(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Just unbelievable, Drudge is sick:

Clip #1. And if anything, these kids are less innocent -- these 16 and 17 year-old beasts...and I've seen what they're doing on YouTube and I've seen what they're doing all over the internet -- oh yeah -- you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on! The kids are trying to get this out of him. We haven't got the whole story on this.

Clip #2: You could say "well Drudge, it's abuse of power, a congressman abusing these impressionable, young 17 year-old beasts, talking about their sex lives with a grown man, on the internet." Because you have to remember, those of us who have seen some of the transcripts of these nasty instant messages. This was two ways, ladies and gentlemen. These kids were playing Foley for everything he was worth. Oh yeah. Oh, I haven't...they were talking about how many times they'd masturbated, how many times they'd done it with their girlfriends this weekend...all these things and these "innocent children." And this "poor" congressman sitting there typing, "oh am I going to get any," you know?

Words fail me. But not Atrios, who points to the sick Media. C&L has the tape.

Update from Last Night in Little Rock, 8:48 pm CT

More doo-doo for Hastert:

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., says she was not told about suggestive e-mails that a Florida congressman sent to a 16-year-old former Capitol page, even though she is one of three representatives who oversee the page program....

Several high-ranking House Republicans have known about the e-mails for months, including Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the House Page Board.

Late last year, Shimkus met with Foley about the e-mails. But Shimkus never told Capito or the board's other member, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., about them until Friday, according to all three.

"There's only three of us on the page board. I feel that we should have been informed," Capito said. "I'm absolutely disgusted by what I'm hearing. I was caught totally unaware."

[Charleston Gazette]

by TChris

Tony Snow's attempt to spin Mark Foley's conduct as involving "simply naughty e-mails" (reported by TalkLeft here) is silly on its face, but will be even harder to sell if, as ABC reports today, "Mark Foley's Internet messages also include repeated efforts to get the underage recipient to rendezvous with him at night." Snow's remarks reflect, as John Nichols reports, the GOP's state of denial concerning the Republican cover-up of Foley's transgressions.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Tom Maguire is selling black helicopters on GOP Predatorgate:

Color me skeptical. Maybe the blog author was an unwitting catspaw, but I would want some assurance that this was not simply a successful attempt to promote a story that wasn't quite ready for the Mainstream Media by laundering it through some blogs (and wasn't that Matt Drudge's ecological niche, back in the day?).

Actually, color you a GOP sycophant who has gone around the bend. But tinfoil has always been largely the province of the Right, 9/11/Diebolders notwithstanding. It penetrates the Right's "mainstream" so readily. Remember Clinton's cocaine ring? Vince Foster's murder? Those stories ended up on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. I guess Maguire is gunning for a slot.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill to grow hemp. Here's his letter to the Assembly explaining his decision. Snippets:

I would like to support the expansion of a new agricultural commodity in this State. Unfortunately, I am very concerned that this bill would give legitimate growers a false sense of security and a belief that production of "industrial hemp" is somehow a legal activity under federal law.

Say hello to Cursor's Bring It On, a great compilation of links for following the 2006 midterm elections.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

UPDATE: Meeting was independently reported in a 2002 Time article, H/T commenter Croatoan, see extended update below.

Now Secretary of State and then National Security Advisor Condi Rice can't believe how incompetent she is and was:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.

It is incomprehensible. And sadly, completely believable. Remember the title of the August 6, 2001 PDB?

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US

Condi ignored that too. More on the flip.

Think Progess has the video of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow on CNN this morning:

This morning on CNN, Soledad O'Brien asked Tony Snow why "any communication between a 16-year-old and a congressman" didn't "raise red flags -- major, massive red flags" with Speaker Dennis Hastert and others who have known about the communications for months.

Snow responded, "I hate to tell you, but it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails."

Over at GMA, according to the Note, here's what George Stephanopolous had to say: If Republicans knew about the x-rated e-mails, Game Over.

Via Crooks and Liars, Rolling Stone has a very long feature article on Omar Khadr, who as I wrote here, here and here, comes from a long line of al Qaeda fighters and has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since he was 15.

As Jeanne of Body and Soul wrote a few years ago:

The problem is, Omar Khadr is as much a victim of these people as a member of the family. He's eighteen years old. When he was captured in Afghanistan, he was fifteen -- a child turned into a soldier by parents from hell. And our government's response to this victim of child abuse was to abuse him further.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Howard Dean is a controversial figure in our Democratic Party. I did not support his Presidential run - I think he was and would be a flawed Presidential candidate. I did support his run for DNC Chairman, I thought he could bring an energy and a grassroots following to our Party, which was sorely in need of it.

But I think Dean has brought a vision that is as valuable as that energy - and that vision is described thusly in Matt Bai's NYTimes Sunday Magazine piece:

the Democratic Party needed to be decentralized, so that grass-roots Democrats built relationships with their state parties but had little to do with Washington at all. "State parties are not the intermediaries," he said. "If I get them trained right, they're the principals."

In other words, I suggested, he was talking about "devolving" the national Democratic Party, in the same way that Reagan and other conservative ideologues had always talked about devolving the federal government and returning power to the states. "That's what I want to do," Dean said firmly.

Matt Bai misinterpets this vision as an attack on the national party structure - an attempt to "starve the beast" to irrelevance, Bai called it. I think it is quite the opposite. It is an attempt to renew the relevance of the Democratic Party as a whole, which is much more than the DNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., indeed the heart and soul of the Party is the millions of Democrats across the nation - our Big Tent. Let me explain why I think Dean's vision is the right one on the flip.

Mark your calendars. October 5 has been declared a day of "No Work. No School. Protest in the Streets."

On October 2 and 5, New York City will be the site of a protest against the military commissions/torture bill, organized by The World Can't Wait.

MONDAY October 2, 7:30PM Cooper Union Great Hall, 7th St and 3rd Ave.,
THURSDAY, October 5 - Rally at 12 noon to 47th & 1st Avenue, Dag Hammerskjold Plaza, March downtown on Second Ave, 4pm, RALLY at Union Square.

On Monday, Oct 2, there will be an emergency citywide meeting in NYC, responding to passage of the Military Commissions Bill. Speakers include OLYMPIA DUKAKIS, MARK RUFFALO (reading statement from SEAN PENN). RENO, MALACHY MCCOURT, CRAIG MURRAY, ex-British ambassador to Uzbekistan who exposed US and UK use torture, BILL GOODMAN, lawyer for Guantanamo prisoners will explain the dire implications of the passage the new TORTURE bill.

The meeting will prepare people for protests on Thursday, October 5 called by World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime. On that day, in over 150 cities and towns across the country, people will walk out of school, take off work, gather in town squares, and MARCH, declaring their intention to bring the Bush program to a halt.

An op-ed at USA Today revisits the bloggers' lunch with Bill Clinton, suggesting that Hillary may be using Bill as a blog Ambassador and positing three options for Hillary vis a vis blogs: Ignore them, attack them or co-opt them.

It's not that simple. The first and second suggested options would be fruitless. The third is not possible. Politicans as astute as the Clintons surely know this.

Is it so hard for non-bloggers to believe that commencing a dialogue between politicans and bloggers is a worthwhile endeavor? Talk to us, bring us into the fold, let us know your values and your beliefs. We'll listen. We may or may not agree, but we'll appreciate the overture and respond. Now, is that so hard to fathom?

Update: The author's full article, before being edited and shortened by USA Today is here.