New at Reason

David Weigel | October 3, 2006

Mark Foley could wreck the GOP majority, whether the Republican leadership made protecting their man a priority, and Bob Woodward challenges the Bush administration's authory... in the new Reason Express.

Comments

Larry A|10.3.06 @ 1:12AM|#

In some ways, the most immediately interesting thing about the Foley affair is that one newspaper uncovered a chunk of the story last November and sat on it. The St. Petersburg Times talked to a Louisiana page about the emails he received from Foley. Scott Montgomery, the paper's government and politics editor, says the emails involved "friendly chit-chat."...If an editor is uncomfortable leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about murky events and motives, maybe he should find another line of work.

Or we can get out our tinfoil hats and suggest that the editor might think the story would have a lot longer legs in the rundown to elections.

Ayn_Randian|10.3.06 @ 1:30AM|#

Bob Woodward challenges the Bush administration's authory

Authory?

Please, I just quit smoking...does it have to come to this?

|10.3.06 @ 2:37AM|#

Drudge says:

NYT: Ross said he learned about e-mails in August, but was too busy with Katrina and anniversary 9/11 to pursue them immediately...

So yeah, I'm going to go with Larry A's theory that the editor might think the story would have a lot longer legs in the rundown to elections.

|10.3.06 @ 2:48AM|#

Larry: the editor of the St Petersburg Times apparently thought it was interesting enough that he put two reporters on it. But they couldn't get two sources to agree on any one point and reluctantly killed it. It's pretty explosive stuff and they weren't going to run it without unambiguous confirmation.

ABCNews got pretty much the same lead the Times did and almost immediately smoked out the second, and far more damning, set of emails. It could be luck or the advantage of being a larger institution. They could shake a lot more trees. That editor is probably kicking himself for not staying with the story, and his decision is probably open to debate, but he did have solid grounds for dropping it. In no way is the Times better off for allowing ABCNews to scoop them.

What's astonishing here is the House leadership's actions. They were handed a stick of dynamite with the fuse lit and they stuck it under their chair for safekeeping. Certainly if they had polled the pages they would have found that Foley had a questionable reputation. They likely would have turned up the same emails ABCNews did. Granted, all politicians are at least partly evil and mostly incompetent but they usually have some skill at politics at least. What the hell were they thinking?

|10.3.06 @ 5:22AM|#

"Certainly if they had polled the pages they would have found that Foley had a questionable reputation."

I thought "pol(l)ing the pages" was the problem.

|10.3.06 @ 7:34AM|#

As much as I would enjoy seeing evidence of nefarious motives on the part of the House Republican leadership for failing to investigate the Foley affair, I suspect the truth is more banal. The current Congress has been so incredibly disfunctional in performing basic legislative duties (at least on legislation I have monitored), the lack of effective response to the Foley revelations is hardly surprising.

|10.3.06 @ 8:56AM|#

Larry A's theory would make sense if the St. Pete Times had broken the story themselves a couple weeks ago, but instead they sat on it, and then kept sitting on it, as someone else scooped them.

|10.3.06 @ 9:20AM|#

Washington Post reporting this morning that the transcript's of George Tenet's testimony to th 9/11 Commission includes his description of the July 10 meeting, when he warned Rice about an impending attack.

Repeat: they have the transcripts of Tenet's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, and this meeting is in the transcripts. Woodward's charge has been proven correct.