Quotation

The drama of Tan Nguyen and how his campaign attempted to scare away Hispanic voters from showing up and voting for his opponent, Loretta Sanchez, has been unfolding for a few days now. I really thought this was just a little scandal, another imploding campaign. I figured Tan Nguyen would withdraw and that would be that.

But no. Apparently Tan Nguyen is claiming that the real problem is not the alleged criminal behavior of his campaign, but rather the investigation into that alleged criminal behavior.

A Republican congressional candidate whose campaign is being investigated for sending intimidating letters to Hispanic voters lashed out at his Democratic rival, saying she was fueling the uproar over the mailings.

Tan Nguyen on Sunday rejected calls to drop out of the race to unseat longtime Rep. Loretta Sanchez (news, bio, voting record), and implied the popular congresswoman was behind the probes into the letters warning immigrants they could be deported or jailed for voting in next month's election.

"There has been no crime committed so why is there a criminal investigation three weeks prior to a very important election?" Nguyen asked. "What is going on? Who is fueling this investigation?"

Here's a little background:

Nguyen said Sunday he did not authorize or approve the letters, which warn in Spanish: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

In reality, immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens are eligible to vote.

California Department of Justice investigators searched Nguyen's campaign headquarters on Friday, as well as his residence and a home listed as belonging to one of his staffers. Investigators are looking into possible voting rights violations.

So who sent these mailings? His campaign office manager! And get this: He fired her last week, but now wants her back.

In other words, he's endorsing intimidating voters, and complaining that criminal investigations into this are the problem.

Nguyen said Sanchez was "fueling this hysteria" and investigators were "terrorizing my family and volunteers" and violating his right to free speech.

If he wants to put this behind him, he should own up and take responsibility for his own campaign. He should apologize. Of course, taking responsibility and apologizing aren't things Republican politicians do these days. But if he can't find it in himself to do this, then he should withraw altogether.

The Associated Press story is quite amusing:

"If he loses one house here, President Bush will enter the last two years very wounded," said David Gergen, a former White House adviser who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

"He will have the capacity to say no to Democratic legislation, but he won't have the capacity to say yes to his own legislation," said Gergen, who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Democratic victories essentially could block Bush's remaining agenda and usher in a period of intense partisan bickering over nearly every measure to come before Congress.

As if there hasn't been intense partisan bickering since the Republicans took Congress in 1994. As if the Republicans didn't escalate that intense bickering to a new level by politicizing 9/11 and making support of the Bush Administrations military adventurism in Iraq a litmus test for patriotism itself. As if the Republicans haven't spent the last 12 years painting the Democrats with lying labels.

The Republicans broke bipartisan collegiality, and now they own the consequences.

Loss of either chamber also could subject his administration to endless congressional inquiries and investigations.

After the rubber-stamp Congress of the past six years, it's about time. If the Bush Administration had sought bi-partisan support of its agenda, maybe this would not be so imperative now.

"There's no question that the Republican coalition is stressed over the way Washington has been handling fiscal matters, the Foley affair, the
Iraq war," said GOP consultant Scott Reed. "All of these are coming together at the same time."

Note the spin here: Republican coalition ≠ Washington. Isn't that convenient. Never mind that the Republicans have called all the shots in Washington for six years now.

Bush, in his own get-out-the-vote appeal, told Republicans: "The consequences of not succeeding this fall are dire for our agenda for America."

A quagmire in Iraq. Torture. Record deficits screaming ever upward. Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan. Spying on Americans without warrants. Forced pregnancy and state-run breeding slavery laws. Attempting to block Plan B and the cervical cancer vaccine. Head-in-the-sand thinking on global warming. FEMA incompetence post-Katrina. Energy policies focused on the 20th century oil industry. No health insurance plan, corrupt education programs, Fortune50 pharmaceuticals-friendly Medicare drug benefits, removing bankruptcy protection for the poor and middle class, the K Street Project, tax cuts for silver-spoon heirs, attempts to gut Social Security (the one federal government program that actually turns a surplus every year), multi-billion-dollar sweetheart deals for Halliburton, leaking Valerie Plame's covert CIA status, Terri Schiavo, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Mark Abramoff, Macaca Allen....

Yes, I am counting on "dire" consequences for the Republican agenda.

Vice President Dick Cheney must turn over his visitor logs:

A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election-season debate over lobbyists' White House access.

While researching the access lobbyists and others had on the White House, The Washington Post asked in June for two years of White House visitor logs. The Secret Service refused to process the request, which government attorneys called "a fishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency."

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld.

The Secret Service can still try to withhold the records but, in a written ruling Thursday, Urbina questioned the agency's primary argument — that the logs are protected by Cheney's right to executive privilege.

Cheney has insisted that while he is working in the public's White House, taking taxpayer money, he can do pretty much what he wants in total secrecy, including have secret meetings with his corporate ruling class colleagues without having to even reveal who they are.

In other words, he wants to be like Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Il -- the autarch who shall not be scrutinized.

This is something to watch. The Republican Culture of Corruption keeps bubbling to the top, and this bubble is big and mysterious and has been festering since 2001, and could reveal much not only about secret deals with oil companies but also why we invaded Iraq in the first place.

Yes, hes's "determined" alright:

"Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging. Our goal is victory," said Bush, speaking at a rally Thursday for embattled Republican congressman Don Sherwood in the town of La Plume, Pennsylvania.

"We are a nation at war, and we must do everything in our power to win that war," he said.

"We will not pull out our troops from Iraq before the terrorists are defeated. We will not pull out before Iraq can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself," he said.

The problem with this logic is that the "terrorists" are Iraqis, and the war is a civil war.

We cannot have a "victory" in an Iraqi civil war, not unless we choose sides. Sunnis? Shiites? Kurds? Whose victory in this civil war should we sanction?

Do they even want our help?

Yet the Bush Administration seems completely out of touch with reality:

Snow said it would be "absolutely catastrophic" for Iraq to become a launching pad for Islamic militants.

It already is. Islamic militants are running the country. The Iraqi "government" hiding behind American troops in a fortress within Baghdad can't even rule Baghdad.

"So there is no option here, and therefore, we will entertain no option other than to succeed and finish the job," he said.

In an interview with Time Magazine, Vice President Dick Cheney sounded a similar theme when asked whether the president would be looking for an exit strategy after the election.

"I know what the president thinks. I know what I think. And we're not looking for an exit strategy. We're looking for victory," he said.

This is what happens when chickenhawks take us into war. They leave it for others to clean up ... and others to die.

This really is just sad:

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. They include massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.

While it seems pretty clear that people are born heterosexual or homosexual (or bisexual, which perhaps explains why so many right-wingers social conservatives insist that their sexual orientation is a choice), it seems less clear what makes for child molesters. Are these incidents of molestation by a priest in his boyhood contributing causes of Mark Foley's own child predations? Do we have the Catholic Church molestation cover-ups to thank?

Earlier this month, Roth said: "Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate" e-mails and instant messages. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct."

How ironic that it's Mark Foley who stands out as virtually the only man in this sordid mess actually taking responsibility for his own actions.