By LARRY MARGASAK
The House’s investigation of a page sex scandal has only one certainty: Former Rep. Mark Foley will escape punishment by his peers.
It is the Florida Republican’s sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage former male pages that have ignited what has become a pre-election firestorm.
As the Mark Foley Congressional Page scandal escalates and various attempts by Republicans to stem it spiral out of control, a new poll shows more than half of Americans suspect a coverup and polls in various House and Senate races show GOP prospects of retaining control of Congress fading.
Fading, also, are the political fortunes of embattled Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose conflicting stories on how he mishandled the Foley affair have come to characterize the moral, ethical and leadership lapses of his party.
By LESLIE MILLER
President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.
In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.
But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."