Hark! The Speaker Mumbles!

Hastert releases a statement on the resignation of Duke Cunningham, who tearfully resigned in disgrace more than a week ago, after pleading guilty to taking more than $2.4 million in bribes from Defense contractors, charges which are part of an ongoing investigation.

“Congressman Duke Cunningham’s letter of resignation will be formally submitted to the House of Representatives when it convenes today. Congressman Cunningham is a war hero whose service to defending America had built a deep respect for him on Capitol Hill. However, the public trust he has built through his military and congressional career has been violated. The behavior by Congressman Cunningham is unacceptable. No one is above the law. He will find that his actions will have serious consequences.”

Of course, when you're the Master of the Obvious, as J. Dennis is, you can get away with something like this. It just gets lost in the blur of excrement that is released in fits and starts from your multi-million-dollar "press operation."
That's all there is, by the way, if you're too sick of Heavy D's prosaic words to follow the link. That's really it! And it's amazingly a lot like the talking points the president carefully repeated last Wednesday in his only public remarks about Cunningham:

"The idea of a congressman taking money is outrageous," the president said. "And Congressman Cunningham is going to realize that he has broken the law and is going to pay a serious price, which he should."

A couple things sort of jump out of the screen at you.

First, it's another monolithic blunder, courtesy of Hilary Swank, er Ken Mehlman, who proves again that the only thing he's really good at (I hear, anyway) is faxing shit out to people in massive doses. The fact that Cunningham was not counseled by Republican leaders to resign his seat before entering his guilty plea and breaking down on-camera is a mark that will be on J. Dennis Hastert and his cronies forever. And they have no way to come out a week later and claim they were involved in his plea. None at all.

Second thing is Hastert found it more compelling to have the "press operation" paint a bull's eye on Howard Dean today before releasing the Cunningham statement.

Once again, if you didn't think that J. Dennis Hastert was the ugly political animal he has revealed in all of these shenannigans, you simply were not paying attention. With J. Dennis, it's all about politics all the time. And time is just about up. Voters in IL CD-14 will not let down the 20-year veteran of phoney, ugly political gaming (a longtime advocate of term limits prior to 1998), but voters across the country have his number.