THIS MODERN WORLD

According to Rush Limbaugh, the real culprits in the Foley scandal are the Democrats.

… more here.

Sure, it may be unfair, possibly to both men. But you can’t deny this pairing of Bernard Law and Dennis Hastert (by Jeffrey Feldman’s Frameshop) has some real visual zing.

(If it’s slipped your mind, Bernard Law was forced to step down as Archbishop of Boston for helping cover up the molestation of children by priests.)

By now, you probably know about Rep Mark Foley stepping down after being revealed to be a sexual predator. Foley wasn’t just caught sending creepy emails to underage boy(s), but some sexually explicit IMs. You’ve also probably heard last night’s revelation that some members of the House leadership were aware of the emails (at least) for almost a year and did nothing about it. But unless you’ve been glued to your computer all day, you may have missed all of the twists and turns the scandal has taken today. It’s every man for himself as the GOP leadership is pointing fingers at each other. Josh Marshall, who’s been leading on this story, sums up things well :

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.
. . .
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.

As well they should be. Their careers are probably over at a minimum. There may be legal liability as well. And depending on how deep the cover-up goes, this could very well bring down the entire GOP with them. People who vote on “moral values” probably aren’t going to like the fact that their party leaders have been covering up for a guy who asked an underage boy to “get a ruler and measure it for me”. This is a milder form of the same sickness that brought down Cardinal Bernard Law and it’ll bring down any Republican who sat on this information as well. As it should.

At the end of a rough week for everything good and nice, Dennis Perrin has combed through YouTube to bring us some of the best sketches from Mr. Show, Exit 57, The Dana Carvey Show, and Fridays.

I don’t know about you, but I could use a laugh. Have you ever wondered why moral and political flexibility is seen as a “maverick” trait in John McCain, but it makes Joe Lieberman a craven DINO? Either way, cowardly or courageous, here’s a song for all the two-faced politicians in Washington :

If nothing else, incidents like yesterday’s Senate cave-in on torture should end silly questions like “What are you going to do if the Democrats win? You won’t have anything to complain about.” As long as there’s money in politics, bigots in the voting booth, and fools in D.C., there will always be something to complain about.