Redneck Liberal: More Foley, FBI Lies, Iraq, Education, Little Big Fence, Government Grows, Environment, Economy and Ignoring Al Queda.

Thank goodness, the Foley scandal is about over. The country's falling apart around our ears and one Republican with a craving for young, hard-bodies just doesn't merit all this national attention.

I know it's about over because the Republicans have basically announced victory and are ready to move forward with their plan to sell the country to the highest bidder.

Congress has decided to investigate the the whole thing, not Foley, but the events leading to the Foley lapse of judgment. The GOP has already thrown Foley to the sharks and with the investigation, will exonerate themselves.

The House ethics committee launched a wide-ranging investigation into Congress's
handling of information about a Florida lawmaker and teenage pages yesterday, as
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) vowed to keep his job, saying, "I haven't
done anything wrong."

And House Republicans are rounding the wagons, a lot of them, around Hastert and backing him to the hilt. Because,

For now, they said, it would be politically disastrous for Republicans to oust
Hastert because it would be viewed as akin to a public admission of guilt in the
scandal, as well as a pre-election victory that would buoy Democrats and help
their turnout efforts.

And Hastert has an ace in the hole, with the two Republicans on the committee are both financially indebted to him.

WASHINGTON — Both Republicans on the House ethics subcommittee investigating the
Mark Foley scandal have financial ties to Speaker Dennis Hastert, whose handling
of the former congressman's lurid Internet messages to House pages is under
scrutiny.

Never admitting guilt or taking resposibility is, like the first commandment of the Republican party. Especially when you already know who's fault this whole mess really is.

When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base
over his handling of the issue, Hastert said in the phone interview: "I think
the base has to realize after a while, who knew about it? Who knew what, when?
When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be
happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of
Democratic operatives, people funded by [liberal activist] George Soros."

And since facts are something the GOP avoids like the plague, everything should work out just fine.

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect
e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP
aide.
That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote,
said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the
aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared
the documents is no longer employed in the
House.
But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first
given to the media.

Plus, when you have the FBI running interference for you, how can you lose the PR game.

The watchdog group that first provided the FBI with suspicious e-mails from
then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said yesterday that FBI and Justice
Department officials are attempting to cover up their inaction in the case by
making false claims about the group.
Law enforcement officials said the
allegations by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are
without merit, and they stood by allegations that the group had refused to
provide some information to the FBI.

Unfortunately, CREW doesn't seem to be intimidated by the FBI. In fact, CREW says the FBI's lying. The FBI wouldn't lie, would it?

Washington, DC – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s (I.G.) office today
to ask for an investigation into why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
has fabricated and disseminated a cover-up story as to why it never investigated
the Foley emails sent to it by CREW.

CBS News has reported that according to the FBI when CREW gave the Bureau the
original set of emails from Rep. Mark Foley to a former House page, they were
“heavily redacted.” The FBI is also claiming that it came back to CREW and asked
for more information so that it could follow up, but that CREW refused to
provide anything further. Reporters from several other news organizations have
repeated this allegation. The FBI is lying.
On Monday, October 2, CREW sent a letter to the DOJ I.G.’s office, attaching
exact copies of the emails CREW had sent to the FBI on July 21, 2006. Both the
former page’s name and the person to whom the page forwarded Rep. Foley’s emails
were clearly visible. Moreover, after CREW sent the emails to the FBI, CREW’s
only subsequent contact with the Bureau was one telephone call from the special
agent to whom CREW had sent the material confirming that the emails were from
Rep. Foley. CREW had no further contact with the FBI.

Crooks and Liars shows us the problem of having all our attention directed towards the Foley Follies.

While All Eyes Are On Foley, Iraq Is Rapidly Deteriorating

Let's check out some of the other stuff that's not getting much attention.

My son's busting his butt trying to sell suckers to his Mom and me to raise money for his sophomore class. No problem with that, but it does make a somewhat lame segue to No Child Left Behind.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-US Newswire/ -- Today,
President Bush will
resurrect one of his most well-known policy failures, the No Child Left Behind
Act, during remarks at Woodridge Elementary and Middle School in Washington,
D.C. While the President likes to tout the Act as one his few legislative
successes, the reality is that the White House and Republicans in Congress have
under-funded the law by $40 billion since its passage in 2001. States have even
been forced to sue the Bush Administration to get the necessary funds to
implement the Act. At the same time, the President has made repeated attempts to
cut Even Start, bilingual education and after-school programs.

I believe that I've mentioned the sham that Congress is putting up over illegal immigration. They're certainly not going to attack the problem at it's source, the greedy scumbags that don't want to pay a decent wage. So they put on a show with their 700 mile fence. As long as you think that they're doing something, they're happy.

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the
U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate
legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised,
according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

GOP leaders have singled out the
fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session.
Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its
construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections.
In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that
voters do not mind the details, and that key players -- including the
administration, local leaders and the Mexican government -- oppose a fence-only
approach, analysts said.

You know that the Republicans have always been the party of small government, unless it involves getting into people's private lives. Guess what?

Light calls the 10.5 million federal contractors and grantees the government's
"hidden workforce" because politicians tend not to mention them when discussing
the size of the federal bureaucracy. Yet such workers absorbed nearly $400
billion in federal contracting funds and $100 billion in federal grants in 2005.
They often performed vital work such as researching new vaccines, running
federal computer systems and making body armor, weapons and meals for the
military.

How's our President doing on the environment? According to federal judges, he's on par with the rest of his accomplishments.

SEATTLE, Oct. 5 -- Using language that suggests they are fed up with the Bush
administration, federal judges across the West have issued a flurry of rulings
in recent weeks, chastising the government for repeated and sometimes willful
failure to enforce laws protecting fish, forests, wildlife and clean air.

The stock market's doing great. So the economy must be doing great, right? It is, in China. More's going out than is coming in. Thanks George.

There is fresh evidence, if any more were needed, that excessive borrowing
during the Bush years will make the nation
poorer.
For most of the past five and a half years, interest rates have been low,
allowing the government to borrow more and more — to cut taxes while fighting
two expensive wars — without having to shoulder higher interest payments.
That’s over now. For the first time during President Bush’s tenure, the
government’s interest bill is expected to rise in 2006, from $184 billion in
2005 to $220 billion this year, up nearly 20 percent. That increase — $36
billion — makes interest the fastest-growing component of federal spending, and
continued brisk growth is likely. According to projections by Congress’s budget
office, the interest bill will grow to $249 billion in 2007, and $270 billion in
2008.
All of that is money the government won’t have available to spend on other
needs and priorities. And much of it won’t even be recycled back into the United
States economy. That’s because borrowing from foreign countries has exploded
during the Bush years. In 2005, the government paid about $77 billion in
interest to foreign creditors in China, Japan and elsewhere.

And just so it don't get lost in the fog of right wing propaganda, what did they know and when did they know it? Well, it turns out that they knew a lot and knew it in time, but chose to ignore it. Understandable, since we were in imminent danger of being wiped off the face of the earth by Iraq.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 2 — A review of White House records has determined
that George
J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza
Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al
Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.
Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism
deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that
they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National
Security Council staff.
According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Tenet told those
assembled at the White House about the growing body of intelligence the Central
Intelligence Agency had collected pointing to an impending Al Qaeda attack.
But both current and former officials took issue with Mr. Woodward’s account
that Mr. Tenet and his aides left the meeting in frustration, feeling as if Ms.
Rice had ignored them.
The dispute that has played out in recent days gives further evidence of an
escalating battle between the White House and Mr. Tenet over who should take the
blame for such mistakes as the failure to stop the Sept. 11 attacks and
assertions by Bush administration officials that Saddam
Hussein was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and cultivating ties
to Al
Qaeda.
Mr. Tenet resigned as director of central intelligence in the summer of 2004
and was honored that December with a Presidential Medal of Freedom during a
White House ceremony. Since leaving the C.I.A., Mr. Tenet has stayed out of the
public eye, largely declining to defend his record at the C.I.A. even after
several government investigations have assailed the faulty intelligence that
helped build the case for the Iraq war.