This post will be updated throughout the day.
Pam’s House Blend – Hastert to Weyrich: I’ll resign if it will help the GOP
WP’s NPRRaw Fisher – Foley Case: Why Parents Keep Silent–But That’s No Excuse for Hastert
WP’s The Fix – Parsing the Polls: How Low Can Congress Go?
Washington Post: Order on Documents Signals Justice Dept. May Pursue Foley
Washington Post: Lawmaker’s Intentions Appear Clear In Exchanges
George Will: Before the Fall of the GOP
Democrats should go into another line of work if they can’t retake the House in this climate of Republican misery.
Shakespeare’s Sister: Waveflux Says, Roy Blunt makes his move
Jonathan Turley in the New York Times: Get Congress Out of the Page Business
Shakespeare’s Sister: Reynolds is Toast
In light of the possibility that Foley bought the continued support of the GOP, who agreed to give it only if he stayed away from the Senate race, a report that Reynolds merely encouraged him to run again may only be a misdirection from an even uglier truth.
Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post: Dumping Denny Won’t Do It
It is a mark of the sheer panic sweeping the ranks of Republican congressmen that one of their most levelheaded members, Ray LaHood of Illinois, has suggested that Congress abolish its page program altogether in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal…
Joseph A. Califano Jr. in the Washington Post: When the House Could Clean Itself
It’s useful today to remember that there was a time when the House leadership had the strength to wash its own dirty laundry.
toledoblade.com – Kirk Cartoon on Foley
NPR: Rural Voters Watching Foley Case Closely
Morning Edition, October 5, 2006 · The scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) contact with congressional pages seems to strike at the heart of the Republican campaign on moral values. But the case does not appear to be having an affect on a small group of voters contacted by NPR who consider morality an important political issue.
AMERICAblog: Boehner and Hastert today blame the children who were the victims
A House GOP leadership email that went out today curiously didn’t include #3 Republican Roy Blunt (R-MO). Inside-the-beltway observers we talked to found it very fishy that Blunt was missing, especially since yesterday Blunt basically threw Hastert under a bus…
The Forward‘s Campaign Confidential – Hastert: It Was Soros!
Embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert says the Foley scandal is the creation of a George Soros-funded campaign. Read it here.
The Forward‘s Campaign Confidential – Mark Foley: The Gay Jack Abramoff points to Andrew Sullivan’s column on scapegoating of LGBT folk:
Andrew Sullivan makes the link…
Gay men, of course, went into a defensive crouch. Like Jews watching the Abramoff scandal, we winced at what we knew would be a collective blame-game. It always happens. There is no connection between homosexuality and an attraction to teenage boys–or at least, no more than there is between male heterosexuality and an attraction to teenage girls. But we know that, whenever a gay man is discovered in any relationship with a much younger man, the old pedophile smear will emerge, as, of course, it did in this case. This was not, in other words, “good for the gays.�
Washington, DC – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s (I.G.) office today to ask for an investigation into why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has fabricated and disseminated a cover-up story as to why it never investigated the Foley emails sent to it by CREW…
CNN: House Speaker Dennis Hastert will hold a briefing at 1 p.m. ET from his office in Batavia, Illinois, CNN has learned. Looks as if C-SPAN is going to carry this.
Kurtz Media Notes: More Finger-Pointing
So you had the top aide to the House’s senior GOP campaign guy trying to keep the seedy details out of the media. No wonder some critics are charging cover-up….
AP via Washington Post – Source: Hastert Intends to Stay Speaker
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Dennis Hastert insists he will stay on as leader of House Republicans, as the ethics committee opened an investigation Thursday into an unfolding scandal over whether House leaders failed to protect teenage pages from a lawmaker’s come-ons.
At a news conference scheduled at 1 p.m., Hastert will announce he intends to remain as speaker now and for the new term of Congress in 2007, a GOP aide said Thursday…
Sen. Carl Levin is on C-SPAN talking about the war and was just asked about Foleygate and its apparent cover-up. He said:
There’s got to be some accountability somewhere in this government.
Hastert Press Conference got postponed to 1:45 pm and isn’t on yet. C-SPAN broadcast the House Ethics Committee Hearing (see AMERICAblog’s comments) and is now taking constituent phone calls while waiting in Batavia IL for Hastert to speak.
2:30 pm: Hastert arrived to cheers and is now speaking.
2:45 pm: Hastert spoke briefly and took questions.
Bryce Chitwood, a former page, is participating in an online chat on the WP Website:
Washington, D.C.: The Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert just held a news conference and announced that they’re naming a subcommittee to investigate the scandal. What is your reaction?
Bryce Chitwood: I feel this is a necessary step. I believe the investigation will show that there was a predator, Mark Foley roaming the hills of Congress, and will praise the Page Program for it’s excellent handling of this situation and of an excellent program.