Capitol punishment

It's been a lousy week for congressional Republicans - but help may finally be at hand.

Jeremy Pikser
October 6, 2006 06:45 PM

Just when the tawdry details of the Mark Foley scandal have, like a jab to the solar plexus, disoriented and buckled the knees of congressional Republicans, threatening to topple at long last the GOP's unchecked power in the US Congress, a court adjudicating a different - but not entirely different - case may have opened the door for a major Republican regeneration.

For those of you who might have been following other more "substantial" issues, let me fill you in. The party (nay, the entire institution of Congress, to be fair) responsible for an unprovoked attack on a foreign nation, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths of innocent men, women, and children, and the life-long crippling and deforming injuries to thousands and thousands more, has been rocked by the revelation that one of it's more popular members, Congressman Mark Foley, from Florida, who was responsible for overseeing the welfare of teenaged congressional pages, had been, in fact, engaging in (at the very least) cybersex with some of the underage boys in his care.

What is worse, we learn is that his boss, Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House of Representatives, was aware of at least some of this information (or at the very least his staff members were ... sure, sure) as much as a year prior to the recent revelations, and did nothing to remove him from his position or come between him and his underage cyberboyfriends. Yesterday, Hastert bravely stepped forward and claimed full responsibility for having done nothing wrong. He quoted Harry Truman's "the buck stops here", but somehow Nixon's "I take full responsibility, but none of the blame" comes more to mind.

The nation that brought shock and awe to Baghdad, destroying its infrastructure, causing death, mayhem, disease (and one would assume quite a bit of child and adult prostitution, but I won't pretend to know the facts on this one) is aghast. So upset is the electorate that it might, just MIGHT (if only those darn voting machines owned, installed and maintained by huge Republican donors don't, once again, oddly report a huge last-minute swing from the exit poll numbers to the "real" numbers) lead to the end of total Republican hegemony in all branches, sub-branches, leaves, seeds, nuts and fruits of what still goes by the name of the US government.

What to do? Foley's defense was that he was drunk at the time. Good answer! So good that insiders report that Bush had been considering using it for his rumoured, soon to be revealed "about face" on global warming, or, less likely, on how he got the whole WMD thing so wrong. "I had momentarily succumbed to my alcoholism disease from, like 1992 to just last week, and, when I sobered up, I realised ... jeez, the arctic is MELTING! We've got to get tough on this Global Warming thing. And then they told me about Iraq, and I said "Weapons of Mass WHAT?! I said THAT?" My secret sources in the Oval Office men's room tell me that they ran it up the flag pole, but nobody saluted.

But fear not. Help is on the way. The Republicans desperately need to hold on to Foley's seat. Well, in the not un-related case I mentioned above, the Republicans may have had their prayers answered. The courts have decided that John Mark Karr, who wrote obsessive e-mails suggesting he might have killed or participated in the murder of Colorado pre-teen sexual icon JonBenet Ramsey, not only did NOT kill JBR, but is innocent of internet child pornography charges.

Get it? The man is CLEAN. What could better? A man cleared of all charges, with great name recognition, AND ... he's into little GIRLS. No telling what this might mean for opportunities for gender equity in the page program. Perhaps the Union can be saved after all.

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