Betrayed: Why Dennis Hastert Must Resign

The recent resignation of Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fl.) is the latest in a string of disgraceful performances by the Republican Conference. A story of “too friendly” e-mails to a former page opened a dam when another page turned over damning Instant messages that showed the Congressman soliciting sex from teenage boys who had served as pages.

The e-mails from the first page were reported to the boy’s Congressman, Rodney Alexander by the boy’s parents. Alexander reported the e-mails (directly or through others) to multiple sources, including National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds and House Majority Leader John Boehner, as well as the Republican member of the page board, Rep. John Skimus (R-Ill.)

Both Boehner and Reynolds claimed to have told Hastert, although Boehner later recanted when Hastert stated he had not been told. Now Hastert is claiming he “doesn’t recall” the conversation, but won’t dispute it, either; a very interesting flip flop on a previous statement.

With Hastert, we’re left to conclude either he lied, or has a very bad memory. Given the reports from two congressmen, plus the unusual circumstances, I lean towards the former. However more damning than that is that incoming pages were warned about Foley’s conduct five years ago, according to the President of the Page Alumni Association.

Now, we’re left with two conclusions regarding Dennis Hastert’s knowledge of Mark Foley’s behavior towards young congressional pages. Either, Mr. Hastert is so aloof he has less knowledge of what’s going on in the US House than a staffer supervising teenagers, or he willfully chose to ignore the information and let a member of his leadership team engage in this conduct while also serving as co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Neither the image of the aloof and clueless leader, or the enabler of bad conduct are good images for the House speaker. Dennis Hastert, as Speaker of the US House, is charged with upholding the dignity and honor of that institution. His failure to address this issue, either through unbelievable ignorance or utter disregard for the safety and welfare of the House’s young charges, is a failure in leadership and a betrayal of conservative principles for which he must stand down as Speaker for the good of the House and the Republican Party.

Linked by Chris at Liberal Idaho and Julie at Red State Rebels.

UPDATE:

LaShawn Barber calls for Hastert’s resignation, joining myself and Captain Ed Morrisey.

UPDATE II:

And then there were four, David Oatney calls for speaker Hastert to resign.

More Reasons to Vote Against Proposition 1

Darrel Deide has a reader’s view that explains more reason to vote against Proposition 1:

• Proposition 1 would squeeze nearly $4 billion from Idaho’s taxpayers over the next 13 years. Worse, there is not a single plan for spending the money. That makes it highly unlikely that our children will see a penny of it.

• Supporters can’t say what tax would have to be raised. Do they want to raise the sales tax to 7 percent? Do they want to raise property tax again? Idahoans deserve answers to this very basic question.

• Proposition 1 is a blank check for Idaho schools. If you give government a blank check for any amount, government will always find ways to spend it. Usually that money will be poorly spent.

• Proposition 1 is a social experiment on our kids. The law would stay in effect until 2020. We would have to wait an entire generation and spend nearly $4 billion before getting a chance to examine whether the law has worked.

• Proposition 1 cons voters into thinking that students will benefit from the money. In fact, there is no guarantee that a single book or computer will be funded by Prop 1…

Proposition 1 will increase expenditures but NOT student achievement. Utah spends less than Idaho on education, but has better results with student achievement. Likewise, there are states that spend more than Idaho and their students do not perform as well as Idaho students. Also, Idaho’s charter schools provide an equal or better education at a significantly lower cost.

It’s a very good argument, read the whole thing over at the Statesman.

First Day of Filming

I completed the first day of filming on a very special video project using my new Digital Camcorder. Most of my scenes went okay, though I ended up with 5 shots for the blooper reel. One scene I’ll have to reshoot, however.

I made the mistake of not writing a script, so I had to think on my feet. I usually do well at that, but in trying to explain what a compromise was, I struggled, so I said the first thing to come to mind. “Compromise is where I want the whole stick, you don’t want any of the stick, and we each get half a stick.” I still don’t know exactly what I meant by that, but I’ll have to reshoot the scene with something that makes sense.