How dare you, Mr. Hastert?

J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert has officially jumped the shark. And in his weight class, that's an accomplishment. Quoth Fat Denny today, on the radio show of another flaming Republican porcine gasbag:

There were two pieces of paper out there, one that we knew about and we acted on; one that happened in 2003 we didn't know about, but somebody had it, and, you know, they're trying -- and they drop it the last day of the session, you know, before we adjourn on an election year. Now, we took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone. We asked for an investigation. We've done that. We're trying to build better protections for these page programs.

But, you know, this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we've tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism -- and we've worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it -- and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.

You're goddamned good and right this is a political issue, Denny--and you're on the losing side of it. Those two short paragraphs of save-your-lard-ass spin sum up everything that is--and, more to the point, everything that is wrong with--the modern Republican Party. I'm frankly amazed there's a building left standing in Springfield--because Abraham Lincoln has to be whirling in his sarcophagus at Warp 7 every time one of you lying scumbags tries to put on the mantle of the "Party of Lincoln." Abraham Lincoln wouldn't recognize you, or a single one of the "principles" you allegedly hold dear, and you know it--which is why you try all the harder to wrap yourselves in his reflected glory, having none of your own in which to bask.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Hastert, you're lying when you claim not to have known about what Mark Foley was doing before this year. You also still have to explain (and answer for) the fact that you learned of Mr. Foley's conduct nearly a year ago and didn't do a damn thing then to urge him to resign, even from his leadership of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. You left him in place, hoping he would help you hold onto your majority in the House--probably with the intention of having him fall on his sword once the 110th Congress had been safely sworn in and nobody was paying attention anymore.

But even if by some miracle you were actually telling the truth and did not know of Mark Foley's conduct, you should have known about it. It's your job to know. What we have here, to quote Cool Hand Luke, is a failure to communicate. Either you knew what you claim not to have known about, and failed to communicate it to the proper authorities as is your duty and your moral obligation, or else your staff failed to communicate what they knew to you so that you could act on it. Either way, it's your head on the chopping block. The only question is, whether you'll go down alone or take the whole crew with you.

For a man who brags in his autobiography about knowing everything that goes down on Capitol Hill, for the third most powerful man in the U.S. government, to claim that he didn't know that one of the members of his own caucus liked to ogle teen-aged boys stretches credulity well past the breaking point. What's more, your actions and those of your colleagues in the Republican leadership give every evidence of a mens rea, a guilty conscience. Why didn't Mr. Shimkus bother to inform either his fellow Republican, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, or the only Democrat on the House Page Board, Rep. Dale Kildee, about the page's concerns regarding Rep. Foley? That question will likely hound you--deservedly--until your dying day.

If you and your fellow Rubber-Stamp Republicans are indeed "the insulation to protect this country," then that goes a long way toward explaining why our government, our economy, our national security, our system of alliances, and our international reputation are little more than a smouldering, sparking, short-circuited shadow of their former greatness. Because you, sir, and all your fellow "leaders" in the House of Representatives, couldn't protect us from a comic with a soft cushion, much less a homicidal maniac determined to take out as many innocent victims as he possibly can. You couldn't protect the young men and women who, idealistically, came to Washington to serve in Congress and perhaps to get a start in politics. Why? Because you were too busy playing partisan politics to notice or care that one of your own members was molesting them.

You're wrong to think that this titanic scandal is a partisan political ploy to bring you down on the eve of the midterm elections. Our side didn't have to dream up this sordid nightmare to flush you out of Congress--you were well on your way to doing that job for us, wasting your time on partisan sniping and petty political posturing instead of attending to the people's business. But since this scandal has come to light, you'd better believe we're going to use it as yet another piece of evidence in favor of the proposition that there isn't a Republican member of the House who's worthy of holding an office of public trust and honor in the United States. Maybe this time, that message will finally get through to the voters. You handed us this mess on a silver platter--because you tried to cover it up to protect your majority.

A few of your pet Bu$hevik Bloviators have tried to take the same line as you did here, Mr. Hastert, and they have failed miserably: just as you will fail, equally miserably. This is not a question of Republicans versus Democrats, this is a question of ensuring that the children entrusted to our nation's care are, in fact, taken care of. Anyone who is derelict in that paramount duty, be he Republican or be she Democrat, should expect to feel the white-hot fury of millions of outraged citizens on the backs of their necks.

If you want a case in point, you have only to look at what happened to the last Democrat who was accused of improper relations with a congressional page. That was Gerry Studds, nearly a quarter century ago. Even though the relationship between Mr. Studds and the page was consensual, and even though the page in question was 17 and thus of an age to give consent in the first place, Mr. Studds was promptly investigated by the House Ethics Committee and censured. And once that task was out of the way, the Democratic leadership of the House put in place safeguards that were supposed to ensure that no other congressional page ever had to suffer the same fate. Safeguards, I should point out, that worked very well until you and your fellow Rubber-Stamp Republicans came along and decided to ignore both your duty and those necessary safeguards, all for the sake of political advantage.

Whereas in response to Rep. Foley's, um, "indiscretions" (to put it very mildly indeed), your response has been to stall, to obfuscate, to stonewall, to deny involvement, to claim forgetfulness and, most tellingly of all, to attempt to shift the blame to everyone but yourself. Those are not the actions of a man who knows he has done all he could to steer the right course, Mr. Hastert. So how dare you go on the radio and on television and try to pretend that you actually give a damn about what happened to those young men abused by Rep. Foley? How dare you try to pin the blame for this scandal on your political opponents, instead of placing it squarely in your own ample lap, exactly where it belongs? And how dare you have the gall, the colossal arrogance, to think that you and you alone are so vital to the future of this nation that your loss would be more than an insignificant blip on the radar screen of history? Have you no shame, sir? At long last, have you no decency?

Don't bother to reply. I already know what you're going to say, you vacuous, toffee-nosed waste of protoplasm. I am literally counting the days until I no longer have to admit to the world that you even putatively represent me in the United States Congress. You sicken and disgust me: you and all your fellow Rubber-Stamp Republicans. I pray regularly to God that your era in power is drawing rapidly to its well-deserved close.

Comments

[Andrea]

I got a tape-recorded message from some woman, defending "her friend Denny Hastert." I deleted the message before it occured to me that it might have been sort of sociologically interesting. I didn't listen all the way to the end, but she seemed to be responding to whatever newspaper referred to him as "dead man walking". They sure got a damage control operation going PDQ!

[Bryan]

Not that it makes a lot of difference in the crime, but most people don't know that the pages are selected and work in a partisan manner. Pages selected by Republicans work on the Republican side of the House and those selected by Democrats work on the Democratic side.

Foley was messing around with Republican pages. How would the Democrats learn about it?

Hastert didn't want to know, so he passed unpleasant problems down to his staff, so he could blame them. The leadership was looking for plausible deniability.