Musing's musings

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.

Glad you could join me on the bandwagon, boys

According to the screaming queen in the fedora last night, the Washington Moonie Times is expected to call today for J. Dennis Hastert to resign as speaker of the House of Representatives. (Hell, no, I'm not linking to either one of those places; if you must go there, you can Google the links for yourself.) They're a little late to the party (I was calling for that three days ago), and their proposed remedy falls way short of what I want--and, I suspect, what most parents of teen-aged boys would want or consider appropriate. But I will give them props for being among the first of the wingnut fringe to recognize that Hastert (and, frankly, others in the Republican leadership, if not the whole of the Republican Party) is nowhere near being in the right in his handling of this sordid affair, and admitting that some punishment is appropriate.

However, I don't think either Drudge or the Moonie Times goes far enough. This is not some pecuniary peccadillo involving kited checks, subsidized stamps, or office furniture we're talking about here. (Not to mention that the last guy who got in trouble for those things wound up in jail and out of politics for good--and rightly so.) We're talking about a pattern of serial sexual harassment over at least five years at best and, if rumblings coming out of ABC News are to be believed, actual sexual intercourse between a 52-year-old congressman and a teen-aged boy at worst. And Hastert both knew it was happening and didn't do a damned thing to stop it.

The only thing Dennis Hastert cared about was to protect the reputation of the Republican Party and keep it in power in Congress. If that meant letting a middle-aged man entice, cajole, solicit, and seduce teen-aged boys, that was OK by Hastert, as long as the middle-aged man in question occupied a solidly Republican congressional seat. (I have no doubt that had Foley been a Democrat, Hastert would have been among the first to shout the news from the rooftops and call for an auto da fe.) Worse yet, Hastert stood idly by and allowed Rep. Foley to continue as the co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, and to cosponsor legislation (which was passed, and signed into law by the preznit with Foley looking approvingly on) that criminalized exactly the behavior in which Foley himself was engaging at the time.

That Hastert and the rest of the Republican leadership in Congress knew they were in the wrong is corroborated by the fact that they never took what they knew to the police, never acted upon their duty to report even suspected child abuse, and never notified the one Democratic member of the House Page Board of anything involving Mark Foley and his inappropriate conduct with the pages in the board's charge over a period of five years. As Jesus pointedly observed in John's Gospel, πᾶς γὰρ ὁ φαῦλα πράσσων μισεῖ τὸ φῶς καὶ οὐκ ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸ φῶς, ἵνα μὴ ἐλεγχθῇ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, "Everyone doing evil hates the light and does not go toward the light, in order that his deeds may not be put to the test" (John 3:20, my translation from the Greek quoted here). If this had been merely, in Spokes-Hamster Tony Snow's infamous words, a matter of "naughty e-mails," there would have been no reason for the Republicans to keep both the Democratic member, Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) and the other Republican member, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), out of the loop. That the Republican leadership did exactly that, and that Hastert also announced today that he was making changes to the page program's policies without inviting Rep. Kildee to the meeting where they were discussed or asking for his input, tells us all we need to know: this is going to be yet another in a seemingly endless series of Republican smokescreens.

Hastert and the rest of the Rubber-Stamp Republican Congress have proven--repeatedly--that they couldn't possibly care less about the concerns that matter to the average American. They don't care about securing our borders, as long as it means that their corporate masters will have access to an unlimited source of cheap labor. They don't care about protecting the nation from terrorists, as long as they can award ginormous no-bid contracts for fighting the war on terra to their campaign contributors. They don't care about the sanctity of life the instant a fetus draws its first breath, unless the life in question happens to belong to a brain-dead woman from whose sufferings they can wrest a little partisan political advantage. They don't think it's patriotic to question the motives of those in government, unless they happen to be Democrats. And, again, they don't care about what happens to teen-aged pages entrusted to them by their parents for the good of the nation, as long as whoever is abusing those pages occupies a safe seat they need in order to retain the majority.

Well I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough for me. If Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, Shimkus and all the rest of the House Ghastly Old Perverts leadership can't be trusted to ensure the safety of the young men and women who are trying to serve their country in Congress while completing their secondary education, then how can we trust them to ensure the safety of anything else? (Except their majority, that is: we already know they're very good at that.)

For my money, the whole of the House leadership should resign. And not just their leadership posts, their seats in Congress as well. And if they won't do the right and honorable thing, then it will be up to us, the voters, to hand them their pink slips a month and a bit from now.

To help make that happen, you can donate or volunteer to help John Laesch, running against Hastert in the 14th District, or donate or volunteer for Danny Stover, running against Shimkus in the 19th District.

Mark 9:42

A verse in the middle of yesterday's Gospel reading seems apposite in the midst of what can only be described as a titanic scandal engulfing the Republican leadership in Congress and threatening to swamp any chances they may have of holding onto their slim majority:

Καὶ ὃς ἂν σκανδαλίσῃ ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων τῶν πιστευόντων, καλόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον εἰ περίκειται μύλος ὀνικὸς περὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτοῦ καὶ βέβληται εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν.

And if anyone should cause one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

--Mark 9:42, my translation from the Greek

Now, I'm not qualified to make judgements about the eternal consequences of Mark Foley's actions with a series of pages over the last year five years, or of the Republican leadership's knowingly allowing it to continue: that right is reserved solely to God. I am, however, a citizen of this republic and as such entitled to consider political and other kinds of secular consequences. And of those, I insist, there should be plenty.

J'accuse!

J. Dennis Hastert should resign forthwith--both as Speaker of the House and as a member of Congress. There is simply no possible excuse for this:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy.

(Emphasis added)

In an earlier version of the same story, the WaPo stated that "Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him 'we're taking care of it.'"

Whatever Boehner may or may not have told Hastert, there's absolutely no way that Hastert, as the No. 3 Republican in government, should have been unaware of the outrgaeous behavior of Rep. Foley. Anyone who thinks that the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee or the head of the House Page Board isn't going to copy the Speaker of the House on news of this kind is living in Fantasyland. And Hastert took no actions that anybody could remember--apart from doing his level best, apparently, to flush this scandal down the memory hole for the good of the party. Never mind protecting the teen-agers entrusted to his care by their parents for the service of the nation. Never mind taking care that the laws regarding the reporting of child sexual abuse be faithfully executed. Never mind rectifying the disgusting hypocrisy of allowing a man they knew to be engaging in the exploitation of children to continue serving as the chair of the caucus tasked with preventing that very abuse. What mattered most to Hastert and the rest of the Rubber-Stamp Republican leadership was that nobody find out about their dereliction of duty. Partei über alles is their credo.

Dennis Hastert is loyal only to the Republican Party. Despite the ad that appeared in my parish bulletin last Sunday, paid for by Hastert's campaign committee, he is not "[w]orking for the Families of the 14th District." He could care less about the families--or anything else--in this district, as long as they continue to vote him into office. The only thing he cares about is maintaining his lucrative hold on the reins of power, and the preservation of the image of the Republican Party as trustworthy and reflective of what they are pleased to call "traditional American values." His actions in the Foley incident demonstrate this quite clearly. Those same actions demonstrate with equal clarity that "values," to Republicans, are only window-dressing for campaign season.

Consequently, Mr. Speaker, I will quote to you the famous words of Oliver Cromwell as he dismissed the Rump Parliament 450 years ago:

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

And do let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Contribute to Hastert's retirement: support John Laesch, Hastert's Democratic opponent in the 14th District. Donate or volunteer your time.

It's déjà vu all over again

That was the first sentence of a letter to the editor I just fired off to several of the major newspapers in this district. The rest of it follows:

I was around 10 years old in the spring of 1973 when Senator Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) famously thundered "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

Here we are, a generation later. Another corrupt Republican in the White House, but that's not what I'm furious about. This time it's the third man on the totem pole who should be getting raked over the coals in the media: and eventually in the courts, if prosecutors can find sufficient evidence.

If you go online to Mr. Hastert's 14th District web page (www.house.gov/hastert), you will see, featured very prominently in the upper right corner (where else?), an announcement about an event held a month ago in Saint Charles: a community meeting on the topic of "Keeping Kids Safe in Cyberspace." But let's look at that meeting in the context of some more recent events, events which are not featured on Mr. Hastert's web page--but which have been plastered all over the internet and the nightly news.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) abruptly resigned from the House of Representatives today. Although no reason for his speedy exit from Congress was given, it is widely believed to be related to a series of scandalous e-mail and internet message exchanges between Rep. Foley (52) and a 16-year-old former Congressional page.

According to news sources, the page in question was interviewed--last November--on the subject of these e-mails. According to an Associated Press report today, Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), the sponsor of the 16-year-old former page, "learned of the e-mails from a reporter some months ago." Instead of calling the police, Rep. Alexander "passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican campaign organization." A spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said that Rep. Reynolds had indeed learned of the matter from Rep. Alexander. Rep. Reynolds did not call the police, either. Instead, he reported the incident to the House Page Board: three congressional representatives and two House officials who oversee the page corps. The AP report then states "It is unclear what the officials did."

Here are the facts: A 52-year-old Republican congressman was sending sexually explicit e-mail messages to a 16-year-old former page. Several Republican members of Congress were aware of the situation nearly a year ago. Not one of them called the police. Nor was any attempt made to discipline Rep. Foley, or to remove him from his leadership post as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. No one in the Republican leadership pressured Rep. Foley to resign from Congress. In other words, while the speaker was in Saint Charles trying to look like he cared about the safety of children in cyberspace, a member of his own Republican caucus was trying to cover up having sent sexually explicit e-mails to a 16-year-old high school student.

So my question is this: What did Speaker Hastert know about this, and when did he know it? I think the good people of the 14th District deserve truthful, unequivocal answers to those questions. And if we don't get them, Mr. Hastert had better do what President Nixon did a generation ago and resign--unless the voters of this district hand him his pink slip first.

According to the New York Times story, posted after I'd already written and sent my letter off, several pages received e-mails and internet messages, ranging from suggestive to sexually explicit, from Rep. Foley. By his own admission, Rep. Rodney Alexander knew about it 10-11 months ago--and his first thought was to cover the GOP's ass, politically speaking. Not to protect the pages. To protect the party.

So fuck the investigations. Dennis Hastert should resign in disgrace just like Mark Foley did. Bad enough this had to happen to one young man who only wanted to serve his country. That the Republican leadership knowingly allowed Mark Foley to continue serving on a congressional committee tasked with protecting exploited children--even as he was exploiting children himself--is beyond shameful. I simply haven't the words--and as regular readers of this space know, that's saying something.

The Republican Party likes to paint itself as the sole possessor of virtue, the arbiter of morality, and the protector of the innocent. The actions of Rep. Foley and the rest of the Republican leadership in Congress have exploded those myths for the lies they were all along. The only thing the Rubber-Stamp Republicans care about is power. Power for themselves, power for their party. And they don't care what they have to do to get it or to keep it.

If we can't trust them to take care of the teen-aged children we send to work in our nation's capital, how on earth can we trust them to secure our borders, or uphold our Constitution as they all swore to do when they first set foot in the Well of the House? Run the rats out of town--starting with the biggest and the fattest rat of all, J. Dennis Hastert. Here's a start: support John Laesch, Hastert's Democratic opponent in the 14th District. Donate or volunteer your time.

That's a good one, Denny!

Quoth Fat Denny Tuesday:

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert voiced confidence Tuesday that the United States can block illegal immigrants from crossing the nation's borders even though he estimates there are up to 15 million living here already.

"What we need to do is seal our border," he said during a phone interview with "The Don and Roma Morning Show" on Chicago's WLS radio station. "If someone is bleeding to death, first of all, you stop the bleeding. We need to stop the bleeding. We can seal the border."

[edit]

"I always say if we can protect Iraq's borders against Syria and, you know, Jordan, and everyplace else, Iran, we can protect our own borders," he said.

The Illinois Republican has been emphasizing the immigration issue in making the case to voters that they should keep Congress in GOP hands.

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.

The Speaker doth protest too much, methinks

I want to be clear from the outset that this is a highly speculative post. I can't provide hard evidence for anything I say (or speculate about) herein, but the circumstantial evidence is mounting to Olympian heights. And if I'm reading the lay of the land correctly, we could be in for a seismic shakeup in Republican politics--in Illinois and nationwide--the likes of which have not been seen since 1994.

It is undeniable that Dennis Hastert's name has been appearing--and not in a terribly good light--in media all across Illinois (and the nation, for that matter) in connection with what certainly has all the hallmarks of a sweet little insider deal. It is alleged that Hastert, and some of his Republican buddies, secretly bought up land in Kendall County that just so happens, in a fortuitous coincidence (as Hastert and his spin-doctors would have it), to be less than five miles away from the proposed route of the Prairie Parkway, a new interstate spur that would complete what is currently the outermost ring road around the Chicago metropolitan area. They then, it is further alleged, sold that land at a considerable profit after Hastert got a federal earmark for the project. You can get more information on the matter at the Sunlight Foundation.

Hastert demands "full retraction"; ABC says no

According to both the local NPR affiliate this morning and the ABC News web site, House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office has demanded that ABC News retract its claim (which I blogged on last night) that Hastert is the subject of a federal investigation:

Late Wednesday, ABC reported on its Web site that the Justice Department response was intended to deny that Hastert was a formal "target" or "subject" of the investigation. But ABC reported that federal officials confirmed that various members of Congress "including Hastert, are under investigation."

Hastert's office later issued a statement calling the ABC report "absolutely untrue" and demanding a full retraction.

Likewise, the Justice Department issued a new denial in response to the ABC late-evening update.

"With regard to reports suggesting that the Speaker of the House is under investigation or 'in the mix,' as stated by ABC News, I reconfirm, as stated by the Department earlier this evening, that these reports are untrue," Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty said in a statement issued shortly after midnight Thursday.

I found no retractions on the ABC News site, and NPR here reported this morning that ABC is standing behind its story from last night's evening news. And their chief investigative reporter is positive they got it right:

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information.

"You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.

She isn't singing yet...

But I do believe the corporeally advantaged lady is winding down her warm-ups when it comes to Fat Denny:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is probing corruption in Congress, ABC News reported on Wednesday.

ABC, citing high level Justice Department sources, said information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

The investigation is alleged to involve a letter that Hastert co-wrote with Tom DeLay, Majority Whip Roy Blunt, and Deputy Whip Eric I. Cantor three years ago. The letter, which ABC News apparently displayed on camera tonight during its evening broadcast, was written to then-Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, urging her to block an off-reservation casino the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians proposed to build near Shreveport, Louisiana. What makes the letter interesting, at least according to a September 2004 article in the Washington Post, are the following facts:

1. None of the signatories to the letter is from Louisiana. DeLay is from Texas, Hastert (obviously) is from Illinois, Blunt is from Missouri, and Cantor hales from Virginia. So why might they be so interested in the doings of a district none of them represents?
2. Further, none of the four Republicans who signed the letter normally gets involved in Indian issues. Again, this begs the question of why they would weigh in on a matter that affected none of their constituents.
3. The Choctaw proposal was alleged at the time, however, to be detrimental to an established casino nearby. That casino was run by the Coushatta Indians, who were clients of convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
4. Dennis Hastert, according to ThinkProgress, received more than $100,000 in contributions from Abramoff and his tribal clients between 2001 and 2004.

Hastert's office, of course, is denying any knowledge of the investigation, and none of his flacks were available for comment. No surprises there.

Update, 2211: According to the Chicago Tribune, the Justice Department has denied that Hastert is being investigated. Considering the source of the statement and the reputation of the media outlet running it, I'm withholding judgement on this one. Follow me below the fold for some speculation.