On the phone calls to members of Congress to see if they still support Speaker Hastert, it’s probably important to keep calling or repeat the calls since, from what I can tell, the answers seem to be changing from moment to moment as the story progresses.

Foley known for squiring pages around DC in his Beemer convertible.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO): I was out of the loop on Foleygate.

Frist: Taliban too strong to be defeated militarily. They should be welcomed into the Afghan government.

Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT) donating tainted Mark Foley money to Mark Foley.

Whammo!

Just out from McClatchy …

The independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission was given the same “scary” briefing about an imminent al Qaida attack on a U.S. target that was presented to the White House two months before the attacks, but failed to disclose the warning in its 428-page report.

Former CIA Director George Tenet presented the briefing to commission member Richard Ben Veniste and executive director Philip Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters on Jan. 28, 2004, said three former senior agency officials.

Tenet raised the matter himself, displayed slides from a Power Point presentation that he and other officials had given to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, and offered to testify on the matter in public if the commission asked him to, they said.

Very hard to say what would be behind the decision to leave it out considering that Ben Veniste was one of the Dems on the Commission.

Speaker Hastert from this afternoon’s Q&A on whether he thought the Shimkus/Trandahl investigation was adequate …

Q Mr. Speaker, on that question, I mean is it sufficient that they just went and asked Foley, hey, we have
this e-mail that has set off some worries with the parents, is this a problem or not? And he says no. So should it have stopped there?

Mr. Hastert. Well, let me say this, and again I want to refer you to the report, but what I want to say is that
the parents didn’t want to — I mean, first of all, there was nothing explicit in this e-mail that I understood. And the parents didn’t even want — I don’t even know if they showed the e-mail — actual e-mail to Mr. Shimkus. I don’t know. But his parents were protective of this thing, and what they wanted was Mr. Foley, and my understanding was, Mr. Foley to stop contacting their son. I think that is what the purpose of it was and I think the reports that I got back recently is that is what happened.

Back to the excuse about the parents’ privacy, right?

Hastert on whether pages were warned in advance about Rep. Foley …

Q Some former pages have said to the media that they were told that to, you know, sort of watch it or not get too, you know, hung up with him.

Mr. Hastert. You know, I had no knowledge of that, and that was not something that this leadership said.

Everybody is on their own.

Dobson on Foleygate: The fault of an ‘oversexualized’ society, not House leadership.

Sign of a campaign that’s clearly in great shape.

Tennessee senate candidate Corker (R) replaces his entire campaign staff.