2006
ArchPundit
IL 6 DCCC Poll
All caveats given it’s from the DCCC, but it looks like good numbers:
IL-06 (Open): Tammy Duckworth (D) vs. Peter Roskam (R)
Head to Head: Duckworth 51%, Roskam 46%. Only 34% of voters in Illinois? 6th district think that the country is going on the right track, while 57% say we?re headed down the wrong track and only 21% give President Bush a positive rating for the job he is doing. [Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 409 voters; October 8-9; margin of error 5%]
The question for this cycle is who has the right voter screens for likely voters, but given the indicators showing Democrats with higher interest, this is a good sign.
That Crack Kerry Team
Dear Larry,
It’s like a meeting of the “no accountability” caucus of the Republican Party. Tonight in Chicago, George W. Bush and House Speaker Denny Hastert will appear side-by-side campaigning for Republican candidates.
And, if you think Republicans can’t dance, wait until you see 2006 candidates waltz away from the dreaded prospect of being caught in a photo op between the President and the Speaker of the House.“Woulda. Shoulda. Coulda.”
That was Denny Hastert’s instinctive response to questions about why the Republican leadership hadn’t done more to protect young congressional pages in the Mark Foley scandal. Those are the words of a politician and a party who have made a habit of ignoring the facts, ducking responsibility, and avoiding accountability.
Woulda stopped the corruption of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and Duke Cunningham. Coulda forced President Bush to abandon his destructive “stay the course” policy in Iraq. Shoulda cared about something other than cynically holding onto power.
Too late now, Denny. We’ve had enough. That’s why we’ve added John Laesch, your Democratic opponent and a former Navy intelligence analyst, to our October slate of veterans running for Congress.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
What better way to respond to the Bush-Hastert get-together in Chicago than rushing contributions to five veterans running in races that can finally break the Republican grip on power. This isn’t the October Denny Hastert and George Bush had in mind.
They thought they’d have Democratic candidates on the run… burying our hopes in an avalanche of special interest money… stealing our momentum with bogus “soft on terrorism” charges.
Speaker Hastert was planning a victory march from one congressional district to another. That’s until one Republican candidate after another begged him to stay home and not bring the debate about his shameful failures of leadership into their races.
Now, with your help, John Laesch can bring that debate into Hastert’s own congressional race. Make Denny Hastert explain himself to the people of Illinois’ 14th District. And help our four other veterans running in some of the closest, must-win races in the country.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
Don’t just support John Laesch’s run against Hastert. Tell Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania that you won’t tolerate Republican attempts to “swift-boat” him by disparaging his service to our country.
Tell Leonard Boswell in Iowa that you won’t let him be thrown off course by hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads funded by the Texas millionaire who was behind the Republicans’ 2004 “swift-boat” attack strategy.
Help Lee Ballenger in South Carolina stand up to the flood of special interest money pouring into his opponent’s campaign from powerful oil and gas interests. And help Colonel Mike Weaver continue his surge in Kentucky with a campaign that tells the truth about the Bush fiasco in Iraq.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
Denny Hastert has been the longest-running Republican speaker in history. But in 25 days, we can take the gavel out of his hands — and the smirk off George W. Bush’s face. Don’t back down. Don’t stop working.
Rush your support now to as many of our five veteran candidates as you possibly can.
Together we’ll win.
John Kerry
I think I can name another relevant veteran candidate related to this fundraiser….
Gee, how did this guy lose.
Click on the link above to correct John’s stupidity.
Very Preliminary Reading
I’m presuming Individual B is Chris Kelly. If so, it’s obviously close to the Governor and there is an allegation of extorting campaign cash to get state paid for benefits. However, my very, very initial reading is that this doesn’t get the public much closer than Kelly to Blagojevich and unless Kelly is flipping, there’s nothing in this indictment to suggestion the Governor is in any more trouble than he was yesterday.
Eventually, it reads like a road map to the Governor or someone who is directing the state funding, but as of now, this isn’t much different than the MSI Scandal.
In no way does this mean I think the Governor is off the hook, and obviously consorting with Rezko, Levine and Individual B is bad news, but it’s not that direct tie I think voters need.
And so it continues
It’s probably safe to say that how Fitzgerald lays out the case may well hold the key to the Gubernatorial election. If it’s relatively vague, Blagojevich gets to run out the clock. If it’s specific and there’s a Public Official A highly involved, it gives the press 4 weeks to track down stories.
Will on Hastert
“We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have — in my view have — put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They’re trying to put us on defense.”
It is difficult to read that as other than an accusation: He seems to be not just confessing a coverup but also complaining that the coverup was undone by bad manners. Were it not for Democrats’ unsportsmanlike conduct in putting “this thing” forward, it would not be known and would not be disrupting Republicans’ storytelling.
What if a Principal Had done the same as Shimkus?
Patty Wetterling’s whole address is here
Foley sent obvious predatory signals, received loud and clear by members of the congressional leadership, who swept them under the rug to protect their political power.
If a teacher did this and the principal was told but did nothing, once the community found out, that principal would be fired.
If this happened in a church and the minister received information and he did nothing, he?d be fired.
Congressional leaders shouldn?t be held to a lower standard than what we expect of our community leaders.
And these two clowns were high school teachers. There is no excuse.
Secrecy is the common ingredient in all child sexual abuse. When we have reason to believe someone is sexually abusing a child, we must act. When a child has the courage to come forward, we must not become part of the secret. We must make the protection of our children the highest priority.
Having worked worked with young people who were preyed upon and having to stop doing that for my own mental health as I got too angry everytime, this is what anyone who works with kids this age knows. You also know the warning signs and Foley, even in the most innocuous e-mails released, clearly demonstrates several.
It’s one thing to make the initial mistake though. It’s horrible, but people are human. The problem is we don’t have the full story and no one seems to interested in telling us what that is. The odd timing of the House Clerk’s departure and his silence had certainly be for some reason I cannot discern becuase if it inolves Shimkus and this situation, Shimkus is going to be in very deep hot water.
Shimkus’ sweet sweet whine
He wants an apology from Pelosi and Durbin.
This was not, I repeat was not, in The Onion.
WATB, indeed.
“People, like Sen. Durbin and Nancy Pelosi, who are using this for partisan gain, they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Shimkus said on WJPF-AM radio in Herrin.
Republicans increasingly fear the scandal may help the Democrats regain the House and Senate after the Nov. 7 general elections.
Rather than issue apologies, spokespeople for Durbin and Pelosi counterattacked.
“Republicans just don’t get it; every mother in America is asking how Republicans could choose partisan politics over protecting kids, and the Republicans are still asking who could have blown their cover-up,” Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said.
It’s perhaps fair to say the facts aren’t all in, however, the facts that are in are pretty damn bad. There used to be some shame in American politics.
Statement from Kildee on House Page Committee and Shimkus
Kildee Statement on Speaker Hastert’s October 5th Press Conference
Congressman Dale Kildee (D-MI), the Democratic Member of the House Page Board, released the following statement today:
Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Page Board Chairman John Shimkus have recently asserted that they did exactly the right thing in their handling of former Congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate emails to a former House page.
The facts are:
* The Speaker and Page Board Chairman Shimkus did not inform me as the only Democratic Member of the House Page Board.
* They did not inform Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, the other Republican Member of the House Page Board.
* They did not inform the House Ethics Committee, which is charged with regulating the conduct of Members of the House.
* It appears that they did not inform the House Sergeant at Arms, the top law enforcement official in charge of security for the U.S. House, including the pages.
* They did not inform the House Democratic leadership.
Had Speaker Hastert followed the traditions and past practices of the U.S. House, he would have immediately consulted with the Democratic House leadership. That is how then-Speaker Tip O’Neill and then-Republican Leader Bob Michel handled the previous page scandal in the 1980’s.
And if my colleague, Mr. Shimkus, had been allowed to do what he now publicly acknowledges that he wishes he had done, he would have informed me and the rest of the House Page Board. A formal meeting of the Page Board, with a bipartisan representation of the House and with the House Sergeant at Arms providing law enforcement advice, would have given guidance as to how to best address this situation with the well-being and safety of the pages being foremost in mind.
Denny Meet Fork, Fork Stick in Denny
Everything Hastert has ever done is now going to be under scrutiny. (behind subscription wall)
If I were the Illinois GOP, I’d be looking for an orderly transition to the new guy. I’m betting Lauzen makes a run. Let’s just hope we don’t have him trying to change his name again….
Speaker Hastert, however, is no passive figure. When it comes to running the House, Hastert has, in fact, been an aggressive partisan. Recall, for instance, that he personally fired the chairman and two Republican members from the House Ethics Committee after they had the effrontery to rebuke Tom DeLay for misconduct. And when it comes to real estate, he has been a downright wheeler-dealer. Virtually overnight, the speaker’s net worth went from approximately $300,000 to at least $6.2 million–thanks, in no small part, to an earmark he authored.
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Here are the essential facts: In August, 2002, Hastert bought 196 acres of land in rural Kendall County, Illinois for $2,125,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hastert bought the plot in two separate transactions. The first deal gave him a house, barn, swimming pool, and 17 acres of land for $1.2 million. In the second deal, he obtained an additional 179 acres on an adjacent property for a little less than $5,200 per acre. The least valuable portions of the second deal were two fields, separated from the rest of the farm by a stream and inaccessible by road.That was a big deal for a life-long politician and wrestling coach like Hastert, but harmless enough. Eighteen months later, however, Hastert’s purchase took a new direction. The speaker entered into a real estate agreement with Dallas Ingemunson, the chair of the Kendall County Republican Party, and a campaign contributor named Tom Klatt. The three men formed a real estate trust and purchased an additional 69 acres of land adjacent to Hastert’s two inaccessible fields. The trust paid $1,033,000 for the land, or about $15,000 per acre–more expensive turf than Hastert’s plot in part because of its access to a road.
And here’s where the deal first begins to acquire a pungent odor: The trust then added Hastert’s two fields to the jointly acquired parcel and credited Hastert with 62 percent ownership apparently on the presumption that Hastert’s $5,200 land was equal in value to his partners $15,000 land.
These deals coincided with a protracted battle in Congress sparked by the expiration of the 1998 highway bill. Hastert’s purchase of his new home and the additional 179 acres of land took place the same month that the House Transportation Committee prepared for its first hearings on a new highway bill–a bill that would be rife with opportunities for members of congress to bring new roads to their districts in the form of earmarks, changes in infrastructure that could have a major effect on real estate values.
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It was, we now know, crucial to the speaker’s own economic development. In December of 2005, four months after the signing of the new Federal Highway Bill containing the $207 million inserted by Hastert for construction of the nearby Prairie Parkway, the 138 acres held by the trust were sold to a developer as part of planned 1600 home housing development. The trust received $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre for the parcel of which 62.5 percent or $3,118,000 went to Hastert. Klatt and Ingemunson also did well. Their profit equaled 144 percent of their original investment. Hastert, however, received six times what he had paid for his investment, a profit equal to 500 percent of his original investment.
The Hastert earmark not only provided money for Parkway construction but mandated that the construction take place on the portion of the Parkway nearest his recently purchased property. While the money contained in the highway bill was sufficient to build only about one-third of the entire 36-mile road, the speaker insured that the right third would be selected by also earmarking funds for construction of a interchange in that portion of the proposed thooughfare.
The decision by the developer to build a subdivision in an area proximate to Hastert’s farm had financial implications for the speaker that ran well beyond the $2.5 million profit he reaped on the sale. The Tribune has calculated that the remaining 125 acres he still owns is now worth about $4.5 million. Even counting the mortgage on the property, Hastert’s net worth, according to the Tribune, appears to be more than $6.2 million. An estimate that Hastert’s office does not dispute, probably because it is extremely conservative.
Making Jim Wright and Newt look like pikers with their book deals.