Hastert Must Go

A freely available LA Times EDITORIAL
10.06.06

His leadership of the House was already bad enough before the Mark Foley scandal.

DENNIS HASTERT SHOULD RESIGN as speaker of the House of Representatives. Not necessarily because he failed to act quickly when shown evidence suggesting that Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) was abusing his power with teenagers — not all the details are known, though the ones that are don't look good.

No, the Illinois Republican should resign because he's an unimaginative politician and an uninspired legislator. Unfortunately, these days that just makes him a typical congressional Republican.

At his job-preserving news conference Thursday, Hastert said, "The buck stops here," then proceeded to blame some of this Republican scandal on the Democratic Party. "I haven't done anything wrong, obviously," he added.

That sound you hear is Harry Truman rolling over in his grave. Still, it was an improvement over the speaker's contention Monday that critiquing his oversight amounted to nothing more than "woulda, coulda, shoulda."

To repeat: Even disregarding the well-documented rumors of Foley's unhealthy obsession with young interns dating to at least 1995, and accepting Hastert's insistence that his office first heard about Foley's misbehavior last fall, the speaker had more than enough information to launch an investigation. Instead, he was more interested in protecting his party's fortunes than the safety of minors.

(Click & Read on Courtsey of The Los Angeles Times)

Photo Captions & Credits: "House Speaker Dennis Hastert" by The Associated Press