This is the last post on Mark Foley until the next one, I swear. Josh has two superb posts up, on the real time unravelling of The Denny's cover-up, and the key role of the so-far silent House Clerk, Jeff Trandahl.

Meanwhile, Mark Foley is having an emotional breakdown. Of course, the next step will be his jailhouse conversion to fundamentalist Christianism, and subsequent employment at a winger think-tank and media career as a moralist. Only on cable, though.

But let's not waste time empathizing with Foley on his future career arc. This little sentence in the Palm Beach Post caught my eye:

When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich hosted a 1996 fund-raiser for Foley, Gingrich posed for pictures with Foley's major contributors. When the picture-taking was over, Foley surprised Gingrich by insisting that the waiters and busboys have their picture taken with the Georgia Republican.

Hmmm....

When you think of it, isn't that the common thread between a lot of Republican failures and failings?

Iraq, torture, Abramoff, Foley coming on to an an underage page--It's all "Because they can."

Authoritarian relationships, where the strong prey on the weak, are all like that.

"Sick sick sick sick sick." To coin a phrase.