Dennis Hastert, who served eight years as the most lamentable Speaker of the House
in the chamber’s history, began a slow exit from the Congress Friday. It was on that
day that the sweaty wrestler, who attained the speakership not on the basis of any political skills or policy expertise but because he was willing to front for the unpalatable Tom DeLay, announced his decision not to seek reelection from the Illinois district that has elected him since 1986.
The House that Hastert built was neither a check nor a balance on the excesses of
the Bush presidency. Hastert’s House allowed the president to go to war and then
initiate the long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan without declarations, it
rubber-stamped the administration’s anti-Constitutional assaults on civil liberties,
it made no complaint when the president attached signing statements that effectively
exempted him from hundreds of laws that had been passed by the chamber.
Hastert’s House was a crude and unworkable place, where members who sought to uphold their oaths to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign or domestic” were held up to ridicule and forced to hold hearings on issues
involving the most extreme abuses of presidential authority — lying to the Congress
and the American people about matters of war and peace — in basement rooms.
Bart says: Remember, they chose Hastert because he couldn’t get laid.
Gingrich was caught up in a sex scandal, and so was Bob Livingston. Since the Fascist bastards just impeached Clinton for having sex, they couldn’t afford THREE speaker resignations in a row over sex, so they picked the sweaty wrestler, who they KNEW couldn’t possibly have a sex scandal in the present or in the past.