Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has basically been a one-man GOP bullshit spewer for the last week or so. He's the main guy in the Republican Party who is pushing the notion that it was the Democrats who were responsible for leaking the fact that former Rep. Foley is a sexual predator. And McHenry was doing his bit yesterday on Wolf Blitzer's program:

MCHENRY: The question remains, though: What person, group or political entity had these nasty instant messages and possessed the e-mails in order to solicit this story? And in a partisan environment like we’re in right now in Washington, four weeks out from a national election, that question must be asked.

BLITZER: So what you’re suggesting — and correct me if I’m wrong, because you’ve been doing this for the last few days — that Democrats are behind the timing of the release of this information? Is that your accusation?

MCHENRY: Well, look, all the fact points lead to one question: Did Rahm Emanuel or Nancy Pelosi have any involvement on the strategic or tactical level? This morning on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the question was asked of Rahm Emanuel. His reaction was he did not see the instant messages or e-mails. He repeatedly said, he did not see. I’ve asked him to testify under oath to assure the American people that he was not involved in this issue in any way, shape or form.

BLITZER: Do you have any evidence at all that Democrats or others might have been behind the timing of this scandal?

MCHENRY: Look, let’s be honest…

BLITZER: Do you have any evidence to back that charge up?

Blitzer asked McHenry four times whether he had any evidence to back up his allegation. McHenry finally answered: "Do you have any evidence that they weren’t involved?"

Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) has a good response to this latest GOP allegation:

If there's any evidence that you need that the values in Washington have turned upside down, you could just hear what Jack had to say. Only in Washington, D.C., can you take a group of people in charge of the House and basically have evidence that they've been looking the other way while a predator has been . . . going after 15- and 16-year-old pages, [and] they somehow . . . have the audacity to turn that into a political attack against Democrats.

Atrios also had a good response:

There is no evidence that Congressman Patrick McHenry hasn't spent the last decade kidnapping babies, raping them, killing them, and piling them up in his basement shrine to Ronald Reagan.

No evidence at all that he hasn't done this.

Quite shocking, really.

I'll say this much -- I hope it was the Democrats who leaked this story. I know all the evidence so far indicates that Republicans leaked it. But I would love it if the Democrats did it, because it would show to me that the Democrats are finally willing to get down and dirty in this fight.

And that is why I am absolutely certain that the Democrats did not leak it.

And speaking of bullshit, I love this:

Commenting on the congressional page scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) on the October 6 broadcast of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, declared that the Foley affair has "turned out to be what some people are now saying was a -- sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages" who had reportedly come forward with sexually explicit instant messages that Foley allegedly sent. Similarly, in his October 6 column, Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Daniel Henninger wrote that "a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages" and then added: "It is the first plausible thing I've heard in seven days."

OK -- now I get it. What we have here is merely a six-year-long joke. You know -- kind of like the Bush Administration.