Look who's attacking Republicans now...

Page the Rature Ready people: the world is indeed coming to an end.

When the Washington Times publishes an scathing editorial that contains the following, you know the universe is shattering:

The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress.

If only they'd managed to muster as much angst over the horrendous mismanagement of the Iraq war in which tens of thousands of people have died.

But when Republicans are embarassed by facts they cannot spin or twist in any way that is favourable to their precious reputations, they take on an immediate posture of revenge:

The matter wasn't pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all. Moreover, all available evidence suggests that the Republican leadership did not share anything related to this matter with any Democrat.

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress.

And they certainly cannot miss an opportunity to attack Democrats while they're at it in that article, as if that makes it an even playing field somehow. Why are people keeping score?

The bombshell, however, comes in the form of this:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

Ouch.

When the Washington Times turns against you Hastert, you might as well stick a fork in yourself. You're done - unlike your lying commander-in-chief who will reign on long after you leave, ensuring that even more people die in his name with the full support of the Times.

Update: The Wall Street Journal is running this whopper of an editorial: Paging Mr. Hastert; Could a gay Congressman be quarantined?:

Florida Republican Mark Foley's sexually explicit emails to a Congressional page certainly warranted his resignation from the House, and they may well merit prosecution. But this being five weeks from an election, the GOP House leadership is also being assailed for not having come down more strongly on a gay Congressman for showing a more than friendly interest in underage boys. That's a different issue altogether.

At least this seems to be the essence of the Democratic and media charge against Speaker Dennis Hastert, who admits his office was told months ago about a friendly, non-explicit 2005 email exchange between Mr. Foley and another page. In that exchange, Mr. Foley had asked the teenager "how old are you now" and requested "an email pic."

In our admittedly traditional view, this was odd and suspect behavior, especially because Mr. Foley was well known as a homosexual even if he declined to publicly acknowledge it.

Minimize, blame the liberals, the Democrats, the media and Foley's alleged sexual orientation...

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

And the WSJ really does suggest that Foley should have been 'quarantined'. If that doesn't give you shivers up your spine, I don't know what would. That kind of attitude is exactly why the Republican leadership covered this up. They too thought guarantining Foley's behaviour by ignoring it was the best thing to do. Obviously they and the WSJ couldn't be any more wrong.