Day: October 7, 2006

Foley Case Is Driving Rightwing Crazy, Literally

Jon Ponder
Stunned onlookers point out to Brooks that The Vagina Monologues is a play, whereas Mark Foley is a real person.

Bo-Bo has gone off the deep end:

LITERALLY. David Brooks says, oh yeah, you liberals think the Foley scandal is bad, well, there’s an underage seduction in The Vagina Monologues but you liberals love that, don’t you?

Stunned onlookers point out to Brooks that The Vagina Monologues is a play, whereas Mark Foley is a real person. Ann Althouse — she takes pictures, you know! — responds:

The third letter notes Brooks’s omission of the “simple point” that what Mark Foley did was “real” and “The Vagina Monologues” is “make-believe.” But, again, the enthusiasm for “The Vagina Monologues” is very real.

Let’s see. Liberals like “The Vagina Monologue” which has a scene depicting an inter-generational seduction. Therefore, as a liberal, I’m a hypocrite if I criticize Mark Foley’s pursuit of young boys — despite the fact I’ve never even see the play (gay men are not its target demo). This is delusional thinking. Literally.

There are a lot of things you could say to this. You could try to explain to these people the concept of fictional characters. You could try to explain that not every character in every scene speaks for the author…

It would all be a waste of time. Some kinds of ignorance are so obviously the result of hard, patient work that all you can really do about them is marvel at God’s creation and move on.

Amen.

Guantanamo Marine Says Beating Detainees Is Commonplace

Jon Ponder
“One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others” but that he was never punished, the statement said.

Los Angeles Times:

A sworn statement from a Marine sergeant alleging that guards at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, regularly beat terrorism detainees — and bragged about it — has been turned over to Pentagon investigators.

“I was shocked and outraged to find that beatings are continuous and open,” Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps’ defense coordinator for the Western United States, said Friday. Vokey is lawyer for one of the prisoners. He forwarded the two-page statement from the sergeant, a paralegal, to the inspector general’s office at the Department of Defense.

“This is offensive,” Vokey said. “I don’t want my fellow Marines treated this way if they are ever captured.”

In the statement, the sergeant said that on Sept. 23, she met a group of men at a bar on the Guantanamo base who identified themselves as guards. The woman said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo “told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison,” the sergeant said in her statement.

“One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others” but that he was never punished, the statement said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, said Friday that officials “are reviewing this affidavit and will investigate these allegations fully.” A call to the inspector general’s office was not immediately returned.

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, spokesman for the Joint Task Force that oversees detention facilities at Guantanamo, said the force “will participate fully with the inspector general to learn the facts of the matter and will take action where misconduct is discovered.”

‘Resignation’ of White House Scandal Figure Announced Late Friday

Jon Ponder
Ralston received 69 of the 400-plus lobby contacts made by Abramoff’s people to White House officials, according to a congressional report.

Susan Ralston, who provides a nexus between disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove, resigned from her job as Rove’s assistant on Friday:

Hours before the beginning of a three-day holiday weekend, the White House announced the resignation of Susan Ralston, a top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Just a week before, Ralston’s name was mentioned 162 times in a 93-page congressional report on the influence wielded in the Bush White House by uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a convicted felon.

The bipartisan House Government Reform Committee studied documents from Greenberg Traurig LLP, Abramoff’s former lobbying firm — billing records and other documents — indicating that Abramoff and his team had made 485 lobbying contacts with White House officials over three years, 69 of which were with Ralston, who seemed to serve as a messenger between the Abramoff and White House camps.

Before coming to the White House, Ralston served as executive assistant to Abramoff. In her letter, dated Thursday but released to the media toward the end of the day today, Ralston wrote that “the time has come for me to pursue other opportunities.”

If the Dems take the House, my congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman, would become the chair of the Committee on Government Reform, which oversees and investigates the administration. (You may remember that Rep. Dan Burton used his chairmanship of this committee to conduct endless, proctological exams of the Clinton Admininistration.) The possibility that Waxman might be investigated Ralston’s activities makes his take on Ralston’s resignation particularly interesting:

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement that “It looks like the White House is trying to make Susan Ralston the scapegoat.”

Waxman said the committee has unanswered questions “about the assistance that Ms. Ralston provided Mr. Abramoff from inside the White House.”

“There are also many unanswered questions about the assistance that higher-ranking White House officials appeared to provide Mr. Abramoff,” including former White House political director Ken Mehlman, who is now chairman of the Republican National Committee, Waxman added.