I believe in and have regularly fought the partisan fight to the bitter end — except when the position is ethically indefensible.
In this case, defending Denny Hastert's decisions is ethically wrong, would undermine our party's commitment to the defense of traditional moral values and is politically stupid in the bargain.
I have known Denny for almost two decades. He is an exceedingly decent man and a hard worker for conservative Republican values and politics. But we cannot deny the fact that he had a sustained lapse of good judgment. The fact that he reportedly has been quite ill for some time may be an explanation — but not an excuse.
Forget the later hideous text messages.
When the speaker was told that Mark Foley had sent that first e-mail — the "overly friendly" one that we all saw last Friday — he had to be either obtuse or on notice of the problem. Any father of a young man who saw such an e-mail sent to his son would rightly be disposed to immediately punch out Mr. Foley and warn him to keep away from his son, and then he would call the police. It was common knowledge that Mr. Foley was gay. If he had been straight and asked for a 16-year-old girl's photo, any sensible person would have concluded the same thing.
But the fact that, according to my best sources in the House Republicans, Mr. Hastert never informed any Democrats of the matter (even on the page oversight board), unambiguously suggests that he knew what was up. Thus began the cover-up. Of course he knew what the Democrats would do with the information. But not only is this not a Democratic Party dirty trick (the facts are real, not made up), but Mr. Hastert had a moral duty to do all in his power to make sure there would not be more victims of Mr. Foley's alleged sexual predation — or clear potential for such.
The fact that Democrats might also cover up such facts is just another reason why I am a Republican. Republicans do stand for sound moral values.
And if it is unfair that Democratic voters often give their politicians a pass on such matters (e.g. former Massachusetts Democratic congressman Gerry Studds got re-elected by his liberal voters after a similar incident was made public), that is just the price we have to pay in this wicked world for holding fast to our values and principles. If virtue were profitable, the whole world would be virtuous.
How in the world will Republicans be able to champion our values in the future if we weasel and excuse the cover-up of such conduct in one of our own? We have more to protect than the next election, we have our historic reputation among more than half the country for our principles.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 10:30 AM

"No one is happy.

Only Keenan McCardell is really saying so publicly, which should endear him to the thousands of Chargers fans who are beside themselves over Sunday's 16-13 loss in Baltimore and too many like it under Marty Schottenheimer.

But be certain about this: Not a soul at Chargers Park is pleased.

Many players, including McCardell, pointed out there are 13 games to play, which might be precisely the point."

"Asked yesterday whether [Schottenheimer] lacked confidence in Rivers, Schottenheimer balked.

“I have complete trust in him,” said the coach, who approved a sequence of play calls that had Rivers throw just once in the third quarter Sunday.

However, Schottenheimer was asked later if Drew Brees were still the quarterback would Sunday's play-calling have been different and would he have been willing to take more risks?

“I think that is a fair assessment,” he replied. “We're not asking Philip to do all the things we asked a five-year veteran to do.”

...After the game, Ravens linebacker Bart Scott said this to the Baltimore Sun: “I'm glad (Schottenheimer) stuck with his game plan, because that Rivers kid could play.”

...[Phil Rivers] played it cool when told of Schottenheimer's comments about how things would have been different if a veteran QB had been under center. But he was clearly crestfallen and then a little angry.

“My hope is there isn't a lack of confidence or trust,” he said. "

"...the Chargers ran five of the nine times they had third-and-4 or longer. Schottenheimer attributed most of the play-calling decisions to poor field position.

But field position did not explain the time the Chargers ran on third-and-6 from the Ravens' 24. It also did not explain the time they started at their 40 and ran three straight plays before punting. Running three straight times after having first-and-20 at the 20 was a little curious as well. So, too, was there reason to question the fourth-quarter decisions to run from the Ravens' 41 on first down and again from the 35 on second-and-20."

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

# posted by EdMcGon @ 7:00 AM

"It's astounding to me," Reynolds said, "as a parent or a grandparent, that anyone would insinuate that I would seek to cover up inappropriate conduct between an adult and a child."

# posted by Robert A. George @ 2:00 PM

It [troubles] me that [GOP defenders] kept referring back to Gerry Studs. While Studds is disturbing and the Democratic response was even more so, that was 24 years ago. The pages in question now were not even a twinkle in their parents eye at that point.

[At] lunch with some friends on the Hill today...they [were] pretty livid with the leadership. Everyone I have talked to agrees that this is 100 times worse than Abramoff or Cunningham - people expect Congressmen to be corrupt, they do not expect them to be pedophiles. Also, no one is buying the "well, what we saw did not seem so bad and we did not see the IM" bit.

But this is absurd.

• Congressman Reynolds' office had a direct role in covering up this scandal.
• Shimkus was the one who took the predator's word for it, and who didn't tell the Democrat or the other Republican on the Page Board about the scandal.
• Alexander, who claims neither his staff nor the leadership ever told him that a page who was his own constituent was sexually harassed by a member of Congress, thinks the House GOP leadership handled this scandal just swell - he just told CNN that simply telling the predator to stop was sufficient.
• Boehner - who knew about the emails, he knew that the decision was made to let Foley stay in their leadership, let him stay as chair of the missing and exploited children caucus. Boehner did nothing.
• And finally, every single GOP member of Congress needs to answer the question as to whether they were the only people on the Hill who didn't know of Foley's youthful indiscretions. It seems it wasn't that a big secret - the pages were warned about Foley in 2001. So who amongst the Republicans knew about Foley and did nothing to stop him.

Technorati Tags: Mark_Foley, Republicans, corruption, Dennis Hastert

# posted by Robert A. George @ 10:00 AM

“At home we put children first, and Republicans are doing just that in the House”

(Washington, D.C.) House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today [July 25, 2006] issued the following statement regarding the passage of H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. The bill passed by voice vote.

“At home, we put the security of our children first and Republicans are doing just that in our nation’s House. We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist. Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists.

“House Republicans understand that a safer America involves providing safety measures on all fronts. That’s why today we passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.”

(Read the entire statement...).

“At home we put children first, and Republicans are doing just that in the House”

Speaker Hastert Comments on the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006

July 25, 2006

(Washington, D.C.) House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today issued the following statement regarding the passage of H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. The bill passed by voice vote.

“At home, we put the security of our children first and Republicans are doing just that in our nation’s House. We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist.

Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists.

“House Republicans understand that a safer America involves providing safety measures on all fronts. That’s why today we passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.”

The Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2006 protects our nation’s children by improving sex offender registration and notification programs, enhancing law enforcement resources, preventing child exploitation, stopping child pornography and creating new criminal offense penalties protecting children from the Internet. The Adam Walsh Child Protection Act also authorizes grants and other programs to protect and help our children.

Stew on those lines: "Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists. House Republicans understand that a safer America involves providing safety measures on all fronts." (emphasis added)

The Adam Walsh Protection Act was passed July 25th -- nine eleven months after Mark Foley's initial suggestive e-mails first became known to House Republicans -- and five months after Dennis Hastert learned about the series of e-mails coming from Foley.

Gee, wonder whether Republican members would sit on information about terrorist activity for nine eleven months!?!?

Safety begins at home?

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Piece edited to reflect the August 2005 date when initial Foley e-mail exchange came to light and Rep. John Shimkus, chairman of the House Committee on pages, was notified. Also, my apologies for the weird layout this morning. Some formatting error was introduced when I e-mailed this post to Blogger.


Technorati Tags: Mark_Foley, Republicans, corruption, Dennis Hastert

# posted by Robert A. George @ 10:39 PM

First, the fact that Speaker Hastert did nothing reinforces the image of a leadership that cares only about protecting itself, even if teenage pages are at risk. The explanation that the Speaker was only aware of the most benign sounding emails is no excuse: even the most benign-sounding weren't benign.

Congressmen rarely, if ever, have informal, social contact with their own pages, let alone those of other members. The wall of separation is even higher after the scandals of a quarter century ago involving members of both parties.

Second, there was no reason to believe that contact was limited to "overly friendly," but largely benign, messages to one page. Rep. Foley was widely thought to be gay. He is not the only homosexual in Congress, and his sexuality alone was appropriately of no interest to Congress (or, apparently, to his constituents). But for an older gay member to appear to be hitting on an underage page should have set off alarm bells even in the offices of GOP leaders used to running the institution without accountability. They had an obligation to make sure that there were no more cases, and to threaten sufficient sanctions to ensure that no such contacts occurred again. They appear to have failed on both counts.

Third, this episode confirms the widely held belief that the Republican majority is corrupt, arrogant, deceptive, and out of touch. Voters can forgive many things, but not leaders so concerned about preserving their own power that they do nothing to protect children under their care. The charges and counter-charges over Iraq and terrorism might be confusing. Not Foleygate. People will easily understand what went wrong here, and it is likely to move a handful of voters, just enough, in my view, to guarantee a Democratic House.

Fourth, GOP members, especially those holding vulnerable seats, will be the first to sense any shift in the public mood back home, where they all are headed, now that Congress has gone out. And if the news is bad--stoked by a growing sense of outrage if more kids were contacted by Foley, and especially if anything physical happened--then they will do anything necessary to save themselves. Just as Jonah was tossed overboard by his shipmates, the Republican majority may defenestrate Hastert from his fancy office.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 8:35 PM