Meet Ollie

Ollie is our foster dog. Check him out on the RESCUE site. He's great fun and very loving. And available for adoption in the Phoenix area.

UPDATE (December 10, 2006): Ollie was adopted last night by a family with another bassett hound and a shar pei.

Foley's attraction to young males was well known on Capitol Hill

Foley's attraction to young male pages was well known, with at least one page being warned over a decade ago.

TPM Muckraker:

"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.

Halfway There:

“My daughter was in the capital page program.”

I had forgotten. JM went on.

“She had dinner with the congressman.”

This did not compute.

“With Foley? Really?”

“Yeah. He invited two pages to have dinner with him and they invited my daughter and another girl to go with them.”

“These pages were boys?”

“Yeah, but they were too smart to go by themselves, so they took the girls to their dinner with Foley.”

It's not plausible that the Republican Leadership was unaware.

Cato Institute provides forum to ID crackpot cult member Jonathan Wells

Skeptic Michael Shermer is speaking about his new book, Why Darwin Matters, at noon on October 12 at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. The Cato Institute is then showcasing a commentary on Shermer by "Intelligent Design proponent Jonathan Wells," whose dishonest books Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism, have been shredded at The Panda's Thumb.

Wells, a follower of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, entered a Ph.D. program at the behest of Moon. Wells wrote: "Father's [Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle."

Rev. Moon, who was crowned in a bizarre ceremony on Capitol Hill thanks to the support of a number of Congressmen, has also been supported by a variety of evangelical Christians who would ordinarily oppose cult groups whose leaders claim to be the second coming of Christ, such as Left Behind co-author Timothy LaHaye, his wife and head of Concerned Women for America Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer, Pat Boone, and Christian Coalition leader and Jack Abramoff pal Ralph Reed. Also involved with Moon have been former president George H.W. Bush and his son and President George W. Bush. (More on Moon and his connections to Christian and Republican leaders here and here.)

Why is the Cato Institute giving a forum to a purveyor of pseudoscience and an advocate of Moon's cult?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Richard W. Rahn, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and writes for Moon's Washington Times?

Some nice t-shirts

A shirt with a picture of Thomas Jefferson and the words "enemy combatant," a shirt that says "I am not a terrorist" in Arabic, and a shirt that just says "enemy combatant" (same link as the Arabic shirt). I like the first two better than the third.

James Dobson's hypocrisy on Foley

Focus on the Family's James Dobson blames society and the Internet for Foley's problems. Bill Clinton, by contrast, was personally responsible for his failings.

Why isn't Mark Foley personally responsible for his own failings?

(BTW, I recommend reading the book James Dobson's War on America.)

Scientology-friendly Foley in rehab in Clearwater, Florida

It looks like ex-Congressman Foley has been a Scientology-friendly U.S. Representative, attending Scientology events at Scientology's Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater and having Clearwater Scientologists raise funds for him. Wonkette asks whether there are any non-Scientology-run rehabilitation centers in Clearwater, Florida, which appears to be where Foley is getting treatment.

Clearwater is the home of Narconon, Scientology's pseudo-scientific drug treatment program.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Foley is a Scientologist or has taken any Scientology courses, but it does demonstrate that he's shown poor judgment in multiple areas of his life. I've previously reported on a number of Arizona state legislators who have likewise shown poor judgment in accepting gifts from and sponsoring legislation from Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

Trading lists of corrupt Congressmen

Cliff Schecter of AMERICAblog clearly has the better of the argument here with Cleta Mitchell of Foley & Lardner, but he's gotta admit William Jefferson's corrupt. Cleta Mitchell's comments are completely out of touch with reality, though--doesn't she remember how Clinton got bashed?

The Foley scandal and legal inconsistency

The pages involved were all 16 years of age or older, and thus above the age of consent in Washington, D.C. and most states. If Foley had actually had sex with them, it would not have been a crime.

But under the "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006" which Foley helped write, discussing sexual acts or soliciting sex from anyone under the age of 18 is a criminal offense.

These laws should be made consistent one way or the other. It doesn't make Foley's actions any more appropriate given his position of trust and power in the House (or provide any excuse for the House leadership's lack of response), but if 16 is a sensible age of consent, then the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 should use the same age as its limit.

Imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for three years for telling a joke

Via Patri Friedman at Catallarchy:

“As best as they can tell Badr Zamen Badr and his brother were imprisoned in Guantanamo for three years for telling a joke. Actually, for telling two jokes. They ran a satire magazine in Pakistan that poked fun at corrupt clerics, sort of the Pashtu edition of the Onion. The first joke that got them in trouble was when they published a poem about a politician…He called them up, he threatened them, and as best as they can tell, he told authorities they were involved with al-Quaeda.”

In other words, political leaders in other countries have used the United States to get rid of their critics, by using false claims of involvement with terrorism. When you accept hearsay evidence, don't conduct an investigation, and don't allow a trial, the process unsurprisingly gets abused, and people get imprisoned for years not because they've done anything wrong, but because they've criticized the people in power.

And now, with the Military Commissions Act, we've set ourselves up for similar abuses inside the United States by removing protections that have existed since Magna Carta.

Foley scandal and the Republican leadership

As the Republican leadership is scrambling to look responsible about this issue that they have ignored since last August or September, they keep contradicting each other and the evidence about what they knew and did. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in particular looks like he has serious trouble with the truth, according to Talking Points Memo:

Just consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn't know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership -- Boehner and Reynolds -- say no, they warned him about it months ago. Hastert got Boehner to recant; Reynolds is sticking to his guns.

Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker's office. And Hastert's office tonight put out the results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership -- not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk -- had actually laid eyes on the emails in question.

Only Hastert's office apparently didn't touch base with Rep. Shimkus, since as Hastert's crew was writing out their statement, Shimkus was offer giving an interview to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which he described how he and the Clerk had read the emails.

(ed.note: 2:19 AM, 10/1/06 ... What makes this even more comical is that, according to the AP "Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker Dennis Hastert's office." Didn't seem to help.)

So the centerpiece point of the Hastert statement this evening appears to have been a fabrication.

It stood up for maybe three or four hours.

At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We're supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him.

While Shimkus is saying he saw the emails, his spokesman is denying it.

Note that there seems to be agreement that the relatively more innocuous emails were known to some people in 2005, the far more incriminating instant messages apparently weren't seen until recently. But there seems to be evidence that many people were aware that Rep. Foley's behavior was, at the very least, "gregarious and 'flaky'", with quite an interest in the House pages, for quite some time.

UPDATE (October 7, 2006): It's now long since come out that not only did Shimkus see the emails, but Foley's former chief of staff (and until a few days ago Rep. Reynolds' chief of staff), Kirk Fordham, brought this to the attention of Hastert's office years ago. See the more recent posts on my blog, including this one.