October 03, 2006
The Foley FalloutThe Washington Times, in an editorial, comes out swinging against Speaker Hastert:
House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.
My wife saw a friend leaving work the other day with a man who wasn't her husband. Is this a red flag? What should we do with such information? There is a high risk in such situations of jumping the gun and making matters worse. I believe that this was the case as regards Foley.
I'm never going to agree to punish people for things they didn't do. Neither Speaker Hastert nor any other member of Congress is responsible for Foley's reprehensible behaviour unless they were 100% informed of all that Foley had done and then they did nothing about it. All reports I have seen indicate that while there were strange stories swirling around Foley, there wasn't anything concrete to be acted upon. Furthermore, Hastert is Speaker of the House, not Dictator - he can't just snap his fingers and get rid of a sitting Congressman. There is a war going on and masses of pressing legislation to be enacted - and Speaker Hastert was supposed to pounce on unsavory rumors about one Congressman? I don't think so.
Foley is out of office and possibly will face criminal charges - whether he committed an actual crime remains to be seen - and that is as it should be. The guilty are paying the price for his crime - and there the matter should end.
Posted by Mark Noonan on October 3, 2006 08:50 AM
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Comments
Strange stories? Reynolds told him 1 year ago!
This whole "can't we just move on" argument didn't sound so appealing when applied to Clinton, did it?
Posted by: Mike ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.gopbloggers.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 3, 2006 04:59 PM
Sorry. They didn't know about Foley's behavior one year ago. They knew about it TWO years ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/04/foley.ap/index.html
Woof. This is getting really, really ugly for you guys. Hastert needed to know "100%...of all that Foley was doing"? Huh, you don't say. So if he only knew 50%, that's not enough for you? Or 75%? No, I guess not.
Gee, you guys sure do set a high standard for your leaders. You must be very proud.
Posted by: Cyberactor at October 4, 2006 04:41 PM
Mike,
Bit different than that - the left wanted us to "move on" from perjury...what we are saying is that unless you have some PROOF of a cover up by Hastert or any other GOPer, then propriety demands that you remain silent and make no accusations you can't back up...I realise that propriety is entirely out of fashion on the left, but you can be the first person to lead things back to sanity on your side of the aisle.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at October 5, 2006 03:43 AM
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