Posted by Mark Silva at 5:30 pm and updated at 7:30 pm CDT

House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office was alerted in the fall of 2005 that a questionable email exchange had occurred between former Rep. Mark Foley, the Republican member of Congress who resigned Friday, and a teenage page. An internal inquiry was made, and closed.

But not until this week, the speaker's office maintains in a "preliminary" review of the matter taken after Foley's surprise resigation, was anyone in the office "aware of the sexually explicit text messages'' involved in Foley's communications with pages. The speaker's office today released a brief summary of an internal review of the handling of the matter -- an unusually quick report, suggesting how potentially explosive it could be for the House leadership.

As a further measure of the pressure House leaders are feeling to explain this incident, Hastert (R, Ill.) and fellow House Republican leaders added a chorus of outrage this evening for the "abhorrent'' behavior in their ranks, an admittedly "obscene'' breach of public trust.

Posted by Frank James at 2:27 pm CDT

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio,) the House Majority Leader, wasn't aware of any "inappropriate contact" between former Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman who represented Palm Beach, Fla. and a congressional page, according to Kevin Smith, a Boehner spokesman in a phone conversation I had with him today.

My earlier posting said Boehner was made aware of "inappropriate contact" which is language that was used in a Washington Post story.

Posted by Frank James at 8:00 am CDT, revised at 2:55 pm CDT

One of the most troubling parts of the emerging scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who sent sexually suggestive emails to teenaged congressional pages, is this: he chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Foley carved out a role for himself as a congressional leader on the issue of exploited children, and is credited with authoring important sections of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 which President Bush signed into law this summer.

(Former Rep. Mark Foley, far right, at the White House Rose Garden signing ceremony for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 on July 27, 2006. White House photo by Paul Morse)

Posted by Mark Silva at 7:20 pm CDT

Palm Beach County, Florida, is the home of the "butterfly ballot,'' the 2000 ballot that proved so confusing that elderly liberal Democrats most likely to vote for Democrat Al Gore cast their votes for Pat Buchanan in the presidential election that ultimately took courts 36 days to decide.

Now, Palm Beach may be getting ready for another election in which the ballot is equally confusing: Florida elections officials say former Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from the West Palm Beach area who resigned today after revelations that he had written sexually suggestive emails to a teenage male page at the Capitol, cannot remove his name from the Nov. 7 ballot. The GOP can pick a "replacement'' candidate, the state says, and people can vote for Foley if they want his stand-in.

Posted by Andrew Zajac at 4:45 p.m. CST

The campaign mailing in the accompanying photos says at least three things about the race between central Ohio Congresswoman Deborah Pryce, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, and Democrat challenger Mary Jo Kilroy.

Posted by Mark Silva at 2:45 pm CDT

Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican once seen as a strong candidate for the Senate and virtually assured of reelection this year, resigned his House seat today in the midst of questions about e-mails that Foley wrote to a former male page in Washington.

Campaign aides had acknowledged that the six-term congressman e-mailed the former Capitol page five times, but had insisted there was nothing inappropriate about the exchange. The page was 16 at the time of the correspondence in August 2005.

Foley’s opponent, Democrat Tim Mahoney, a venture capitalist, had called for an investigation. The Republican Party of Florida will have to replace Foley, 52, a former state legislator and member of Congress from the West Palm Beach area since 1995, for the Nov. 7 ballot in a state whose congressional delegation is overwhelmingly Republican and faces little risk in this year’s elections.

"He did the right thing,'' said House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.). "He did resign.''

Posted by William Neikirk at 12:15 p.m. CDT

Peace is at hand. Henry Kissinger is back.

According to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, he of Watergate fame, Kissinger is now advising both President Bush and Vice President Cheney on Iraq.

(Henry Kissinger, 2nd from left, and Gov. George W. Bush at a May 2000 event. Former Secretary of State George Shultz (far left) and retired Gen. Colin Powell are also in the photo. Tribune photo by Pete Souza.)

According to a new book by Woodward, the former secretary of state under Richard Nixon has been telling our two current leaders that in Iraq, "Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy."

Henry Kissinger is a good man with a quote. Anyone who utters "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," as he did when he was Nixon's national security adviser, knows how to turn a phrase.

Posted by Frank James at 11:50 am CDT

While President Bush has an approval rating from Americans somewhere around 40 percent, give or take, and Congress’s approval rating is south of 30 percent, the Supreme Court remains the government branch with the highest public favorability, with a 60 percent approval rating, according to a Gallup Poll released today.

That 60 percent is the highest rating for the nine justices since 2003, the Gallup survey indicated. The survey was timed for the start of the court's new term next week.

There's an irony in the approval numbers for the three branches. The two branches that do the most to cater to public opinion have lower ratings than the one branch that is generally impervious to such polls. Maybe there's a lesson in that somewhere.

Posted by Mark Silva at 10:25 am CDT

As a congressional report raises new questions about contacts between disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House, President Bush is preparing to campaign next week for two California congressmen whose own connections to Abramoff have been questioned in their campaigns for reelection.

The White House has attempted to distance itself from from Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud and is cooperating with a continuing federal investigation of corruption in Washington. But Abramoff had billed lobbying clients for hundreds of contacts with White House officials – including 10 with chief political strategist Karl Rove – and provided tickets to sporting events for Rove’s assistant, according to a report of the House Government Reform Committee released today.

(The committee bills its 93-page report as "an unusually detailed glimpse into a sordid subculture of fraud and attempted influence peddling'' yet acknowledges it leaves many questions unanswered.)
Download 1_final_abramoff.pdf

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Friday, September 29, as collected by the Associated Press.

Congress is winding down its legislative session in preparation for leaving town to campaign for re-election.

President Bush is speaking on the war on terrorism again this morning and is meeting with President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

Posted at 7:55 am CDT

Congress is on its way to approving miltiary trials for accused terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other detention facilities. The House voted yesterday, the Senate expected to follow today.

David Lightman filed this report for the Hartford Courant:

Bill Creates System To Deal With Detainees

But unlike the war in Southeast Asia, the war on terror is not a war against sovereign nations or organized liberation movements. The rules of prisoner engagement are different - and, Simmons and others contend, ill-defined and even non-existent.

Posted by Mark Silva at 7:25 am CDT

How much of a role does former President Bill Clinton plan to play in his party's campaigns for the midterm congressional elections? His office says Clinton has 30 events planned in October -- events such as his appearance at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner of the Iowa Democratic Party on Oct. 14.

"We have requests from pretty much every competitive campaign,'' says Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, who already has made more than 40 appearances -- "basically everywhere.'' He will continue campaigning in places like Philadelphia, where the Democrats are targeting three House Republicans as part of their bid for a 15-seat net gain and with it a takeover of the House.

The president, who made a media splash over the weekend with his fiery appearance on Fox News Sunday and other venues, carries a voice like no one else's in his party. And he is using it to defend the Democrats' commitment to national security and challenge the Bush administration's handling of it. For more on the story, see the article that appeared in today's Tribune:

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Thursday, September 28, as collected by the Associated Press.

President Bush is campaigning for Republicans in Ohio and Alabama.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing on peace prospects in Darfur with UN Ambassador John Bolton. 8:45 a.m.

The House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee holds a hearing on the use of deceptive measures to obtain personal information, a practice called "pretexting" with Hewlett-Packard officials, others. 9 a.m.

Posted by Frank James at 4:01 pm CDT

President Perez Musharraf, who appeared on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart show last night, didn’t exactly do what visiting heads of state are supposed to, which is not add to the troubles of the hosting leader.

President Bush spent a lot of yesterday trying to prove that what Democratic critics were saying about the National Intelligence Estimate was wrong, that the Iraq War had not worsened the terrorist threat.

The president even ordered the release of a declassified summary of the NIE.

But the Pakistani president didn’t exactly help. Stewart asked Musharraf, in a mock serious way for irony’s sake, why he hadn’t included a discussion of Iraq in his new memoir, In the Line of Fire.

Posted by Andrew Zajac at 3:30 p.m. CST

Call it practical internationalism.

The Princeton Project on National Security Wednesday unveiled
a report that outlines a long-term foreign policy strategy that re-focuses the U.S. on a multi-lateral approach to global problem-solving.

The report, a bi-partisan effort shepherded by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, calls for a combination of reform of old alliances and institutions like the UN and NATO, and the creation of new ones, including a "Concert of Democracies" to coordinate security issues among the world's liberal democracies.

Although it points to George Kennan's post-World War II anti-communist vision of containment of the Soviet Union as a model for the kind strategic thinking that's needed, the report emphasizes that the variegated 21st century foreign policy landscape requires strategy that is "multidimensional, operating like a Swiss army knife."

Posted by Mark Silva at 3:18 pm CDT

The Republicans are headed to the heartland for their 2008 presidential nominating convention, with the Republican National Committee today announcing that it has selected St. Paul, Minn. for the convention. Minneapolis hotels will be filled as well.

Some will read this as a calculated party bid for the hearts of a blue state and bordering marginally blue states: Minnesota had backed Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts with 51 percent of its vote in 2004 and gave President Bush 47.6 percent. It was even closer for Kerry in Wisconsin, razor-thin, and similarly close for Bush in Iowa --making it a region in play in '08.

Posted at 2:07 pm CDT

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says it's time to "get tougher'' with the Iraqi poltiical leadership.

He also says allies have to work together -- "you don't essentially put a gun to their head.''

David Lightman reports about the senator having it both ways in today's Hartford (Conn.) Courant:

By DAVID LIGHTMAN
Washington Bureau Chief
Hartford Courant

"President Jalal Talabani is committed to working for a unified, democratic Iraq that preserves the rights and promotes the security of all its citizens," the Connecticut Democrat, who is seeking re-election as an independent, said after he and four other senators met privately with Talabani for 45 minutes in the Capitol.

Posted by Frank James at 1:14 pm CDT

Who do you blame, President Bush or former President Clinton for Osama bin Laden not being captured?

It’s a question that’s all of sudden become relevant with the controversy over the recent television docudrama, “The Path to 9/11;” Clinton’s memorable appearance on Fox News Sunday, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s effort earlier in the week to shift the blame on the Clinton administration.

Posted at 1 pm CDT

David Lerman of The Daily Press (Va.) published an article yesterday that bears watching, like the scale.

The question is how much is to be gained, politically, by losing, physically?

BY DAVID LERMAN

In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee rose from small-state obscurity to national fame after losing more than 100 pounds and penning the self-help book, ``Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork.” He is now a Republican presidential hopeful.

Posted by Mike Dorning at 10:00 am CDT

The University of Chicago Hospitals has offered its explanation for a large jump in salary it gave to the wife of Sen. Barack Obama two months after he took office. Michelle Obama's pay nearly tripled when the medical center promoted her to vice president for external affairs in March 2005.

The story below from this morning's Chicago Tribune offers greater detail:

Employer: Michelle Obama's raise well-earned

By Mike Dorning, Washington Bureau. Tribune staff reporters Bruce Japsen and David Mendell contributed from Chicago

Hospitals spokesman John Easton said Obama's salary was in line with the compensation received by the not-for-profit medical center's 16 other vice presidents.

Good morning.

Here are some Washington events of note for Wednesday, September 27, as compiled by the Associated Press.

President Bush is having dinner tonight with Afghan President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistani President Hamid Karzai at the White House.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is making what is billed as a major speech on U.S.-Africa policy, at 9 a.m.

Posted by William Neikirk at 3:04 p.m. CDT

During a weekend trip from Washington, D.C. to Irvine, Ky. for a high school reunion, I began to take note of gasoline prices. I filled up in Arlington, Va., paying $2.29 a gallon. I filled the tank again in Ashland, Ky., just across the road from an Ashland Oil refinery, and paid $2.07 per gallon. I stopped in Morehead, Ky., for the night, where the lowest price was $1.95 a gallon. On my way home, I filled up at Harrisonburg, Va., where the price was $1.99 a gallon.

At my reunion, several of my classmates said they thought the decline in oil prices represented manipulation by the oil companies to help the Republicans retain control of Congress in November. The notion of political manipulation is a fairly strong one in America these days, since the prices of oil and gasoline have plummeted in recent weeks. A recent Gallup Poll showed that 42 percent of those questioned believed the drop in prices was political in nature.