This Just in on the Party of Corruption

According to this article in the Washington Post (picked up from the AP), a congressional aide warned aides to Speaker Denny Hastert about Mark Foley's behavior THREE YEARS AGO. This case just becomes more and more troubling. The evidence continues to mount that the Republicans are more interested in saving themselves and retaining power than in investigating and dealing with sexual predation by one of their own. It remains shocking to me that Republicans even continue to exist in this country.

On a related note, Republicans have been defending their party's handling of this by saying . . . that the Democrats have their own sex-page scandals . . . from 23 years ago. Of course, as I have said, I do not hold the Republican party responsible for an individual member's actions -- rather, my problem with the Republican party is that the Republican House leadership swept the whole thing under the rug and has essentially hidden Foley's sexual predation from outside investigation.

So, how did the Democrats handle the sex-page scandal from 23 years ago (which, by the way, actually involved two Congressmen - one Republican and one Democrat)? It turns out they handled it in the best possible way. One of the outside investigators brought in to look into this scandal 23 years ago (Joseph Califano, Jr.) wrote a nice op-ed piece explaining what happened then, in comparison to now. Then, everything was opened to the public, information was shared between parties, and every little piece of dirt was thoroughly examined. Of course, back then as well, the Democrats made sure that they had a working ethics committee. As everyone knows, Republicans have rendered the ethics committee completely impotent and silent.

Frankly, everyone should have figured out several years ago that the Republicans must be corrupt simply based on the fact that the Republicans shut down the ethics committee. When there's no light shining on you, it's easy to engage in illegal or unethical behaviors. It's sort of like when a dictator shuts down all the newspapers and kicks out all the journalists -- you know things are about to get ugly.