Seems the Republican leadership may have known about Foley's foibles, and done little. Honestly, could Rahm Emanuel be any happier?

Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) at the Improv's annual "Funniest Celebrity in Washington":

"The Republicans are getting a little carried away on immigration. They just built a 200-mile wall around my office."

Hi-oh!

Foley resigns. Almost unbelievable, this particular series of events.

Jeanine Pirro contemplates some precision wiretappery. Scandal ensues. (Hard to believe she's even still running for something, isn't it?)

Dick Armey, an expert at name-calling thanks to a lifetime of name-related humiliation, calls Tom Tancredo a "cheerleader of jerkiness." Wouldn't have come up with it myself, but I can't say I disagree.

From Slate, via Wonkette: The George Allen Insult Generator.

North Carolina lunatic congressional candidate Vernon Miller - already the source of one of the looniest campaign ads in recent memory - has taken things to a whole new level with an ad that claims (really) that Rep. Brad Miller "spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men." Go. Watch. Laugh.

(How the announcer could even read that script without becoming ashamed of himself is beyond me.)

Update: Wonkette is similarly confounded.

An incredible story (the first in a three-part series) about New York's "justice courts," which are often administered by judges who never graduated from college, much less law school.

A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, "Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then."

It's a long story, and you probably won't have time to read it unless, like me, you've got something important to put off. But it'll no doubt make you shake your head.

"Noted political scientist" and oft-quoted Knower of Most Things Larry Sabato has jumped on the George-Allen-is-a-racist bandwagon. Welcome to the fold, Mustache.

By way of update: today's Last Call! Shot and Chaser.

SHOT . . .
"George Allen and Larry Sabato did not know each other in college" -- Allen adviser Chris LaCivita (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 9/26).

. . . CHASER
"Those nerds are a threat to our way of life" -- Stan ("Revenge of the Nerds," 1984).

Moneyball's Michael Lewis has written a new book, The Blind Side. I haven't read it yet (in my defense, it doesn't actually come out until October), but a bit of it - specifically, the story of a kid named Mike Oher, who's now a star at Ole Miss - was adapted for inclusion in this Sunday's Times Magazine, and it's utterly engrossing. Worth a read whether you're a football fan or not.

A few recent stories, by way of catch-up:

• On Thursday, George Allen's mother told reporters that the reason her son was so tetchy about the Jewish thing was that she had asked him not to acknowledge it. ... Please, please, let this man run for president.
• Crazy Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, on the subject of electric shocks during prisoner interrogations: "Electric shocks are given to people during initiations to different clubs ... Is that torture? I don't know."
• A nice, meaty Washington Times exposé, courtesy of The Nation. This just in: the Times's editors are misogynistic, racist jerks.
• And finally (this one's bizarre, and tough to nutshell): Amy Klobuchar's Senate campaign fired its communications director for viewing an unaired Mark Kennedy advertisement that was discovered by a blogger and forwarded to the campaign.

A couple of neat projects by Flash artist Jonathan Harris:

• 10x10 - "an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time."
• Phylotaxis - "an exploration of the space where science meets culture."