YES THERE IS OTHER NEWS BUT EVEN THE OTHER NEWS HAS TO BE PRESENTED IN RELATION TO THE FOLEY COVER-UP

Every writer I know-- not to mention every candidate I talk to-- is experiencing the same frustration right now: no matter how big a story you have, nothing gets by the Foley Predatorgate cover-up brouhaha. I mean this can't go all the way to the election, can it? Hastert has to resign by the end of the week and it'll quiet down. Right?

Meanwhile, Claire McKaskill has Barack Obama and Michael J Fox campaigning for her, another poll in PA-10 shows Chris Carney's margin over GOP woman-choker Don Sherwood into double digits, and Man On Dog's last hope for keeping his seat was dashed today when the PA Supreme Court denied Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli's bid to get on the ballot. (Say "Senator Casey" and try not to choke; it's still a helluva lot better than Senator Santorum.) But none of these stories are getting any real traction. Foley and Hastert have sucked all the air out of the room.

And it isn't like people aren't trying. Some of our favorite writers, like Bob Scheer and Williams Rivers Pitt have written incredible essays. But unless something is about Foley and the cover-up... well, no one is ready to switch channels yet. Gee, we're obsessed.

Scheer tried luring people to his incredibly important Condoleeza, destroyer of national security story with a catchy title: Rice More Sordid Than Foley. And she is-- and far more dangerous. "They are such liars" begins Scheer. And no, I am not speaking only of the dissembling GOP House leaders led by Speaker Dennis Hastert who, out of naked political calculation, covered up for one of their own in the sordid teen stalking case of Rep. Mark Foley. Call me old school, but I am still more concerned with the Republicans molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to be guarding the nation's security, an assignment which they have totally botched. The news about the Foley cover-up, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation."

But it probably will. Since I got Adam to wake up from a drunken stupor-- no doubt still celebrating his congressman's downfall-- and do this lovely on-topic art creation for you, at least listen to Scheer's main point if you can't afford the time to hit the link and read Scheer's whole worthwhile piece. The State Dept. (i.e.- Rice) finally admitted-- after lying her ass off to the 9/11 Commission and to the press and to the public-- that she "had indeed been briefed in July 2001 by George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, about the alarming potential for an Al Qaeda attack, as Bob Woodward has reported in his aptly named new book, State of Denial... The omission of this meeting from the final commission report is another example of how the Bush administration undermined the bipartisan investigation that the president had tried to prevent. Surely lying under oath in what was arguably the most important official investigation in the nation's history should be treated more seriously than the evasiveness in the Paula Jones case that got President Bill Clinton impeached."

Pitt has a similar approach in his story, The Tipping Point. "Let's see" he begins. "Anything important happen over the last several days?" Apparently that can be answered affirmatively and he lists a few: "Seventeen American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Saturday. Dozens of civilians have died in the last few days as the sectarian civil war in Baghdad reaches new and horrific levels of violence... Condoleezza Rice has been exposed once again as a bad liar. Several new reports confirm that CIA Director Tenet and CIA Counterterrorism Director Black did, in fact, deliver a stern warning to her regarding an impending terror attack two months before 9/11. That same warning was given one week later to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft, in a briefing described as a "10 out of 10" on the Take-This-Seriously-o-Meter by the official who prepared it. Rice, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft all received frightening warnings before the attacks, with Bush getting the August 6th PDB warning to cap it off, and nothing came of it. This moves matters well beyond simple negligence. It is abundantly clear that there was a policy in place to whistle past any and all terror warnings in the months before 9/11. It wasn't about incompetence. It was policy." And then there was the bipartisan congressional report on Abramoff describing "hundreds of contacts between Abramoff and the White House, including 82 contacts with Karl Rove's office."

But Pitt comes to the same conclusion as Scheer and everyone else has, right now there is only the sex scandal. Pitt, braver than most writers even breaches the awful truth that even Brian Ross refuses to mention-- physical contact. I guess I shouldn't be all in a rush for it to get onto the TV that Foley was having sex with the boys not just sending them-- how did the White Hose put it?-- "naughty e-mails?" The closer to election that comes out, the more likely it is that my goal of 50 Republican seats being swept away in a tidal wave of national revulsion is likely to be realized.

Oh-- before I get back to reading the newest Suskind book, The One Percent Doctrine, I just wanted to mention a word about Adam's artwork above. Do you think it's outrageous and unfair? Tonight newspapers have started reporting that "a senior House Republican has asked the House clerk to look into allegations that then-Rep. Mark Foley was turned away from the congressional page dorm on Capitol Hill after arriving there intoxicated one night." Maybe he wanted to do some e-mailing and IM-ing with them up close?