Democrats are clearly to blame in the Foley scandal
Welcome back to the work week -- at least for those of us who were absent from work yesterday. Having a Jewish fiancee meant spending all of Monday in Yom Kippur services -- Lashanah Tovah to all the chosen people out there.
Anyway, I'd just like to come out here and say that this entire Foley scandal is the fault of Democrats. Foley himself has blamed alcohol, as those keeping up with the scandal know. This, of course, is absurd -- I myself am no stranger to the bottle, nor are the vast majority of my friends, acquaintances and colleagues. And to my knowledge, there's not a pederast among us.
Meanwhile, stand-up guys like Bill O'Reilly and Matt Drudge have blamed the 16-year-old page that Foley came on to, with Drudge even calling him a "beast." But I'm just not into blaming the victim, and besides, O'Reilly and Drudge are just prepping for their own problems. O'Reilly, after all, already has one sexual-harassment suit under his belt, and Drudge ... well, he's always seemed kind of degenerate. And in this post-truthiness world, what my gut tells me matters a lot more than any solid evidence.
Matt Drudge, alleged sexual deviant!!! Developing ...
The Democrats -- and most of the media, for that matter -- have blamed Republicans, saying they didn't do enough soon enough. And it's true that Republican House leaders like Tom Reynolds and Speaker Dennis Hastert knew about this thing months ago, and did nothing substantial, in effect sweeping the scandal under the rug.
It would seem, then, that Republicans are clearly to blame, and that more of their fat should join Foley's on the fire -- and if we're talking Dennis Hastert here, that better be one hell of a fire.
But Democrats should share the blame of Masturgate, as I've come to know it...
After all, shouldn't Democrats have known better by now?
Meet Mark Rey:
He's the Undersecretary of Agriculture in charge of the Forestry Service, whose job it is to protect our natural woodlands. His former job? Timber industry lobbyist.
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And here's Mike Leavitt
Now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and formerly the EPA administrator, before his time at the EPA, Leavitt was the governor of Utah, where his anti-environment, anti-health decisions included allowing "US Magnesium to emit over 42 million tons of Chlorine per year-nine times the Chlorine emissions from all other states. Despite intense local pressure from citizen groups, Leavitt's Department of Environmental Quality failed to bring the polluter under control. The EPA was forced to step in, filing a $900 million lawsuit against MagCorp for alleged environmental violations. He is now head of that very same EPA. Leavitt downplayed the toxic releases of the mining industry - including the releases of the potent neurotoxin Mercury by saying 'in reality it is not pollution.' " (source)
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Now, meet Paul Hoffman:
Paul is the Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. He runs the Federal Fish and Wildlife prograns and the U.S. Parks. A former member of the pro-business Chamber of Commerce, he has fought to allow drilling and mining in the parks he is supposed to be protecting.
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Here's Gale Norton:
Norton was Bush's first Secretary of the Interior, the department that heads up all of our protected federal lands. Before that, she was a mining industry lobbyist.
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And now let's meet David Lauriski
Under Bush, Dave is head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Before that, he was a coal industry executive and lobbyist. When he was named head of the MSHA, he bragged to a group of coal industry executives about how short his agenda was. Subsequently, he called for an end to the administration's program that offers chest X-rays to coal miners to check for black lung. He also wanted to cut the amount of mine inspectors by 25 percent.
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But don't think for a moment that putting the fox in charge of the henhouse is purely an executive branch phenomenon for Republicans. Here's Jim Inhofe.
Oklahoma Senator Inhofe, the Chairman, for God's sake, of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, dismissed global warming as a "hoax."
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Do you see the point now? The Dems should have wised up to the placement of GOP officials a long time ago. The Republicans apparently place leadership based on some sort of Bizarro World concept, in which the people who are most dangerous to something are placed in charge of it. When Mark Foley became the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, he should have been arrested on general principle. The failure of the Democrats to get this done will no doubt haunt them in November, when the voters repay their failures by voting in God-fearing Republicans by the barrel full.