The attention to Dennis Hastert -- EX House Speaker since January 2007 is rather impressive. I find it VERY sad that he apparently abused four boys back when he was a High School wrestling coach in Illinois 40 years ago.
The linked article is by a guy named Ken Rudin who is on MPR every Monday to talk about politics -- it is from '98 as the Washington Post was doing it's duty as a wholly owned subsidiary of "The Party" (D) in defense of Democrat Slick Willie walking the halls of power with his pants around his knees. I find the following video to be a great remembrance ... "I Let An Intern Go Down on Me". We naturally don't hear much about Slick, since he was and is a "Good Guy", certified wonderful by TP as well as his "hell, have you seen my wife?" currently running for POTUS!
Certainly the loss of standards in our nation is one of the few truly "Bi-Partisan" efforts, and I use the term "Bi" very mindfully, but the "standards" for defending reprehensible behavior are FAR from bi-partisan.
I find the following from the linked article to be especially expositive:
Reps. Dan Crane (R-Ill.) and Gerry Studds (D-Mass.)
The House ethics committee on July 14, 1983, announced that Crane and Studds had sexual relationships with teenage congressional pages – Crane with a 17-year-old female in 1980, Studds with a 17-year-old male in 1973. Both admitted the charges that same day, and Studds acknowledged he was gay. The committee voted to reprimand the two, but a back-bench Georgia Republican named Newt Gingrich argued that they should be expelled. The full House voted on July 20 instead to censure the two, the first time that ever happened for sexual misconduct. Crane, married and the father of six, was tearful in his apology to the House, while Studds refused to apologize. Crane's conservative district voted him out in 1984, while the voters in Studds's more liberal district were more forgiving. Studds won reelection in 1984 with 56 percent of the vote, and continued to win until he retired in 1996.
Remember, this column is from 1998, and the WHOLE PURPOSE of the article is to exonerate Bill Clinton of paying any price for multiple acts in the workplace that would have gotten teenagers dismissed from McDonalds! The "standard" of TP for exoneration of their own is conveniently "others have done it" -- certainly a HIGH "moral standard". US corporations are hard hearted enough to not want to pay even minimum wage for employees to have even "consensual" sex in the workplace, and if the sex involves a managerial employee it is ESPECIALLY prohibited by Federal Statute. Strangely, this holds even if "others have done it" -- if that was the "standard", Cain would have gotten all future murderers off.
Note that Gerry Studds, a Democrat has sexual relations with a 17 year old male, BUT, he was a Democrat! (admitted Gay even!) hey, NO PROBLEM! The Democrats in his district were happy to keep electing him until he retired!
Sure, **I** find sex with a 17 year old male as "worse" than sex with a 17 year old female, but I'm smart enough to know that to the extent that "liberals" have anything called "morals" at all, it ought to be "equivalent" ... or "something". From what I can see, the biggest determinant of "morality" is the location of an "R" or a "D" next to your name.
Hell, in the current "moral climate", how would one even IMAGINE such a thing as "morality"? Yes, yes, I understand, Hastert was an "R", so therefore he is subject to the awful charge of "hypocrisy" because he claims some "morals" -- where the D's are clear that they don't have any stupid "moral standards" at all!
That is the world today -- we need to feel some sense of "moral outrage" over Hastert (which I do), but feel none over Slick Willie ... which I also do, but am obviously in error on.
What concerns me at a deeper level is if Hastert is intended to be the "horse head in the bed" letting anyone who dares oppose TP know that "YOU ARE VULNERABLE"!
Why should they waste the time going after Denny Hastert? He has been out of power since 2007! Unless, THE POINT is that TP has got the goods on ANYONE that dares oppose them. Given the Internet, the NSA, FBI, CIA, IRS, EPA, etc, it is nearly certain you are actually guilty of a bunch of felonies -- and if you aren't, how hard is it to create an internet trail indicating that you are selling explosives, secrets, child porn, drugs, etc ?
Maybe the REAL message of Hastert is from the TP Godfather.