Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

T R E 4 5 O N

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

People are weird.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

No Justins, No Peace

He really is that stupid.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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Excellent Question

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Hilzoy:

In the story above, Kurtz claims that “on Friday afternoon”, Fordham tried to cut this deal. The ABC story that he was trying to prevent was filed at 3:02pm. The first story, about the “over-friendly” emails (as opposed to the graphic IMs), was filed at 3:06pm the previous day.

This is the first confirmation, to my knowledge, that Fordham was there before the IM story broke. (In the post I linked to above, Glenn Greenwald claims that that fact is in this story, but in fact it’s quite ambiguous about when Fordham showed up, reporting on Saturday that Fordham had “returned to Foley’s side to advise him during the past couple of days.” TPM’s timeline puts Fordham’s appearance on Saturday the 30th, citing the same story.)

Before the IM story broke, of course, only the emails had been made public. Reynolds, of course, had known about these emails for months;

[…] I find it odd that Reynolds would loan out his chief of staff to Foley, at a time when he’s in the middle of a very tough race and working as head of the NRCC in the middle of a very tough election season (and yes, I know that federal workers are not supposed to work on campaigns, but I would find it flatly incredible that a chief of staff would not be involved in both, or that his presence just wouldn’t be missed. And, as John Aravosis notes, it would be nice to know whether he’s advising Foley at the taxpayers’ expense.) I find it especially intriguing that Reynolds would lend out his chief of staff before, not after, the IM story broke. At that time, all that had been made public were the emails — the ones that, according to Reynolds, had failed to raise any red flags before.

It could be that Reynolds is just very generous with his staff’s time. Someone asks him to loan out his chief of staff, and he’s always ready to oblige. It could be that Foley called Reynolds or Fordham after the first story, confessed all, and asked for Fordham’s help. Or it could be that Fordham was dispatched to ensure that Foley resigned and/or to contain the damage. (Since Foley has now confessed to being an alcoholic, he might have been in the middle of a major meltdown.) In this latter case, I can’t really see Reynolds taking this step without consulting with the House leadership.

In any case, it would be nice to know why, exactly, Fordham showed up when there was nothing known to the public that would explain his presence. If the answer is something along the lines of my third hypothesis, it would also be nice to know how Reynolds knew that there was enough to this story that he needed to dispatch his chief of staff, at what had to have been the worst possible time, to deal with it.

Indeed it seems difficult to explain how Reynolds knew to send his Harvey Keitel (Wolf or the Cleaner, take your pick) before the truly damning story broke. Foley may well have called Reynolds that morning to confess that he was in a whole world of shit, but barring that it seems impossible not to conclude that Reynolds knew the full contours of this story well before the rest of us did.

And if Reynolds knew then it would have been criminally negligent of him to hide his knowledge from the House leadership. The meltdown of Illinois Sentate candidate Jack Ryan demonstrated that you can lie about your foibles to the public (I dare anybody to make it in politics without doing so) but you don’t lie to your party.

Glenn Greenwald also notes that the chief of staff in question – Kirk Fordham – sits at the middle of the entire scandal. Fordham served as Foley’s chief of staff. Then he served as Reynolds’s chief of staff. Then, the day after the fist hint of trouble came out but before the real shit hit the fan, Fordham went into damage control mode for his old boss. People at his level pf responsibility, waist-deep in an existential battle for control of the House, don’t freelance that sort of job. What did he tell Reynolds to get himself reassigned? Did he have to tell Reynolds anything?

Puts a nice frame on the story doesn’t it.

Treat this as an open thread for everything Foley-related.

Reader Interactions

14Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    If this story tells us anything, it tells us that Democrats are clearly out of the loop in Washington. I mean, god damn? Did any Republican not know Foley was chasing 16-year-old male tail by the time this story broke?

  4. 4.

    Punchy

    The NEW news on ABC is that Foley was rubbing one out while waiting to make a vote, online with one of these minors.

    $10 bucks says after this is all through, his keyboard makes it on Ebay.

  5. 5.

    Richard Bottoms

    Fox News had copies of emails written from Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) to a Louisiana boy, but chose not to run the story, according to a passage in an Associated Press report.

    Ailes should go

    One more person should walk the plank. Roger Ailes’ Fox News had the emails. Time to find out if they spiked the story to help the GOP.

  7. 7.

    RSA

    “Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story.”

    Jesus. What do newspaper reporters do, again?

  8. 8.

    Punchy

    Bombshell #2, if confirmed. From abcnews.com, blog comments section:

    When I was a Congressional Page in 1998, we pages were warned by former pages AS WELL as staffers in the house and page program to BEWARE and stay away from 3 GOP members of Congress due to past history and inappropriate behavior with other pages. Obviously Foley has resigned and we are grateful.

    Although 2 members of Congress (at least that I know of and was warned of) still remain.

    Let me say this: it doesnt end with the members of congress; high level staffers are doing the same thing!!

    Posted by: Former Page – Summer 1998 | Oct 3, 2006 1:50:40 PM

    Interestingly, that comment has now been scrubbed by ABC. Why, I haven’t a clue. But the implication that they’re TWO MORE GOP slimeballs out there…well….shit may REALLY hit the fan.

  9. 9.

    Andrew

    Interestingly, that comment has now been scrubbed by ABC. Why, I haven’t a clue. But the implication that they’re TWO MORE GOP slimeballs out there…well….shit may REALLY hit the fan.

    That sounds kinky, but I haven’t heard anything about Foley et al. getting into the poop stuff.

  10. 10.

    PeterJ

    Interestingly, that comment has now been scrubbed by ABC. Why, I haven’t a clue. But the implication that they’re TWO MORE GOP slimeballs out there…well….shit may REALLY hit the fan.

    A comment on a blog is just that, a comment on a blog. It’s not a fact. So unless there is real evidence for more predators, it’s just a comment on a blog.

  11. 11.

    Pb

    The three alleged names I’ve seen floating around here:

    SECOND EMAIL
    From: hill boy
    Signed-By: yahoo.com Mailed-By: yahoo.com
    To: [email protected]
    Date: Sep 17, 2006 7:55 PM
    Subject: Outraged by skinterns?
    Reply Reply to all Forward Print Add sender to Contacts list Delete this message Report phishing Show original Message text garbled?

    After reading your post on skinterns I wanted to fill you in on what really goes on in the halls of Congress.
    I used to be a House LA on the Hill working.
    When I was working up there, folks use to refer to the Terrible Three – Barney Frank, Mark Foley, and Jim Kolbe.
    Everyone knows about Barney Frank’s exploits…living with a man who ran a gay prostitute ring out of Frank’s house…and how he how used to hit on men much younger than him.
    And Jim Kolbe…everyone who works on the Hill has heard rumors about Kolbe. One of my friends even told me that Kolbe hit on him on several occasions.
    Despite all the stories, Frank and Kolbe are well respected because when they got caught, they admitted that they were gay.
    That and neither Frank nor Kolbe have anything on Foley.
    People were always talking about seeing Foley lurking in locker rooms around DC looking for sex, how he especially likes teenage boys, and frequents gay bars around D.C. and in his district.

    And yeah, take it for what it is, an alleged email on a random blog, albeit one dated 9/17/06, and in a post from 9/21/06.

  12. 12.

    tBone

    Where are our resident apologists? I really want to ask Darrell who he’d rather send his kids camping with: a gay Scout Leader or a Republican member of Congress?

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