Hot on the heels of N. Korea's nuke test, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon is set to assume the leadership of the one world government United Nations.

Many observers with more knowledge than I about Korea have suggested these two events are not unrelated. The UN remains without its own nuclear stockpile. Will MAD prevail? Only time can tell.

In seriousness, this probably won't really mean a whole lot. The UN is in need of much more serious overhaul than Mr. Moon can bring. It will take a lot more than a new Sec. General to get us back on the road to global consensus.

Chris Bowers has some numbers over on MyDD.com (which is now my go-to politics page) which seem to suggest that the Dems are poised to take the House of Representatives this November.

If this prospect excites you, the time is now to donate, volunteer, send out emails, and talk it up with your friends and family. I think putting a check on the Bush administration is VERY important. Among other things, it will mean much less of a chance of bombing Iran. But we've got to bring it on home.

If this isn't exciting, or you're cynical about the possibilities here, stay tuned. While it's true that there are massive institutional problems with our political system, this is still step one towards: universal health care, reversing global warming, keeping the internet free and open, ending the imperial occupation of Iraq, developing alternatives to fossil fuels, and any number of other important things that require (at a minimum) that the Federal Government not be pushing in the wrong direction.

I'll be blogging more about what might be done soon.

An interesting bit of history: back in 1983 there was another Congressional Page sex scandal, in which one GOP lawmaker confessed to relations with a female page in 1980, and also in which Gerry Studds -- a Democrat from Massachusetts, the first "out" Congressman, and posessor of an apt name for this story -- admitted to a relationship with a 17-year-old male back in 1973.

Studds won re-election and the Republican did not. Most of Studds' constituents already knew he was gay, and he basically didn't apologize for what he did:

Studds, however, stood by the facts of the case and refused to apologize for his behavior, and even turned his back and ignored the censure being read to him. He called a press conference with the former page, in which both stated that the young man was legal and consenting. Studds did not break any U.S. laws for that time, in what he and page called a "private relationship."[1] He continued to be reelected until his retirement in 1996

Bill Clinton could have learned quite a lot from this guy.

Now, let's be clear. Being an adult and getting intimate with a 17-year old is ethically dubious. It's almost certainly unethical if there's a workplace power relationship. If you happen to be considering trying something like this, don't.

However, I think the response of Studds shows the power of standing behind your choices. I may find Studds and the 17-year-old iffy, but if the 17-year-old is willing to stand by his man ten years later and say it was all good, that's a strong statement.

This requires you to embrace your actions in the first place, of course, and to have a solid internal moral gyroscope you can live by. But if you've got those things and a clear head, you can potentially break a lot of social rules to little ill effect.

With the recent busting up of a Qaeda cell plot in Britan -- thanks to some nice'n'legal police work and cooperation with Pakistan -- there's a fresh round of fearmongering and the expectation that Bush's poll numbers will bounce.

The latter isn't happening, and perhaps taking a cue from Holy Joe, left-leaning bloggers have begun to push back against the terror scare by pointing out that we survived the cold war without spending our lives hiding under the bed.

But good grief, when did the Republican Party become infested with what sound like so many loud, whining cowardly pundits? One second Reagan is up there standing toe-to-toe with the Rooskis, negotiating cool as a cucumber with 20,000 nukes pointed at him, and the next thing I know, the likes of Limbaugh or the crew at Powerwhine and Freeperland, are all shrieking like a class full of tweaked-out, neurotic fifth-graders having a panic attack every time OBL pops up in a grainy video with a rusty AK in the background.

Fear is over if you want it. And once Fear is over, war can be next.