More on Rep. Foley: Turns out House Republican leadership knew about his attempts to seduce 16 year-old boys *last spring.*

Keep telling me about how we have to keep voting for these friggin’ child molester protectors just because they aren’t as bad as the Dems.

That’s not some podunk member sticking up for a buddy. That’s your House frickin’ leadership sheltering the boy-loving SOB. He should have been gone within an hour of Boehner and Hastert finding out. Were I in Hastert’s shoes,I’d have been screaming and throwing stuff off Foley’s desk at him. Were I sitting there, they’d have had to call security on me, had Foley not offered his retirement on the spot. Instead, Hastert can’t remember discussing it. Can’t remember discussing the possible child molesting habits, of the Congressman who is vice chair of the task force to fight child molestation and child pr*n? WTF?!?!

If they can’t fire a guy who looks like he’s probably a child molester, what makes you think they’ll be able to take a stand on tough issues on our behalf? They can’t ditch a guy who will jeopardize their election chances six months out, they wait until 30 days before the election? What the hell is wrong with these people. If they can’t even protect their own interests, how do you think they are doing with ours?

No, we don’t need to put the Democrats in office. What we need, is some new Republicans. I don’t think it’s possible to do that through the primary system, however. An off-year election, with a lame duck president, is the next best bet. Yep, we may have a few bad years. But do you really want to put to the test the maxim, “I’d vote for Satan himself before voting for the Dems”? Seems to me, the Republicans are really trying to see if their staunch partisans, and staunch conservatives truly mean that.

I’m looking forward to Geraghty’s explanation about why I should still vote Republican this time around. It should be pretty interesting.

[UPDATE]: Here’s a news article that is slightly more charitable to Hastert and Boehner. Based on the quotes and paraphrases of Hastert and others in the House Republican Caucus, it appears that this issue was referred for discipline in late 2005. Hastert doesn’t seem to have any recollection of it. Funny, if you told me a Member was hitting on young boys *via email* – as in, “in writing,” as in, “evidence,” – I’d have hit the roof. While this “nuanced” version of the story is slightly less damning than the version I’ve believed is true (Hastert gets the whole story up front) it’s still quite damning (Hastert knows there’s a very serious problem, refers it for discipline, and doesn’t really follow through on it). “Another member warned him to cool it on the hot emails to young boys” isn’t discipline. That’s dereliction of duty. Sorry, this ain’t a Dem hitjob. This is a story about treating potential pederasty with the same blase attitude that the Catholic Church treated it for a long time. That is a no-go in my world. The crime of dereliction of duty – failure to investigate, isn’t quite as bad as dereliction of duty – failure to take necessary action; but the only reason we’re talking about this being a lesser offense is because Hastert didn’t do what he should have done in the first place. Had he taken charge of his responsibilities and investigated this out, he would have known how bad the situation was. The only reason his defenders can cry “nuance, not as bad as you say” is because he was willfully blind to the problem.

There are two ironies here. The first is that all of a sudden, it’s okay for Republicans to hit on high school boys, when we nearly threw a president out on his ass for fooling around with college-aged interns. The second irony is that the Democrats are calling for all of his emails to pages to be revealed. I agree.

And while we’re at it, let’s have all emails between members of congress and interns, pages, and other sundry office workers below the age of 21 published. Fine, do a privilege review, to make sure that they don’t contain material subject to legislative privilege. But print them all.

I’ve only worked in D.C. for a few years, but I’ve seen enough situations involving senior people who use their position to get sexual favors from very junior people, that I’m quite sick of it. How anybody in Congress is able to stand up and lecture us on right and wrong, is beyond me.

And for the record, I’m all in favor of sex, straight, gay, deviant, whatever you like. I really don’t care. But when you are the boss and the object of your affection is a junior employee… it’s just abuse.