"Blame the Dems"? Blame FOX! (Plus: A Foleygate spy)

Can you believe this crap? On Hardball, Republican Representatives Jack Kingston and Patrick McHenry tried to reverse reality itself with the GOP's latest screwball theory. Without offering any evidence, they said that the Democrats possessed the Foley emails, yet held onto them until five weeks before the election.

McHENRY: I don't know -- Chris, I'll answer it this way. I do not know that they did not. And Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel, I asked them two days ago in a letter, to submit themselves under oath and say clearly, yes or no, did they have prior knowledge of the instant messages and/or emails, and if they did, they're an accessory to this crime --

MATTHEWS: How so?

McHENRY: -- because they allowed to keep a pedophile out on the streets.

Pelosi allowed it?

We know that the Republicans refused to divulge Foley's problem to the Democratic member of the page oversight board. We know that the FBI received the Foley emails from CREW last July. We know that the Bureau did zip and later lied to cover up its inaction. We know that someone has been trying for months and months to get the media to focus on this issue. And we now know that Denny Hastert was quietly trying to play fixer long before he claims he learned of the situation. In fact, we have plenty of indications that the G.O.P. knew for the better part of a decade that Foley had a weakness for young men.

We also know that FOX News received the Foley emails "nearly a year" ago -- and they did nothing about it.

Did FOX investigate the lead, as ABC later did? Nope. Did FOX turn the emails over to the FBI, as CREW did? Nope.

To use McHenry's mangled words: FOX, the Republican media organ, "allowed to keep a pedophile out on the streets."

Yet the Republicans want you to blame Nancy Pelosi, against whom we have not one molecule of evidence.

Someone goes in for photography: As you know, I suspect that Mike Rogers of BlogActive is responsible for the StopSexPredators site, which first published the emails. Apparently, someone else suspects Rogers of being up to something: A covert photographer stalked him as he went out to eat with a friend.

"And they say I play nasty?" asks Rogers.