Jerry Weller jumps in with both feet:
Fuller said the congressman also wants an investigation into who leaked the e-mails to the news media.
“The bigger question for my boss is, who sat on these messages for three years,” and leaked them just weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Fuller said. Particularly, he said, Weller wants to know “who put them up” to releasing the damaging information, and suspects Democratic sources. “He thinks it needs to be looked into.”
Weller’s stance was, in tone and substance, close to that of House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner, second in command to Hastert, also questioned the source of the revelations in a letter to the conservative Washington Times that responded to its call Monday that Hastert resign.
“We also need to know why these messages surfaced only last week, on the final day of legislative business before the November elections,” Boehner said, according to Congressional Quarterly.
.?
Who sat on the information? It sure looks like some young Pages who were harassed by a Member of Congress sat on it and given their age and the attacks on them by the right wing media outlets, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have come forward before…not to mention how difficult it is for young people of that age to deal with their sexuality.
Strangely, the evidence and by that I mean the very clear statements by ABC contradict this bullshit. It’s a hysterical failed attempt at jijutsu to try and say the Democrats must have been sitting on evidence of wrong doing when Republicans themselves refused to tell Democrats about the initial concerns.
Will the press do their job?
There are many Republicans who have taken responsible positions–I can point to below with McSweeney who I think is giving Hastert a pass, but is taking the story very seriously and wants a full report on it by election day. He even has some ideas about reforming the ethics committee that are interesting. What he and other decent human beings aren’t doing—trying to create fictional stories or blame the victims.
This didn’t need to be highly partisan. On Friday the 29th, a simple admissions that they screwed up would have killed the story by now. Perhaps a little bit of discussion about why Democrats weren’t included in the discussions 3 years ago, but not much else.
Republicans are trying to turn this into a Democrat problem. It’s not surprising. Other members of the right wing, such as Matt Dridge, are trying to claim the emails and IM are a hoax or a prank.
But about the “leak” conspiracy angle, there’s a blog over at the Chicago Times that makes a great point:
A couple of points:
1) Josh Marshall over at TalkingPointsMemo has done a fairly good job of identifying the source as Republican staff, not Democrats; but more importantly
2) This is exactly the same response that the White House always has when embarassing information about the war is published. It’s never, “This is terrible and we must change policy.” Instead, it’s, “We must find and punish the person who blew the whistle.”
It’s not going to work this time — and it shouldn’t have worked in the past.