Another Day, Another Presidential Signing Statement

Defying Congress, Bush says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.



The AP reports:

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it's appropriate for the administration to know what reports go to Congress and to review them beforehand.

"There can be a discussion on whether to accept a change or a nuance," she said. "It could be any number of things."

The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power.

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg said Bush is trying to subvert lawmakers' ability to accurately monitor activities of the executive branch of government.

"The Homeland Security Department has been setting up watch lists to determine who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed," said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

He said the Homeland Security Department has the most significant impact on citizens' privacy of any agency in the federal government.

Homeland Security agencies check airline passengers' names against terrorist watch lists and detain them if there's a match. They make sure transportation workers' backgrounds are investigated. They are working on several kinds of biometric ID cards that millions of people would have to carry.

The department's privacy office has put the brakes on some initiatives, such as using insecure radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, in travel documents. It also developed privacy policies after an uproar over the disclosure that airlines turned over their passengers' personal information to the government.

The last privacy report was submitted in February 2005.

Bush's signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."

His rationale was that it "rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

Mark Foley, George W. Bush and Michael Brown, post-Katrina

[It looks like Foley's asking a lot of people how big they are (some of them embellish).]

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Friday Cat Blogging

I like to think of these cats as the Republicans' base:



They're going to catch on, they're going to get it. They will. Eventually.


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You May Only Speak to This Man If You Believe Iraq Had WMD

Denver Man Sues Secret Service for Arrest After He Criticized Cheney on Iraq War


I know what you're thinking.

"He must be a nutcase, he was probably yelling, or threatening Cheney," but that doesn't seem to have been the case.

On Democracy Now!:
A federal lawsuit was filed on Tuesday against the U.S government alleging civil rights violations. The lawsuit was filed by Steven Howards - an environmental consultant in Colorado - who was arrested in June after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney and denounced the war in Iraq. The lawsuit is the third one that's been filed charging that Secret Service agents or White House staff members violated the law when they attempted to keep people with opposing views away from President Bush or Cheney. In another suit pending in Colorado, two people say they were kicked out of a public event where Bush was speaking because of an anti-war bumper sticker. And in West Virginia the ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two people who were arrested at an appearance by Bush because they were wearing anti-Bush t-shirts.

Steven Howards, was arrested in June on harassment charges after he approached Dick Cheney to denounce the Iraq War. He has filed a federal alleging civil rights violations.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Howards joins us now from Denver, where he filed the suit on Wednesday in federal district court. Welcome to Democracy Now!

STEVEN HOWARDS: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Why don't you explain exactly what happened? What day was it?

STEVEN HOWARDS: I think it was the middle of June, and I was in Beaver Creek, Colorado, with my two kids, accompanying them to a piano camp. And that morning, I had read about the deaths, the rising death toll in Iraq. And who walks by me, but Mr. Cheney. And to be honest, I couldn't resist the temptation. So I approached Mr. Cheney and told him that I thought his policies in Iraq were absolutely reprehensible.

AMY GOODMAN: Just one sec. He, by himself, walked by you in a mall? Vice President Dick Cheney?

STEVEN HOWARDS: Well, you know, yes. There was apparently -- Gerald Ford has an annual kind of get-together of political VIPs, if you will, that -- I don't know -- discuss world issues. And I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to cross Mr. Cheney. Mr. Cheney was actually going across an outdoor mall, kind of a pedestrian mall, in Beaver Creek, Colorado. And there were lots of Secret Service agents, but he was walking through, taking some time, shaking hands. There were probably more Secret Service agents there than there were members of Joe Public. But I, you know, I waited my turn, and I walked up to Mr. Cheney, and I told him what I thought. And then I quickly exited, because I didn't want to create a scene or give anyone opportunity to cause me any problems.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened next?

STEVEN HOWARDS: Well, I then continued on, took my child to piano camp, came back about ten minutes later, because if you know this area, you've got to pass through the same area. And I was approached by a Secret Service agent, who accused me of assaulting the Vice President. My eight-year-old son was standing next to me at that point in time. His exact words were, “Did you assault the Vice President?” And I said, “No, I didn't. But I did tell him the way I felt about the war in Iraq, and if Mr. Cheney wanted to be shielded from public criticism, he should avoid public places.”

And I closed by telling the agent that if freedom of speech was against the law, he should arrest me, at which point he grabbed me, cuffed my hands behind my back and started carting me across the mall. I stopped and told him I could not abandon my eight-year-old son in the middle of a public mall, at which point he responded, “We'll call Social Services.” Fortunately, on the way out, we passed my wife, who -- my son was with my wife. He had run off in terror. He wouldn't even talk, he was so scared.

They took me to jail, with my hands cuffed behind my back for three hours. The Secret Service agent told my wife, myself and anyone else that would listen that I was being charged with assaulting the Vice President. Those charges were later reduced to harassment. And two weeks later or three weeks later, the charges were dismissed altogether.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened to you during that time? During that two weeks, did other people see you being arrested? Did they know who you were?

STEVEN HOWARDS: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. No, it was a scene. I was treated as though I was a convict, like criminal. It was horrifying for my kids. And so we waited for a few weeks. Actually, we left. We were going on vacation. We left a few days later. This actually happened two days before Father's Day, so it was quite a memorable Father's Day, as you can imagine. We left a few days later for our vacation, and we got back. In the mail, there was a notice that the charges had been dismissed. Apparently, the Secret Service had come to my office and to try to see me, and they would not leave their names. It was very Gestapo-ish, I must say. But I never returned their calls, and I have no reason why they came to my place of work. And that's it.

AMY GOODMAN: And why have you decided to sue the government now?

STEVEN HOWARDS: You know, because it's such a transparent attempt to suppress free speech. You know, we view the suppression of free speech and -- my family, we view the suppression of free speech and the assault that this administration has made on our constitutional rights to free speech as a greater threat to the future of this country than Osama bin Laden ever will be. You know, first this administration argued that if you criticize their policies, you were in fact providing support to people like Osama bin Laden. You were boosting the threat to national security. Then they suggested that if you oppose their policies, you were actually equivalent to a Nazi sympathizer.

You know, the nation is united on the need to fight terror. That's not an issue. The question is, the issue is how this administration has gone about choosing to do that. And lots of people are very upset about that.

And now, the administration has forged the final link by suggesting that if you exercise your constitutional rights to free speech in opposing this administration's policies in Iraq, you are therefore posing a threat to national security and subject to arrest. And I don't know about the rest of America, but I find that thought and that logic, that twisted logic, absolutely terrifying. So we brought the lawsuit to really expose this issue and to raise the question of, do we in fact still live in a free nation, where people are free to express their opposition to government policies?

AMY GOODMAN: What are you asking for?

STEVEN HOWARDS: Right now, we're asking for a jury to -- we're actually deferring to a jury to decide what the resolution to this matter should be. We're asking for some acknowledgement by the Secret Service and by the administration that people have a right to free speech. We're asking for an apology to my kids for the wrongful arrest and search that occurred. And if any financial rewards or any financial settlement comes of this, that's great, but that's not the goal of the lawsuit. And if any financial rewards come, they'll go to a charitable organization. That's not our goal here. Our goal here is to prove a point.

AMY GOODMAN: Isn't the Vice President immune from prosecution as he sits in office?

STEVEN HOWARDS: Yeah, well, actually this is a civil suit. And it's against the Secret Service officer who did the arrest. After he arrested us and, again, threatened my wife and myself, saying he was going to spend all day Monday in the U.S. attorney's office ensuring that felony assault charges were brought against us, he then gave us his business card. So we know exactly who arrested us. And this is actually a civil suit against the Secret Service agent.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Howards, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Again, arrested a few days before Father's Day on harassment charges, first on assault charges, then lowered to harassment charges, for approaching Dick Cheney in a mall in Colorado.

Are U.S. Taxpayers still paying for Secret Service protection of Saudi Arabia's Embassies in the U.S.?

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tag, Technorati Tags, tags, categories, alternative media, first amendment, free speech, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, Dick Cheney, The Constant American, Constant American

Meanwhile, More OTHER Reasons Not to Vote for Republicans . . . .

. . . . GAO blames Bush administration, NOT lawsuits by environmentalists, for logging losses.


The AP reports:

A government study blamed the Bush administration, not lawsuits by environmentalists, for adding to the cost of a logging project in which the government spent $11 million to salvage less than $9 million in timber from a wildfire.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the administration's decision to dramatically increase logging, coupled with the size of the fire and the complexity of environmental laws, led to delays.

The so-called "Biscuit fire" burned almost 500,000 acres in Oregon and California in 2002, making it largest wildfire in the lower 48 states since 1997.

The Bush administration and its Republican allies contended that lawsuits filed by environmentalists led to the increased costs.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the report released Wednesday demonstrated the need for a new law sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., to speed up logging of burned forests and tree planting after storms and wildfires.

"The pattern of litigation-related delays associated with this project bears poignant witness to the need for congressional action on Greg Walden's post-catastrophic restoration bill, as the president called for in Los Angeles," Rey said.

The bill would order that federal forests hit by disasters larger than 1,000 acres be restored within months, rather than years, before insects and rot set in, diminishing the commercial value of fire-killed timber.

President Bush urged Congress to pass the bill during a visit Tuesday to Southern California, where a giant wildfire about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles was extinguished after nearly a month.

"I believe Congress needs to pass further law that will enable us to restore forests once they've been burned," Bush said.

In an interview, Rey said techniques authorized by the bill could have allowed officials to begin work on the Biscuit project years earlier, "and diminished timber values could have been avoided."

Environmental groups and most Democrats oppose the salvage-logging bill, arguing that cutting large old trees and planting new ones makes forests more vulnerable to new fires and less valuable as habitat for fish and wildlife. They say it is better to allow forests to come back on their own.

New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the GAO report demonstrated that the Bush administration overreached in its efforts to log large areas burned by the Biscuit fire.

"Taxpayers are going to have to spend millions more just cleaning up the damage from the logging than the government made from the timber sales," Bingaman said. "At the same time, promises of community fire protection, habitat restoration and scientific analyses remain unscheduled and unfulfilled."

Overall, 12 salvage sales in the burned areas were completed by the end of 2005, resulting in harvests of about 67 million board feet of timber, the GAO report said. The total was less than one-fifth of the 367 million board feet proposed for sale in an environmental impact statement issued by the Bush administration in 2004.

A board foot is the volume of a piece of wood 1-foot square and 1-inch thick. It takes about 10,000 board feet to build a modest two-bedroom home.

"Forest staff overestimated the timber available for harvest," the report said, adding that administration estimates that salvage logging would create about 6,900 local jobs and $240 million in regional economic activity now appear overly optimistic.

The Forest Service and other agencies have spent $5 million and expect to spend an additional $5.7 million on the salvage sale of wood and other related costs, the report said. Timber sales from the logging are expected to generate about $8.8 million in revenue.

Walden, in a statement, said the Senate should adopt the House-passed bill.

"With this fire season's record scorching of lands, it's time to stop fiddling, change the law, free our foresters to respond ... and remove the burned dead trees while they have value," he said.

Wildfire "is the Katrina of our forests, and the Senate is failing to act," Walden said.

Oxygen Collective: Biscuit Fire Old Growth Reserves Face Imminent Logging.

For information on the logging bill, H.R. 4200, and the GAO report.

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Civet Coffee at $1900 USD per lb.

This should really be filed under "Yes, it's another `quit complaining about your job'-Monday," (or better yet, "Why they hate us"), but I need a critter-fix (and a break from Foley-a-deux):


One-ounce of coffee, $150 USD.

AFP reports:

To the coffee connoisseur, apparently, it is the ultimate brew -- right to the very last dropping.

Civet coffee, made from beans eaten and passed through the weasel-like animal, is said to be the most valuable coffee in the world.

One ounce (25 grams) can sell for more than 150 dollars and despite the price coffee lovers cannot get enough.

For someone who never drank coffee until a few years ago, Filipino environmentalist Vie Reyes is at the forefront of the coffee culture boom, having cornered a niche market with her expensive beans.

The sugar palm civet (paradoxorus Phillipinensis), or alamid in the local language, forages in the mountains and forests around the vast Philippine archipelago.

The nocturnal creature's staple diet is sugar palm fruit and coffee cherries, which they devour in large quantities.

But the animal only digests the pulp of the coffee cherry, so the bean ferments in the digestive system. Once it is excreted, it is collected by Reyes's trusted gatherers for washing, drying and roasting.

Reyes, and her husband of 23 years, Basil, accidentally stumbled on to civet coffee while doing conservation work on sugar palm trees outside Manila in 2003.

"These nocturnal civets would actually eat the fruit and excrete them all over the ravine," said the energetic Reyes, 44, speaking at her home in suburban Las Pinas city south of Manila where she roasts and packs the exotic beans.

She and Basil did extensive research in rural communities and discovered that civet cat coffee was an old secret among the local folk.

"They were afraid that people wouldn't buy the coffee if they learned it came from inside the cat. The locals only collected the droppings for their own consumption," Reyes said.

Coffee Alamid, as Reyes has branded her brew, is a natural blend of liberica, exelsa, robusta and arabica beans that are found in abundance in the Philippines.

Before roasting, the beans have a sour acidic smell that may turn off the less adventurous, but after being dried and then roasted, they give off a sweet chocolatey aroma. When ground and brewed, they produce a coffee that is strong and earthy thanks to the natural fermentation method.

From initially just collecting the civet droppings from one site outside Manila, the couple now go on long cross-country trips scaling remote mountains and teaching villagers how to gather the precious waste during the coffee season from October to April.

From an initial harvest of only five kilograms (3.1 pounds) and an investment of 600 pesos (12 dollars) in 2003, their operation has steadily grown into a multi-million-peso business that now sells its products abroad.

Billed as the "rarest coffee in the world" the commodity is sold by Japan Airlines as a gourmet product on its business class section for 600 dollars for 100 grams and is exported under the Coffee Alamid trademark to China, Taiwan, Australia and the United States.

As a real mark of its gourmet qualifications, it is even sold in one coffee shop in Vienna.

"I didn't know anything about coffee. We didn't drink the beverage, not even instant coffee," Reyes says almost apologetically.

"This whole thing started out as an advocacy for the environment that now puts more than food on our table," said the a mother of five who has a degree in economics from the prestigious University of the Philippines.

But taking Coffee Alamid to the mainstream was not easy, as it was initially greeted as a novelty item for tourists looking for something unique to take home.

The product was displayed at trade fairs but drew a tepid response while efforts to sell it as an authentic Filipino product failed to generate interest from big coffee shops.

It was not until two years ago, when a small article about the product appeared on the front page of a major daily newspaper, that things started to heat up.

Walk-in clients brought friends and word spread.

Soon, foreigners started inquiring and offering them exclusive distributorship.

"We mortgaged our house, spent our savings and sold our cars to keep us going," said Basil.

"It paid off and we are now devoting our lifetime and two generations of this family to coffee making."

Here's their website.

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tag, Technorati Tags, tags, categories, animals, conspicuous consumption, quit complaining about your job, Phillipines, American Culture, our way of life, The Constant American, Constant American

Watching the Republican Party Tear Itself Apart From Within . . . .

. . . . But nobody can chew off their own feet better than we, Democrats, can.



I can't help but wonder if this Mark Foley scandal isn't all a Karl Rove set-up, a planned purge, a sacrificial lamb about to blow anyway so Rove tripped the switch a little early. This way, if he's got the inside skinny on an even worse Democratic scandal, he can get the Foley-Hastert story off the front pages in a few days and fill the final weeks leading up to the election with a negative focus on Democrats. It's the only way that I can explain why Rove didn't tell Hastert that it's time he retire. There's still time for Republicans to get out in front of this story and turn around their image before the election. It makes no sense for Republicans to bleed from this scandal into another week.

But like I've said before, Rove can make a person crazy trying to second guess what he's got up his sleeve.

And speaking of politicos who can drive you nuts, lets talk about Howard Dean's plan to build the Democratic party state-by-state. Rumor has it that it's what's behind the great friction between Dean and Rahm Emmanuel. Great idea, Dr. Dean; when are you going to start?

I spent a good amount of time today looking up all of the Republicans involved in the Foley-Page scandal, to see what I could do to give a hand to their Democratic opponents. This would be a great opportunity to raise some money for them, push their campaigns to the front burners in the media, wouldn't you think?

Unfortunately, serious, legitimate Democratic party contenders don't exist for those seats. Only one of them has a working website, but not much else - they're barely listed at ActBlue (online fundraising accounts), or anywhere else.

Of all Democrats, wouldn't you think that Howard Dean would have realized the importance of Democratic candidates having websites, up and running, capable of accepting donations? I would have thought that at the top of the DNC's budget would have been a salaried website designer and webmaster, making sure that every national and state Democratic candidate had a functioning website.

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tag, Technorati Tags, tags, politics, categories, Karl Rove, dogs, page scandal, Mark Foley, DNC, Rahm Emmanuel, Howard Dean, elections, Democrats, Republicans, The Constant American, Constant American

Republicans Endangered and Exploited Their Own Supporters' Children to Hold On To Power

Overheard at Washington Monthly:

I'd believe much more in Fordham's Christian sensibilities he if hadn't actively tried to prevent a child predator and the other people who enabled him to get what's coming to them from both law enforcement and the voters.

I guess that this reader hasn't caught the GOP's new & improved spin operation today.

Wednesday's memes:

"16 year olds aren't children, so Foley's not a pedophile."

"The Democrats also knew that Foley was a homosexual (and if he's gay, then he's obviously a pedophile), so they, too, are guilty of a cover up."

This is what Democrats ought to be pointing out for the media and those people who aren't capable of independent thought (Republican voters): The Republicans' habit of trying to move the ethics' bar ever lower after they have been caught dead to rights.

Democrats ought to be the echo chamber after every revelation in this story, reminding voters that "This is what happens when one party controls all branches of government, and they refuse to perform their Constitutional role of oversight."

It's hard to believe that if Hastert hasn't resigned by now, that Rove hasn't signed off on Hastert's strategy of hanging in. At least until after the election. That seems to me to be a pretty risky strategy, unless Rove is fairly confident that in these last weeks before the election Republicans will be able to reduce their base's reaction to this scandal as "boys will be boys." A drip-by-drip de-sensitization to a middle-aged Republican congressman's preying upon teenagers, until Rove's promised "October surprise" takes over the air time being given to this story.

Hastert supporters like Patrick McHenry (R-N. Carolina), a 31-year-old, first-term member of Congress, legend for his anti-gay, Christian-right rhetoric, hit the air waves today to question "How did these IMessages and emails get to the media?" McHenry is accusing Democrats (ABC says that it didn't get the story or the messages/emails from a Democrat), as if forcing Foley out of office and an investigation of this situation is something to be ashamed of. Throw some money at McHenry's Democratic opponent, Richard Carsner if you can.

As long as we're asking questions, who in the Republican leadership questioned the pages and their parents and learned that they didn't want to file charges? Did the investigation of Foley end once they realized that it was only Republican pages that Foley went after? Does the Republican iron-grip on power extend to their constituents, too, threatening them if they went public? Let's remember that pages are the children of the most influential and biggest contributing members of the political parties. If Mark Foley was diddling the son or grandson of one of Rodney Alexander's (R-LA) biggest contributors (or Jim McCrery's, (R-Shreveport), was there a conspiracy among more Republican members of congress to keep it quiet? Apparently one of the pages in question and his family have been threatened:

U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-Quitman, defended House Speaker Dennis Hastert and himself Tuesday even as calls for both lawmakers' resignations came for their handling of the page scandal that cost Republican Congressman Mark Foley his job.

The firestorm broke Friday after reports surfaced that a male page from Monroe contacted Alexander's office about inappropriate e-mails from Foley in the fall of 2005. Foley resigned Friday.

Alexander said his office contacted the teenager's parents and Hastert in the fall and House Majority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Tom Reynolds, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, in the spring of 2006.

"We contacted the family and the House leadership on multiple occasions about the e-mails," said Alexander, R-Quitman. "If the speaker didn't know any more than we did, I think his response was adequate."

The page's family had U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery, R-Shreveport, come to Alexander's defense on Tuesday, saying he 'has done everything he thought was appropriate. Rodney is beyond reproach," McCrery said.

But another Louisiana Republican, Rep. Charles Boustany of Lafayette, said he would have tried harder to bring the problem to Hastert's attention.

"I might have done this differently," he said.

The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, called for Hastert to step down on Tuesday, while the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus called for Alexander's resignation.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., questioned why Alexander went to Reynolds, who leads the political group whose goal is to get Republicans elected.

"He's trying to cover their political backsides," Clyburn said of Alexander. "I think that is atrocious. He politicized this from day one."

Clyburn said Alexander and other Republicans are trying to protect Hastert. He said the leaders could have acted last year to make sure there wasn't a pattern and that there weren't other victims.

But Alexander said he was unaware of previous e-mails Foley sent to other pages that were more lurid than the ones sent to the Monroe page.

"I didn't have any idea about any previous e-mails," Alexander said. "I'd heard rumors he was gay but never anything about inappropriate contact with pages before the ones reported to our office.

"I think (Hastert's) response was adequate if all that he knew about was the e-mails we had. I have know way of knowing if they knew anything else."

In the 2005 e-mails to the Monroe page, who was 16 at the time, Foley asked the teenager how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The former congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself.

"Our office informed both the speaker and the majority leader," Alexander said. "I don't know how much higher I could go than that."

Alexander said he believes the e-mails to the Monroe page stopped after House leadership warned Foley.

"The family never told us there were any more e-mails," said Alexander, who has been in contact with the page's family. "I assume they would have let us know if there were more."

Neither the teenager, who Alexander said has been threatened, nor his family responded to multiple interview requests.

Why aren't Rodney Alexander and Jim McCrery being dogged by the media about what they knew and what they were told? Why aren't they being pressured to resign their seats? Why aren't Democrats, like Alexander's opponent, Gloria Williams Hearn, and McCrery's (Patti Cox) making more hay over this?

Republicans did nothing to protect the children of their own supporters from becoming victims.


Filed under: Page scandal, Mark Foley, Karl Rove, Hastert, McCrery, Gloria Williams Hearn, Patti Cox, Rodney Alexander, Republican party, Jim Boehner, Charles Boustany, Patrick McHenry, Richard Carsner

Republicans Call for the `Grover Norquist Solution' to the Page Program

Grover Norquist, the radical rightwing strategist and close adviser to George W. Bush said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Once again, Republicans' solution to a government program that doesn't put money directly into their pockets is to destroy it:

U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood on Monday called for the termination of the House page program at the end of this semester until it can be reviewed in the wake of the scandal over a House member's inappropriate Internet chats with teenagers who were in the program.

It's amazing that the United States ever got off the ground at all with the Republican party perpetually plotting its demise whenever they didn't get their own way, or were caught with their hands in the till.

The history of the Page Program is long, going back to 1829. It's difficult enough trying to instill civic-mindedness and foster patriotism in young Americans, given how Republicans have worked for the last thirty years to destroy our public education system. But when it comes to our nation's children, Republicans prove again that they just can't be bothered:

The scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley has brought new attention to a program that brings dozens of high-school students to Capitol Hill each year.

Path to Pagedom: To qualify, pages must be high school juniors, at least 16 years old, have good grades and be sponsored by their local representative or senator.

Job Description: Pages are essentially glorified gofers. They fetch members for votes and hand-deliver messages, bills and amendments to and fro. For their service, which is limited to one semester, they earn the equivalent of an annual salary of between $18,800 (for House pages) and $20,500 (for Senate pages). They live in dormitories in Capitol Hill and attend mandatory, early-morning classes before heading off to the Hill.

Page Fashion: Pages are required to pay for their own uniforms -- navy jackets, dark gray slacks or skirts, long-sleeved white shirts and black shoes.

Origins: The program can be traced to silver-tongued statesman Daniel Webster, who appointed the first Senate page in 1829. The first House pages followed in 1842.

Where Are They Now: Several pages have later returned to Capitol Hill as lawmakers -- including such current senior members of Congress as Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CN), Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA).

Page Problems: Despite its long history, the program was nearly eliminated two decades ago. In 1983, a congressional investigation turned up evidence that two House members, Reps. Daniel B. Crane and Gerry Studds, and a senior House employee had engaged in sexual liaisons with pages.

Crane, a Republican from Illinois, admitted to a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female page. He was censured and voted out of office in 1984. Studds, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the sexual affair he had with a 17-year-old male page was consensual, and accused the House ethics committee of violating his privacy. Studds was also censured, but won re-election the following year and served in Congress until his retirement in 1996.

In the wake of the investigation, Congress overhauled the page program and adopted new protections. A dormitory for pages was created near the Capitol, and the minimum age of participation was raised from 14 to 16.

What Now: The future of the program is once again threatened. In the wake of the Foley revelations, several lawmakers have called for a suspension or end to the 150-year-old congressional tradition.

The solution is to get lawmakers into office who have a sincere desire to serve the public instead of their own `bottom line.'

They could try filling their time with work (you know what they say about "idle hands"?) - this 109th Congress is the most `do-nothing' Congress in the history of the nation. 3-day work-weeks (Congress was in session only 94 days this year), Republican-controlled, this Congress left Washington last week after having failed to meet, for the 10th year in a row, the deadline for completing the budget for the upcoming fiscal year:

"I regret that we have once again so markedly demonstrated in the United States Senate that keeping our job far outweighs the desire to do our jobs," Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a speech from the Senate floor Friday afternoon.

"There will (have been) no accountability for most of the actions taken by Congress on the domestic portion of the budget," agreed Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., highest ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Byrd said GOP leaders have been unwilling to bring the domestic spending bills up for debate before the Nov. 7 elections because of the deep cuts they include to popular programs. Byrd calculated that Republicans plan to cut domestic programs by $14 billion after adjusting for inflation.

"The summer-long hiatus from our legislative duties make me wonder why we bothered to keep the lights on in this chamber at all," Byrd said.

What do members of Congress say when they pass each other in the halls on Wednesdays?

"Have a nice weekend!"

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Students Sick With 9/11-Related Illnesses Want Federal Help

Bush and the GOP gave tax cuts to their supporters, the richest of the rich, all the while lying to the residents and workers in lower Manhattan about the safety of the air they were breathing:

In addition to the emotional trauma they faced after the World Trade Center attacks, students who went to schools in Lower Manhattan say they are also facing respiratory problems, and now they also want the federal government's help.

Current and former students were told it was safe to return to class after September 11th, and they did, exposing themselves to the same toxic air inhaled by first responders.

"They were minors during 9/11; they had no options. They were ordered back to school because the EPA said that the air was safe, and they had no ability to say yes or no," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. "And now we're finding out that it may be that some of these children are going to come down with very serious illnesses."

"A major driver of lymphoma is being exposed to excessive amounts of toxins pollutants, which is exactly what we inhaled when we were down here after September 11," said former Stuyvesant High School student Amit Friedlander, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. "So I think, whether or not my cancer came from September 11, there definitely will be a lot of people who will be getting sick."

The families are calling on the federal government to provide money for medical screening and health insurance for the students.

Students and teachers began getting sick one month after the WTC were hit and collapsed:

New York City Board of Education officials are at loss to explain headaches and breathing problems among dozens of students and teachers at Stuyvesant High School, located in shadow of collapsed World Trade Center, since classes resumed week ago; Chancellor Harold O Levy says daily air-quality tests have detected no harmful pollutants at any level that should be of concern; says only potential problem is mildly elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

We know now that this wasn't true - harmful pollutants were not only detected, they were measured in alarming amounts. Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA, and the Bush administration lied and hid the test results from New Yorkers.

Stuyvesant High School, founded in 1904, is one of, literally, a handful of special public schools in NY for intellectually gifted students. Specializing in math and science, admission to Stuyvesant is by competitive examination and tuition is free.


Stuyvesant is noted for its many accomplished alumni, its rigorous academics, and for sending the most students to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton of any public school in the United States. These are not `legacies,' like George W. Bush.

Stuyvesant has contributed to the education of several Nobel laureates, winners of the Fields Medal and the Wolf Prize, and a host of accomplished alumni. It consistently leads the nation in number of National Merit Scholarships as well as Intel (formerly Westinghouse) Science Talent Search Semi-Finalists and Finalists. Stuyvesant sends nearly all its students off to four-year universities and around 30 percent go on to the Ivy League.

Stuyvesant graduates earn an average SAT score of about 1400 (685 verbal, 723 math). Stuyvesant also was the high school with the highest number of Advanced Placement exams taken, and also the highest number of students reaching the mastery level.

Children are required to be in school and have a right to a safe environment. No child, no person, in the U.S. should have had their government lie to them as happened here. That it happened at Stuyvesant, to focused students with such ability and promise, puts a personal face on the further insult that our government inflicted on Americans after the initial devastation of 9/11/01.

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U.S. Supreme Court Lets Texas Ban Vibrators

`Neck' massager.
Kiss those neck massagers goodbye, ladies:

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a Texas law that bars the sale of dildos and other ``obscene devices,'' turning away an appeal by a store clerk facing prosecution.

The justices made no comment in rejecting the appeal, which argued that the law violated a constitutional right to sexual privacy. The court last year turned down a similar challenge to an Alabama law.

Texas is one of a handful of states that ban sexual devices. Courts have upheld laws in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas and struck down restrictions in Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana.

Texas bans the manufacture, sale, distribution and promotion of ``devices including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marked as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.''

Ignacio Sergio Acosta, a clerk at Trixx Adult Bookstore in El Paso, was arrested in 2003 for selling a vibrator to two undercover police officers. A state trial judge threw out the case, saying the law was unconstitutional. An appeals court overturned that ruling and said the prosecution could go forward.

In his Supreme Court appeal, Acosta pointed to a 2003 Supreme Court decision that said states can't ban private homosexual conduct.

We're going back to the 1950s, and breaking all speed limits getting there. That last line, "In his Supreme Court appeal, Acosta pointed to a 2003 Supreme Court decision that said states can't ban private homosexual conduct," is the most chilling. I see it as an invitation to states to begin the assault on Griswald vs. Connecticut, the landmark case allowing the sale of contraceptives to unmarried people and which laid the groundwork for abortion by describing "zones of privacy" in the Constitution.

Just when it looks like the Republican party may be imploding under the weight of their own hubris, greed and overreach, there comes that bracing jolt of cold water splashed in our faces: We're going to be stuck with Bush's judicial appointees for decades.

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Torture: A Practice of Sadists

Barbara Bush with her son, George W. Bush, 1946

Over at Think Progress:

last point. everyone here is fond of the idea that torture doesn’t work. okay, listen to what you are saying. torture didn’t begin with the bush administration, it is at least thousands of years old. so, if something doesn’t work, does it survive thousands of years?

Comment by paul — October 1, 2006 @ 12:00 pm

Torture has nothing to do with getting information out of an enemy combatant. It's to satisfy sadistic impulses of frustrated inquisitors. It's along the same lines as an officer looking the other way when his men get drunk, get into fights, or sexually assault some woman who crosses their path. "They're just blowing off some steam."

Torture as an ineffective method to gain information is a settled issue among experts, professionals, in the field. The problem is that we are being led by and run by non-professionals - and some severely emotionally disturbed ones at that. If you want to understand who and what these people are, start with Justin Frank's book:

Dr. Justin Frank, a renowned Washington, DC-based psychoanalyst, assembles a comprehensive psychological profile of President George W. Bush in the book, `Bush On The Couch.'

Using the principles of Applied Psychoanalysis, the discipline of psychoanalysing public and historical figure pioneered by Freud, Frank fearlessly builds his case, which concludes with a most disturbing diagnosis. With an eye for the subtleties of human behaviour sharpened through thirty years of clinical practice, Dr. Frank traces the development of Bush's character from childhood to present day, identifying and analysing Bush's patterns of thought, behaviour and communication. A thorough and authoritative examination of Bush's public appearances and speeches, along with historical, biographical, and journalistic records, Bush On the Couch is a compelling portrait of George W. Bush, filled with controversial and disturbing revelations about our nation's leader:

. the scion of a powerful family that failed to nurture its first-born son even as it instilled within him a false sense of omnipotence
. an individual in the grip of anxieties that require a monumental effort to manage
. an untreated alcoholic supported by a nation of enablers
. a rigid thinker with a perilously simplistic worldview
. and a megalomaniacal leader driven to invent adversaries so he can destroy them

Insightful and accessible, courageous and controversial, Bush On the Couch sheds startling new light on the Bush psyche and its impact on the way he governs, tackling head-on the question no one seems willing to ask: Is the president psychologically fit to run the country?

In the Bush administration, we're looking at a group of people who come from authoritarian, dictatorial, abusive families. Starting with Bush himself. "(I'm going to, We're going to, Let's) kick some ass" is one of the most frequent quotes attributed to Bush by people who have met with him. He's described as "combative," "impatient," "exasperated," "smug," "arrogant," "surly," in every meeting he has with his staff, members of Congress, and heads of state. He is not a man who shows respect for others or knows how to get along with others. Whenever you see him in public, no matter who he's with (the press, town forums, heads of state, Republican leadership in Congress) Bush can't wait to get it over with and get away from them. He doesn't like people, he's not comfortable being around people, and the only way that he even makes it through events is by ridiculing them, unevening the balance of power to his advantage.

Gail Sheehy wrote `The Accidental President' in 2000:

"Bush has a whole lot of energy and aggression to burn off or he's likely to blow. He has always been that way. When Barbara Bush took her 13-year-old son and his best friend, Doug Hannah, to play golf at her Houston club, George would start cursing if he didn't tee off well. His mother would tell him to quit it. By the third or fourth hole he would be yelling "Fuck this" until he had ensured that his mother would send him to the car.

"It fit his needs," says Hannah. "He couldn't lose."

Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, "That boy is going to have optical rectosis."

What did that mean? "She said, 'A shitty outlook on life.'"

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.... It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles.

The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. "There was only one problem-my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you-he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.

"George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready,'" says Bush-family friend Bo Polk Jr.

Bush's relationships with friends can best be described as sophomoric - he's obsessed with fart jokes, and when he and Rove aren't swapping them, Bush is said to love to fart in front of new aides in the Oval Office and watch them squirm. To derive pleasure from the discomfort (or pain or embarrassment) of others is the definition of sadism.

Bush is also legend for his vengeful nature, a sense of `entitlement' and a very long mean-streak. He wasn't the "loyalty enforcer" on his father's Presidential campaign because he was a nice guy. He was an arrogant, snide, MEAN, sadistic ass to anybody in his father's campaign who he thought wasn't subservient enough. Every successful executive has somebody on his payroll like Bush - the guy who does the firing, drops the axe, and doesn't care what anybody thinks of him. You don't expect the hatchet man to then enter politics as a candidate.

Did you know that during press conferences, it's not enough for journalists to ask questions in a respectful tone and call him "sir" - they must also refer to him as "Mr. President." From a 2004 White House press conference a few days after 20 American soldiers were killed in Iraq and 3 American mercenaries were killed and mutilated, dragged from their burning car in Iraq:

THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you a couple of questions. Who is the AP person?

Q I am.

THE PRESIDENT: You are?

Q Sir, in regard to --

THE PRESIDENT: Who are you talking to?

Q Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline, is there a chance that that would be moved back?

"Sir" wasn't deferential enough for Bush. This was his way of enforcing a hierarchical order in an American President's relationship with the press corps. In case you don't catch Bush's press conferences, here's one from just a few weeks ago, as discussed on Democracy Now!:

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Wallsten, I want to end by asking you about that exchange that you had with President Bush back in June. You were wearing sunglasses during a news conference. The President on the White House lawn. Let's watch and listen.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Peter, are you going to ask that question with those shades on?

PETER WALLSTEN: I can take them off for you.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: No, I’m interested in the shade look, seriously.

PETER WALLSTEN: Alright, I’ll keep it then.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: For the viewers, there's no sun.

PETER WALLSTEN: I guess it depends on your perspective.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Touche.

AMY GOODMAN: This became a very big story, you and your shades. Why?

PETER WALLSTEN: Well, the President, of course, had no idea at the time that I have a retinal condition, a form of macular degeneration called Stargardt’s, so I have -- most of my central vision is gone. But in that context, what was important was that it was outside in the rose garden, it was an overcast day. But even on an overcast day, the glare can be hard to take, especially sitting outside for an extended period of time. That press conference was over an hour long. So it's pretty painful to sit outside with that much glare without sunglasses. And I frankly forget I had them on. It's just natural for me to have them on outside, and I forgot about them, until he mentioned it when he called on me and asked me, of course, as you just saw, if I was going to keep them on. I offered to take them off, and it became funny.

But he had made fun of several reporters that day, and he did not know about my condition.

Bush's cruelty to animals when he was a boy has been reported, as has his callous disregard for others whose lives he's responsible for:

Karla Tucker and George W. Bush

Under Texas law, each death penalty case has one chance to be reprieved by a governor without the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The board must recommend the second reprieve in order for it to be granted. All 18 members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles are appointed by the governor (Clark, 2000). Before Tucker was executed, there were pleas for clemency from Waly Bacre Ndiaye, the United Nations commissioner on summary and arbitrary executions, the World Council of Churches, Pope John Paul II, and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, among other world figures. Unusual pleas came from conservative American political figures such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson, interceding on her behalf. Tucker did not ask for a pardon, only commutation of her death sentence to life in prison. Huntsville Prison's warden testified that she was a model prisoner and that, after 14 years on death row, she likely had been reformed. Despite these pleas, Bush signed her death warrant. In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Bush for Talk Magazine (September 1999, p. 106). Excerpt from this interview is quoted below:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

Just because people "clean up well" (good haircuts and suits) doesn't mean that they're emotionally healthy and well-functioning.

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Everything I Need to Know About Mark Foley & Republican Party Leadership I Learned From `The Sopranos'

GOP Staffer Warned Pages About Foley 5 Years Ago, Says President of Page Alumni Association


Congressional pages at State of the Union address. In Republicans' charge, Congressional pages put in harm's way.

For the last couple of days, I've been listening to journalists on all of the cable news outlets (from Mike Viquiera and Chris Matthews at MSNBC to the line-up at CNN) say how they've known Mark Foley for years, twelve years, since he's been in office. They've talked about how much they like him and how badly they feel for him. One journalist who had obviously just gotten out of a Republican spin session, suggested how Foley's behavior must have been due to the rum. How do these people manage to land jobs in this highly competitive medium, television? [Communications majors, with little or no education in any other field relative to what they cover in the news.]

On Monday's Hardball:

MATTHEWS: A.B., you cover the Hill all day long, you know the culture. I‘m not building you up, you know. You know that culture up there?

A.B. STODDARD, THE HILL: I do. And I want to say that I‘ve known Mark Foley for 12 twelve years, and I am not in the House Republican leadership, but if I knew that he was too friendly with the pages, I think it was up to the Speaker Hastert to be aware of it, as well. And the fact that they didn‘t...

MATTHEWS: Did you know there was fire behind the smoke, though? Beside having a covert interest in these kids?

STODDARD: I think when it comes to children, you have to treat smoke as fire. That‘s what I would do if I was running the House. If I found out about this, I would have looked into it more and done my level best to maybe wrap this up a year ago, ask Mark Foley to leave.

MATTHEWS: What were the indicators, was it the fact that he showed in black tie for the page graduation or what?

STODDARD: No, he was just, he was know—look, Mark Foley is a very nice guy, and as I‘ve said, I have talked to him many, many times over the years. He was very well liked by all of his colleagues. There are closet homosexuals in the Republican party, they are not known in the pages.

Mark Foley was not know as a drunk, Mark Foley was known as a really nice guy who happened to spend a lot of time attending meetings of the page program, welcoming addresses, et cetera, the functions that they had. And he was just very friendly with them, you know, as they make their way through the building and stuff. It was just a known fact and it just wasn‘t really—it wasn‘t comfortable, it wasn‘t appropriate.

And I think the leadership clearly knew about this. I think when they learned this a year ago, they could have done more to investigate it or wrap it up. And they missed an opportunity to protect themselves.

MATTHEWS: Were they afraid that they would offend the gay community if they went after someone who was perceived to be gay, just because of his orientation?

STODDARD: I do not think that‘s why. I think they swept it under the rug and didn‘t tell Dale Kildee because they wanted to save themselves.

MATTHEWS: You‘re right. That was the guy mentioned as the real straight arrow, not straight, but straight arrow, in the Republican—he‘s the only Democrat in the Committee they could have told about this. They didn‘t do it. They were afraid to let him know.

OLIPHANT: The more people you tell, the more you widen the circle, the more you protect yourself. I mean, this is a wonderful example of what happened when you have one of these tight little circles, and people don‘t think outside the bubble, you are asking for it.

STODDARD: That‘s right.

I, too, have known Mark Foley for the same twelve years that these journalists have known Foley - from his time on the air since he entered politics. I have never liked him. I have always seen Foley as a closeted gay man, hiding in a political party that makes no bones of their hatred for homosexuals. How self-loathing must you be to work and raise money for, and serve the interests of a group of people who want you outlawed?

Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and currently a television personality on MSNBC, said that he and Foley entered Congress at the same time, 1994, the Newt Gingrich revolution. Scarborough said that he knew the first time he met Foley that Foley was gay. If I knew it through the television screen, and Scarborough knew it standing right next to him, everybody in the Republican party had to have known it. How is it that all of these people could know and like Foley for years, and for it not to have changed their minds about gays and gay rights legislation?

It's one thing for Republicans to come up with hateful and wrong-minded legislation on that which they are ignorant and fearful of. But there's no learning curve with Republicans. They refuse to change their opinions, no matter what - whether it's about homosexuality, global warming, the origins of islamic hatred of the west.

How can we expect a group of people who don't understand the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia (and who don't want to know) to be trusted to keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks?

Okay, technically, pedophilia is defined as obsession with pre-pubescent children. A middle-aged man fixated on teen-aged boys isn't illegal, coarse advances on them are untoward and not becoming of a member in the U.S. House of Representatives. What Mark Foley did was illegal in the truest sense of sexual harrassment laws regarding subordinates in the workplace. Had the Republican party not gutted the House Ethics Committee, Foley would have been brought up before them. In the current climate (the Christian right's influence over the Republican party), Foley would have been thrown out of the House. That's not altogether a bad way to handle this case of an emotionally immature lawmaker with poor judgment, arrested sexual development, making sexually explicit advances on the offspring of his party's wealthy contributors, wandering the halls outside of their dorm, drunk and disorderly.

But that wasn't how Republicans dispensed with Mark Foley. They decided, as long as three years ago, to do nothing. I can think of a couple of reasons why, but the most obvious one is that Foley is an "earner." Foley's PAC donated directly to the campaigns of Republicans in both Houses of Congress, rivaling In just less than 3 years, Mark Foley gave Tom Reynolds committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, a group that aids and coordinates Republican efforts to re-elect their own in the U.S. House of Representatives, $330,000 (that includes $100,000 the summer after Reynolds learned of the messages), ranking Foley as one of the campaign's largest single contributors:


Another "earner," closeted gay character `Vito Spatafore,' reluctantly marked for death by the head of the Soprano crime family after he's outed.

To decide to do nothing, Republican leadership had to have also made a conscious decision that the children of their wealthy contributors were expendible. These teen-aged pages weren't the children of the evangelical Christian base of the Republican party. If and when the Christian Right base ever got wind of it, Republican leadership (Hastert) would just say "I just learned about it, too."

There was a blueprint for handling situations like this. Republicans have been quick to point out two congressmen on whom the blueprint was followed twenty-three years ago:

In 1983, two lawmakers were censured by the House of Representatives for having sexual relationships with teenage pages. Rep. Dan Crane, R-Ill., admitted to sexual relations with a 17-year-old female page, while Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass., admitted to a consensual sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male page that began ten years earlier in 1973.

The ways each lawmaker handled the scandal — and the consequences they faced afterward — were very different. Crane apologized for his actions, saying, "I'm human" and "I only hope my wife and children will forgive me." He was subsequently voted out of office in 1984.

Studds, who was openly gay, said the relationship was consensual and charged that the investigation by the House Ethics Committee raised fundamental questions of privacy. As his colleagues in the House read their censure of him, he turned his back and ignored them. He too held a press conference afterwards. Standing beside him was the male page with whom he had the relationship. And instead of apologizing, both Studds and the page said that what had happened between them was nobody's business but their own. The twosome pointed out that they had been consenting adults acting in private. And if people had a problem with that it was just too bad, because it was none of their business. He won re-election the following year — in a more liberal district than Crane's — and served in Congress until his retirement in 1996.

The only commonality between the Studds, Crane and Foley scandals is that each involves sex, only with Studds and Crane it was a single consensual affair. Mark Foley, however, is the poster-man for everything that the Republican party says is wrong with Democrats, only lo' and behold, it's one of their own being protected by their party's leadership. This scandal exposes Republicans' hypocrisy. What remains is whether the Republican base (evangelical Christians) realize that the Republican party has been playing them for fools, using them to gain majority status in order to rob the American people blind.

ABC News reports:

A Republican staff member warned Congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.

Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor.

Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff."

Staff members at the House clerk's office did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Some of the sexually explicit instant messages that led to Foley's abrupt resignation Friday were sent to pages in Loraditch's class.

Pages report to either Republican or Democratic supervisors, depending on the political party of the member of Congress who nominated them for the page program.

Several pages for members of Congress tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley, R-Fla.

Loraditch says the some of pages who "interacted" with Foley were hesitant to report his behavior because "members of Congress, they've got the power." Many of the pages were hoping for careers in politics and feared Foley might seek retribution.

Loraditch runs the alumni association for the US House Page Program and he is deeply concerned about the future effects this scandal could have on a program that he sees as a valuable educational experience for teens.

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To Critics Who Say Woodward is Savaging Bush Because Bush Wouldn't See Him For This Book?

Here's the transcript of the "60 Minutes" interview with Bob Woodward about `State of Denial'. Go to the bold below for Woodward's response to critics who claim that he is savaging Bush because Bush wouldn't see him for this book:

President Bush's former chief of staff, Andy Card, said the Bush presidency will be judged by three things: “Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.” Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, has just completed his third book on the Bush presidency, “State of Denial.”

Woodward spent more than two years, interviewed more than 200 people including most of the top officials in the administration and came to a damning conclusion. He tells Mike Wallace that for the last three years the White house has not been honest with the American public.

"It is the oldest story in the coverage of government: the failure to tell the truth," Woodward charges.

Asked to explain what he means that the Bush administration has not told the truth about Iraq, Woodward says, "I think probably the prominent, most prominent example is the level of violence."

Not just the growing sectarian violence — Sunnis against Shias that gets reported every day — but attacks on U.S., Iraqi and allied forces. Woodward says that’s the most important measure of violence in Iraq, and he unearthed a graph, classified secret, that shows those attacks have increased dramatically over the last three years.

"Getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week," he says. "That’s more than 100 a day—that is four an hour. Attacking our forces."

Woodward says the government had kept this trend secret for years before finally declassifying the graph just three weeks ago. And Woodward accuses President Bush and the Pentagon of making false claims of progress in Iraq – claims, contradicted by facts that are being kept secret.

For example, Woodward says an intelligence report classified secret from the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded in large print that "THE SUNNI ARAB INSURGENCY IS GAINING STRENGTH AND INCREASING CAPACITY, DESPITE POLITICAL PROGRESS."

And “INSURGENTS RETAIN THE CAPABILITIES TO…INCREASE THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE THROUGH NEXT YEAR.”

But just two days later a public defense department report said just the opposite. “Violent action, will begin to wane in early 2007,” the report said.

What does Woodward make of that?

"The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

"Why is that secret? The insurgents know what they’re doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn’t know? The American public," he adds.

"President Bush says over and over as Iraqi forces stand up, U.S. forces will stand down. The number of Iraqis in uniform today I understand is up to 300,000?" Wallace asks.

"They’ve stood up from essentially zero to 300,000. This is the military and the police," Woodward replies.

"But, U.S. forces are not standing down. The attacks keep coming," Wallace remarks.

"They’ve stood up and up and up and we haven’t stood down, and it’s worse," Woodward replies.

John Negorponte knows it’s worse. He’s the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, and according to Woodward, Negroponte thinks the U.S. policy in Iraq is in trouble – that violence is now so widespread that the U.S. doesn’t even know about much of it; and that the killings will continue to escalate.

"He was the ambassador there in Iraq and now he sees all the intelligence," Woodward says. "I report he believes that we’ve always going almost back to the beginning, miscalculated and underestimated the nature of the insurgency."

Why?

"There’s this feeling, 'How can a bunch guys running around putting improvised explosive devices in dead animals and by the side of the road in cars, cause all this trouble," Woodward says.

Woodward reports that a top general says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has so emasculated the joint chiefs that the chairman of the chiefs has become “the parrot on Rumsfeld’s shoulder.”

And, according to Woodward, another key general, John Abizaid, who’s in charge of the whole Gulf region, told friends that on Iraq, Rumsfeld has lost all credibility.

"What does that mean, he doesn’t have any credibility anymore?" Wallace asks.

"That means that he cannot go public and articulate what the strategy is. Now, this is so important they decide," Woodward explains. "The Secretary of State Rice will announce what the strategy is. This is October of last year." She told Congress the U.S. strategy in Iraq is "clear, hold and build."

"Rumsfeld sees this and goes ballistic and says, 'Now wait a minute. That’s not our strategy. We want to get the Iraqis to do these things.' Well it turns out George Bush and the White House liked this definition of the strategy so it’s in a presidential speech he’s gonna give the next month," Woodward tells Wallace.

"Rumsfeld sees it. He calls Andy Card, the White House chief of staff and says 'Take it out. Take it out. That’s not our strategy. We can’t do that.' Card says it’s the core of what we’re doing. That’s two and a half years after the invasion of Iraq. They cannot agree on the definition of the strategy. They cannot agree on the bumper sticker."

"General John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, you quote him as saying privately a year ago that the U.S. should start cutting its troops in Iraq. You report that he told some close Army friends, quote, 'We’ve gotta get the f out.' And then this past March, General Abizaid visited Congressman John Murtha on Capitol Hill," Wallace says.

"John Murtha is in many ways the soul and the conscience of the military," Woodward replies. "And he came out and said, 'We need to get out of Iraq as soon as it’s practical' and that sent a 10,000 volt jolt through the White House."

"Here’s Mr. Military saying, 'We need to get out,'" Woodward continues. "And John Abizaid went to see him privately. This is Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s commander in Iraq," Woodward says.

"And John Abizaid held up his fingers, according to Murtha, and said, 'We’re about a quarter of an inch apart, said, 'We’re that far apart,'" Woodward says.

"You report that after George W. Bush was reelected, his chief of staff, Andy Card, tried for months to convince the president to fire Don Rumsfeld. Why?" Wallace asks.

"To replace him. Because it wasn’t working. Card felt very strongly that the president needed a whole new national security team," Woodward says.

"You write Laura Bush was worried that Rumsfeld was hurting her husband. Andy Card told her the president seemed happy with Rumsfeld. And the first lady replied, quote, 'He’s happy with this but I’m not.' And later she said, 'I don’t know why he’s not upset,'" Wallace remarks.

"What’s interesting, Andy Card, as White House chief of staff every six weeks set up a one on one meeting with Laura Bush. Set aside an hour and a half to talk about what’s going on, what are the president’s anxieties? Smart meeting," Woodward explains. "And in the course of these sessions the problem with Rumsfeld came up. And she voiced her concern about the situation."

But Dick Cheney wanted Rumsfeld to stay. Why?

"Well, Rumsfeld’s his guy," Woodward says. "And Cheney confided to an aid that if Rumsfeld goes, next they’ll be after Cheney."

Cheney stunned Woodward by revealing that a frequent advisor to the Bush White House is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam War.

"He’s back," Woodward says. "In fact, Henry Kissinger is almost like a member of the family. If he’s in town, he can call up and if the president’s free, he’ll see him."

Woodward recorded his on-the-record interview with Cheney, and here’s what the vice president said about Henry Kissinger’s clout: "Of the outside people that I talk to in this job I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than just about anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month," Cheney tells Woodward. "I sit down with him."

Asked whether the president also meets with Kissinger, Cheney told Woodward, "Yes. Absolutely."

The vice president also acknowledged that President Bush is a big fan of Kissinger.

"Now, what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply:
'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again. Because in his view the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will. That we didn’t stick to it," Woodward says.

He says Kissinger is telling the president to stick to it, stay the course. "It’s right out of the Kissinger playbook," Woodward says.

In his book, published by CBS sister company, Simon & Schuster, Woodward reports that the first President Bush confided to one of his closest friends how upset he is that his son invaded Iraq.

"The former President Bush is said to be in agony, anguished, tormented by the war in Iraq and its aftermath," Wallace says.

"Yes," Woodward replies.

Asked if the former president conveys that message to his son, Woodward says, "I don’t know the answer to that. He tells it to Brent Scowcroft, his former national security advisor."

"You paint a picture, Bob, of the president as the cheerleader-in-chief. Current reality be damned. He’s convinced that he’s gonna succeed in Iraq, yes?" Wallace asks.

"Yes , that’s correct," Woodward says.

Woodward interviewed President George W. Bush for the first two books for hours.

"And do you know what? There are people who are gonna say, look Woodward is savaging President Bush because he wouldn’t see him for this book," Wallace remarks.

Woodward says that's not true. "He did not, and I asked. And I made it very clear to the White House what my questions were, what my information was. What could he say? That the secret chart is not right?" Woodward says. "That these things that happened in these meetings didn’t occur? They’re documented. I talked to the people who were there. Your producer, Bob Anderson, has listened to the tapes of my interviews with people to make sure that it’s not just kind of right, but literally right. This is what occurred."

And Woodward says that no matter what has occurred in Iraq, Mr. Bush does not welcome any pessimistic assessments from his aides, because he’s sure that his war has Iraq and America on the right path.

"Late last year he had key Republicans up to the White House to talk about the war. And said, 'I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.' Barney is his dog," Woodward says. "My work on this leads to lots of people who spend hours, days with the president."

"And in most cases they are my best sources. And there is a concern that we need to face realism. Not being the voice that says, 'Oh no, everything’s fine,' when it’s not," Woodward adds.

I've always thought Bob Woodward was a straight and narrow, unimaginative dullard. That is his best defense against the Bushies' assaults. He doesn't pretend to have any particular insight into the people he's covering and doesn't offer anything other than their own words and physical evidence. He's always been just a stenographer, taking down (or taping) the participants' words, gathering the documentation, etc. That's what he's done in `State of Denial.'

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