Recalling Denny Hastert

Of course, Chris is talking about Denny Hastert.

And I think about how many others there might be.  And I think about it even more now that Lindsey Graham has gone bat-shit at a 180 on kissing the ring of Donald Trump.

There have been rumors for ages that Graham is a closeted homosexual, so that's what first comes to my mind, but of course it could be anything.  It's just patently obvious that it's something precipitated his about-face.

Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa mention and speculate about Graham in their latest podcast.



Sarah (from St. Louis):

Celebrating another child molester put down on Roy Moore Loses Alabama Day

A federal judge in Chicago on Tuesday ordered that Dennis Hastert never be left alone with anyone under 18 unless another adult is present who is aware of the former US House speaker’s conviction in a hush-money case that revealed he had sexually abused several high school students.

[...]

Any adult whom Hastert might ask to be present when minors are around must first be approved by a probation officer and the person providing treatment to Hastert, the judge’s order says.

[...]

The requests to tighten the restrictions came in a report filed under seal by a probation officer Monday in Chicago federal court.

[...]

US District Judge Thomas M. Durkin didn’t explain in his brief order why that and other new restrictions on the 75-year-old were called for now, three months into his two-year period of supervised release from prison.

  NY Post

Leaving plenty of room for speculation.

Others included barring Hastert from possessing pornography and using “any sex-related telephone numbers.” He also must allow — and pay for — the installation of software that records all his computer activity, from browser history to email correspondence and internet chats.

In handing the Illinois Republican a 15-month prison term in April of last year, Durkin branded Hastert “a serial child molester,” citing at least four students abused by him when he coached at Yorkville High School in suburban Chicago from 1965 to 1981.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Newsweek Disgrace

Bringing Dennis Hastert in for commentary???

Are they nuts?

Also not linking.

I Forgot All About Denny!

And any time we think someone who could become (or is) president couldn't be a sleazy dirtbag criminal, let us remember Denny Hastert.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

True, and So Weird

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Remember Denny Hastert?

Dennis Hastert, the former US house speaker, moltested four boys while working as a high school wrestling coach, prosecutors have said.

Hastert agreed to pay one of his victims, who was aged 14 at the time of the abuse, $3.5m, court filings have shown.

The filing is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert, who worked as house speaker from 1999 to 2007, paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse.

  Guardian

Call me jaded, but I can't believe he's alone as a Congressman in his depravity.

Prosecutors say Hastert still was abusing boys when he first decided to run for office, but the now-74-year-old Republican managed to keep any hint of sexual misconduct quiet throughout a political career that carried him from the Illinois Legislature to the halls of Congress and eventually to the speaker’s office, where he was second in the line of succession to the presidency.

How he managed to keep it quiet is directly related to my doubts that he was the lone molester in Congress. There should be a Spotlight investigation of that great den of iniquity.

It chronicles a chain of deception that began with Hastert exploiting his position of trust as a teacher and coach and carried on years later to include lying to bank officials and making false claims of extortion to the FBI to conceal his wrongdoing.

The filing recommends that a federal judge sentence Hastert to up to six months in prison for violating banking laws as he sought to pay one of his victims, identified in court documents as “Individual A,” to ensure the person kept quiet.

Six months for violating bank laws. Nothing for being a sex predator - for molesting boys?

Prosecutors noted the statute of limitation on any sex-abuse charges have long since run out, making the banking charges the only ones they could pursue.

Because money is much, much more important than the well-being of children.

Days after pleading guilty, Hastert entered the hospital and nearly died from a blood infection, according to his lawyers. They also say he had a stroke and required in-home care.

[...]

The defense has asked the judge to give Hastert probation and spare him prison time, citing his deteriorating health and the public shame he’s already suffered.

Sure. He's the victim here.

Giving me the opportunity to say my favorite phrase:  hoist with his on petard.

Bacha Bazi

This is a whole aspect of the "War on Terror" that we didn't hear much about. I had seen reports that boys in Abu Ghraib were raped. Apparently, that was not only okay, but useful. But I was unaware the US military commanders told soldiers to ignore what was a fairly common occurrence amongst Afghan top police and military officers outside prison.

SEPT. 20, 2015

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

[...]

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012.

[...]

Buckley [Sr.] believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death, and he has filed a lawsuit to press the Marine Corps for more information about it.

[...]

Lance Corporal Buckley had noticed that a large entourage of “tea boys” — domestic servants who are sometimes pressed into sexual slavery — had arrived with [an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan] and moved into the same barracks, one floor below the Marines. He told his father about it during his final call home.

Word of Mr. Jan’s new position also reached the Marine officers who had gotten him arrested in 2010 [for a litany of abuses, including corruption, support for the Taliban and child abduction]. One of them, Maj. Jason Brezler, dashed out an email to Marine officers at F.O.B. Delhi, warning them about Mr. Jan and attaching a dossier about him.

[...]

The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler [...]. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.

Mr. Jan appears to have moved on, to a higher-ranking police command in the same province.

[...]

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

  NYT

The two U.S. soldiers say they used physical force to drive home their message to the Afghan police commander who had been sexually abusing a boy.

"I picked him up, threw him to the ground multiple times and Charles did the same thing," Dan Quinn, who was a U.S. Army captain at the time, told CNN. "We basically had to make sure that he fully understood that if he ever went near that boy or his mother again, there was going to be hell to pay."

The actions of Quinn and the other soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, against the American-backed police commander displeased their superiors in the U.S. military.

Quinn says he and Martland were relieved of their duties shortly afterward.

[...]

[A]fter a decade of training with U.S. forces, it seems some Afghan commanders are continuing the abuse unchecked.

[...]

The Pentagon denies that telling soldiers to look the other way is official practice.

  CNN

Just like torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not official practice.

“We were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did.”

From an October 2009 CNN report:

It is widely known among the population that, most of the time it is commanders, high-ranking officials and their friends who partake in the abuse of the boys.

  CNN

Isn't it always?

"It continues because of the culture of impunity and lack of legal provision against this practice."

Doesn't it always?

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned yesterday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page.

[...]

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took.

[...]

At the Capitol Hill signing ceremony for the commissions bill, a GOP campaign priority, reporters asked Hastert only about Foley. "He's done the right thing," Hastert replied.

  WaPo 2006

Tue June 9, 2015

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was paying a former student to keep quiet about allegations of sexual abuse from the time when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois, two sources with knowledge of the federal government investigation told CNN on Friday afternoon.

Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois between 1965 and 1981 before entering politics. Federal prosecutors indicted Hastert on Thursday for lying to the FBI about $3.5 million he agreed to pay to an undisclosed person to "cover up past misconduct."

  CNN

October 28, 2015

Disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is expected to walk into a federal courthouse Wednesday morning in downtown Chicago and plead guilty to charges that stemmed from an alleged agreement to pay out millions of dollars in hush money to a mysterious "Individual A."

And people who have watched the case told TPM on Tuesday that thanks to the plea deal with federal prosecutors, reports of sexual misconduct against one of Hastert's former students will remain vague—at least for now.

[...]

Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and an adjunct law professor at George Washington University, told TPM that he believed the potential for more information about the alleged misconduct to come out at trial was a driving force behind Hastert's plea deal.

  TPM

Care to go back to Reagan/Bush?