Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: John Boehner = Denny Hastert, at least -- Plus, key questions for Tom Reynolds

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: John Boehner = Denny Hastert, at least -- Plus, key questions for Tom Reynolds

...now there seems to be still another Boehner version, as The Palm Beach Post reports this morning: "Boehner told the Dayton Daily News he was '99 percent' sure he talked to Hastert about the matter, but also said he did not recall their conversation."

So: (a) Boehner told Hastert about Foley and Hastert assured him they were "taking care of it"; (b) Boehner does not remember whether he ever talked to Hastert about Foley; (c) Boehner affirmatively claims that it "is not true" that he spoke with Hastert; and now, (d) Boehner is "99 percent" sure he talked to Hastert about Foley but remembers nothing about the converstaion. Does that sound like someone qualified to be Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, let alone Denny Hastert's replacement for Speaker of the House?

And this event has gone under-noticed because it happened late afternoon last Friday. Nancy Pelosi introduced a Motion on the House floor to mandate that the House Ethics Committee investigate how Foley was able to engage in such inappropriate conduct with Congressional pages and whether the House leadership failed in its duties. Boehner blocked the motion by claiming that they only learned of it that day, and therefore introduced a motion of his own -- which the GOP majority quickly approved -- to have the question of whether there will even be an investigation decided by the House Ethics Committee, the majority 5-member GOP contingent of which (out of 10 Committee members) is composed of the most subservient GOP backbenchers selected exactly for that reason. Predictably, they still have not decided whether they will even "investigate" at all.

The GOP-controlled House is a legislative body which routinely passes the most monumental legislation within days or even hours of its being completed, without there being anywhere near sufficient time for representatives even to read the bill, let alone contemplate its merits or deliberate in any meaningful way. Just this past week, Boehner's House Republican caucus voted to legalize torture, indefinite detention powers and warrantless eavesdropping before the ink on the final drafts was even dry.

They routinely shove legislation down the throats of House members as quickly as they can. Yet Boehner claimed that more time was needed to contemplate a very short and straightforward Motion directing the House Ethics Committee to investigate the Foley matter. The duplicity and obstructionism is hard to fathom, but that is how Congressional Republicans operate. Boehner not only helped conceal Mark Foley's behavior with pages, but he then actively obstructed an attempt to have the House investigate this matter by invoking the flimsiest and most transparently deceitful rationale to do so.

(2) Following up on what I really believe is the most incriminating fact yet -- that it was Tom Reynolds' current Chief of Staff, Kirk Fordham, who negotiated on behalf of Mark Foley to try to persuade ABC not to release the sexually explicit IMs -- last night I e-mailed the post I wrote about the Fordham-ABC negotiations to Brian Crowley, The Palm Beach Post reporter who first reported that Fordham was working to help Foley manage the crisis. I asked Crowley if he knew whether it was Fordham who negotiated with ABC (this was before Aravosis reported that he confirmed that it was). Crowley did not answer, but he did include this in his article this morning: