I'm Not Feeling Foley

I am having an unexpected reaction to Congressman Foley's sex scandal.

—Not surprised that a gay-bashing, flag-waving, "save-the-children" Republican turns out to be a closeted chicken hawk who harasses cute boy pages in the House of Representatives.

—Not taken aback if the entire House leadership knew about it, tolerated it, and for all we know, ordered in the beer.

"Foley gets triple bonus points for hypocrisy. As co-chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children, he has been a fierce advocate for tough sanctions against people who sexually exploit children over the Internet..."

I fully expect that men like Foley, who scream about the pornographic dangers of the Web, are likely the most narcissistic predators in town. Foley wouldn't know a moral code if it fell on top of him. He's part of a very select club.

But here's my NEW unexpected reaction:

All things considered, I don't give a shit about this.

I'm rather devastated on another front. Our Congress passed bills this past week that dismantle habeas corpus, that legalize torture and free-for-all wiretapping. The emperor's new edicts target  anyone, including citizens, who might have a bad hair day in the President's almighty estimation.

This is that same club— with their teeth bared, instead of their drawers down. As blogger Ian MacLeod puts it, "The Rule of Law is dead in America." 

Yet this new regime is apparently a big yawn with the American public. Snooze on, Victoria. Everyone who watches TV knows all about Foley's boxer shorts, but the loss of one's right to privacy, or a jury trial, doesn't seem to make anyone's dick hard.

That odd select few, the voting crew who put this club in office, are so precious that they don't believe that tewworist-related nastiness will ever happen to them. George Bush wouldn't dare waterboard anyone in YOUR family! Terrorists are easy to spot because they incite hysterical racist feelings you can't control!

And I'm supposed to care about Tom, Dick, and Mark-Foolery?

I'm not worried about 16-year-old pages insofar as their age is concerned. It's damaging to infantilize them. They are NOT children. When I was sixteen, and my boss harassed me, I was outraged, but I didn't want to be treated like a child; I had my own personal sex life as I pleased.

These pages deserve respect. Their concerns are a legitimate labor complaint, and they are interns dealing with a hostile work atmosphere, rather than babies without a minder.

Foley is gross, and resignation is too good for him— but the reason he disgusts is his politics, his ethical vacuum. It's not that he's gay, or thinks hard-bodied young athletes are hot. I'd love to Gitmo him and any of his brethren at dawn, but don't give me this pedo-titillation crap like that's what I'm supposed to care about.

Some activists are pressing hard on the "Foley Child Molestor" talking points because they believe this kind of salacious description is what it will take to win points in the next election.

Turning red to blue is going to save the day, right? A slight adjustment will be all it takes, and then all those Dems who voted for the homeland-uber-alles, leave-no-child-unmolested crap are going to get on their knees and beg for forgiveness and democracy, right?

That pinned hope is more self-deluded than Mark Foley ever was.

Photo of Magna Carta. Read it and weep:

The fifth amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees:
No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Written 575 years earlier, in the 13th century, Magna Carta declares:
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned,...or in any other way destroyed...except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.

Comments

[Station Agent]

Good points. I agree fully and would only add an unexpected reaction of my own. How hollow and unsatisfying it is to see the Republicans fall apart over this, instead of all the other abuses...

[C.S. Lewiston]

Tasteless jokes of the 1980's (when the last congressional-page scandal hit):

"Why don't congressmen need bookmarks?"
"Because they just bend over the pages!"

But seriously, those pols who wail the loudest about morality and who concoct the ugliest, most destructive kinds of punishmnts for immorality, real or imagined (can you say "sex offender registry"?), are usually the most evil S.O.B.'s of them all.

You made a good point. Susie. 16-year-olds might not be full-fledged adults but they are not children. What I hated most about high school is that some of the teachers and administrators kept forgetting that you weren't in third grade.

As for Mr. MacLeod's points (anyone who hasn't clicked the "rule of law..." link above - do it now), that is bonechilling. My father's family got out of Nazi Germany only months before Kristallnacht. Is history really about to repeat itself? Do we have a prayer of defeating this legal monstrosity in the courts? Are Americans so ignorant and uncaring about their own basic human rights that the only thing left for anyone with any sense to do is to have a big garage sale, sell off everything we own and climb onto a plane, a boat, or a bus to anywhere-but-here?

[Jon Bailiff]

Consider this: In an 11th hour late night session, a bill passes the Senate that would make the Founding Fathers puke on their lecterns.

"Political minutes" later, the House of Representatives— whose own pukeworthy legistlation is now being reconciled with the Senate version for Bush's signature— offers up one of their own. I submit that this is burnt offering to the Gods of Complete Prurient Distraction.

It's been revealed that the House leadership, and no doubt most of the boys club in DC, knew everything but Foley's underpants size. Why now? I hope you and your loved ones are never pointed at by your neightbors, the police, or the gov't with the cry of "Witch!"-- I mean, "Terrorist!"

[Arthur D. Hlavaty]

Dennis Hastert did such a good job of covering up it's a shame the Republicans can't make him a cardinal.

[bifemmefatale]

Thank you, Susie. Once again, you found the words to express what I've been feeling, only better.

On top of the writ of habeas corpus, the House quietly passed a bill making it illegal for lawyers who successfully challenge the federal government on the separation of Church and State to be paid for their work, thus making it less and less likely that anyone will bring such cases. This garnered not a single mention in the mainstream news that I have seen, not even NPR.

I want my fucking country back. And I do not believe the Dems will give it to me anymore either. They're just as culpable.

[DC (in UK)]

Good post, Susie. I suspect it will be easier for the Democrats to run on Foley than on terrorism - especially now that Bush his got his 1933-style Enabling Act re. torture and detention without trial. (NB: Don't be surprised if the the Great Sidekick over here in the UK goes down the same route.)

[Rowan]

Grand hypocrisy aside, this scandal is a "Wag the Dog" distraction. Isn't it interesteing that the film "Wag the Dog" portrayed the White House concocting a war to hide a sex scandal when in fact it's a sex scandal that distracts the American people from the attack on their freedoms?

Last week was BANNED BOOKS week. While clinging to the vestiges of the First Ammendment, I witnessed this government wipe its ass with the Constitution.

It makes me sick.

[Ross MacKinney]

I am right there with you! I think that the administration has done a great job of de-personalizing torture...and Foley has a face, unlike the hooded victims of a court system that now exists outside the law.

Of course our district reps (Northern California) voted against it, but apart from being COMPLETELY appalled, I have done little but watch in horror. However, I am organizing a training for direct action here in Humboldt, and torture does lend itself to some dramatice consciousness-raising actions .

[Nelson G]

Yes, Susie "the dismantling of Habeas Corpus" is a way more important issue than a man caught chasing after boys in the Halls of Congress. But don't forget OR I hope you've not forgotten that if one looks to pass laws that in essence dissolve away one's Constitutional rights, what better way than thru sex and or porn?

[Laurie Mann]

Great line, Arthur.

Susie, thanks for reminding folks what's important.

[C.S. Lewiston]

Susie: I don't think it's that big an exaggeration to call you a national asset, from your participation in a free-speech court case in the 70's to your current activities. Let's hope that you can continue to write for us from San Francisco and not Costa Rica.

Not long ago here in the southern tier of upstate New York, back when defense contractors like IBM and GE ruled local economies, things were very solidly Republican. That's changed somewhat. In recent years, Democrats have apparently made significant gains, at least where I live. For example, they unseated an apparently un-unseatable state assemblyman, won the county-executive's chair and replaced a 3-term Republican mayor. That's good. Working from the local level up is how it should be done. Build to last. Question: Can the Democrats get their shit together on a national level?

[B.]

I'm pretty sure that most Americans don't deserve America.

We have all this neat stuff like the bill of rights and a constitution but in reality we are a collection of the same timid and salatious, yet seething and hateful stock that created the very conditions our ancestors fled from and couldn't wait to replicate here. I know, because right when I am at my most heroic in my own head, I catch myself slipping into this if. I. am. not. extremely. careful.

In a novel my wife just read there is a quote (something like): "All fanatics everywhere have the same look, like they want to jack off all the time and just can't manage to do it". In this case you wish some people would just prime the pump and get on with mowing the lawn and paying the bills rather than getting all covertly gooey in their pants about the new "Gay congressmen in bondage" Hot letter straight from the capital lockeroom...

If there is a national sport it would be "disdain yet enjoy". Not a field sport, but does have a convenient home version you can play with friends if you find yourself homebound on a friday evening.

From all that I have seen reported it is a matter of gross unprofessionalism and bad taste. O'Reilly, really had kinda better material depending on what you want to hang your hat on, though both can certainly choose their venues better.

"Hypocrisy", sure but in this case I find the fact that the story has such legs to be more fascinating. They just read those letters over and over and...

B.

[Paul]

I am really glad to hear someone finally putting this in perspective, as well as speaking out against the stupid infantilization of 16-year-old young men. Yes it was inappropriate, but the faux outrage on our side is dispiriting.

Keep up the good work Susie.

(Why was commenting closed on huffpo?)

[B.]

On second thought, I'm not sure as much about "hypocrisy" as I am that all of this is just 'good TV'.

There are only so many stories the media know how to tell. Only a limited set of stories the populace considered as one big animal know how to hear. The evening news can really be summed up in the opening line "The same stuff happened today as always, only to different people, and of all that, here is what we know how to tell you about..."

This is like the adult version of children playing the same disney video over and over because it is a story they understand and know how to take in....listening and making sense of the world is not a passive process, it is a skill. Like people learn to enjoy sexuality, it isn't just a matter of having something delivered to you...you still have to at least know how to answer the door when the bell is rung.

This kind of story rings bells simply because everyone has been to this door before. In fact...moral fall and redemtion is our main cultural process.

I've read some of this blog and it reminds me that telling new stories ought to be something of a paid duty. Something has to get that big public "kid" to watch something beside that one video, if it take centuries.

Telling alternative stories to the one on that overplayed video ought to be a sacred religious duty...the duty to "randomly make up stuff for the sake of humanity".

Nothing is more dangerous than a well told story read in the dark, not understood....yet.

B.

[Rich]

I totally agree with you. I see a lot of righteous indignation about this and the smug glee that at last a high-ranking Republican turns out to be a pedophile. But frankly, his actions don't even compare with the two huge actions from his peers that were all but swept under the rug last week. Congress dealt a double blow on habeas corpus and on torture. Foley's crime might have reached a handful of pages (bad metaphor, but there you go), but Bush, with Congress now complicit, really molested every human on the planet. No matter how you look at it, Foley's crime is a "coma" in the history of human rights.

Bush's crime may never get atonement.

[Lucy Kemnitzer]

Susie, I'm not showing up as a trackback, so here's the link to where I sent people to you.

http://ritaxis.livejournal.com/183943.html

It would be so much prettier if HTML were allowed in the comments.

[Sexy Lioness]

Amen to realizing that 16 year-olds are not physically, at least, children and have their own sexuality. All children do, it's just not safe to write about, talk about, study, or even admit to knowing.

I'm here to tell you that 16 year-old boys can be VERY aggressive when it comes to sex, even if the target is twice his age, or more. It's not a risk I'm willing to take, but it is surely flattering when it happens, even if it is only because they want the skills they are pretty sure I can teach them. This is not to say that I think the boys were coming on to Foley, and if they were, it was probably a joke amongst themselves.

Oh, and that piece on "the rule of the law" was brilliant! We've got lots of those former dustbowl families here in my part of California. I understood that article from an "over the fence" perspective.

[JeffWarner]

The scary part of S. 3930 [The Military Commissions Act of 2006]that people seem to miss is this:
Sec 949(rules)2B
"Evidence shall not be excluded from trial by military commission on the grounds that the evidence was not seized pursuant to a search warrant or other authorization."
(block copy and paste from THOMAS the Library of Congress site)

Read that again just to get the full impact of how far we are toward the establishment of the Fourth Reich. Search Warrants are no longer necessary in the 'War on Terror'!

read it and weap
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:3:./temp/~c109ygfhxN:e21769:

[Steve Harsin]

The average person in this country just plain doesn't give a fuck about any of these happenings in our government. They believe as long as they conduct their life according to 1950's norms they are safe, with *perhaps* the added afterthought wondering why the hell anyone would care. The fact is, the average American has not faced enough true adversity in their life to truly appreciate the protections built into our system which is now being dismantled. My greatest fear is that this has to get so bad that the average person is affected by these changes, and affected dramatically, before we can turn that tide. And to me, that is a bone-chilling thought.

[Sue]

That is one of the strange things about this "democratic" system in the States: it doesn't matter that this administration has such low approval rates - they happily continue to advance their agenda, step by disasterous step. The more they falter in the polls, the more they seem to accelerate.

Surely the near-complete absence of any opposition ideology(let alone effective opposition) has a lot to do with the Republican ability to continue merrily along no matter what the rest of the country thinks. The Democratic Party (aka Republican Lite) has so completely collaborated with the Republicans that the best they can do is seize on such "moral" issues.

Susie, your brilliant integration of political, sexual and social good sense is the best possible reality-check. Shall we have a periodic campaign to spread the word about your incomparable blog?
Sue

[Pam Rosenthal/Molly Weatherfield]

Amen, Susie, and thanks

[Jim Faryar]

Yeah, those pages were just yanking Foley's chain. I doubt they sufferred any harm. But the distraction from the really big news of the actions of Congress on habeas corpus and on torture is sad.

[C.S> Lewiston]

All of this is edifying, if somewhat dispiriting. I'd like to know what can be done, short of chartering a plane to San Jose (C.R., not CA).

Not all Democrats are Republicans with a new paint job. Getting moe of those people not only into Congress, but onto local school boards, statehouses, etc. may not stop the Republico-fascist juggernaut but it will at least slow the motherfucker down.

Recommended reading:

michaelmoore.com
aclu.org
http://www.drudge.com/ (DRUDGE parody/opposition site with lots of links to opinion/analysis columns).

[PINK]

three points:

first off, it's amazing to me that Foley would check into rehab for alcoholism and objectionable behavior after being outed as a homo. does he think he'll be cured of the evil gayness? i wonder if he'll still disavow his own sexuality for the sake of a political party that hates him right now?

secondly, you’re right, susie. our country can't handle the sexuality of a 16-year old, let alone one that might be gay. dare i suggest that maybe the page-boy was actually attracted to Foley? maybe cyber sex was only the beginning of what could've happened?

lastly, did you notice that this week the supreme court refused to hear arguments involving banned sex toys? sell a dildo and get jailed. what?

as a nation, we're fucked.

[misterniceguy1960]

I used to console myself with that quote about "living in the early days of a better nation", but I no longer find it in my heart to have that much faith in this country.

Awhile back, I posted a piece on my blog that began, "I wish I knew how to quit you, America, but I keep coming back, no matter how many times you break my heart." Now, though, I'm beginning to feel as though I can see the end of the relationship in the distance.

[Sandrino]

This administration has destroyed everything good that America stood for. The USA is on the decline. This century belongs to China. The USA is morgaged up to the gills to China. Soon China will start issuing marching orders telling our government what to do and we will have no choice but to follow orders. The USA is morally bankrupt and soon will be fiscally bankrupt as well. We no longer are the land of the free and the home of the brave. We have lost the war and we don't know it. We have forgotten who we were. If the founding fathers were alive today they would be embarassed to be Americans.

[dhenwood]

Interesting how the Foley affair has upstaged the Woodward book, with its damaging reports on Bush & Co. indifference to pre-9/11 warnings. Of course there were other reports of that, but Woodward has quasi-official status.

I think it's incomplete to talk about "hypocrisy" in this context. Seems to me that having a dark, secret life is almost a precondition for being a public moralizer. Either the public moralizing stance is designed to defend against self-doubt and external scrutiny, or the high-minded proper life is absolutely unsustainable without some kind of sexual outlet, or both.

[ChicagoChild]

Since when are 16-year-olds not children? Because some cuss and drink or smoke? Because some are sexually active? Because some have ADULT bodies and make YOU hot?

I have been a 16-year-old child and would have agreed with you wholeheartedly back then, that I was no kid, was sophisticated and smart as heck! Sure I had an outer cool and fantastic fashion sense and street smarts. I was from a big city, afterall. But being a teenager myself, watching family members go from youngins' into teens and raising teens myself, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING SIXTEEN YEARS OLD AND A MATURE ADULT. A sixteen year old may be sexy as hell, may hold down a job, drive, make good grades, have better drugs than you, know more sexual positions than you at that same age, have a criminal record longer than your arm----but that in no way makes them worldly wise or easy pickens for those in their 20's, 30's, 40's, or 50's.

[Doyle Saylor]

Your comments are being circulated around in the blogsphere and I saw them and thought I'd come here to say thanks for the comments.

The fault lines in this scandal serve a good purpose, it weakens the fundamentalist moral order, and it weakens the democrats who colluded with the Republicans these long years. While this is a minor event in the political process it points up a rot going on in the right that is based in the lost war in Iraq.

According to reports Bush still wants a war with Iran after the election. Now he may be persuaded not to, but that move to have war would certainly accelerate the rights decline.

In any case it is clear that a long conservative period is closing. Well said Susie.
Doyle Saylor

[B.]

I wonder how long it would take to brand as "unserious" (or worse) a candidate who ran on the:

1. Sexuality and gender isn't our business its yours and lets make business good.

2. Sure we'll tax you, but look at all you get! (Sweden etc.)

3. If it doesn't attack us, we shouldn't attack it.(period)

-platform. They would be laughed off the dais, but some in the audience wouldnt' be laughing and those people should stick together.

B.

[Anthony Kennerson]

One of your finest essays ever, Susie....and dead on.

Mark Foley may deserve serious jail time and treatment for his obsession with young men and his gross abuse of his position of power, and the enablers of the Repub leadership who covered up his trolling should have hell to pay....but to focus so much time and fury on him as an human pinata for sexual predators while caving in so profusely on far more important issues like basic fundamental constitutional protections....well, that's one of many reasons why I'm not a Democrat. Or a Republican, for that matter.

And the attempt to link Foley's aggressiveness to alcohol or gayness is particularly appalling.

Hopefully this puts the final nail in the coffin of the Right's offensive....but considering the weakness and cravenness of the "opposition", I'd not give much hope.

Anthony

[Lily Burana]

Get out your pen and write up an Op-Ed for the TIMES or the WashPost, Susie. We need your good sense front-and-center on this!

[Paul]

ChicagoChild, there is a world of difference from drawing a distinction between a 16 year old and a child, and saying that they should be "easy pickens" for someone older. I am trying to find any comments here that say that or even suggest it.

Pedophilia has a specific meaning. A 52-year old having cybersex (and possibly more) with people he has a custodial relationship for is something else. Nobody is saying it's a great thing... however it's different than someone victimizing a prepubescent where consensuality doesn't enter into it.

[Paul]

Matthew Yglesias (http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/10/pedophilia/) says it better than I can...

[Avedon]

It's a dual-purpose scandal: It takes our attention from all of the other horrible things they're doing, and it drives people into another sex panic frenzy that, not incidentally, is part of the demonization of gay male culture.

My god, how is it possible to forget that teenaged boys are the horniest creatures alive?

And does anyone really think that sexually harassing someone who is over 18 is somehow not bad? Is this a joke?

Oh, yes, they are making a mockery of pretty much every feminist/sexual liberation/anti-child abuse accomplishment of the progressive movement. That's the joke.

And it's all just cover for destroying everything that made America worth the effort.

(Remember when talking about child abuse wasn't just a way to take away young people's sexual agency?)

[Ashtoreth Hostility]

Well, I mean, Nixon wasn't impeached because of illegally bombing Cambodia, or sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks, or for countenancing COINTELPRO or for having an enemies list; he was impeached for obstructing investigation of a break-in, where the political headquarters of some rich Americans was broken into on behalf of some other rich Americans. It's real important that the serious crimes be off the agenda, because one might want to commit the same crimes one day. So again, you might recall, Newt Gingrich was hailed as this advocate of small government, even as his district received the third largest government subsidy in the nation, and the Democrats said nothing because it would ruin their own scams. Destroying habeas corpus is _good_ for the rich and powerful; it keeps the rabble in line. Why would you want to screw up such a good deal by bringing attention to it?

[lazlo]

the situation has been worse than we may think for a while. can you die for america? can you kill for america? can you put down your books and pick up a gun? i love costa rica but by the goddess i live here and i'm not going anywhere. thank you for opening our eyes. lets see if we will fill our hands.

[Anastasia]

You're quite right, to infantize a sixteen year old is absurd in our world. Centuries ago, sixteen year olds were of marriagable age, and it was no huge deal. It's difficult to reconcile with the convenient hypocrisy that exists. From one end there are those who are 'poor little child', and (according to transcripts of their cozy chat) this sixteen year old male wasn't protesting. He could have switched the PC off, but he didn't, and I'm not saying that to chastize his action, most teenagers are curious, and by sixteen, they're thinking about sex. From the other, there's an industry out there that puts teenagers in the sexual spotlight to sell anything (on catwalks, in magazines etc), so what does one do?

I've been reading up on this matter throughout this week, on various blogs and I have to say that you hit the nail on the head, and aren't afraid to do so, unlike many who take one side (the 'foley is a child molester' view, when the other person isn't a child), and kind of forget about the other factors, like politicians that fail to do their job.

[C.S. Lewiston]

I just had a thought.

Are These United States *really* getting ready to emulate Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, or Argentina during the notorious Dirty War of the mid-70's? Are our federal courts so heavily infested with Federalist-Society members and other radical rightists that they actually would uphold what amounts to the wholesale repeal of not only the Bill of Rights, but the rule of law itself? Is it really time to load our muskets or hastily pack a suitcase and get on a plane for anywhere-but-here? Or is there something a little more insidious going on here? Something more mundane and cynical?

Legal challenges to The Military Commissions Act are inevitable. Pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU, People For The American Way and MoveOn.org will certainly mount them, and soon. I have a hard time believing that Congress actually wants to turn America into a Stalinesque terror-state, not to say that it couldn’t happen. But I think the real reason for passing this almost absurdly totalitarian law is to sap the financial and manpower resources of the ACLU, PFAW, etc. for years to come by keeping them busy fighting what I believe will prove to be a patently unconstitutional piece of legislation. What does Congress plan to whip on us while the freedom lobbies are distracted? More attacks upon the few rights American workers now have? An end to the 8-hour day and the minimum wage? Outlawing of labor unions? Heaping content restrictions upon our mass media to the point where innovators and dissenters merely give up rather than face financial ruin? Casting in stone the buying and selling of members of congress like so many pork bellies?

[Phoenix Woman]

Here's the deal:

1a) If you're black, habeas corpus didn't exist for you until fairly recently.

1b) Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and we got it back again after Andrew Johnson succeeded him as president.

As black blogger Steve Gilliard says, much if not all of the moaning about "We'll NEVER get our country back!" comes from fairly privileged white people whose lives, on the whole, have never been and will never be as circumscribed as, say, an average black sharecropper in 1960's Georgia.

Yet Georgia and much if not most of the South (not to mention the North!) is no longer like that. Things are nowhere near perfect -- otherwise the GOP's ability to scare white-flight suburbanites wouldn't work so well -- but they are nowhere near the unremitting hell that was life for African-Americans right up until LBJ and Hubert Humphrey pushed civil rights starting in the 1940s. If we can overcome Jim Crow and the various Sovereignty Commissions/White Citizens Councils, we can overcome this. (Granted, the media isn't on our side, but we can fix that, too -- mainly by becoming the media.)

2) When the ultraconservatives didn't like the direction of the Republican Party in the 1960s, they worked to take over the party so they could change its course. It took the better part of two decades, but they did it.

But the ultra-lefties have never been as into party politics as have the righties. The farther left one goes, the truer this is. This is attributable to the standard 20th-C. Neo-Marxist belief that a good Marxist/Communist/Socialist/etc. should never participate in party politics, even as a Marxist/Communist/Socialist/etc. (I used to be on the Socialist Liberty mailing list, and the flames against old Bolshie David McReynolds - who dared run for president a few times in the 1990s - were nothing short of thermonuclear. If these guys - and they were 90% guys - had directed their energy toward something like, say, organizing a precinct, they'd have got somewhere. But noooooo: That would have meant supporting the system you wanted to see collapse!)

3) Sadly, most Americans have been so Gaslighted by the corporate media (which has got steadily worse ever since Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which made it possible for hate-radio bigots like San Francisco's own Rush Limbaugh to go national) that they have no idea what habeas corpus is. They DO, however, know all about sex predators. If we can get the GOP Congress thrown out, then we can at least stymie further progress -- and then with a Democratic president, we can start to undo some of the damage done by Bush. (Again, don't expect the media to be particularly helpful here: Think that FOX News or Rush Limbaugh's going to tell their listeners the truth about rolling back Bush's tax cuts for the rich or his efforts to gut habeas corpus?)

Sigh. I know, I know, you don't want half measures. You want to see the whole political edifice fall down so the glorious workers' revolution can occur. There are two problems with this strategy: 1) It relies on a politically-literate populace and/or politically-savvy Bolshie leaders (see any of those lately?), and 2) the country whose political edifice you want to see crumbling has nuclear weapons.

[Phoenix Woman]

If you're wondering why there's such a hullaballoo over this among the tighty-righties:

This is a direct hit on the Fundies. The GOP has sown the homophobic wind, and now they're reaping the homophobic whirlwind.

Insider cons like Tucker Carlson have actually gone on TV to state what we all knew outside of the Fundies themselves: That the GOP's leadership despises the Fundies. And considering that the God-squadders are the GOP's base, that's pretty dangerous.

Here's the deal: The Fundies aren't just the GOP's most reliable voting bloc. They are the foot soldiers that make everything run. They are the door-knockers, the petition-passers, the phone-bankers, the literature-droppers, the people in charge of get-out-the-vote operations at the all-important local level.

And the Republicans, by blowing off Foley's sexual harrassment (he actually tried to storm the pages' dorm when he was drunk off his ass), have pissed off the Fundies big-time.

The Fundie leaders, who themselves don't believe their own propanganda and hate their flock as much as the Republican leadership does, are trying vainly to soothe their parishioners' ruffled feathers -- Focus on the Family's James Dobson sent out a bizarre blame-the-victim message last week wherein everything was the pages' fault -- but it's not working.

So even though you all hate the whole PredatorGate coverup scandal, it may be the single biggest wound to the religious right in the past thirty years. Dobson himself has lost beaucoup face by rushing to defend what his followers see as the undefensible.

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"You ain't looking for nobody," the big man said. "You couldn't find n
"In Manhattan, Kansas, you could be arrested for this," she said.
"One of those little cameras with a very fine lens. You can take snaps