Slap the mat, Denny

It's time. Past time, in fact.

You maybe could have weathered the storm if the only people talking about the Prairie Porkway were us "flying rabid lambs" in Left Blogistan, plus a couple of local fish-wrappers.

But when the Chicago Tribune, that rock-ribbed bastion of all things Republican, takes you on not once, but twice in the same week, the only thing left on the agenda is for the corporeally advantaged woman to sing her aria before the janitors come in to sweep up what's left of the mess.

Yesterday's editorial (the second Trib link in the previous paragraph) was scathing:

Take a secret land trust, a booming real estate market and a long-sought nearby highway. Add a secret federal funding process known as a congressional "earmark," as in "let's earmark that money for this project." The result when all those elements become public knowledge can be embarrassing, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert now has discovered.

Hastert denies there is any connection between the profit (pegged at $1.5 million to $1.8 million) he made from selling land in booming Kendall County to a housing developer and the $207 million in federal funding he secured via earmarks for the proposed Prairie Parkway in the area.

The Trib's editorial board first lays out the exact timeline and names all the key players. Then they lambaste Hastert for hiding behind a secret land trust which, although as the Trib notes is common in Illinois politics, does tend to indicate a bit of a mens rea, a guilty conscience if you will. Having hit him with the left jab on the trust issue, the Tribune editors then gave Hastert a devastating right hook, slamming him hard for having compounded his secret cushy land deal with federal earmarks last year that seem quite clearly to have operated, whether by chance or by design, to drive up the price of the land in the trust--immediately before Hastert and his corrupt Republican associates sold the land at a very tidy profit.

The editors then move in for the kill:

Hastert is furious that his integrity has come into question.

But there's no one in the nation who's in a better position to do something about that than the speaker of the House.

One, stay out of secret land deals. Two, eliminate the earmark process.

It's too late for the former, and I don't see Hastert in a starring role in the latter flick, either.

This one is going to stick, Denny. You aren't going to be able to cut and run from this one, or bob and weave your way to safety. Being an innocuous pig at the Washington trough is no longer possible when the people who used to be there ahead of you to give you cover are already out of the picture. This land deal won't pass anybody's smell test, and I don't foresee the story dying down that much during the summer silly season. It's only four months to election day, and there are all sorts of knives out for your hide--thanks in large part to the high-handed way in which you have chosen to conduct yourself with regard to the state and county officials who have helped you to acquire and to hold onto the very office you have now soiled with your sordid conduct.

Do us all a favor, and announce that you're going home to wherever it is you call home these days, to "spend more time with your family." Illinois deserves a better public face in Washington than your porcine jowls and money-grubbing ways. So take your ill-gotten gains and slink home. I'm sure you should be able to score a reasonably good advance for your memoirs, and you've probably got at least a couple of years on the GOP lecture circuit before you become completely irrelevant. Your glory days are over, now that you don't have the Hammer to help you hold on to power. Go gracefully, before we have to kick your fat ass out.

Comments

[Andrea]

Oh, if only he would back out gracefully.

[Jimi]

Andrea,

I don't see that but I would settle for an unceremonious resignation.