House Speaker Denny Hastert's staff knew in 2005 that Rep. Mark Foley had had inappropriate e-mail contact with young pages. They say they told the Speaker in the spring of 2006. Hastert defends his inaction by saying he didn't know the contact had sexual, as opposed to just over-friendly tones to it. Yet, it was serious enough for Foley to be warned about it. Saturday, Hastert moved for a criminal probe.

Hastert moved for a criminal probe because his hand was forced by publicity and by other Congressmen refusing to take the fall alone. Had Hastert become aware of the explicit nature (pdf) of the e-mails through the Congressional grapevine without the press finding out, do you really think he would have called for a probe a month before the November elections? Of course not. He would have sat on it and allowed the creep to be re-elected and maintain his committee leadership positions.

There's more that defies credulity regarding Hastert's knowledge. Why was he told in the spring of 2006 but not the fall of 2005? How could John Boehner, Tom Reynolds, Rodney Alexander, the Clerk of the House and others know but not Hastert? Why wasn't a criminal probe launched then? Why wasn't Foley pressured to resign in the Spring of 2006?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat

Mark Halperin, of ABC's The Note fame, actually seems to get it better than just about all Democrats, until he proves he is just as stupid, or cowardly:

[M]any . . . believe that the Republicans' strategy of fighting from the base has worn out its welcome. Therefore, this view holds, a campaign that appeals to moderates, one waged from the center, is the only way for the party to maintain control of the House and Senate. Interesting theory, but it probably won't work. If the Republicans want to keep their majorities in the midterm elections, their best chance is to stick with the old, base-driven Bush-Rove electoral strategy.

Why? In the eyes of the Bush team, America is a polarized country, one where there are fundamental divisions worth fighting over. A president -- and a party -- should not worry about slender margins of victory or legislative control. The goal is to accumulate just enough power to use the energies and passions of the base to effect ideological change in the nation's laws and institutions, even if -- sometimes especially if -- those changes might be at odds with majority public opinion.

Broder? You listening? Democrats, you listening? More stuff to listen to on the flip.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Here's another reason to take the rogue Dems to task. Look what they have wrought:

Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."

Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.

. . . Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.

Sad but true. And it hurts. Morally and politically.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

In a short note, Chris Bowers takes umbrage at the charge, apparently leveled at him, that he has been "mollified," which I took to mean, coopted:

I'm not "mollified" because the majority of Democrats are with us on pretty much every issue. I just don't think it is fair to argue that Democratic Party in general was in favor of torture, or any other piece of legislation where the majority of Democratic elected officials voted against it. I hate that lazy thinking that because some Democrats voted for something, somehow it is OK to say that Democrats in general were complicit with it. And I stand by that.

Well, I think it is ridiculous to argue Chris has been "mollified"/ coopted. But it is not ridiculous to argue that Chris' reaction to the Democratic performance on the atrocity known as the Detainee Bill was wrong. Of course he was not alone. At the Daily Kos community, calls to "calm down" were rampant on Thursday. And those calls were wrong too. I'll explain why I think so on the flip.

A plane with 155 aboard went down in the Amazon jungle in Brazil yesterday. Today, the wreckage was spotted, and authorities in Brazil say it's impossible anyone survived.

The plane was en route from Manaus to Rio. I took that flight in the late 70's, spending a week in Manaus after a week in Rio. Manaus is a top tourist destination. It has a fascinating history. I remember staying at the Tropical Hotel Manaus which reminded me of the Taj Mahal (which I've never seen, only imagined) with hallway floors that were all marble and huge ceilings. The outdoor zoo was incredible. [Click on the "Manaus" section under destinations.]

Just another thing to love about Amsterdam, a city where all data packets are created equal.

by TChris

This is what happened when "Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, and Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor of the State Department, urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies":

[The recommendation] so angered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that his aides gathered up copies of the document and had at least some of them shredded.

"It was not in step with the secretary of defense or the president," said one Defense Department official who, like many others, would discuss the internal deliberations only on condition of anonymity. "It was clear that Rumsfeld was very unhappy."

England and Zelikow also wanted the administration to obey the Geneva Conventions. Nothing ticks off Rumsfeld like these crazy liberal notions of following the law or respecting the other branches of government.

by TChris

Today's depressing read: Ohio documents the last hours of the condemned.

After Ohio resumed executions in 1999, the state began documenting prisoners' last days down to the minute and second. Twenty-three convicted murderers have died by injection.

The executions are carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where guards maintain a running computer log from the time a condemned inmate arrives at the prison in the Appalachian foothills to the moment a funeral director leaves with the body a day later.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

John Aravosis notes E&P's essential post on the explosive revelation in Woodward's new book:

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser. " For months," Woodward writes, "Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy... that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.... Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

"Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? "

. . . The result? "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting though to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off . President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies." "Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long....

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Hypocrisy and distasteful whining from Lieberman Again:

Lieberman's campaign spokeswoman, Tammy Sun - "Joe Lieberman is running for Senate because he's trying to change the kind of partisan name-calling apparent in Wes Clark's recent statement supporting Ned Lamont ," she said. "This is just more of the same negative attacks from the Lamont campaign."

Joe Lieberman, when being a partisan Democrat suited his purposes:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) accused [Wesley] Clark of making a "journey of political convenience, not conviction" after Clark described in the debate how he had become a Democrat after supporting Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon and just two years ago praising President Bush at a Republican dinner when Democrats were fighting Bush's tax cuts. . . . "I was fighting that reckless economic strategy [of the administration] while Wes Clark was working to forward the Republican agenda by raising money for the Republican Party," Lieberman said.

Joe is truly unprincipled and shameless. A man of no honor.

The Democrats in the Senate fail us once again. After Thursday's approval of the torture - denial of habeas bill, Friday they voted to approve the House bill to build a 700 mile fence across the border.

House Republicans, fearing a voter backlash, had opposed any approach that smacked of amnesty and chose instead to focus on border security in advance of the elections, passing the fence bill earlier this month. With time running out, the Senate acquiesced despite its bipartisan passage of a broader bill in May.

Congress also passed a separate $34.8 billion homeland security spending bill that contained an estimated $21.3 billion for border security, including $1.2 billion for the fence and associated barriers and surveillance systems.

Politics suck. No one has a spine. Everything is about compromise. If the minority party wants any of their bills to advance to a hearing or a vote, they have to capitulate to the party in power on their issues. I learned this first-hand many times, the last time being on a visit to Congress in 2003 to advocate for the Innocence Protection bill. Congressman Sensenbrenner's aide made it clear that if Democrats didn't cave on a bill he wanted -- the Feeney Amendment which would increase federal sentences -- neither the IP bill, nor any bill the Democrats sought to advance, would ever make it to a vote. They controlled the calendar. Congressman Bill Delahunt and Sen. Patrick Leahy's staff confirmed this.

I wondered then and I wonder now, who has the stomach for this? I certainly don't. I'm trained as an advocate, fight to the finish, if you lose, at least you fought the good fight.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Joe's Pajama Party:

SIMON: -- on this. That if you do win -- and you're doing well at the moment -- if you do win as an Independent, you will still then become a Democrat, stay as a Democrat and caucus with the Democrats.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. The critical thing is to caucus with the Democrats because if you don't caucus with a party, you don't have the opportunity to hold your seniority in the committee assignments that you've got and that's important to the folks back home

So he caucuses with Dems not because he believes in Democratic values, but for "seniority." No wonder the Bush and the GOP thinks he'll switch:

George W. Bush moved a step closer to Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman's re-election bid in Connecticut as an independent candidate when Tom Kuhn, the president's college roommate and close friend, co-sponsored a Lieberman fund-raising luncheon Thursday in downtown Washington. . . . Republicans backing him against antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee, hope for a change of heart by Lieberman.

More than hope looks like.