BAD TIMING. Boy, was this the wrong weekend for The New York Times to run that criminally weightless Op-Ed from Mark (Slam Book) Halperin about the essential political genius of the Party of Lincoln. First, there are all those administration loyalists running to the air-sickness bag formerly known as Bob Woodward to vomit back up five years of Kool Aid. (Andy Card? The ultimate, multi-generational Bush family retainer? That's like Timmy's being mauled by Lassie.) And then there's the festival of schadenfreude of watching the Republican leadership writhe in what appears to be a vain effort to get its collective hindquarters out of the crack in which Rep. Mark Foley has wedged it, and the equally frenzied contortions of the Republican enablers in the press as they try to explain it all away. Those of us in Boston draw on our own experience with a similar scandal to ask a single question:
Who elected Bernard Cardinal Law Speaker of the House?
--Charles P. Pierce
