All about knowing

- 2 hours and 5 minutes ago

This morning I came across a prayer by Pastor Scotty Smith, one he wrote just recently that focuses on his life in light of the words of Psalm 27. "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). Here is what he prays on that basis:

Dear Lord Jesus, if you would say “Yes!” to just one of my prayers... if you would fulfill a single desire and intense longing of my heart, how could I possibly choose wiser than King David? Though I were to assemble a catalogue of commendable requests and redemptive petitions, there is nothing more to be desired than to gaze upon your unmitigated, unfiltered, unabridged beauty.

For on that Day all will be made right. Indeed, Lord Jesus, when you are finally and fully in sight, everything will be made right. Every prayer I’ve ever offered in concert with the heartbeat of heaven will be answered. Every quest and question will either be dissolved or resolved. All wrestling with providence and interceding over circumstance will be done with.

I will shout on that Day what I sometimes only half-heartedly whisper in this day, “My God has done all things well!” There will be no more praying in part... no more knowing in part... no more hoping in part. We shall see you as you are, Jesus, and we shall be like you. (1 John 3:2)

Until that Day, Jesus, please show us... show me, more and more of your beauty. Reveal as much of your beauty to me as I can entertain. For by the light of your beauty my sin becomes much more reprehensible... the gospel becomes much more commendable... your kingdom becomes much more visible... but above all, you become so much more desirable.

Jesus, no matter what I oftentimes think, feel, pout, demand or say... it is you I want more than anything or anyone else. Keep me restless until my heart more fully rests in you. So very Amen, I pray, in the beauty and bounty of your great name.

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KNOWING.ISO

Epic Disneyland '56 home movie is now a DVD

Programming the Commodore 64: the Definitive Guide

Greg reviews every manga series he reads, part 2: MPD-Psycho

Comics Should Be Good!

- 16 hours and 28 minutes ago

I kind of hesitate to review this, but I will anyway. I'll explain below the jump!

Oh, the kookiness!

MPD-Psycho is written by Eiji Otsuka, drawn by Sho-U Tajima, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian, and lettered by Steve Dutro. Dark Horse publishes the English version, and nine volumes have come out. There's part of the problem. The most recent volume came out last May, a tenth volume has not been solicited, and there doesn't seem to be any news about it coming out. It seems that there aren't many more volumes to go before the series is completed, so it seems strange that Dark Horse hasn't continued publishing it. It makes it difficult to recommend the series, because I have no idea if it's going to finish, and it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.

MPD-Psycho is a fairly wacky comic that begins with a multiple personality disorder sufferer (hence the title) and then goes sideways into far weirder areas. In some ways, that's fine, but in other ways, the accretion of governmental conspiracy takes the focus away from the main character, and whereas series that I will highlight later in this mini-feature of manga reviews handle that better, Otsuka isn't quite as good at it. The main character, we think, is a police detective named Yosuke Kobayashi, who in the first few pages is being sentenced to a jail term for "professional negligence resulting in death." As he stands to be sentenced, he tells the court that he is, indeed, Kazuhiko Amamiya, not Kobayashi. Then we go back in time and see him as Kobayashi, who's working a murder case. The killer delivers a large cooler to him one day, inside which is his girlfriend, dismembered but still alive. Then we go back to the present, where he's in prison. He's no longer Kobayashi in prison, he's Amamiya. So far, so good. A woman, Machi Isono, visits him to get profiles of various cases she's working on. She gives the profiles to his old partner, Sasayama, who's somewhat incompetent . She's also bothered by a freelance journalist, Toguchi, who gives her a videotape showing the "birth" of Amamiya and the crime for which he was imprisoned - he tracks down the killer and shoots him. In that moment, we realize that there are three personalities in his head - Kobayashi, Amamiya, and the one who pulled the trigger, Shinji Nishizono. Still all clear?

Machi offers Amamiya a job when he gets out of jail at her private criminal research lab. This is where the series takes its first real twist. A murderer Machi has been profiling (with Amamiya's help) turns out to be a female cannibal, and when the cops pick her up, she commits suicide using a razor she had hidden in her mouth. Toguchi is there to film it, and he gets close enough to look under her left eyelid and see a bar code there. The bar code becomes part of the central mystery of the book: What is it, what does it mean, and how are all the people who have one (and there are many) linked? Otsuka keeps piling weird stuff on weird stuff, but he does manage to keep things on track. This is a government conspiracy book, so things are never what they seem, but when you read all the volumes at once, you see the grand scheme much more plainly (at least, as much as Otsuka has shown us so far). One of the ridiculous things about conspiracy books is that everyone is in on it, and MPD-Psycho, unfortunately, doesn't escape that cliché, as people keep showing up who are plotting something behind the scenes. The mystery is fine - the entire enterprise has something to do with a 1960s folk singer who also happened to be a terrorist - but like all conspiracy stories, every so often the reader has to roll his or her eyes when the coincidences (that aren't, of course, actually coincidences) pile up. But if you can deal with that, you can enjoy this.

Otsuka and Tajima make sure that this world is dangerous - it's a violent manga, to be sure, but that's not surprising. What's interesting about MPD-Psycho is that no one is safe, not even children (who are, throughout the book, often the perpetrators of horrible violence). Amamiya himself isn't even safe! It keeps the tension high in the book and adds to the sense of not knowing who's who. Even seemingly innocuous characters might turn out to have a bar code on their eyeballs and become crazed killers. You're never quite comfortable reading MPD-Psycho, which is somewhat refreshing. With my last selection, Gantz, you expect everyone to die. With later selections, there are certain characters you're reasonably sure are safe. With this book, you never really know. It's fun!

Otsuka manages to keep the book from being all grim and angry by including Sasayama, who's a nice comic figure. Sasayama uses Machi Isono early in the series to get profiling information from the imprisoned Amamiya because he's not very good at his job, and then he allies with her and Amamiya to solve cases, but he's still not very good at it. He's a goofy character, but this book needs something like that, someone to point out the absurdity of what's happening before the reader does. Yes, in Sasayama's world, people are actually dying horribly and people are turning others into killers, but it's still a little ridiculous, and Sasayama is Otsuka's way of winking at the audience. It's good to deflate the insanity a bit, and it keeps the book from taking itself way too seriously.

As difficult as it is for me to discuss American artists, it's even more difficult to discuss manga artists. One of the reasons I resisted manga for so long is because whenever I saw the art, it featured the same style of art - the big eyes, goofy expressions of extreme emotions, and too many speed lines to deal with. Obviously, I've learned better, but it's still hard for me to really express what's going on artistically in these manga. Tajima is a fine artist, but he doesn't have, to me, a wildly distinctive style. There's a lot of photo-referencing in this book for the long shots of Tokyo or Manila, and the violence is nice and gory, but he also slides into the extreme expressions that I associate with manga art at odd times, when they don't seem to match the words or even the situations of the book. I enjoy the art quite a bit, but I'm not very good at explaining what's good and bad about it. Sorry.

The biggest disappointment about MPD-Psycho is that Otsuka ignores the multiple personality stuff, for the most part. I don't mean that Amamiya doesn't show his other personalities, just that it doesn't seem to have much impact on the story except to allow him to do horrible things. The real focus of the story is personalities and how they can be manipulated, which fits into the set-up at the beginning, but Machi Isono and Sasayama don't seem terribly perturbed that Kobayashi suddenly starts manifesting all these personalities, some a lot more evil than the Kobayashi one. We get a perfunctory connection between the personalities, but they don't do much more investigation into what's really going on with their comrade. The main plot distracts them, of course, but it seems weird that the fact that Amamiya suddenly turns into the crazed Nishizono, for instance, doesn't faze them in the least. It's not a book that delves into the psychological too much, nor does it pretend to be, but it's somewhat weird, given the major theme of the series.

As I wrote, MPD-Psycho seems to be stuck in limbo with regard to the rest of the series, and that's a shame. It's a wildly entertaining roller coaster ride of a story, and the ninth volume ends with some interesting cliffhangers, so I'd like to see where it all ends up. We shall see if Dark Horse sees fit to bring out the rest of it. That would be nice.

Next: Something that will probably end up being higher on the list, but it's a bit too soon to tell!

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‘Predators’ Preview Debuts at SXSW

Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux

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SafeDriver Wireless Vehicle Monitor

Solar Surge for iPhone 3G and 3GS

Again, it's over: Microsoft loses second review of Word appeal

BetaNews.Com

- 1 days and 21 hours ago

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A permanent injunction against Microsoft selling versions of Word that contain XML editing ability effectively remains in place today, after a shot-in-the-dark appeal by Microsoft of its appeals loss last December was shot down Wednesday by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Although Microsoft is no longer distributing versions of Word or Office with an XML editor that a jury found infringed upon the patents of former development partner i4i, it made a face-saving effort to change the record of history. Such a change would have shown that Microsoft did not borrow the ideas behind a Word plug-in that i4i demonstrated, for its own purposes, knowing that i4i held a patent on those ideas.

What may be more historically important about Wednesday's ruling -- which replaces the December ruling -- is that it may re-establish an older legal precedent with respect to patent infringement. Patent reformers, including Supreme Court judges, have been utilizing their own judiciary discretion with respect to a benchmark for damages. Legislation still on the table in Congress would change US patent law so that judges must estimate what a product would have been worth had it not been infringed upon, under normal market circumstances, in setting damages.

The reason many damage awards by juries reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, using formulas that sometimes seem arbitrary, is because they agreed with plaintiffs' attorneys that the real-world damage is so great that any attempt to really estimate loss in monetary value is pointless. That was the case in the i4i trial, where in District Court, a jury decided there was no real formula for measuring the extent of Microsoft's transgression.

The problem considered with the District Court trial was that the base of the damages award was set at $200 million, a figure which admittedly came from a rough estimate of how many copies of Word that Microsoft probably sold during the period in question (2.1 million) times the amount of royalties i4i contended it should have received for each of those copies ($95). Microsoft argued against that formula for numerous reasons, including the fact that not all 2.1 million users of Office or Word would even see the XML editor function in question. Weighing against the need to consider the validity of that strict formula was the notion that i4i had suffered irreparable injury, which the law literally defines as something the law cannot define.

Specifically, i4i argued, Microsoft destroyed the relevant market, so that you couldn't measure it any more. Given that set of circumstances, how would it look for judges to go questioning the jury's formula on nickel-and-dime issues of royalties?

"The district court concluded that there were inadequate remedies at law to compensate i4i for its injury," wrote Judge Sharon Prost for the three-judge panel. "The district court found that before and after Microsoft began infringing, i4i produced and sold software that practiced the patented method. The district court found no evidence that i4i had previously licensed the patent, instead finding evidence that i4i sought to retain exclusive use of its invention. It was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that monetary damages would be inadequate. In this case, a small company was practicing its patent, only to suffer a loss of market share, brand recognition, and customer goodwill as the result of the defendant's infringing acts. Such losses may frequently defy attempts at valuation, particularly when the infringing acts significantly change the relevant market, as occurred here. The district court found that Microsoft captured 80% of the custom XML market with its infringing Word products, forcing i4i to change its business strategy. The loss associated with these effects is particularly difficult to quantify. Difficulty in estimating monetary damages is evidence that remedies at law are inadequate."

So the injunction stands, but not after tossing Microsoft the most hollow of victories: Sixty days, the Appeals Court decided, was not a fair amount of time for Microsoft to comply with the District Court's order, so it extended the period to five months...from the date of the order. That means the injunction now takes effect on January 11...two months ago.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: On Microsoft's request, we changed our original headline, taking note of the fact that Microsoft did not file a complete appeal on December 22. What it did file was a petition for an en banc rehearing of the existing appeal, and that petition was actually granted, even though the revised opinion issued Wednesday effectively clarifies the Appeals' Court's earlier stand.]

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

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Google's Blogger gets a ridiculously easy template editor

Upping the double standard: Fox now asking if it's "time for Speaker Pelosi to go"

Media Matters for America

- 1 days and 22 hours ago

Despite presenting no evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was personally aware of concerns regarding former-Rep. Eric Massa's behavior months before those claims were made public, Fox & Friends hosted a panel on March 12 to discuss whether it's "time for Speaker Pelosi to go." But Fox news figures defended then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert after it became public in 2006 that Hastert had likely been personally informed of an inappropriate email then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) sent to a congressional page.

Fox News hosts panel on whether it's "time for Speaker Pelosi to go" over Massa allegations

Doocy: "[S]ome are wondering...is it time for Speaker Pelosi to go?" On the March 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy introduced a panel discussion by noting "the ethics violations plaguing Washington," and stating, "Some are wondering on the right, is it time for Speaker Pelosi to go?" Doocy went on to say, "We've heard of these skeevy allegations about" Massa that "apparently Pelosi's office knew about...back in October and people are going, what did she know? When did she know it? This doesn't look good for her."

During the segment, the following on-screen graphic appeared:

Fair and Balanced Fox: Defend Hastert -- who was likely aware of Foley's email -- but attack Pelosi, who says she was not aware of Massa allegations

The disparities between Fox's coverage of the reports surrounding Massa and its reported on March 11, "Pelosi said she personally learned about allegations of misconduct [by Massa] March 3. The speaker said her staff knew about the allegations of sexual harassment around the time they were reported to Mr. Hoyer's office in early February."

WSJ: Leadership aide says Pelosi wasn't informed of "October discussion" about Massa. While Pelosi's staff was reportedly informed of "concerns" about Massa in October 2009, the Journal reported that according to a senior Democratic leadership aide, "Pelosi wasn't informed of the October discussion, and the matter was not referred to the House ethics committee because it did not involve allegations of inappropriate behavior or sexual harassment."

Hoyer's office says Hoyer ensured misconduct allegations were immediately referred to ethics committee. Hoyer's office released the following statement on March 3:

The week of February 8th, a member of Rep. Massa's staff brought to the attention of Mr. Hoyer's staff allegations of misconduct that had been made against Mr. Massa. Mr. Hoyer's staff immediately informed him of what they had been told. Mr. Hoyer instructed his staff that if Mr. Massa or his staff did not bring the matter to the attention of the bipartisan Ethics Committee within 48 hours, Mr. Hoyer would do so. Within 48 hours, Mr. Hoyer received confirmation from both the Ethics Committee staff and Mr. Massa's staff that the Ethics Committee had been contacted and would review the allegations. Mr. Hoyer does not know whether the allegations are true or false, but wanted to ensure that the bipartisan committee charged with overseeing conduct of Members was immediately involved to determine the facts.

By contrast, ethics committee found that Hastert was likely told about Foley emails and apparently took no action. From page 85 of the ethics committee's 2006 report on the Foley scandal:

The Investigative Subcommittee finds that the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that Speaker Hastert was told, at least in passing, about the e-mails by both Majority Leader [John] Boehner and Rep. [Tom] Reynolds [R-NY] in spring 2006.

[...]

Neither the Majority Leader nor Rep. Reynolds asked the Speaker to take any action in response to the information each provided to him, and there is no evidence that the Speaker took any action.

Ethics committee found that Rep. Boehner and then-Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) failed to show "any curiosity regarding" Foley emails and failed to ask Hastert to take any action. From page 85 of the ethics committee report:

Rep. Alexander did not ask either the Majority Leader or Rep. Reynolds to do anything -- each decided to mention the matter to the Speaker on his own initiative. Like too many others, neither the Majority Leader nor Rep. Reynolds showed any curiosity regarding why a young former page would have been made uncomfortable by e-mails from Rep. Foley. Neither the Majority Leader nor Rep. Reynolds asked the Speaker to take any action in response to the information each provided to him, and there is no evidence that the Speaker took any action.

In 2006, Fox News figures defended Hastert's role in Foley scandal

September 30, 2006: McClatchy reported that Reynolds said he informed Hastert of emails "months ago." On September 30, 2006, McClatchy reported (accessed via Nexis) that Reynolds said he informed Hastert "months ago about the existence of e-mails to a page from Foley":

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee charged with maintaining his party's majority, said Saturday that he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert months ago about the existence of e-mails to a page from Foley -- e-mails the boy said "freaked him out."

Hastert said he doesn't remember the conversation but "has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution," his chief of staff and outside counsel said in an internal review released after Reynolds' statement.

The revelations have prompted calls for independent investigations. Some Democrats have alleged a coverup by the House leadership.

Hannity defends Hastert: "The only thing that Hastert knew about was that there was an e-mail." From the October 4, 2006, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

JANE FLEMING (director, Young Democrats of America): Yeah, it's clear that Hastert knew over a year ago, and maybe even longer, that this was going on, and he did absolutely nothing about it. And we have to ask: Why did he do nothing about it?

It seems to us that he was covering it up, hoping that it would go away. When it didn't go away, then they had Foley resign, and they still haven't done a full investigation about --

HANNITY: Hey, Jane, Jane --

FLEMING: Yeah?

HANNITY: Let me stop you right here.

FLEMING: Go ahead.

HANNITY: There is no evidence, none that you can cite to our audience --

FLEMING: Yes, there is.

HANNITY: -- wait a minute, wait a minute -- that Dennis Hastert knew anything about the sexual, salacious nature of the instant messages.

[...]

HANNITY: The only thing that Hastert knew about was that there was an email. Now, I spoke to Hastert. He didn't even know about the request for a picture. All he knew was the parents wanted the emails to stop --

ANN COULTER (right-wing pundit): Right.

HANNITY: -- and the parents' request was answered. He didn't know about this, and there's no proof, in spite of liberals screaming it, they can't cite any evidence that Hastert knew.

COULTER: No, of course not.

HANNITY: But here's what we do know. Here's what we do know. The George Soros-funded group, for example, got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Open Society that gives money to this group, CREW, well, they knew about this -- and I'm reading from The Hill -- quote, "when CREW received copies of Foley's e-mails earlier this summer." So apparently, now there's even discussion that they may have been in contact with Democrats.

Hannity said there's "no evidence" GOP leaders knew Foley was "going after pages," demanded CREW "phone records." From the October 5, 2006, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Let me go back to Michael Barone here for just a second. Michael, this is an important point you were raising here. And I want a full investigation. Democrats are calling for it, but interestingly, I think, you know, I'd like to see -- for example, we know that this website, CREW, funded by George Soros, had these emails now and were bragging on their website as early as July 21.

Now, that raises the questions, because a lot of these CREW members previously worked on Capitol Hill for prominent Democrats. I'd like to see emails, I'd like to see phone records, I'd like to know if there was any contact regarding these things. In other words, what did they know and when did they know it? Because what you're pointing out here, they would have put the safety and security of children, you know --

BARONE: At risk.

HANNITY: -- prioritize partisan politics over the safety and security of children.

[...]

DOUG HATTAWAY (Democratic strategist): That's exactly what the Republican leadership did. They -- the point you're missing, Sean, I think, is wherever these explicit emails showed up -- I don't know what the leadership knew about those -- they knew that this guy was going after pages --

HANNITY: There's no evidence of that at all.

[crosstalk]

HATTAWAY: -- they did nothing about it.

ALAN COLMES (co-host): And thank you very much, Mr. Liddy, Mr. Hattaway, and Mr. Barone. Thank you.

Hannity: "no evidence" Hastert knew, suggested Republican leadership are "innocent people" being "smeared." From the October 3, 2006, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Well, it's taken on a very different dynamic though tonight, and that is that Democrats are saying -- I was watching The Fox Report with Shep tonight, and there's Nancy Pelosi out there campaigning today, saying with just 100 percent certainty that Dennis Hastert knew.

Now, I interviewed Dennis Hastert. I've interviewed John Boehner. They both deny -- and there's absolutely no evidence to corroborate this. Now, we're also getting information tonight that there are Democratically funded websites, by people like Soros, that had knowledge of this long before this was made public.

I'm wondering if we're now moving into a different arena here, where this is so politicized that this is going to backfire against the people trying to make hay out of what is a sexual scandal of one man. Your thoughts?

[...]

HANNITY: All right, perhaps, but we'll examine that in the next segment. But I think more importantly here there's some fundamental, I think, fairness issues here.

Everybody that I know is glad Foley is gone, but there seems to be an issue here to purposefully politicize this issue, and I find that equally repugnant to me. And, more importantly, I think this takes on a whole new dimension, and this is it, that, if in the pursuit of political power you are going to falsely accuse individuals of knowing things about horrible scandals like this, you better have evidence, because we live in America, and those American people you're describing are fair-minded.

DICK MORRIS (Fox News contributor): And that's going to backfire.

HANNITY: And when innocent people are smeared, Dick, I've got to believe that people would tend to side with the people that are being smeared. And I see that this is happening more and more in this scandal.

Brit Hume: "[I]'s always easy to say what [Hastert] should've done, but when you start thinking about the things he could've done, there's not much there." From the October 8, 2006, edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:

HUME: Well, I think that toward the end of the week it did begin to look a little brighter. I don't think the weekend revelations, Chris, are particularly important.

The former page of whom you speak was an adult, 21 years old, at the time, and was long out of the House page program. And it appears that Foley's pattern was that he would flirt with these pages, and sometimes in quite a lurid and disgusting way, but nothing ever happened physically until after they were out of the program. And heaven knows how many more will turn up to say that, yes, they, too, carried on with him after they were out of the program, so I -- and besides that, Foley's gone, in disgrace, finished. So how much more of the scandal can be fed by revelations about what he did is questionable.

As for what Hastert knew or didn't know, we probably won't know what the facts are on that until this investigation is concluded. However, let's look back at this a moment.

Let's assume that Hastert did know or that he decided he wanted to do more than simply issue a stern warning when he discovered these overly friendly but not X-rated emails. I think the defense that he makes, or that some make of him, that if he tried to do something really strong, he would have been accused of gay-bashing, there would have been charges that the Republicans were trying to out one of their own members solely because he was gay. It would not have been a pretty sight.

So history doesn't disclose its alternatives, but I think we can pretty well see what that one would have been. And it gives you an idea of -- it's always easy to say what he should've done, but when you start thinking about the things he could've done, there's not much there.

Bill Kristol: "I think there's no evidence that Hastert did anything wrong, in my view." From the October 8, 2006, edition of Fox News Sunday:

KRISTOL: Well, one would think, if one were Foley's chief staff and thought one's boss was doing something really wrong and immoral, one might not just be quiet for the next three years, if Hastert's chief of staff didn't act appropriately. Maybe they thought they had talked to Hastert and to Foley and things -- and he had subsided. Maybe there's some self-serving recollection going on here.

I think there's no evidence that Hastert did anything wrong, in my view. And this is -- I do honestly believe now the media is trying to stampede the social -- you know, they're treating social conservatives like idiots, for one thing, like children. "Oh my God, one of 230 House members was gay and a real creep, and, you know, and therefore we're not going to vote on the issues we care about, therefore we're going to abandon every position we have. We're going to retreat in shudder from the -- retreat in horror from the polls in November and let the Democrats win a majority."

It's not going to happen. The polls have not moved all week. That is the big fact that's going on. The media is trying to stampede the elections, confirm the Democratic victory, and it's not working.

Kristol: "No one has really proven or even plausibly suggested what [Hastert] should have done that he didn't do." From the October 3, 2006, edition of Fox News' The Big Story:

JOHN GIBSON (host): With me now is Fox News political analyst Bill Kristol, who is the editor of The Weekly Standard. He actually spoke to Dennis Hastert just a short time ago.

Bill, what does Dennis Hastert say about this call for him to step town?

KRISTOL: Well, first, he's really repulsed, I think, by Foley's behavior. You know, Denny Hastert was a high school teacher and a high school coach, and this kind of attempt to exploit young boys, I mean, he -- it's just -- he seems really sickened by it.

He's angry at Foley for betraying his trust, his colleagues' trust, the voters of Florida's trust, these page -- pages' trust. He's also angry at the Democrats for making -- trying to make this a big political issue to divert attention from the real issues that should be debated in this congressional election, and I think he's disappointed in some of these few conservatives who I think foolishly have somehow lashed out at Denny Hastert.

The speaker seems to have done what he could have done given what knowledge he had at the time. No one has really proven or even plausibly suggested what he should have done that he didn't do. And I think he's -- he says he's going to, you know, he's not resigning, and he's going to try to get the debate back to the issues.

Mort Kondracke: "Hastert's position is completely defensible." From the October 6, 2006, edition of Fox News' Special Report:

KONDRACKE: Look, I completely agree with what Jim Baker said, and Jim Baker is a very wise politician, that you give the -- you give the enemy one of your people, and they'll just be chomping after more. Look, I agree that Hastert's position is completely defensible, and what the Republicans need to do is to change the subject.

Now, what are they going to change the subject to? They don't, you know, they're not going to want to talk about Iraq. I guess they want to go back to terrorism. I don't think that arguing over Gerry Studds or Barney Frank is gonna -- is gonna really change the subject; it's just going to rivet attention back on this because, look, what the Republicans rely on for their base is morality voters, values voters, married women with children, and evangelicals, and those people are dismayed by this whole thing.

Bill O'Reilly: "Hastert's you know, being witch-hunted down." From the October 4, 2006, edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: And in the "Impact" segment tonight, the Foley controversy continues to dominate the media. The question now is there anything more here? And is the far left involved in exposing Congressman Foley?

Joining us now from the ABC News studio in New York City, the man who broke much of the story, investigative reporter Brian Ross.

Now we are hearing that the roof is going to fall in on Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Hastert's guy issued us a statement just seconds ago, saying, look, Hastert didn't know anything about this. He heard a couple of inappropriate emails were sent. Nothing was sexual. Hastert's, you know, being witch hunted down. What do you have? What do you know? And is Hastert in trouble in your opinion?

[...]

O'REILLY: Whatever. But the fact remains that you tried to get a hold of Speaker Hastert. And so did I today. We both did. He will not talk to you. He will not talk to me. I think that's foolish. I think he has to go out and defend himself.

Because at this point, the heavy odds are that he's going to have to resign for the good of the Republican Party. Am I wrong?

ROSS: Hard for me to judge on the politics of it, but I can give you the facts. And that is that he has given inconsistent statements and actually forgot apparently that he was told about Foley earlier this year by Congressman Tom Reynolds, who today reasserted, "I told the Speaker. Maybe he forgot, but I did tell him."

O'REILLY: But what did he tell him? What did he tell him? You see, here's the real crux of this matter.

ROSS: Right, right.

O'REILLY: Did he tell him this guy is just flirting with these guys, and it is ridiculous, and it's embarrassing, and he's got to stop? Or did he tell him the guy's having a sexual deal on the Internet? See, that -

ROSS: No, he didn't tell him that.

O'REILLY: -- that is what it is.

ROSS: And, look, I know what happened here in terms of the timeline. Those sexually explicit instant messages were not really in anybody's possession outside of a handful of pages until last week -

O'REILLY: All right.

ROSS: -- when we got them from some former pages.

O'REILLY: So it's very possible that Hastert didn't know anything other than the guy's an idiot. He's just doing things that are just immature and ridiculous.

ROSS: Well, a hair more than that, according to Fordham. That this was -- because it was no secret among that group that Foley was likely gay, and that his attention to the young male pages, in particular, troubled a number of staff members.

O'REILLY: All right, so they did raise a red flag -

ROSS: They did.

O'REILLY: -- and apparently Hastert did not act upon. I think that's fair. Is that a fair statement?

ROSS: Well, he -- Scott Palmer, according to Fordham, at least, went and met with Foley. And then others also went there.

O'REILLY: OK, so I think it's a fair statement.

Now the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a far-left group. George Soros gives a lot of money to it through his Open Society Institute. They apparently are the ones that drove this thing behind the scenes. Is that what you're hearing?

ROSS: I'm not familiar with them. They didn't drive us, but I've since seen they have posted some of those original emails on their website. I don't think they had the ones that really are the ones as you say correctly are in contention.

O'REILLY: OK. Because we're trying to figure out who is driving this, who went to The St. Petersburg Times, The Miami Herald, Fox News in Washington and got a hold of some emails.

The emails that we got a hold of were innocuous. There weren't any smoking gun. But we now believe, and The Wall Street Journal believes as well, that a George Soros-funded group drove this story. That could be an interesting wrinkle here.

But now, Fox runs with claims that Pelosi aides may have known about Massa's behavior

FoxNews.com: "Massave Problem." On March 11, FoxNews.com posted a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Pelosi's Office Knew of Massa Concerns." FoxNews.com posted the following image which linked to the article:

massave

Malkin: "The stance of the Democrat majority has been to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." On the March 11 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed "now it's coming out that potentially her aides may have known about Congressman Eric Massa and some of the concerns that people had about his activity, sexual misconduct allegations, that maybe they knew as long ago as last year." Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin responded: "[T]his is about Nancy Pelosi, and it is about that very pledge she made so publicly and ostentatiously to clean the swamp, to drain the swamp, and what she has done is overflown it -- overflowed it, and I think the stance of the Democrat majority has been to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. And to hear her talk in such condescending and flippant tones about how her job is not to be a receiver of rumors -- that was the actual quote that she has given now -- what does that tell you about her vigilance regarding integrity among her majority members?"

America's Newsroom: There are "reports now that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was actually informed months ago" about Massa. On the March 11 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, co-host Bill Hemmer claimed there were "new questions about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about those incidents and, chiefly, when." Co-host Martha MacCallum claimed that there were "reports now that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was actually informed months ago about some very questionable issues surrounding Eric Massa." Hemmer later asked Fox News reporter Steve Centanni, "What do we know about what Nancy Pelosi's staff first heard, and when, about these concerns about Massa?"

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