It's too swiftboatian. It's got Rove's "John McCain has a black illegitimate child" fingerprints all over it. A part of the GOP does not want Allen to run for president and they are the ones behind giving him the smackdown. Rudolph Giuliani --- take heed. The public dressing-down of Bernard Kerik was a warning aimed at you. The kingmakers of the GOP will not tolerate your serious candidacy for president, so make sure you pull out after New Hampshire, because the kingmakers don't need to make shit up about you, like they did with McCain. There's plenty of real stuff to make juicy copy with.

The GOP knows Allen is not as "likeable" as Bush and they will not be able to ignore, bury or explain away the confederate flag, the noose and the macaca the way they "explained" Bush's "disappeared" years.

Say goodnight, George.

What's his district like?

It is part of the GOP spin machine's effort to cast Foley as a "liberal" homosexual who is "masquerading as a conservative". Placing the words "democrat" and "liberal" in proximity to Foley's name is this week's assignment, whether it is O'Reilly faking a "D" as Foley's political affiliation, Pat Buchanan's declaration that Foley is "masquerading as a conservative," William Donohue's tortured attempt to twist the discussion of Foley's abuses into an attack on the Pope and the Catholic Church (you can't make this stuff up, I'm telling you) or other endless efforts by the TV and radio punditocracy to declare that they "thought it was the liberal democrats who are in favor of all this TOLERANCE."

But we must not allow the fake-ocracy the satisfaction of even pretending Foley is a "liberal" or a democrat, or that Foley's homosexuality somehow makes him less Republican, or a false conservative.

In 2003, Foley was faced with being outed in Florida newspapers and, according to the St Petersberg Times "In Florida Foley did succeed in getting control of the budding story, sort of. He rounded up prominent conservatives, from Gov. Jeb Bush to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, to tout his strong Republican record...

...Foley's only announced primary challenger, former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum (whose media adviser is openly gay) said he sees no issue. Likewise, Gov. Bush dismissed potential damage to Foley, citing his strong conservative voting record."

If Foley was "masquerading" as a conservative, then so is Jeb Bush. Bush knew Foley was gay and it was ok with Jebby so long as Foley was a tried and true political conservative. It is the GOP way. A good gay is a closeted, conservative gay. All other gays are unacceptable.

So keep your Mark Foley, conservative guys. He's all yours. He came out just a leeeedle too late for an alternative "tolerant" identity...

I just read that Brian Ross at ABC News has said his source for the Foley story was a Republican.

Now why would a Republican do that?

Could it be...?

Woodward's book came out this week and had some pretty explosive revelations, including Tenet's meeting with Rice where he specifically told her an attack against the US was imminent.

On Wolf Blitzer's show last Friday, former CIA chief John McLaughlin admitted that the meeting between Rice and Tenet had occurred (this was when Rice was still denying the existence of the meeting) and confirmed that the warnings were repeated, urgent and imminent and that Condi blew them off, saying she wanted to "work on a comprehensive plan for Al Qaeda."

Anyone who has ever been to graduate school knows that is professorial talk for "I'll back-burner this and wait for some underling to do the hard work, then hand me a 100 page annotated folder which I will then hand over to you without even looking at it."

Other revelations --- about Rumsfeld's spectacular incompetence and the military's attempt to rid itself of this demented neocon -- are as disturbing as Condi's botched approach to national security, which cost us 3,000 lives, the destruction of 2 skyscrapers and part of our military headquarters. Not to mention the lost lives and the tremendous drain of money that is Iraq. Now Afghanistan is also a failed adventure, with Bill Frist declaring this week that we should make the Taliban part of Afghanistan's permanent government because "we can't beat them militarily". (I swear, you can't make this stuff up.)

Perhaps that's why a Republican went to ABC with the emails. They needed something big to deflect attention and they didn't have a Democratic sex scandal they could broker, so Foley got thrown under the bus.

The FBI has had Foley's emails for a year. Why release them now? I'm starting to think that all this talk about Hastert being "in danger" of losing his job is just that - talk.

I'm starting to believe the GOP is using Foley as a diversionary measure. They figure they will probably still hold onto his seat in November because his district is heavily Republican and conservative. The voters there will pull the lever for Foley come November, knowing that he is not really on the ballot. And the GOP will not make Hastert give up his position.

Could this be the October Surprise? A sex scandal that will probably not result in any loss of Republican seats and will successfully pre-empt the discussion of Woodward's book and the meaning of its revelations? It would be typical of the GOP to be behind this. It would be a political bunt; a sacrifice to advance the party closer to home plate.