved in the matter, Representative Thomas Reynolds of New York, airing a campaign ad that included an apology.
“Nobody’s angrier and more disappointed that I didn’t catch his lies,” Mr. Reynolds says in the television commercial. But Mr. Reynolds notes in the ad that he called complaints about Mr. Foley to Mr. Hastert’s attention months ago. “I trusted that others had investigated. Looking back, more should have been done, and for that, I am sorry.”
Other Republicans insisted that if their leaders had known how sordid Mr. Foley’s communications were, they would have acted.
“If Tom Reynolds had had any, any, any indication that Mark Foley was this sick,” Mr. McHenry said, “he would’ve taken Mark Foley’s head out on a pike.”
Democrats have largely stood aside, enjoying Republicans’ intramural squabbling over who knew what when. But in the face of the more aggressive Republican defense today, some lashed back.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware was asked whether Democrats might have long known about Mr. Foley’s actions but leaked information only to affect the midterm elections.
“What a dumb thing to say, what a silly thing to say,” he said on CNN. “Here you’ve got these pages at risk and the answer is, The Democrats did it? The news media did it?”
He predicted that the matter would influence the elections less than the war in Iraq, which he called “a debacle.”
The Foley scandal arose just as Republicans were battling to move beyond other bad news, including pessimistic reports about Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against terror.
On Thursday, a White House aide, Susan B. Ralston, resigned. She was a former aide to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff who later worked for the presidential adviser Karl Rove. A Congressional report said she was a conduit between the two men. Her connections were particularly sensitive after a Congressional report documented hundreds of contacts between Mr. Abramoff and the White House.
As the House Ethics Committee, the Justice Department and Florida law enforcement authorities investigate the Foley scandal, much attention will focus on how soon and how plainly Republican House leaders were warned about Mr. Foley and how strongly they reacted.
“As far back as 2002-2003, there were warning signs” about Mr. Foley, said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who heads House Democrats’ election efforts, said today on the ABC News program “This Week.”
But Representative Adam Putnam of Florida — called to appear on the program with Mr. Emanuel after Mr. Reynolds belatedly bowed out — disagreed. “The speaker’s office acted pro-actively, they acted aggressively” in the Foley matter, he said.
A former aide to Mr. Foley, Kirk Fordham, expects to go before the Ethics Committee this week and testify that he alerted the speaker’s office in 2003 to inappropriate contacts with pages by Mr. Foley, his lawyer said.
Mr. Fordham is also expected to say that Scott Palmer, the longtime chief of staff to Mr. Hastert, later met with Mr. Foley to talk about his troubling interest in pages, said Timothy J. Heaphy, Mr. Fordham’s lawyer.
Mr. Palmer has denied having such a discussion with Mr. Fordham.
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Originally Posted by Tock
