• Earlier in the year, long before the allegations had been made public, Massa had called me with a potentially huge story: Four retired generals — three four-stars and one three-star — had informed him, he said, that General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, had met twice in secret with former vice president Dick Cheney. In those meetings, the generals said, Cheney had attempted to recruit Petraeus to run for president as a Republican in 2012.

• The generals had told him, and Massa had agreed, that if someone didn’t act immediately to reveal this plot, American constitutional democracy itself was at risk. Massa and I had had several conversation on the topic, each more urgent than the last. He had gone to the Pentagon, he told me, demanding answers. He knew the powerful forces that he was dealing with, he told me. They’d stop at nothing to prevent the truth from coming out, he said, including destroying him. “I told the official, ‘If I have to get up at a committee hearing and go public with this, it will cause the mother of all shitstorms and your life will be hell. So I need a meeting. Now.’”

• Massa eventually came to the Esquire offices in New York to tell us the Petraeus story. He spoke with the bluster and hyperbole I had seen in him at stump speeches, but he had credibility on this matter — twenty-four years of active service in the Navy, a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, and an increasing voice in the media as a Democrat who would speak with authority about military issues. Still, when he called the possibility that Petraeus could beat Obama in an election a “coup” and “treason,” the characterization seemed odd. “If what I’ve been told is true — and I believe it is,” he told myself and two colleagues, “General David Petraeus, a commander with soldiers deployed in two theaters of war, has had multiple meetings with Dick Cheney, the former vice-president of the United States, to discuss Petraeus’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency. And in fact, that’s more than a constitutional crisis. That’s treason.”

Do I need to write a punchline? This is bark-at-the-moon stuff. Feel free to speculate in comments about how I’m part of the cover-up for the impending tickle-driven coup d’etat.

Thanks to Noah Shachtman’s Twitter feed.

Nancy Pelosi — $7,000 (PAC and campaign committee)

Steny Hoyer — $7,000 (PAC and campaign committee)

James Clyburn — $7,000 (PAC and campaign committee)

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — $5,000

International Association of Fire Fighters — $5,000

Harris Corp.’s PAC — $5,000

The Engineers Political Education Committee — $5,000

Bachmann’s juiciest accusation — and the one about which we know the least — concerns Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “The real story about Massa is that it appears that Speaker Pelosi might have known about these sexual harassment allegations in October,” says Bachmann. “I’m not saying this is what is, but I’m saying this is what it looks like.”

Well, here’s what Fox News has reported.

Fox News has learned that Pelosi’s aides learned last October that Massa was living with male staffers and asked Massa’s office to change that. According to The Wall Street Journal, Massa’s former chief of staff also told Pelosi’s staff that Massa’s language and conduct made some aides uncomfortable.

Based on that, Bachmann will inform a crowd that Nancy Pelosi covered up Massa’s behavior to twist his arm for a vote … that, well, she didn’t end up getting.

I’m not saying he is as pure as the driven snow, I don’t know, I don’t know the guy, but this is a moment that will decide the course of this nation, possibly.

Glenn Beck on Eric Massa, March 10:

I think we found out who he is — someone who can’t be trusted to tell the truth about his life… now that we spent the hour, we don’t have to ever pay attention to this man ever again

Republicans on Eric Massa, later on March 10:

House Republicans are considering whether to ask Thursday for the Ethics Committee to investigate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for their handling of information about misbehavior by former Rep. Eric Massa, who resigned Monday for sexually harassing male staffers.

So, here’s what happened. On March 3, Massa resigned amid rumors that he sexually harassed a staff member. There was unanimity among conservatives — this might be the Democrats’ Mark Foley scandal. On March 7, Massa melted down on a radio show and lobbed wild accusations at the Democratic Party establishment. The conservative unanimity broke, with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Mark Levin treating Massa like a truth-telling exile. On March 9, Massa melted down, again, on Glenn Beck’s show, and nuked his own credibility. So now we’re back to the “Democrats’ Mark Foley” strategy. It’s going to cause Democrats some trouble, but not as much as it would have if conservatives had stuck to their first instincts about Massa.

Update: Looks like Massa’s resignation might have been a shrewd move. From the Post:

The committee concluded that Massa’s resignation put him outside the reach of any punishment the committee could dole out, and would render any findings of wrongdoing irrelevant. But the move appears likely to set up a political battle with House Republicans, who are already complaining in campaign ads that Congressional Democrats are unwilling to look too deeply into or punish the ethical transgressions of their own.

Republicans signaled Wednesday morning, just before the House ethics committee was set to hold a meeting, that they wanted the probe to continue. Republicans sources said that the public deserved to know who in the House Democratic leadership knew about the swirling allegations and what they did upon learning that congressional staffers might be victims of harassment.

“America, have you ever heard of a 50-year old man having a tickle-fight — five men tickling each other so hard that they can’t breathe?” said Beck. “I think we found out who he is — someone who can’t be trusted to tell the truth about his life.”

“I almost said, ‘I think we could, but you’ve wasted enough of my time, get out,’” said Beck. “I almost threw him out of the studio three times. … What a waste of time this man was!”

Bitterly, Beck expressed hope that he’d helped Massa kill his own credibility. “Now that we spent the hour,” said Beck, “we don’t have to ever pay attention to this man ever again.”

Later in the show, Beck invited on Michelle Malkin — who’d sounded the alarm to conservatives about trusting Massa — and bowed to her foresight.

From Malkin:

“Conservative hero” my foot.

“Crapweasel” is too kind a description for the desperate, bottom-feeding Massa. He is not a useful idiot. He’s just an idiot.

Allahpundit of Hot Air goes a little further:

When pressed on corruption, all he could do was blow smoke about how super-keen he thinks the tea party is, etc. In fact, not only didn’t he dish new dirt, he cleaned up some of the dirt he’d already dished: In the first clip below, he dismisses the suggestion that the Dems had forced him out unfairly for his behavior. “I forced myself out,” he says — i.e., he deserved to go. Good work, Massa.

And Ace of Spades:

You Know… Beck could have improved his credibility — and provided entertaining TV — if he had switched midway through to a hostile interrogation of Massa, instead of allowing him to blather vaguely that he made some “mistakes” which he takes ownership of but which also weren’t really mistakes, it’s just that people took his tickle-parties the wrong way.

There’s some debate over whether the interview was salvageable at all, with the “no, it wasn’t side” confident that Massa is/was too much of an opportunist for his spin to be taken seriously.

To my surprise, a slightly edited video of that speech is still online. Behold, the new hero of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

I didn’t leave the Republican Party. It ran away from me, and it ran away from this country, and it has become so constricted in its own twisted evil that even those who look in the mirror and say “I’m a Republican” can no longer say it, unless the bathroom door is closed and no one can hear them! You see, the Republican Party may have once been the party of the big tent, but it’s now become a very, very small outhouse. And you know what it’s full of. And Bill O’Reilly, I’m talking to you!

Note also Massa’s passionate embrace of universal health care.

Massa’s incredible radio meltdown over the weekend was tailor-made for talk radio and TV. It led the Drudge Report for much of Monday — today, Drudge is focusing on the not-so-subtle gay innuendo that Rahm Emanuel “thugs around gym showers.” And on the snippets I heard of talk radio yesterday, hosts delighted in how Massa validated their narrative of the Obama administration as a thuggish (always that word) Chicago mob that had the power to, say, initiate bipartisan ethics committee investigations of political enemies. Mark Levin, whose shtick is that of a brainy conservative lawyer who’s had enough, played clips of Massa bellyaching about the conspiracies against him — Levin, back in the studio, darkly intoned what this proved about the “Chicago machine.”

Fox News has had some trouble making this narrative stick. Last night’s episode of Greta Van Susteren’s show began with the host breathlessly reporting that Massa claimed to have been offered a “bribe” by unions — his word for union offers of electoral support if he voted for health care. When Van Susteren and guest Rick Santorum tried to delve deeper, they… well, here’s what happened:

SANTORUM: I — it’s — it’s irrational behavior. I don’t understand why he’s doing it. If he was as angry as he was at being forced out, he should have stayed. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: But was he really forced out? They’re having an investigation. I mean, his behavior — I mean…

SANTORUM: Yes. Investigating someone is not forcing someone out. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: Right. He was being investigated.

SANTORUM: He was being investigated. And I understand, you know, he’s obviously under a lot of pressure. There’s all these bizarre stories about Rahm Emanuel and — and what — you know — I don’t know. I don’t know…

VAN SUSTEREN: The nakedness in the shower. We got that on “Hannity.”

SANTORUM: Yes, OK, good. I…

VAN SUSTEREN: We don’t have to do the naked shower one.

This probably won’t end with a lot of glory for Massa or his short-term allies.