Another one bites the dust. I’m in mild surprise over this, but here we go anyway: Representative Mark Foley of Florida sent a number of rather inappropriate emails to a 16 year old page. They got released, they’re creepy, and now he’s resigned.

Campaign aides had previously acknowledged that the Republican congressman e-mailed the former Capitol page five times, but had said there was nothing inappropriate about the exchange. The page was 16 at the time of the e-mail correspondence.

Ah, well at least it was nothing inappropriate. Apparently I was wrong. But wait, here’s AMERICAblog to the rescue with the evidence.

…totally fine. Nothing at all wrong with that. Oh, and in the ultimate irony, apparently Foley’s entire Congressional life is the fight against child molesters.

FOLEY INTRODUCES SWEEPING LEGISLATION ATTACKING INTERNET CHILD PORN INDUSTRY
WASHINGTON - {Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) introduced legislation last night along with Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) that goes after the Internet child porn industry and for the first time would hold credit card companies and Internet service providers accountable if they knowingly facilitate child pornography.

And here’s a great quote of his from 2002.

“I’m deeply disappointed the High Court sided with pedophiles over children. This decision has set back years of work on behalf of the most innocent of Americans.”

So here’s a big question for you all: the republican party has manwhore Jeff Gannon posing as a reporter, child molesters working to fight child molestation, a newspaper and a pundit who mock terrorist attacks on liberal establishments, and more corruption and bribery than democrats could ever hope to match.

Yet, this is the party that constantly waves its banner that they are the ones who care about “traditional family values”. How is this possible, and why do people still believe it?

Now I know this is going to be spun around to say “well they’re just acting like this in order to FOOL you stupid liberals into buying it”, but I think it says a lot about the War on Terror when al-Zawahiri releases a video, he’s not angrily shouting about how they will eventually win. Instead, he basically mocks the United States for failing.

“Bush you are a lying failure and a charlatan. It has been three and-a-half years (since the arrests) … What happened to us? We have gained more strength and we are more insistent on martyrdom,” the Egyptian militant leader said.

This is the equivalent of sitting just out of reach and going THBBBBB at Bush. I can already feel the “hey look, terrorists and democrats say the same things!” wave building up.

Talk to me folks. Are you registered? Ready to vote out some redcoats? We need to fix Congress, that’s the only way to fix the mess that’s been made.

Man, I forgot about this one. It seems like Abramoff kinda faded away a few months ago, but he’s back with a vengeance. I’ll just let you watch this one and decide for yourself.

[youtube]0rqsb0C7niE[/youtube]

Great.

Wow. I’m not a fan of republicans in general, though I tend to think that they’re generally good people who just have misplace priorities. Occasionally they’re good people who just don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Case in point? Trent Lott’s wisdom about the Middle East.

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”

Now this is a man who has a deep and profound understanding of the world around him. It’s a good thing he’s in office. I feel a lot safer knowing an intelligent, responsible guy like that holds some kind of responsibility for the fate of our nation.

Somebody stop the country, please. I’d like to get off. The House passed it earlier, and now the Senate has passed the “compromised” torture bill and it’s going to be sent off to President Bush to be signed.

No quote, since the article is fairly short. I’d just like to say that, truthfully, this hurts my heart. I cannot fathom the lack of morals being shown in Washingtown today. Bush and the few neocons who genuinely support this nonsense say we need to put away politics and let this pass, but it’s only passing BECAUSE of politics.

The republicans want an issue they can champion to make the Democrats look weak, and the Democrats wouldn’t filibuster or uniformly oppose it (34 Dems supported this) in order to avoid looking too soft so the republicans would have something to throw in their faces for the undoubtedly ugly ad campaigns.

Politics passed this bill. If this had been staved off until after the election, it would have never been passed, but our politicians were more concerned with keeping their seats than doing the right thing.

Scariest of all? Given Bush’s record, there is a good chance that he’ll add a signing statement onto this bill and let him out of what meager restrictions it does contain.

[tags]torture, politics, senate, bush, terrorism[/tags]