NEWS: Hastert Channels OJ

POLITICS: Hastert Channels OJ

House Speaker Dennis Hastert held a press conference in front of a cemetery today and told America that he will fire anyone on his staff who is found to have covered up Mark Foley's sexual approaches to pages. Hastert, who is roommates with his Chief of Staff, believes his staff handled the Foley situation well but in hindsight could have done "a little bit better."



The Speaker of the House claims he met with his staff and concluded they acted appropriately. But he also issued them a warning, ""If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs." No reporters asked him whether or not his staff held up a mirror at that point.



Hastert believes the House Ethics Committee investigation will get to the bottom of the scandal, but hopefully not all the way to himself.

Meanwhile, across the country, Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe revealed that a page came to him in 2000 regarding inappropriate messages sent from Foley.

The clerk of the House is Hastert's Chief of Staff. That now makes four people who claim to have told either Hastert or his Chief of Staff about Foley's emails. John Boehner, the Majority leader, Tom Reynolds, the Chair of the NRCC, and the ex-Chief of Staff for Foley and Reynolds, Kirk Fordham. All claim to have told the Speaker or his office last spring or in fall 2005.



Check out the Foley blame chart.

Amazing.

Denny is by far my favorite politician. Anyone remember this press conference?

Denny was basically put in the Speaker's chair by Tom DeLay. DeLay knew that he'd never be able to get elected Speaker himself, so he installed a puppet there who'd let him run the House from the Majority Leader position instead.

And now the Republicans are paying for it, because this guy is a real dumbshit who doesn't know what to do if it's not in the Republican playbook.

Republican playbook: you mean like "Hail Mary"?

Hell, it seems like he can't even call the plays IN the GOP playbook. It took him over 48 hours to start blaming Clinton for everything.

No, that's a Catholic prayer. They're kind of like the Mormons. You get what votes you can from them (but far fewer, percentage-wise) and then worry if the more Fundie parts of your consituency start feeling their oats they'll start attacking them for being "not quite Christian."

Ha!

They need to sit his ass on the bench!

God no. The best thing for the opposition is that he's STILL the Speaker and he will REMAIN the speaker until Nov. 7. It's gold. Dems don't even have to talk about him; they can let CNN do that for them and hopefully get back to talking about Iraq, the economy, the minimum wage, et al.

HAHA, I'm sorry - the Dems are sure to fuck this up too.

From the Dems point of view, that's true. I mean, since we couldn't have gotten Henry Hyde.