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I have a little personal connection to this actually. Rep. Shimkus is
the chair of the House Page Board/Committee/whatever. I worked for
his campaign in 1994 literally hundreds of hours, he used to be a
teacher at my Lutheran high school, and I worked for his campaigns as
Madison County Treasurer. I've known him and his family for my entire
life. His wife played organ at a church I taught Sunday school, at my
grandparents funerals, his parents go there, etc. He's one of 4 US
Congressmen with military service. He holds my respect and admiration.
I don't believe the emails were illegal or predatory. Strange and
inappropriate sure - and I think he (Foley) should have resigned as
he did. I also think Rep Shimkus and other GOP leaders did the
appropriate thing in late 2005 by saying "Hey whacko, this isn't cool
- knock it off." Would anyone else in the same situation have done
differently? Keep in mind the IM messages just surfaced I believe; I
think the email asking for a pic was the only evidence at the time.
Unless I'm missing something this seems like a bigass political play
and nothing more (which is expected). I'm not blaming the dems or
anything, just pointing out that the claims of inaction and predatory/
illegal emails are blown out of proportion IMHO.
-- Brent
On Oct 3, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
On Tue, 3 Oct 2006, Phillip Kelchen wrote:
On Tuesday 03 October 2006 11:50, Mike Miller wrote:
I snipped out the URLs and email addresses from this message. I
guess it's no surprise they're going after Hastert. --Mike
Of course it's no surprise as that behavior is taken straight out
of the National Politics for Dummies textbook- find anybody with
ANY link at all (the more powerful the person the better!) no
matter how tenuous, to the problem and hammer them publicly about
it and call for a resignation. If you can get away with it, then
you succeeded in causing damage to your opposition. If you didn't
get them ousted, then you have political fodder for next election-
"He was sooooo sleazy that he refused to resign even after
$EVENT..." It's a no-risk way to make the other side look a lot
worse than they really are and to score yourself anywhere from
little to a huge amount of credit and votes.
That's all true, but there are some interesting wrinkles on the
current drama:
The Washington Times -- a very "conservative" (some would say
insanely right-wing) newspaper is asking Hastert to step down:
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061002-102008-9058r.htm
House Majority Leader John Boehner, Republican, is blaming Hastert
for problems:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2006/10/boehner_points_.html
So it isn't just Democrats attacking Hastert because he's
vulnerable right now. Everyone is attacking him, partly in self-
defense ("It isn't 'Republicans' who screwed up, it's just Hastert!")
Mike
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