Category: The Dish

"I was still pretty shell shocked myself," Fordham said of the day he learned about the messages. "This was someone I had worked for 10 years. I had no inkling that this kind of blatantly reckless – just obscene – behavior was going on behind our backs," – Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff to both Tom Reynolds and Mark Foley.

"The fact is, even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges, I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate behavior. One of these staffers is still employed by a senior House Republican leader. Rather than trying to shift the blame on me, those who are employed by these House leaders should acknowledge what they know about their action or inaction in response to the information they knew about Mr. Foley prior to 2005," – Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff to both Tom Reynolds and Mark Foley.

"We will make you successful, as long as you don’t mind me grabbing your [deleted] once in a while," – Congressman Mark Foley to a Congressional page.

We?

If you need a break from Foleygate, and missed an earlier link to the debate between David Brooks and me about the meaning and future of conservatism, then here’s a link to a video of the event yesterday at Cato, an audio version and an iTunes-friendly podcast. A mutual friend imagined the exchange as follows:

AS: Oakeshott!
DB: Tocqueville!
AS: Waterboarding!
DB: Waterskiing!
AS: Provincetown!
DB: Lattetown!
AS: Gay!
DB: You don’t say!

Or something like that. As the Congressional Republicans form a circular firing squad, the debate about how corrupt conservatism has become is not exactly off-topic. You can read my essay about faith beyond fundamentalism here.

Hastert allegedly knew about the Foley problem for years. Money quote:

Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff for Foley, told ABC News today that sometime in late 2003, he told the Speaker’s chief of staff that Foley was getting too close to young male pages. Fordham says the Speaker’s aide, Scott Palmer, then met with Foley. Fordham also said the Speaker knew about the meeting.

If that last sentence is true, Hastert is toast. According to Fordham, Hastert knew about the problem, did nothing, and then lied about it. That’s a lethal trifecta.

Here’s the money ‘graph from his statement:

The fact is, even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges, I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate behavior. One of these staffers is still employed by a senior House Republican leader. Rather than trying to shift the blame on me, those who are employed by these House leaders should acknowledge what they know about their action or inaction in response to the information they knew about Mr. Foley prior to 2005.

So Fordham claims there is one actual individual still working for a "senior House Republican leader" who knew before 2005 about Foley’s problem. Others may have known but are not now in the House leadership. That seems to me to suggest that Fordham didn’t tell Hastert directly but had every reason to believe he’d done his duty in notifying Hastert’s office. At least that seems the most Hastert-friendly glimmer to be found here.

Hastert’s office responds to Kirk Fordham’s assertion that he notified "senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives" two years ago of Mark Foley’s problem and asked them to do something about it. Here’s their response: "That never happened." I note that Fordham did not say he told Hastert personally. It’s possible Hastert wasn’t warned. But Fordham insists someone very high up was. I guess we’ll find out more soon. I also note that Fordham is openly gay. And like every openly gay man I know, seems creeped out by Foley’s conduct.

John Yoo, torture advocate, architect of the Bush administration’s detention policies, was on NPR today. He’s a chilling individual. I recommend listening to his defense of the right of the executive to detain anyone without charges and torture them at will. The readers’ comments give me hope.

A reader writes:

I just watched your opening speech without taking notes – but in case you’d think it a useful measure of how well you hit your targets, this is how I’d sum it up in a few words:

1) Doubt is the essence of conservatism because, man being born to err, any certainty whatsoever has a chance of being error, and error enshrined in power is dangerous; therefore what conservatism "conserves" is a bulwark against, an escape route from, and an impediment in the path of, all certainty.

2) The distinctive embodiment of conservative doubt in the American constitution consists chiefly in its dispersal and balancing of power, and not in any positive assertion of a particular good, truth or virtue.  The assumption is that any one branch, state, party, or office-holder is likely at one time or another either to fall into an erroneous certainty, or to betray such ideas of good and virtue as might be shared, and that therefore the essential function of constitutional government is to allow any of its constituent parts to be frustrated, to let none be sure of prevailing, and yet to guarantee to each the possibility of fighting again another day after a lost skirmish.

3)  The problem of fundamentalism is that it ascribes the moral powers and rights of absolute truth to certainties that cannot rightly be so regarded, that are instead likely (as all certainties are) to include error, and that grow in their potential for harm in proportion to the degree that they are not examined by a skeptical, doubting conscience.  From this contradiction between the valorization of certainty and the valorization of doubt springs an inherent enmity between fundamentalism and conservatism.

Did I get that right?

Too right. You should write a book. But if you want to read one that makes this case as carefully as I could, you know where to find it. The official launch date is next Tuesday, but you can pre-order on Amazon now.

It may have been unwise for the House leadership to get Kirk Fordham to take the fall on the Foley matter. He’s now unloading to the press:

Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged…

The longtime Capitol Hill aide said he would fully disclose to the FBI and the House ethics committee "any and all meetings and phone calls" regarding Foley’s behavior that he had with senior staffers in the House leadership.

"The fact is even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate behavior," Fordham said.

Senior staff at the highest level of the House? In 2004? Asking them to intervene? Who?

A reader is impressed by the dignified way in which the Amish community has dealt with the terrible toll of recent days:

The thing that has struck me about the Amish, is how truly Christian they are … they will not be photographed or interviewed because is it too vain.  We won’t see any Amish on CNN, Oprah or the like because they believe in humility and privacy.  They have thanked the police and firefighters who helped their community.  They have expressed forgiveness to the murderer and have also expressed sympathy towards his wife and children.  They have noted how difficult it will be for their and the murderer’s children to go back to school. This tragedy has deeply affected me.  But, I have come away with a sense that the Amish have shown us all an example of how Christ would behave … with dignity, forgiveness and love. They are a real Christian community.    

From what I’ve seen, I couldn’t agree more. And what a contrast with some of the preening charlatans and scolds among the power-obsessed Christianists who now dominate the GOP. Here is the power of the Jesus I believe in:

A grieving grandfather told young relatives not to hate the gunman who killed five girls in an Amish schoolhouse massacre, a pastor said on Wednesday. "As we were standing next to the body of this 13-year-old girl, the grandfather was tutoring the young boys, he was making a point, just saying to the family, ‘We must not think evil of this man,’" the Rev. Robert Schenck told CNN. "It was one of the most touching things I have seen in 25 years of Christian ministry."

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How easy to say. How hard to practise. When people actually practise what Jesus preached, it still shocks, doesn’t it? And Jesus’ teaching is nothing if not shocking.