(This Blog was written by John Laesch on the way back from the Chicago Press conference and it is being posted by Kristen Lash, Blog team coordinator.)
This morning I held a press conference in Chicago to ask for Hastert's resignation from his job as Speaker of the House.
We all know that Foley is guilty and now it is important to hold the Republican Leaders responsible for the cover-up.
I've learned that Hastert has not only protected a Republican cyber-sex molester, but also Republican Don Sherwood, a Pennsylvanian Congressman who beat and strangled his mistress. Sherwood will be handily defeated by Chris Carney, another "Fighting Dem," this November.
On October 18, 2006, Dennis Hastert is scheduled to hold a fundraiser for Sherwood. This is PROOF that Dennis Hastert cares more about protecting his political power than he cares about protecting family values or the integrity of the House of Representatives.
Read below the fold for more on the press conference and Hastert's other dirty laundry.
The press conference was held at the Kluczynski Federal Building at 230 S. Dearborn in Chicago this morning at 10 A.M.
ABC and CLTV covered the press conference while CNN was out in the district asking voters what they thought of Hastert's scandal. This afternoon I will be meeting with the Daily Herald.
In addition to calling for Hastert's resignation, I used the opportunity to raise many of the questions that have been raised here in the Blogosphere.
Why did Dennis Hastert and friends cover up for a sexual predator?
Here is a short excerpt from my speech:
We all know for a fact that both John Shimkus and Dennis Hastert knew about Mark Foley's cyber-sexual advances towards underage boys.
Eleven months ago, Shimkus and Hastert were finding ways to cover up Foley's illegal behavior.
Surprisingly, today, Republican leaders now believe that Mark Foley should be tried under the full weight of the criminal justice system.
Eleven months ago Foley deserved a slap on the wrist and today he should be in jail.
I let the press know that Dennis Hastert proudly took full responsibility for young boys working in the Capital. Here is an example from Hastert's book, Speaker. On page 235 reads Mr. Hastert recalls the anthrax scare in Washington D.C.
We said, 'We have kids opening that mail.' I'm responsible for the people who work in these buildings on Capitol Hill, so I decided we were better off shutting down and sending everyone home."
In 2001, Dennis Hastert was responsible for protecting employees in the Capital, but by 2005 he felt that protecting a 16-year old page from a sex offender was not important.
As Hastert and Shimkus have been squirming and trying to get their story straight for the last several days and I think it is important that we call them out on their flip-flopping. These guys change their story faster than a Nascar driver changes tires.
When this story first broke, Dennis Hastert said that he knew nothing about Foley's addiction to young male pages.
Then, Dennis Hastert has said that he can not remember if he heard about Foley's affection for young pages or not.
Now he is saying that maybe he had heard about it but he did not know the sexual explicit details; thinking that the e-mails were "overfriendly."
Hastert wanted to see and sniff all of the dirty laundry when it was Bill Clinton's affair with a grown woman. But Hastert will look the other way when it is a Republican Congressman hitting on underage boys.
Hastert is doing more than "looking the other way" in Sherwood's case; he is raising money for Sherwood. Here is a Wikipedia summary of Don Sherwood's extramarital affair.
On September 15, 2004, a woman locked herself inside the bathroom of Sherwood's Washington, D.C. apartment, and called 911 to report she was assaulted. When police arrived, the woman, Cynthia Ore, accused Sherwood of choking her, though he maintained he was only giving her a backrub. No charges were filed because both Sherwood and Ore refused to provide any details.
The details of that incident went unnoticed until 2005, when Veronica Hannevig, who ran against Sherwood on the Constitution Party ticket in 2004, distributed a copy of the police report to several newspapers and television stations. Sherwood initially contended that Ore was merely a "casual acquaintance". He eventually admitted he had a five-year extramarital affair with Ore, but denied abusing her.
Ore later filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against Sherwood, accusing him of repeatedly assaulting her during their relationship. On November 8, 2005, Sherwood and Ore ended the lawsuit by reaching a settlement, the terms of which were not released.
Now, Dennis Hastert has abused his "cover-up power" by protecting a cyber-space molester, and it is time for Hastert to step down from his position as Speaker of the House. America has had enough of business as usual in the Republican Party.
If I could deliver one message to America, it would be this: Restore honesty and integrity to our House of Representatives by voting Democratic on November 7th - together we can take America in a new direction!
Please use this Blog to let me know how many other sex offenders, wife beaters and un-Christian value-free Republicans Dennis Hastert is raising money for.
Respectfully,
John Laesch