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The Roll Call newspaper in Washington reported on its website this evening that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois intends to resign his House seat later this year. The subscription-only site said Hastert, who had already announced he would not seek reelection in 2008, was calling friends and associates today and telling them of his decision. His early departure would create the need for a special election in his exurban Chicago district, possibly on Illinois' Feb. 5 presidential primary day. The 65-year-old former high school teacher and wrestling coach, first elected to the U.S. House in 1986 after six...

WASHINGTON — Dennis Hastert's walk off the political stage may be a footnote in history but it also marks the end of a career that is notable for its leadership as the longest-Republican House speakership ever during a tumultuous era in Washington horse-trading. Nearly lost in the buzz of recent scandal and resignation, Hastert's expected departure is the culmination of a bad year for House Republicans, who lost the majority in the 2006 midterm elections and whose prospects remain unclear following the unexpected death of Ohio Rep. Paul Gillmor this week and retirement decisions by an array of former party...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Few politicians fall as far and as fast as Dennis Hastert, but the longest-serving Republican House speaker in history landed with his sense of humor intact. "I do have a schedule," he laughs when asked how he fills his time in the minority and proves it by holding up a printed card that lists his day's events. He also has a postcard-gorgeous view of the National Mall from his Capitol office, one floor beneath his former suite. "Lower to the ground," Hastert chuckles, a self-deprecating reference to the lofty position he held for eight years in an...

The AP did a fine job of advocacy for the Democratic Party tonight in a story on Bush's appearance with Speaker Hastert at an Illinois fund-raiser for two GOP candidates for Congress. In Bush Gives Hastert Boost in Time of Need, the AP made a few outrageous statements that amount to tearing down Republicans as opposed to merely reporting news. The AP tried to characterize Bush as a "tepid" supporter of Speaker Hastert and directly said that "half the country" wanted Hastert to resign. The $1.1 million fundraiser provided the first picture of Bush with Hastert since a scandal broke...

  Dog At Large!April 7, 2005 The Devil once made an offer to former Clinton lackey, Sandy Berger.  The Devil visited Berger's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you,” the devil said. " I’ll get you a top level security clearance; I’ll give you your 15 minutes of pathetic fame; I’ll make you the best liar in the world and I’ll let you get away with being a despicable scumbag. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, their children's souls and your country’s soul rot in hell for eternity." Berger...

Pundits glued to their Potomac seats, applying their usual Beltway explanations for everything that happens in America, would have it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert bollixed up the House page scandal because he is an unredeemed Republican partisan. Or that he doesn't care enough about congressmen hounding boys. Or that his conservatism made him do it.Blind partisanship, moral failings, hypocrisy, gay bashing or any of those other explanations that don't come close to the reality that Hastert was simply doing politics as it is practiced here, in Illinois.Hastert knows no other way, having been bred, born and raised in the...

Posted by Michael Rule on October 5, 2006 - 16:26. What did Speaker Hastert know about former Congressman Foley’s lurid communications with a former page, and when did he know it? This is an open question that will be resolved through investigations by the House Ethics Committee and the FBI. Yet before all the facts are known, "The Early Show" continued to clamor for Hastert’s resignation. The "Early Show" has raised the subject of Speaker Hastert resigning in at least two stories in each of the last four days. On Thursday’s program, Hannah Storm spoke with CBS’s idea of a...

Another amazing piece to the Foley blackmail story. To jump into the middle of the story: we have established that it was Jordan Edmund, the then-18 year old page, now 21-year old political operative, who was the recipient of Rep. Foley's IM lust. Edmund, a gay, 21 year-old college student from San Diego CA, has somehow, mysteriously and inexplicably, managed to get the job of campaign manager for a repub candidate from Oklahoma. Edmund has a companion, also 21 and also from San Diego, working with him on the Oklahoma campaign. I have posited on other posts that these two...

Finally, a Republican scandal that may stick Usually when the Republican chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children instant-messages an underage boy and asks him to get out a ruler to measure his... Well. Ahem. Let's just say: Usually when a congressman is involved in a scandal, he doesn't bring the whole party down with him. This time could be different. The Mark Foley affair is so simple and so human, it's like a Cliffs.Notes version of all the other Republican scandals: Rampant corruption. Leadership? Ha. No one cares till the klieg lights get turned on. THE...

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that his successor, Dennis Hastert, appropriately handled the aftermath of a scandal involving a Florida congressman and salacious, explicit instant messages to underage male pages. Gingrich on Tuesday dismissed a call for Hastert's resignation by The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper whose editorial page editor is Gingrich's former press secretary, Tony Blankley. "I do not agree with that, and I think it's very premature and very inappropriate," said Gingrich, who was in Lexington to give a speech to the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Foundation. Rep. Mark Foley,...

Critics are calling for Rep. Dennis Hastert to step down as Speaker of the House over his handling of the Rep. Mark Foley affair. NewsMax strongly disagrees with that sentiment. The Washington Times, a conservative voice in the nation's capital, has joined some Democrats in criticizing the Illinois Republican for not doing enough to investigate questions about Foley's e-mail exchanges with a former House page. Hastert must "resign his speakership at once," the Times demanded in a lead editorial published Tuesday. But while we have disagreed with Hastert over Congressional spending practices, we feel that in the Foley matter he...

Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, has resigned abruptly from the House on the revelation by ABC News of “sexual” instant messages to underage male pages. The Democrats in Congress and in the media are trying to hang this albatross around the necks of Republican leaders, and Republicans generally. There is incompetent reporting, either accidental or deliberate, on this story. Foley sent e-mails to some pages that were not overtly sexual. Almost the entire press has failed to report the differences between e-mails and instant messages. Since most reporters use both methods of communications or can easily get information about...

This column is going to make me very unpopular with Republicans. I don't care. It must be said. Following the revelations about Florida Rep. Mark Foley's sexually suggestive e-mails to a 16-year-old congressional page, I have concluded Republicans are unworthy of retaining control of the federal government. I sincerely regret this is the case. I would much prefer that there were a real viable alternative to the Democrats, who are not only unworthy, but also unacceptable. But wishful thinking is not going to protect our country. Wishful thinking is not going to expand freedom, promote justice and restore morality to...

Pardon me, but I smell something very peculiar in the way we have learned of the disgrace of Rep. Mark Foley. The email scandal which led to the resignation of the Republican Congressman is reverberating throughout the capital and the nation, as Democrats attempt to capitalize on bad news for Republicans. The seamiest of the released emails, which Foley has not denied, are right up there with Rhodes Scholar and Illinois Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations lusting for 15 year old Catholic school girls in their uniforms

I live in Batavia Illinois just a short distance from Dennis Hastert’s office. I decided to snap a few pictures of the march. I am sure some of my pictures won’t be in the MSM.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Sunday he may challenge a judge's order allowing FBI agents to examine documents seized at a Louisiana congressman's Capitol Hill office in a bribery probe. Hastert said he believed Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was "in big trouble" and that the House would not be joining in support of Jefferson himself. But he said the House separately might seek to make clear its position that the Justice Department cannot randomly and wantonly search lawmakers' offices. "The gentleman from Louisiana is in big trouble, as far as I'm concerned. And we're not trying to protect him," said...

I'm once again breaking out the shows into their own separate posts and including the background/info links with the guests' listing in those posts.  I will not be posting an entry for ABC This Week because:ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) 'This Week' will not air on Sunday, July 23, due to ABC's coverage of the British Open; we will return with all the latest in politics on Sunday, July 30.ABC This Week comment web page John Bolton does a twofer this week, covering both FNS and CNN.  Coming just after news that Voinovich will now vote for confirmation followed by...

   You Have To Wonder June 1, 2006 In 1994 current Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert signed the Contract With America...by 2007, he destroyed it. You have to wonder what kind of a person wins the trust of the American electorate by signing a Contract “to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives” and then heads in the opposite direction. Pledging “To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves” Hastert promised to “FIRST, require all laws that apply...

The search is still on for Pied Piper Pitt, last seen downing large doses of "medication" at Bukowki's. His Furorbunker location is still unknown and at this time we have no report on when he will emerge to confront the Hoaxmas backlash. However, it is now suspected that his partner in crime, Jason Leopold, is currently working at ABC News as evidenced by a completely unsubstantiated (and quickly refuted) STORY that Leopold-like sources have told that news organization that House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI. Of course, the DUmmies, upon hearing this "news," beat a...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version April 26, 2006, 11:22 a.m. Bridge to November The inability of a handful of House Republicans to stomach a long-overdue belt-tightening reform is threatening to prevent the House from passing a budget resolution for the first time since 1974. Fortunately for fiscal conservatives, a pork-laden spending bill has come along just in time to remind the public why this particular reform is so desperately needed. On Tuesday, President Bush threatened to veto an emergency spending bill for Iraq and Katrina if it exceeds $92.2 billion. Bush, who has yet to...