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It?s pretty late at night and I?m not going to go into a lot of research but a rumor has been bubbling up that should be recorded ? even if it?s knocked down later as more information comes due. The rumor, substantiated by a number of people I?ve talked to who know the Denny Hastert people personally is this: Denny Hastert has determined to resign before his term as Speaker expires ? for one reason only. When you step down as Speaker your pension is calculated on your level of pay and Speaker?s pay is a lot more than that...

Hastert Will Step Down Exclusive: The Speaker bows out of the Republican leadership after Democrats take his power. The contest to succeed him will help define the Republican Party in a new era of divided government. By MIKE ALLEN/WASHINGTON House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will not seek reelection to the Republican leadership when his members return as a minority party after taking heavy losses in Tuesday's elections, a Republican official tells TIME. Hastert, 64, a low-key former high school wrestling coach, was beloved by members as a "good cop," compared to the enforcer style of the longtime number two leader,...

Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told fellow Republican lawmakers on Wednesday he does not intend to run for minority leader when Democrats take control of the House in January, officials said. Hastert conveyed word in a conference call one day after Republicans lost control of the House in midterm elections. The officials who described Hastert's plans did so on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt a formal announcement. His decision to step down cleared the way for a likely succession battle. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, is expected to run, and Reps. Mike Pence...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today commented on tomorrow's White House signing of the Secure Fence Act passed by the Republican Congress. "Our borders constitute the first line of defense in protecting the American people from terrorists. Last July I met with border security agents and other federal and local officials during my visit to the border, and I promised them we would address this national security crisis. The Republican Congress has responded to the American people's demand for a secure border by increasing the physical barriers and infrastructure along the...

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert testified in private before ethics investigators Tuesday and then said they should work quickly to find out who knew about Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s come-ons to congressional pages and what was done about it. Hastert spoke briefly after his closed-door testimony to the House ethics committee that is trying to pin down when he and his staff learned about Foley's actions. "I answered all the questions they asked to the best of my ability," Hastert said after testifying for almost three hours. "I also said that they need to move quickly...

Pelosi Doesn't Understand War on Terror, Hastert Says By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor October 24, 2006 (CNSNews.com) - The United States cannot win the global war on terror if U.S. leaders don't understand it -- and Rep. Nancy Pelosi does not understand it, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said on Tuesday. Hastert -- who holds the job that Pelosi is eager to assume -- was reacting to Pelosi's remarks on the CBS program "60 Minutes." He said her comments should serve as a "bellwether" for the American people. "Democrat Leader Pelosi would trust the terrorists to give up their objective...

ROME - A Roman Catholic diocese has opened an investigation of a priest who said he fondled and shared saunas while naked with Mark Foley when the former U.S. congressman was a boy in Florida. In interviews in the past two days, the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 69, who is now retired and lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, has given different details about his encounters with Foley four decades ago. On Wednesday, he told the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune by telephone that he massaged the boy in the nude, was naked in the same room on overnight trips with him...

The Washington Post, yesterday, posted a story raising questions about a House rules change that clearly delineates a line of succession should the Speaker of the House be unable to take his place as the third in line to succeed the president in a state of emergency or vacancy. In keeping the the liberal mantra that the Republican leadership is the most "secretive" ever, the Post seemed worried that the House rules change is somehow a danger to American democracy because the persons chosen by Speaker Hastert to succeed him has not been made public knowledge. The Post's story over...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shows no sign of resigning over the Mark Foley-House page scandal. But the mere suggestion that he might do so raises an intriguing political and constitutional question: Who would replace him while Congress is in recess? The answer, it appears, is on a piece of paper locked away in the House clerk's office. In a little-noticed action taken nearly four years ago, the House amended its rules dealing with the "continuity of Congress" in emergencies and the succession of speakers. The rule, cited recently in Roll Call, directs the speaker to "deliver to the...

CHICAGO -- President Bush stood shoulder-to-shoulder with embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Thursday, offering a powerful boost in his moment of need and declaring the country "better off" with Hastert in power. "I am proud to be standing with the current speaker of the House who is going to be the future speaker of the House," Bush said as he opened a speech to raise money for two Illinois congressional candidates. The $1.1 million fundraiser provided the first picture of Bush with Hastert since a scandal broke involving a Republican congressman pursuing underage male pages. Although the president has...

  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...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, with his job on the line because of the spiraling Mark Foley cyberspace page sex scandal, was duped Tuesday into letting a stranger into his Plano home -- a serious security breach. Hastert literally let his guard down and allowed in his house a hustling, self-promoting evangelist little known in this country, the Houston-based K.A. Paul, who at 7:30 a.m. arrived at the speaker's home with a camera-wielding associate. How Paul and his aide, Dennis Ryan, got to Hastert's door is a tale of apparent chance. How the publicity-hungry Paul and Ryan walked through it...

The Republican candidate who's trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Allen on Tuesday called for the resignation of GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert over the congressional page sex scandal.Darlene Curley said Hastert has allowed attention to be drawn away from important issues facing Congress through his "failure to investigate the issue properly." The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee is investigating any potential violations of standards of conduct following the resignation of Florida Rep. Mark Foley's over his come-ons to male pages. Regardless of the outcome, Hastert should step down anyway, because he has...

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...

A former five-term Boston city councilor pleaded not guilty today in Lawrence District Court to charges that he tried to seduce who he thought was a 15-year-old boy with sexually explicit instant Internet messages. David Scondras, 60, is accused of using the name "Topdadd" to send graphic photographs and sexual messages to a man who identified himself as a 15-year-old. Lawrence police arrested Scondras on Monday in the parking lot of a charter school where authorities say he had arranged to meet who he thought was a teenager. communicating with a 20-year-old security guard who alerted an officer after he...

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday he'll dismiss anyone on his staff found to have covered up concerns about ex-Rep. Mark Foley's approaches to former pages. Hastert said he huddled with his staff members last week and he believes they acted appropriately in handling information on Foley's conduct. But he also issued them a stern warning: "If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs." The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation and the House ethics committee is investigating any potential violations of standards of conduct. Timeline pushed back Meanwhile, Rep. Jim...

Fox News on Air Story

Per Fox News: After addressing a group in Aurora, IL, Speaker Hastert will answer questions. He is currently speaking to the group, and the question and answer part will start thereafter.

(2006-10-09) — In the wake of the weekend detonation of North Korea’s first atomic bomb, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, called for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-IL. “It’s important that lawmakers keep the main thing the main thing,” said Rep. Pelosi. “We can’t get so distracted by debates about North Korea’s sovereignty that we forget that Dennis Hastert is still on the loose, indirectly endangering America’s children.” The timing of the atomic bomb test raises questions, she said, about when President George Bush first knew of former Rep. Mark Foley’s lurid instant message chats with teenage...

Gary C. Knapp for The New York Times“That is the problem we have in society. Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a ‘right’ to do whatever.”DAVID THOMAS, Father, Norfolk, Va. VIRGINIA BEACH, Oct. 7 — As word of Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit e-mail messages to former pages spread last week, Republican strategists worried — and Democrats hoped — that the sordid nature of the scandal would discourage conservative Christians from going to the polls. But in dozens of interviews here in southeastern Virginia, a conservative Christian stronghold that is a battleground in races for the House and Senate, many...