We had four parties during the 1860 presidential election cycle, Lincoln won by a plurality, not a majority. Afterwards, the northern Democrats were nearly as viscious as the Democrats are now.

Things can be cleaned up, but that means campaining hard and long at the grass roots level to eliminate abuse and fraud in elections, all the way from local to national.

If you want to get radical, abolish elections for the House of Represenatives entirly, select them by lot from the voter rolls. We’d need to pick several names at once, because the voter rolls have people who have moved, are dead, or are otherwise ineligable. If you doubt that this is workable, I’ll point out that the British House of Lords is basicly a random cross section of Brits, the aristrocracy being only a memeory. The House of Commons, being full of professional politicians, keeps being shown up by the Lords, who actually try to solve problems.

It’s a comedy.

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

It’s not that you’re the bearer of bad news (is it news if it hasn’t happened yet?), but rather you’re very likely wrong in your prediction.

In light of the miscontructions of my position on this, I will merely throw myself on the judgement of history which is set to render its verdict very shortly.

The Republicans are going to get hammered, IMO. It matters not that Foley has resigned or that Hastert does not. It matters not that this might be a sort-of contrived scandal.It matters even less that “no sex” has been proven to have occured. What does matter is that Congress is held in disdain by the vast majority of the population, that recently polls have indicated that the distaste has spread to include even one’s own member of Congress, and that this is precisely the kind of ’simplistic’ hook upon which all manner of discontents can be hung. And they will be, even if no-one fully acknowledges it.

Bearing bad tidings really does suck.

Who knew?

What part of “Foley has resigned from Congress” do you not understand?

I could see your point if Foley was still in office defending his lifestyle or pretending he ‘never had sex’ (which by the way in this case he didn’t have sex) that the ‘rulers’ were overstepping the power however, in light of the fact that Foley has resigned from office makes your argument meaninglesss.

But all this does not matter since the ONLY thing the opposition party really cares about is getting Bush.

Why do scandals of imperfect men bring about the rise and fall of party popularity? In my opinion, it has power because most Americans have moral values. Moral values are an easy argument to win, they’re an easy handle to use in manipulation. When politics are decided by “the majority”, then scandal is good for offending the opponents supporters or mobilizing the attacker’s base (eg. Clinton and the Republican takeover of Congress).

People seem to be so easily manipulated, because they care. As much as you may hate anyone that votes from the other side of the aisle, they really aren’t that far from you in their views. We live in a cohesive, stable society where government and the populace are still balanced. Unlike many nations in the world, we don’t have REAL problems. We don’t have REAL dangers in the political system. Consider Palistine, there you have the choice between an ex-terrorist group that has recently renounced terror, or a terrorist group that has not renounced terror. In Lebanon you have the choice of an impotent secular government or a crazy religious militia. Afganistan, evn with our help, gives the voters the lovely choice between thug or warlord, or Religious Nutcase (if the Taleban were to regain power). In Hungary, a lie by the PM rocked the nation to its core and nearly destabilized the country. In Thailand there was a complete millitary coup.

We are nowhere near close to any of these issues. If the Democrats held all branches of government, we still wouldn’t be close to any of those nations in terms of instability or risk. If the republicans held all the sides with a strong majority, there still wouldn’t be the sort of problems we see elsewhere.

Suddenly the current scandal makes sense. It’s disingeneous politics to say Bush is Hitler and people, deep down (except for the few crazies) know that. It’s disingeneous to think that our nation would become a smoking crater if the Democrats took power, any sane person knows that.

So, the only thing we have left to differentiate the sides is who can score the biggest media attack on the other side.

All in all, I’m rather glad that our biggest political issue is a pervert, a lobbyist and some minor corruption, salted heavily with lying retoric from both sides. It gives me some level of confidence that our nation just might be ok.

Every time I see “Aristophanes” I automatically think “Ridiculous!”

Hastert is a solid, stolid, journeyman legislator. Walls don’t go up or stay up without competent bricklayers.

Pelosi is an airhead, who nothing solid ever could or would build.

To conflate the two demonstrates an appalling lack of discrimination.