Foley a Deux/North Korea Nuke Test

All the news that's fit to print on the Foley scandal (and more.) We do it, so you don't have to.

It appears that Congressional pages were complaining about Foley as far back as 1995. If that's the case, it boggles my mind that the House leadership could somehow not know what was going on, especially if "Republican staffers" knew and were warning the pages. At a certain point it goes beyond unfortunate ignorance to flat-out negligence. House Speaker Hastert so far is rejecting calls to resign (and having a rough go of it) but he's not the only one in hot water; Thomas Reynolds is facing considerable public scrutiny over what he knew and when and why he didn't do more about it(beyond encouraging Foley to run again apparently), shields of children notwithstanding. (As an aside to that story, it's nice to see threads that diligent bloggers are picking up-such as the staff connection between Foley and Reynolds-making into the papers, where they belong.) As for Rep. Boehner...well, he's has his own issues. And the scandal is predictably lowering already low opinions of Congress....for good reason, say the editors of the Washington Post. John McIntyre thinks that Hugh Hewitt's advice to Republicans to fight back and resist calls for resignations is the winning strategy for the Republicans coming up on the mid-terms, and I agree that it would be...in backwards land.

In other minor news, nobody is very happy with North Korea's announcement that it intends to test a nuclear weapon, although the Bush administration has made no clear statement thus far as to what our response would be to such a test. North Korea is so far resisting pressure to abandon it's plans. My opinion, in case you're wondering, is that everyone is trying to figure a) if N. Korea is serious and b) if they are, what they're going to do about it. Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations says N. Korea is trying to "step things up a notch" (via CFR.org) and this is the only way to do it. I would say the most prevalant opinion is that the Bush administration needs to start talking seriously to N. Korea, though what that would entail is far from clear.

Update: Rep. Reynold's current Chief of Staff Kirk Fordham has resigned/been fired.

Update II: Well...this is what happens when you try to throw people under a bus (see Reynolds/Boehner.) House leaders trying to play the blame game are insisting that Fordham is the one who made every effort to keep Foley's indiscrete e-mails quiet. In response, Fordham informs the media that he told Hastert's office about Foley way back in 2004.

Update III: Glenn Greenwald makes it quite clear that this is in fact a correct characterization of the events related to Fordham.

Update IV: Fordham now says he told Hastert and others as far back as 2003.