I Used to Privately Snicker at the Dems

[hawthorne]

Seeing as BarnOwl has quoted my page one post all the way down here on page seven, I might as well join those saying “Well OK then”. Bricker’s responses suggest I was too harsh.

[Bricker]

@Siege

I was under the impression Hastert has spoken for himself, several times, and contradicted himself more than once. Please do correct me if I’m wrong.

So far as I’m aware, this is not so. There has been a confusing flurry of information and statements from a variety of sources.

Don’t get me wrong. If a week goes by and this isn’t cleared up, that’ll be enough for me – Hastert should go. But I fail to see what’s so critical about this issue that we need to decide now, this very day, the question of Hastert’s guilt. Let the man speak in his own defense if he is so minded, and judge the results then.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bricker

Don’t get me wrong. If a week goes by and this isn’t cleared up, that’ll be enough for me – Hastert should go. But I fail to see what’s so critical about this issue that we need to decide now, this very day, the question of Hastert’s guilt. Let the man speak in his own defense if he is so minded, and judge the results then.

I’m fine with that. As I see it, though, the ball is very much in his court: he needs to explain why he didn’t follow up on the three leads he had just in the “overly friendly” emails, why instead of following up through any appropriate channels he instead went to the alleged perp, took his story, and accepted it at face value.

Daniel

[The_Hamster_King]

@Bricker

But I fail to see what’s so critical about this issue that we need to decide now, this very day, the question of Hastert’s guilt.

As a rabidly partisan Democrat, I’m quite happy for Hastert to remain Speaker of the House all the way through the election. He’s a gift that keeps on giving … .

[RTFirefly]

@Bricker

Sorry, I don’t agree. While this is a serious matter, it’s not necessary to reach any conclusions in 24 or even 48 hours. I don’t care what they say – I want to give Hastert a chance to speak for himself. If he denies that he was informed, why should I necessarily resolve the conflict in credibility against him?

I missed the part where I set a 24-48 hour timeframe. Holy crap, Bricker, it’s good to see you’ve taken my advice and loosened up from your tight legal standards, but you don’t have to go so far as to make stuff up.

But if you’ll recall, where we started into this particular dialogue was with my post #262, where I said:

To follow up on Miller’s post, multiple members of the House GOP leadership have participated in this coverup: Hastert, Boehner, Shimkus, Reynolds. What reason do we have to believe that these guys aren’t representative of the GOP caucus? And how many party members are calling for them to step down? I see Shays and one or two others, but that’s it.

I don’t really see that you’ve made a dent in this.

Yeah, the point was that people were claiming Jewell was GUILTY, and thus unfit to be a security guard. Now people are claiming that Hastert is guilty.

And the idea was that Jewell was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and Hastert was going to stop being Speaker and become just another member of Congress.

The point of all your legal proceedings and all is that it’s wrong to deprive people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And in the case of the first two, that means, for good reason, that one should be treated as innocent by the courts until one is proven guilty.

To force someone out of high political office - well, voters do that periodically according to their whim; no standards of proof are required. High office, unlike life or liberty, isn’t an inalienable right. And if Hastert resigns the Speakership prematurely due to public pressure, well, such is the political life.

I think it’s fair to wait a few days before pronouncing sentence. Hastert was duly elected by the people of his district as a Representative and by the House as its Speaker. He’s entitled to keep that job until there’s more evidence than, “They said they told him.”

He’s entitled to keep that job until enough Congresspersons or constituents are ready to vote his sorry ass out of the job, for whatever reason they damned well please. Period.

It’s not an entitlement.

But like Pochacco, I’m content to see all four of those not-so-esteemed gentlemen keep their jobs until after the election. You’re the one who can’t see that your party’s a pack of liars (see post 246), completely aside from this latest scandal. The shades haven’t lifted from your eyes; you are as blind as ever.

[Bricker]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I’m fine with that. As I see it, though, the ball is very much in his court: he needs to explain why he didn’t follow up on the three leads he had just in the “overly friendly” emails, why instead of following up through any appropriate channels he instead went to the alleged perp, took his story, and accepted it at face value.

Daniel

Sure. And if his explanation is, “Well, in retrospect, I should have done things differently, but I believed Mark when he said…” then he’s gone. He can (in my view) evade criminal responsibility with such an explanation, but the guy was the freakin Speaker of the House. He doesn’t get to keep that job in light of such a blunder.

[wonky]

@Bricker

But I fail to see what’s so critical about this issue that we need to decide now, this very day, the question of Hastert’s guilt.

I’m content, nay delighted, for the Republicans to stretch it out, thereby keeping it in the news.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bricker

Sure. And if his explanation is, “Well, in retrospect, I should have done things differently, but I believed Mark when he said…” then he’s gone. He can (in my view) evade criminal responsibility with such an explanation, but the guy was the freakin Speaker of the House. He doesn’t get to keep that job in light of such a blunder.

Makes sense. I’m not sure what a credible explanation would look like, but I’m not too worried about how long he takes to make his explanation; from a cynical perspective, I’m happy for him to take as long as he wants to come clean.

Daniel

[jayjay]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

from a cynical perspective, I’m happy for him to take as long as he wants to come clean.

Personally, I’m hoping for about another 3 1/2 weeks…

[MaxTheVool]

I’ve started a new thread for the general Bricker’s morality hijacks here.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Bricker

But I fail to see what’s so critical about this issue that we need to decide now, this very day, the question of Hastert’s guilt.

This is.

House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.

“The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,” a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. “And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss.”

That’s what’s critical about the timing, innit?

Or did you think this is (A) a matter of actual, legal *guilt * rather than responsibility, and (B) that it happened in a context-free vacuum? Both would be typical of you.

[RTFirefly]

@RTFirefly

the idea was that Jewell was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and Hastert was going to stop being Speaker and become just another member of Congress.

The point of all your legal proceedings and all is that it’s wrong to deprive people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And in the case of the first two, that means, for good reason, that one should be treated as innocent by the courts until one is proven guilty.

To force someone out of high political office - well, voters do that periodically according to their whim; no standards of proof are required. High office, unlike life or liberty, isn’t an inalienable right. And if Hastert resigns the Speakership prematurely due to public pressure, well, such is the political life.

I should add that if Hastert is pressured into resigning, he will be able to live comfortably off the multimillion dollar proceeds of his shady land deal for the rest of his life.

Here’s the nickel summary: In 2002 Hastert bought some land for a house along with some adjoining fields. He paid about $5,200 per acre for the fields.

Eighteen months later, he formed a land trust with a couple of local Republican politicos. The trust bought 69 acres of land adjacent to Hastert’s for about $15,000 per acre (it was nearer a road and therefore more valuable) and Hastert then added 69 acres of his own land to the trust. Although his 69 acres had been worth only $5,200 per acre a year and a half earlier, the trust valued his land at the same $15,000 per acre as the new land, three times its original price. Sweet, huh?

Then, Dennis Hastert decided to enter the earmark hall of fame. A highway bill was wending its way through Congress at the time, and Hastert took a special interest in it:

There was no better object lesson in the case against earmarks than the Prairie Parkway Corridor, pushed by none other than Denny Hastert. This new highway, designed to connect the counties west of Chicago to the metropolis itself, had neither the support of the public nor the Illinois Department of Transportation....But the Prairie Parkway did offer one important convenience: It was located just over a mile from the property owned by Hastert's trust.

....In December of 2005, four months after the signing of the new Federal Highway Bill containing the $207 million inserted by Hastert for construction of the nearby Prairie Parkway, the 138 acres held by the trust were sold to a developer as part of planned 1600 home housing development. The trust received $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre for the parcel of which 62.5 percent or $3,118,000 went to Hastert. Klatt and Ingemunson also did well. Their profit equaled 144 percent of their original investment. Hastert, however, received six times what he had paid for his investment, a profit equal to 500 percent of his original investment.

What’s more, Hastert still has over a hundred acres left from the parcel he originally bought in 2002. That land is worth double, or maybe more than double, what he originally paid for it. Ornstein and Lilly finish up with this observation:

The speaker hasn't exactly helped his case with his accounts of the transaction. His office has, for instance, described the Prairie Parkway as located over five miles from his property. But U.S. Geological Survey aerial photographs clearly show it to be about four miles closer than that.

We cannot say at this juncture whether the actions taken by the speaker are illegal. We can say that they do not meet the standards we expect — or should expect — from a member of Congress. And they certainly do not meet the standards we expect from the speaker of the House.

If Republicans want to keep Hastert in the Speaker’s chair, that says a great deal about Republicans. It’s not like this land deal has been a secret, either; the Chicago Tribune did a series of stories on it back in June and July. It just hasn’t yet been frontpaged in the WaPo or the NY Times.

[Polycarp]

And where is Ken Starr when we really need him?

[Shodan]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong. Easy question: do you see yourself as a blind partisan?

Daniel

No.

Thus some follow-up -

• Would you characterize anything I have ever said in defense of Foley or in defense of the handling of the scandal as blindly partisan? If so, what is it?
• Would you characterize my first post in this thread as blindly partisan?
• Would you characterize Polycarp’s reaction to it as such?

On preview, fuck it. No one’s going to read it anyway.

Regards,
Shodan

[ElvisL1ves]

Good Lord, I think he’s serious.

Of course he doesn’t think he’s a *blind * partisan; if he realized there was even a possibility he wouldn’t be blind.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Shodan

No.

Thus some follow-up -

• Would you characterize anything I have ever said in defense of Foley or in defense of the handling of the scandal as blindly partisan? If so, what is it?

In defense of Foley? No.

• Would you characterize my first post in this thread as blindly partisan?

No, although I would characterize it as threadshitting, inasmuch as you suggested you hadn’t followed things around here because you expect the responses to be fairly cut-and-dried; that looks like you’re on about The Usual Suspects, bringing something into the thread that wasn’t relevant to the OP and just consisted of gratuitously insulting people. If that’s not what you meant by the cut-and-dried comment, clarification would be welcome.

• Would you characterize Polycarp’s reaction to it as such?

No. He suggested that a Republican and a Republican owed an apology to a Republican. How is that blindly partisan?

I note that you did not ask me whether I considered your post that I quoted several times to be blindly partisan. Why didn’t you ask that question?

Daniel

[kaylasdad99]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

No. He suggested that a Republican and a Republican owed an apology to a Republican. How is that blindly partisan?

Well, you must understand that in Shodania, blind partisanship is demonstrated whenever anyone other than a Democrat is addressed in a tone that is not obsequious and servile.

[RTFirefly]

@Polycarp

And where is Ken Starr when we really need him?

Bite your tongue! I wouldn’t even wish that man on George W. Bush!
But I wouldn’t mind resurrecting Archie Cox or Leon Jaworski. We don’t need an obsessed Puritan for a special prosecutor; all we need is one who will seek the truth with respect to matters of actual importance.

[gonzomax]

This is a repub scandal. The dems are not responsible. There were many repubs who knew and could have stopped it. Hastert is just one of them. They were willing to sacrifice teenage boys to maintain the cover up. Where oh where are the repub values they trumpet. If they had them this would not have been allowed to continue. This coverup reeks of hypocracy. It should make people understand ,at the core they are a political party willing to sacrifice values to maintain power.

[Tuckerfan]

@Lord Ashtar

This just goes to show that people on both sides of the isle suck. I think I’m about to become an anarchist.

Nah, the Scorched Earth Party’s way cooler.

Bricker, I initially skipped your thread because I figured that it was you being smug and saying you were now openly laughing at Dems for some reason. Nice to see I was wrong. The greatest danger we face presently, IMHO, are those people (on both sides of the aisle) who put party before country.

I haven’t had time to read the whole thread, so forgive if this has already been addressed, but I’ve seen no mention of it in the media, so I think that it must have slipped under a lot of radars.

@Newt

Well, you can have second thoughts about it, but I think, had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would have also been accused of gay bashing. I mean, the original notes had no sexual innuendo, and the parents did not want any action taken.

(emphasis mine)

“Overly aggressively reacted”? WTF? You mean like taking him out back and having him shot?