I thought it might be worthwhile to track the media's coverage of the Foley/Hastert/Predatorgate scandal via a count of Google News stories:

(From past experience I've noted that Google News story counts take a few days to settle down, so it's best to consider the last three four days' data to be tentative.)

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It's a grey Saturday here at Jack and Jill Politics. The perfect weather to spend listening to the soothing bluesy sounds of "The Incredible Jimmy Smith" album: Back at the Chicken Shack. Don't take my word for it. It says right on the cover art over the chicken coop and above the black-and-white dog in big red letters that he's incredible.

First a word: Jack and Jill Politics is looking for local minority-authored blogs to start building a blogroll. We want to find more progressive blogs covering politics in the states like CTBlogger (CT), Where Is the Outrage (NC), Vivian Paige (VA) and Black At Michigan (MI) with voices that can add new perspectives. If you are a local minority blogger or know a local minority blog that deserves a little more attention, please leave the link in the comments or email us at jjpolitics at gmail.com. Thanks in advance!

Mama's got a lot to do today and I bet you do too. So I'm gonna hit you with some quick links to check out in our weekly roundup of what's happening at the crossroads where minorities and politics meet.

* First, this Mark Foley Predatorgate coverup thing is not partisan despite Republican efforts to make it so. That's why they are going to lose and lose big in the elections. It's not Democrat vs. Republican; it's Right vs. Wrong. The cover-up caused even conservative Christian Black blogger La Shawn Barber to dig deep and question her loyalty to the current GOP leadership. Furthermore, Wanda Sykes would like you to know that Foley is giving alcohol a bad name. (Thanks to the Huffington Post for the link!) I would like to know why Mark Foley is in rehab and  not in jail. Isn't what he did somehow against some law somewhere?

* Republic of T breaks it down on attempts to connect homosexuality and pedophilia. This is wrong and ignorant, Margaret Cho agrees. Hopefully, pastors will keep that in mind in church this Sunday. Let's keep the hate where it belongs: directed at child molesters and not at the GLBT community, ok?

More after the jump...

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Update: 61% of Americans believe the Republicans protected Foley.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of American adults believe that Republican leaders have been “protecting [Mark] Foley for several years.” A Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey conducted Tuesday and Wednesday nights shows that only 21% believe that the leadership “just learn[ed] about Foley’s problems last week.”

The polls are starting to come out.

Republicans, already struggling against negative public perceptions of Congress, now face voters who say new scandals will significantly influence their vote in November.

With midterm elections less than five weeks away, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that about half of likely voters say recent disclosures of corruption and scandal in Congress will be very or extremely important when they cast their vote next month.

The poll of 1,501 adults, including 741 likely voters, occurred Monday through Wednesday as House Republican leaders came under increasing pressure to explain what they knew of sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley of Florida to teenage pages.

More troubling for Republicans, the poll found that by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 likely voters says Democrats would be better at combatting political corruption than Republicans.

The Foley scandal, fueled by new revelations each day, has put Republican leaders and GOP candidates on the defensive, forcing them into a political detour just as they were preparing their final offensive against Democrats to save control of Congress.

The poll also found that President Bush's efforts to depict the war in Iraq as part of a larger campaign against terrorism and to portray Democrats as weak on national security was not altering the political landscape.

Disapproval of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq was at 61 percent among likely voters, a slight uptick from the 58 percent who disapproved last month. A majority of likely voters also disapproved of Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, a conclusion that mirrored past attitudes.

I asked for emails from people in the field a few days ago, and they tracked with this.  There is a sickness in the Republican base, an anger and revulsion at the Foley revelations.  We're going to regret not having more voter registration programs out in the field, as there will be a bunch of races where our lack of interest in our voters will mean some lost races.  This is very bad news for the Republicans.  If I had to guess, this Foley scandal hits them on national security, because it shows that they are not moral-kickass types, but creepy child predators and cover-up artists.

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