The bill of particulars is lengthy. Consider the Mark Foley page scandal. An explosion in questionable “earmarking” for pet legislative projects. The neutering of an already weak ethics process. Hardball tactics on the House floor. A weakening of committee chairmen accompanied by heightened pressure on them to leverage legislative clout to raise campaign money. Undue deference to the executive branch. Personal enrichment.
Take those together with the shocking revelations of sexual abuse of youths placed in the trust of Mr. Hastert, a popular and successful coach, and he emerges as a deeply flawed figure who contributed significantly to the dysfunction that defines Congress today. Even his namesake Hastert rule — the informal standard that no legislation should be brought to a vote without the support of a majority of the majority — has come to be seen as a structural barrier to compromise.
.. It was a sex scandal that put Mr. Hastert into the top House job in the first place. Robert Livingston, a Louisiana Republican in line to replace Newt Gingrich, was forced to step aside after accusations of marital infidelity as the House impeached President Bill Clinton in 1998.
.. “At times, he seemed to believe he worked for the vice president,” Mr. Lilly wrote
.. one of the most egregious acts by Mr. Hastert was steering a 2005 highway bill to passage after he made certain that it contained a new Illinois road called the Prairie Parkway close to land Mr. Hastert had secretly purchased through trusts. A series of profitable real estate deals, along with a flourishing lobbying practice after he left the speakership, helped Mr. Hastert’s net worth grow substantially and explained how he had millions to pay to his high school victim.
Jonah Goldberg: Afghan Pedophilia by the rich and powerful
Of course, the Pashtun fondness for buggering young boys is well known. Kandahar’s reputation as the pederasty capital of South Asia — worst tourist slogan ever! — goes back centuries. The practice, called bacha bazi, is a kind of Veblenesque “conspicuous consumption.” Rich and powerful men — chiefly warlords — take on sex slaves as a status symbol. The unpopularity of the practice helped fuel the rise of the Taliban, which banned it.
Video Destroys Trump Campaign Spin as Michelle Fields Files Criminal Charges
Fields claimed that Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, yanked her away from Trump when she tried to ask him a question about affirmative action, bruising her arm and almost causing her to fall. Fields tweeted a photo of the bruises, and a Washington Post reporter backed her account — as did an audio recording of the event. The Trump campaign responded with scorched earth. Not only did it release a statement falsely claiming that no other reporter witnessed the incident, Lewandowski himself spewed forth a vile series of tweets that not only implied Fields was a fabulist, he also implied that she’d made up a sexual harassment charge in the recent past. The campaign demanded to see video evidence.
Spotlight On Truth
It is hard to find someone more cynical than I am about the media business, but I tell you, watching this movie made me so proud of the Globe reporters and editors on the Spotlight team, but also of my profession. I knew most of the narrative portrayed in the film, but I did not fully grasp until seeing this movie how difficult it must have been to tell this story in Boston.
.. That kid’s father might have been a working man from Latin America who didn’t speak a word of English, but he understood what was happening. He went out and hired a Jewish lawyer, and sued the church on behalf of his son. Smart man. Often, it takes an outsider.
.. I winced at a scene later in the film when one of the Catholic good ol’ boys tells Robby that the Globe shouldn’t run the story because people need the Church “now more than ever” (this is shortly after 9/11), and besides, Cardinal Law “is not perfect,” but he’s a good man, and we can’t let a few bad apples, blah blah blah. I had Catholic establishment people – more than one – telling me, an observant and quite conservative Catholic at the time – the same thing. Except the phrase that they tended to use was, “I know the bishops haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory, but …”. It’s stunning to think of it now, in 2016, after all we know, but there were quite a few good Catholics back then who rationalized ignoring the horror in just that way.
.. I believe he really is a saint. Nevertheless, it was Pope John Paul II who reassigned Bernard Law to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, one of the most honored churches in the Roman Catholic world.
.. In nearly every single case, I was powerless to do anything, because I could not convince these sources to talk.
.. If you think being a Christian is simply about knowing things – as in, getting the doctrinal questions correct — you are setting yourself up for a very great fall.
.. I thought I knew where the lines of good and evil ran within the Church, and between the Church and the World. And I thought the main thing about being a Catholic Christian was assenting to the teachings, receiving the sacraments, and following the rules.