Kill the Messenger

Dennis Hastert (Asshole, Illinois) has looked at these facts:

Mark Foley, Republican congressman from Florida, has resigned from Congress.

ABC revealed the fact that Foley had been having "sexually explicit" IM chats with congressional pages, ages 16 and 17, for some time.

This fact was revealed to ABC by a Republican aide. Once ABC aired the story, former (and perhaps even current) pages contacted ABC with their own lurid tales.

Other Republican congressmen revealed that it had been known since as early as 1995 that Foley had "a page problem." The pages had been warned about Foley since 1995.

Nobody did anything about it until ABC aired its report, even though several other news outlets had the same information.

The country found out about all this when ABC aired its story. Some of the people who found out about this were Democrats.

These are the facts that Hastert looked at. Foley's conclusion? It's the Democrats' fault! Well, the Democrats and the Pages! It's our fault because we found out about all of this

Interestingly, this is the same tack the Bush administration took everytime something unpleasant was revealed. Abu Ghraib? It wasn't bad that we were abusing prisoners; it was bad that someone told us. Secret prisons in Eastern Europe, places where we "rendered" prisoners to be tortured? Yup; it was bad that we found out. Kill the messenger. What you don't know won't hurt you, unless you happen to be one of those innocent people (estimates are that 80% of the prisoners in Guantanamo did nothing wrong) rounded up and tortured.

Yes, indeedy. GOP. Gathering of Pedophiles. Gargantuan Old Perverts. Grumpy Old Perverts. Got nO Principles. You take your pick.