“He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile.”

i think i'm really getting to like these "tag" things.

independents' day media rulezzzz!

He's no pedophile, but he's most certainly an adelophile.

Other absurd/hilarious aspects of the Foley issue:
1. GOP leadership knew about these troubles MONTHS AGO.
2. "Dear media, Though it is noteworthy that he chaired a house committee on missing and exploited children, it's not actually 'ironic.' It would be ironic if he'd trafficked a Brazilian urchin into the US and then been lewd with that child. Please use this term correctly, Signed, Nora."

Bring on the circus, I say. It gives me something to watch during the day...
______________________________

never again, my dear, shall we come dancing here...
we'll play guitar and video games.

Well, while I'm certainly cheering along with everyone else, I'm not getting my hopes up that this will do any lasting damage to the Republicans. It has tarnished one man's reputation, no doubt, but the far-right has an uncanny way of dodging bullets like this time and time again. Remember when we thought the "Scooter" Libby thing would bring down Cheney? Remember when we thought Karl Rove was a goner for sure?

That, and Bush's poll numbers were up substantially last week, well into the 40s, as I recall. Not great, by any stretch, but significant compared to his low-30s period. Do not "misunderestimate" these people and their ability to mobilize their forces and squeak through just in time to retain control of Congress in the upcoming elections.

Tags are your friend, but they're even more useful when you don't get TOO exact with them. For instance, your "DC politics" tag doesn't end up filing your story with other stories that are tagged simply by "politics." Better off to tag this as DC, politics, etc... so that it ends up in both tag categories instead of creating its own.

are 16 to 17 year olds still children? Because I always thought a pedophile was someone who was attracted by the lack of sexual maturity (prepubescent) of the child/vicitm and yet ascribes mature sexual feelings to that victim.

but in related news, I rather thought this article here was pretty spot on as an overview of what is probably typical of any population the size of Congress over the years.

Absolutely true. No matter what, this isn't a mortal wound. However, it is a question of whether they can dodge this completely in the four short weeks before the election. Couple that with the surprisingly wide coverage of Bob Woodward's new book critical of the war in Iraq, and then the simple realty of the situation in Iraq getting worse and worse and more and more unspinnable every fucking day, well that's a pretty big ditch to climb out of in a brief amount of time.

Now, I'm not saying that they won't, and lord knows the Democrats don't do much to keep them down there, but the negatives for them run far ahead of the positives right now.

Which, of course, means that we'll probably be bombing Iran or North Korea in a matter of days.

The time crunch is definitely a major selling point for cautious optimism.

I guess my main worry is that the Repubs will dig up a Dem scandal to distract everyone during these crises. A lot can happen that way in one month, and we know that right-wingers are not above dishing dirt anywhere they can scrounge it up.

Absolutely true. They're also not above dragging a few braindead wannabe jihadists across the headlines as the next big terrorist threat, or making everyone fly on planes naked, or anything else in order to distract and cause fear and panic. But, from everything I've read, this caught them off guard, and they've been off their game for a while. So maybe there's a little light at the end of this tunnel.

is this humor? I can't tell what is funny anymore.

One of the worst aspects of this whole thing is that, like the 'war on terror', conservatives are sure to attempt to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality.

you mean there is one?