What are we to make of this bizarre WaPo article, which identifies the sore waltzer as one Jordan Edmund?

A student at the University of California at Berkeley, Edmund has taken time off this year to serve as deputy campaign manager on Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr.'s campaign for Oklahoma governor. Edmund contacted Jones, a well-known Oklahoma City trial lawyer and Republican Party member who was appointed to represent Timothy McVeigh after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Jones said he believed fellow Republicans referred Edmund to him.

The message transcripts show a humorous, sometimes self-conscious high school student who showed an easy familiarity with Foley. Engaged in a typical round of teen dances and lacrosse games, he at one point asked the congressman for help getting into a fundraiser for Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).

Cunningham, who resigned from the House last year after pleading guilty to taking bribes, was Edmund's sponsor in the 2002 page program.

Edmund's MySpace entry, where he goes by "EDMO!," also mentions lacrosse and dancing among his interests. But chiefly, he wrote, "Politics is my passion; I love the game . . . I grew up all over the place but I call San Diego home."

In the instant messages, Foley mentions a San Diego meeting with the former page to whom he is writing.

In the section headed "Who I'd like to meet," Edmund says: "I don't know, but I do know who I don't want to meet. Stupid people, people who don't like politics (politicians make your [expletive] laws)."

Edmund's allegiance to the GOP, say some, raises one of the biggest questions about him: Why would a young man with seemingly such a bright future in the Republican Party save messages so potentially damaging to it?

"He's a very personable guy and . . . certainly a rising star," said one page who served with Edmund in 2002 and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

This is just wild. If Jeb Bush attempts to run for anything, ever again, all the Dems have to do make a 30-second "docudrama"-style reenactment of this incident which actually happened yesterday in Pittsburgh:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in town for a fund-raiser for Sen. Rick Santorum, had a close encounter with a large group of anti-Republican protesters as he was making his way to the Duquesne Club, Downtown.

It was about 4:15 yesterday when Mr. Bush met up with the protesters near the corner of Liberty and Sixth avenues. The protesters were marching to join other pickets already gathered in front of the exclusive club, a little more than a block away at 325 Sixth Ave.

Protesters said Gov. Bush blew them a kiss, acknowledging the crowd of about 30 chanting pickets that was made up of United Steelworkers and members of Uprise Counter Recruitment, a tour traveling through 22 cities to support anti-war efforts.

The protesters came closer.

"Jeb, go home," they shouted.

Mr. Bush, accompanied by a security guard and a female aide, made a slow retreat toward the T-station at Wood Street.

"He was quickly getting out of the way and not wanting to engage us," said Jon Vandenburgh, one of the protesters, who also is a researcher for the United Steelworkers.

Once in the subway station, Mr. Bush scurried to the escalators and descended to the mezzanine level, Mr. Vandenburgh said.

By now, Mr. Bush was cornered. He was surrounded by signs that said "Pittsburgh is a Santorum Free Zone," "Honk if you're sick of Rick," and a crowd growing increasingly louder, according to Mr. Vandenburgh.
...
Mr. Grove said a Port Authority canine unit was called in to help with crowd control. Two officers used their tasers to stun two protesters who "were asked to leave, but did not go," Mr. Grove said.

The tasers he said were empty of the cartridges that supply a more powerful charge.

"It was a very tense situation. They were very close to the governor and shouting on top of him."

As a precaution, the governor was ushered into a T-station supply closet and stayed there until the crowd left.

No arrests were made and no citations were issued, Mr. Grove said. Mr. Bush was not injured.

The two men who were tasered were shaken and left the protest, said David Meieran, with the Thomas Merton Center and one of the protesters with Uprise Counter Recruitment.
...
Mr. Vandenburgh and Mr. Meieran said they later saw Mr. Bush escorted to the Duquesne Club, which he entered through a back door at about 5 p.m.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bush said she was unaware of the incident last night and had no immediate comment.

Sounds like a man who has a deep understanding of the new kind of war we're in.

Flat Daddies.

A pretty interesting article: With Friends Like These: The Militarization of MySpace

Mr. Dinerstein said he and other Republicans intended to trumpet the story of Mel Reynolds, the former Democratic congressman from Chicago who was imprisoned for corruption and for having sex with an under-age campaign worker. Former President Bill Clinton pardoned Mr. Reynolds before he left office.

“If the Democrats want to fight on the issue of who’s protecting the public and the children and all that,” Mr. Dinerstein said, “God bless them, because two weeks from now Mel Reynolds will be a household name.”

You heard it from Mr. Dinerstein: by October 17, Americans will be saying, Mark who? Never heard of him. But let's talk about Mel Reynolds...

But the real gold these days is coming from another Reynolds...NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-NY). Here he is with his "supporters":

The Ape as a kind of nautilus.



Presidential Pelvis.

1. How long until an Osama video is "released"?

2. What if Osama announces that he is absolutely horrified at Mark Foley's behavior? Will that mean that the rest of us will have to cease being--indeed, become the opposite of--absolutely horrified?

3.

Shimkus added: “I think, based on the information I had, what I did was fine. If I regret something, maybe I should have had Dale [Kildee] with me because now it’s going to be a political football.

Doesn't Shimkus mean "a political lacrosse stick"?

4. By the time of the November elections, will a majority of Americans be clear on the difference between an email and an IM?


Finally, Bay Buchanan says we have GOP leadership "that believes the predator." I agree with her, though I don't think the point has anything to do with Mark Foley, and would more accurately be phrased "believes in the Predator."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," former Pentagon Spokesslut Victoria (restyled as "Torie") Clarke chides her discussion-mates, telling them she thinks it's "so awful" that they "jump to the political implications" of a matter that is, she says, "absolutely horrifying" to Republicans and Democrats alike and so, by implication, absolutely horrifying to all Americans.

Additonally, George Stephanopoulos reminds us that one reason this scandal is so damning is that it's "a story people can understand"; elsewhere we've been reminded that the Foley scandal represents "every parent's nightmare."

So, Americans, I think it's been explained to you pretty clearly: if you're not "absolutely horrified" (and in an appropriately trans-political manner) you're either not an American, or there's something very, very wrong with you.

I'm going to have to second speakingcorpse's nomination of Mark Foley for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.

By the way, wasn't "Torie" Clarke the public face of Rumsfeld's Pentagon during the build-up to the war, appearing at those phony "town hall discussions" and such? Which do you think is more "absolutely horrifying" to "Torie"--the 2,712 American deaths and up to 48,100 wounded that she personally helped cause; or Mark Foley asking a male congressional page whether he masturbates every day?

Remember that the when the U.S. government tortures detainees it is in fact not torturing, since, as Bush has observed, torture is "not in our soul." Nor are sex crimes in the Republican soul. As speakingcorpse reminded me earlier this evening, anyone accused of sexual misconduct--all types, but especially the gay pedophilic variety--is, by definition, a Democrat.

So the question becomes, how will Nancy Pelosi respond to these charges against her?
Do the voters of Palm Beach really believe that their congressman's querying underage boys in the congressional page program about their masturbation habits is really worse than, say, a dirty bomb being detonated on Worth Avenue?

Just because the congressional head of child protection is interested in 16-year-olds' cast fetishes, and has the bad taste to ask the youths to waste valuable study-time re-measuring their genitals, does that mean he does not, after all, understand the fact that we face a new kind of enemy, and are fighting a new kind of war?