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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (750935)	10/3/2006 12:47:40 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Washington Times calls on House Speaker to resign 1 hour, 14 minutes ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper that generally supports Republicans, called on Tuesday for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert over his handling of a congressional sex scandal. ADVERTISEMENT "House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once," the newspaper said in an editorial in which it joined conservative leaders in calling for leadership resignations over the handling of matter. The scandal, centering on sexually explicit Internet messages sent by former Republican Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) of Florida to teenage male congressional pages, came to light just weeks before a close November 7 election to decide control of the U.S. Congress. The Washington Times said the House leader was either grossly negligent for overlooking early "red flag" warnings "or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away." Foley, a six-term House veteran, resigned last week. The FBI, Florida state investigators and House ethics investigators are all looking into his communications with pages, who are teenagers assigned to answer telephones, deliver documents and run other errands for members of Congress. Hastert and other top Republicans have said they knew of e-mail traffic between Foley and a 16-year-old boy, described to them as "over-friendly," at least six months ago. Hastert on Monday insisted he did not know the sexual nature of the messages to other pages until they surfaced on Friday. "The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator -- and, incredibly, the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children -- could be prowling the halls of Congress. The matter wasn't pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all," The Washington Times editorial said. The scandal put Republicans on the defensive in the final month of a tight election campaign, with Democrats needing to pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to regain control of each chamber. "Republicans can't simply "get ahead" of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past," The Washington Times said. The newspaper called for a special congressional session to elect a successor and nominated fellow Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, to fill the speaker's post for the remaining three months of the 109th Congress. The Washington Times reported that the conservative group Citizens United and Richard Viguerie, a founder of the conservative movement, called for House leadership resignations for not action when they first of the inappropriate e-mails. Some Democrat and Republican lawmakers have suggested any congressional leader who knew the content of the messages and failed to take action should step down.