by TChris

Old story, new actor. A Bush administration appointee mismanages his agency, refuses to take responsibility, and resigns without being held accountable. The star of today's story: Carl J. Truscott, former director of the mostly useless Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

[Truscott] violated ethics rules by requiring 20 employees to help his teenage nephew prepare a high school video project, part of a wide-ranging pattern of questionable expenditures on a new ATF headquarters, personal security and other items, according to a report issued yesterday. Carl J. Truscott, who previously served as head of President Bush's security detail at the Secret Service, also took several trips with excessive numbers of ATF agents, including a $37,000 journey to London in September 2005 with eight other employees, according to the report.

Truscott demeaned female employees and wasted money on the construction of ATF's new headquarters (he requested a nifty hidden television in the director's office and another TV in the director's private bathroom). Truscott paid for his excesses by cutting back on vehicle maintenance and bullet proof vests.

In true Republican form, on display so regularly these days, Truscott professed to feel wounded by the report, refused to acknowledge fault, and blamed everyone but himself. (To be fair, he hasn't blamed Clinton ... yet.)

From Big Tent Democrat

Even Professor Reynolds sees this dog wont hunt:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

. . . UPDATE: Reader Anthony Calabrese thinks there's probably less here than the AP story suggests:

I am a long time reader -- also a tax lawyer. While my practice does not involve real estate investments, I think it may be much ado about nothing. Generally, if you transfer property to a company in return for an interest in the company, there is no federal income tax on the transfer. If the company was an LLC (as stated in the media reports), the company was probably a partnership for tax purposes. There would be no LLC level tax as profits and losses would pass through to the partners.

So I can see no real tax issue. The only issue is that Reid might have been hiding his ownership of the property, but holding investment property in an LLC is fairly common in order to protect the owners from torts or bankruptcy. I think this is simply an issue of someone forgetting to file a form.

Good for Professor Reynolds.

As the House readies for hearings Thursday in Foleygate, Sen. John McCain has called for an independent investigation.

Chief witness at Thursday's hearing will be former Foley Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham.

In other news from Foleyville, former Congressional page Jordan Edmund and his lawyer, Stephen Jones, met with members of the U.S. Attorneys' office in OKC for 2 1/2 hours. And Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe says he warned of the House official in charge of the page program of Foley's e-mails to pages back in 2001.

Update: Arianna says Republicans are whistling past the Foley graveyard.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

All of us, Democrats and Independents, and Republicans for that matter, we're all FDR liberals. I have written it here before, liberals won the battle of ideas during the New Deal. Some extremist Republicans want to refight that fight, but no Republican who wants to get elected will fight that fight.

I write this because Harold Meyerson writes an incisive reaction to Markos Moulitsas's theory of Democratic Libertarianism:

Writing from the perspectives of a more New Dealish American liberal and an avowed social democrat (the latter tendency, I need not be reminded, being one that has fewer avowed adherents in America than libertarianism, though more than Trotskyism), I want to make a couple of points that Markos doesn't touch on. First, I want to point out the areas of overlap between libertarianism--or, at least, the preservation of personal liberties--and New Deal democracy, and even social democracy. Second, I want to look again at some of the new libertarianism Markos documents within the Democratic Party--not just where it extends, but where it can't extend, and why it can't.

On the other side, I'll talk more about Meyerson's cans and can'ts, but if I may, it seems to me that what Markos is attempting is a packaging of New Deal policies in attractive garb for those who consider themselves libertarian in outlook. In that sense, I think Markos' exercise is a valuable one. And to consider it an academic discussion of libertarianism is to miss the point.

Think Progress says House Speaker Denny Hastert is now trying to blame others for the Mark Foley mess. From the news conference today,

QUESTION: How satisfied are you with how your staff handled the scandal so far and whether anyone resign in your office?

HASTERT: I understood what my staff told me, and I think from that response, they've handled it as well as they should. However, in 20/20 hindsight, probably you could do everything a little bit better. If there is a problem, if there was a cover up, then we should find that out through the investigation process. They'll be under oath and we'll find out. If they did cover something up, they should not continue to have their jobs. But I -- but I didn't think anybody at any time in my office did anything wrong. I found out about these revelations last Friday. That was the first information I had about it.

News coverage here.

by TChris

Another poll, this one conducted by The NY Times and CBS News, brings more bad news for Republicans. Perhaps the most telling finding:

Americans - including women and suburbanites - are more likely to say that Democrats, and not Republicans, share their moral values.

by TChris

The NY Times reports that gay Republicans in Washington are "under siege and suspicion." The party that gets in bed with intolerant gay-bashing hate-spewing homophobes isn't standing behind its gay members? What a shock.

"You can see where it would be easy for some people to blame gays for something that might bring down the party in Congress," said Brian Bennett, a gay Republican political consultant. He was a longtime chief of staff to former Representative Robert K. Dornan, Republican of California, who regularly referred to gays as "Sodomites."

by TChris

The Bush administration has given us plenty to protest. Yesterday, in a day of protest organized by The World Can't Wait, people gathered together in more than 200 cities to express their displeasure with the Bush Administration. In New York:

Thousands of protesters clogged New York City's streets as they marched from the United Nations headquarters. Some people lay down in the middle of the street, while others carried signs saying "Expose 9/11" and "This war should be over." They also handed out fliers reading, "Drive out the Bush regime."

In Washington D.C.:

by TChris

Incumbent legislators who brag to their constituents during the next few weeks about supporting the construction of a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border aren't likely to tell the rest of the story: much of the money appropriated for the project won't be spent on the fence.

[S]hortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects -- not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of a "virtual fence."

The fence is a symbol, an expensive monument to simple-minded and ineffective solutions to complex problems. But it's also a cynical campaign lie that "reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details."

by TChris

This enjoyable essay summarizes the many faults of Donald Rumsfeld (the least of which is his propensity to cheat at squash).

There can be little serious doubt that Rumsfeld and his policies represent ground zero at the epicenter of the political and strategic disasters erupting around and steadily engulfing the Bush-Cheney White House in what is now a groaning sea of grief. But, the concerns over Rumsfeld's problems are worse, much worse.

Meanwhile, in his struggle to be reelected, Republican Rep. Chris Shays says Rumsfeld must go.

by TChris

According to Congressional Quarterly, reported at Raw Story, Dennis Hastert is willing to resign his speakership if it would help the Republicans. Of course, in Hastert's judgment, his resignation wouldn't be beneficial, but would start a "feeding frenzy" of calls for the removal of other GOP leaders in the House, including fellow enablers John Boehner, Thomas Reynolds, and John Shimkus.

Hastert is right about one thing: his resignation won't help his party. Nothing can help the Republicans at this point.

Update: Hastert's current strategy, probably all he has left: blame Democrats (and the liberal media, i.e., ABC, the "liberal" network that brought us Path to 9/11) for his problems. Hastert apparently hasn't noticed that conservatives are the loudest voices demanding that he resign his speakership.

FoleyGate has claimed it's first casualty: Rep. Tom Reynold's aide, also a former Mark Foley aide, Kirk Fordham:

ABC News' Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper reports that Kirk Fordham has resigned. The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, according to Republican sources on Capitol Hill.

Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat. "He begged them not to tell the page board," said one of the Republican sources.

Fordham, of course has his own tale tell. He's being made the scapegoat.