Foley, Hastert, Fossella Letter to the Editor

There is a great LTE piece from the SI Advance on Sunday confronting Rep. Vito Fossella and his continued support of Speaker of the House Rep. Hastert despite his poor leadership over the Foley scandal;

Rep. Vito Fossella really did it this time. Now he is defending House Speaker Denny Hastert and saying Hastert should remain as speaker. The same speaker who protected child predator Republican Rep. Mark Foley. Fossella claims Hastert did not know.

Well, Vito here are the facts!
Fact: GOP staff, working for Republican Speaker Denny Hastert, warned the page class of 2001-2002 to stay away from Foley, five years ago.

Fact: Former chief of staff to GOP Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), Kirk Fordham, says he warned Hastert's chief of staff of Foley's behavior three years ago. Whether or not you believe Fordham, his testimony is consistent with the other facts showing that the Republicans knew about Foley's behavior long before last week.

Fact: Both Reps. John Boehner, the Republican House Majority Leader, and Tom Reynolds, both say they told Dennis Hastert personally about the Foley issue months ago. Hastert says Boehner is lying. So one of the two most powerful Republicans in the House is lying about an investigation into a child sex predator. That deserves a separate investigation right there.

Fact: Hastert's staff was informed of the Foley e-mails a year ago, but Hastert would like us to believe his staff simply never told him that a member of Congress, a member of his leadership team, was under investigation for preying sexually on young children -- children whom Hastert was responsible for.

Vito Fossella should stop protecting those who defend child predators. Then again, Fossella also defended Tom DeLay, swears he did not know Jack Abranoff, sees nothing wrong with lavish vacations on campaign funds and says stay the course in Iraq.

Someone has been in D.C. a bit too long, or simply lost complete touch with reality.