Continued Foley Fallout, Over A Year Later

Before we get going on Iowa tonight, I think you should have a look at the depths to which the conservative movement will go to protect their own. Turns out Denny Hastert was paying Mark Foley's legal bills out of his own campaign coffers, and abruptly resigned before the Federal Election Commission smacked him with fines up the yin-yang.

According to FEC documents, Hastert last January initially failed to disclose that legal fees had wiped out the final bit of cash he had in his campaign account. The Illinois Republican and former high school wrestling coach filed an amended finance report in February showing that his '06 campaign had racked up $147,000 in legal expenses in connection with the Foley investigation. In order to avoid substantial fines (and further debt), Hastert quietly agreed last summer to shut down his campaign and pay a $1,000 penalty, the FEC documents show.

The lack of ethics and respect for election law here is unsurprising, but instructive. Why the hell was Denny Hastert paying for these legal bills? They say it was for the "representation of Mr. Hastert in the Foley investigation," but who was investigating him? This was just using one account to cover another, and failing to disclose it.

The Republicans will do absolutely whatever they need to do to win elections. Don't forget that.

No, Hastert's Really Resigning This Time

Wouldn't you think that the resignation of one of the country's longest-serving Speakers of the House would get a little more ink than this one? Or did everyone just realize that Denny Hastert was nothing more than Tom DeLay's puppet, and the man himself was irrelevant?

Or maybe Hastert's just that kind of leader. See, every other House Republican is leaving Congress, so he's leading the way!

At any rate, there'll be a special primary election on February 5. The progressive choice for the Democrats is 2006 opponent John Laesch, who managed to get john08.com, so that's a good Internet team.

A Seat We Can Flip - In February

Dennis Hastert is going home to spend more time with his sausages. And that sets up a special election for early next year in IL-14 (probably coinciding with their Febraury 5 Presidential primary, and with Obama involved in it I'd expect a crisp Democratic turnout). This is a seat with two good challengers on the Democratic side, John Laesch and Bill Foster, both of whom have been very aggressive in their fundraising and netroots outreach.

This is a tremendous opportunity to pick up another seat in the Midwest and get a better Democrat in there, especially if Laesch can make it through.

Resignation

That Denny Hastert is possibly about to resign is pretty much expected; a Speaker of the House suddenly pushed to the back bench is a shock to the system that quickly leads to the backbencher seeking to find another line of work.

But I didn't expect Senator Diaper to lose the Republican Party so quickly. Isn't EVERYONE in that party a hypocrite? Why does this one rankle everyone so much? I mean, he lost Hannity? HANNITY? That's like God losing Pat Robertson.

Of course, Vitter is up for a criminal violation, but again, this isn't unique to the GOP. I guess I have major scandal fatigue.

UPDATE: John Kerry didn't botch this joke...

"There once was a man named Vitter/Who vowed that he wasn't a quitter," Kerry began. "But with stories of women/And all of his sinnin'/He knows his career's in the — oh, never mind."

The Latest Right-Wing Smear

OK, so I hadn't really been paying attention to this "Nancy Pelosi wants a private jet" story until I read this story in my LA Times today. And it's totally ridiculous.

The story is: before 9-11 Speakers of the House were on their own as far as travel was concerned. Afterwards, concern about the line of Presidential succession demanded that the Speaker, whoever they were, needed to fly around in a military jet. So understand, this is not Pelosi's choice, but a mandate.

Denny Hastert would fly in a small military plane from DC to his district in Illinois. That plane WOULDN'T REACH PELOSI'S DISTRICT in San Francisco unless the weather was perfect. Otherwise it would have to stop to refuel. And the only military passenger plane that could make the trip nonstop is the supposedly lavish C-40 (it's actually not that lavish). Pelosi never specifically asked to use it. The Defense Department sent her a letter saying the C-40 would be available to her if one were ready. The House sergeant-at-arms was the one that recommended Pelosi use a plane that didn't require refueling as a matter of security.

Out of this comes a scandal? Wow, the media will literally reprint any crap a conservative says, won't they? Apparently Lou Dobbs has been running with this story for a week, even though it's false.

My favorite part of the Times article, though, was this.

Pelosi said Wednesday she would just as soon fly commercial, but security rules wouldn't allow it. Aides say she is so mindful of not misusing the powers of office that when she recently encountered a wild bird in her Georgetown condo, she called the super rather than the security detail downstairs. In fact, they noted, the speaker herself caught the bird in a brown bag.

She caught a bird! How's that for a "San Francisco liberal"! That's more combat experience than Dick Cheney ever had! And she didn't have to stock the condo with birds, unlike the hunting ranges where the Vice President spends his time.

So Pelosi today came out and said she'd fly commercial. She shouldn't have to play this game, but that's where we are in Washington. The smears and demands for punds of flesh never stop, and when Democrats fight back, the Republicans go into their persecuted martyrdom shtick. And the media is an all-too-willing accomplice, while conveniently forgetting the hypocrisy:

On Sunday, Oct. 1, Hastert’s team was scrambling to contain the escalating fallout from the Foley page scandal.

That day, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), then the chairman of the page board, had gotten an urgent phone call from Stokke. The Hastert team wanted Shimkus to return to Washington immediately from his home in southern Illinois in order to appear at a press conference on Monday with the Speaker, and they did not want to deal with commercial flight schedules.

So at 8 p.m. that day, Shimkus arrived at the military side of the Scott Air Force Base near Belleville to board the Speaker’s jet that had been dispatched for him.

The plane then headed to an airport near Aurora, Ill., to pick up Hastert, who had been weekending at his home in Plano, before flying on to Washington.

That Monday, Hastert and Shimkus headlined a press conference in the Capitol to talk about the Foley resignation.

So it's OK for the Republican Speaker of the House to send an Air Force plane to pick up a fellow Congressman to go have a press conference on how they didn't shield a colleague from jail for political reasons. But it's not OK for the Air Force to let a Democratic Speaker of the House know she has a menu of options for using the mandated form of travel.

It's enough to make you sick.

UPDATE: When Tony Snow says this...

"This is a silly story and I think it's been unfair to the speaker," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

...you know there's nothing there.