Before most votes were even cast, righter-wing House Republicans got ready to throw rightwingers Denny Hastert and John Boehner under the bus, according to their house organ The Hill:

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the outspoken chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), is expected to run for House minority leader if the GOP loses its majority by a sizable margin, a Republican aide with knowledge of his intentions said yesterday...

If he runs, the loquacious conservative would join Energy and Commerce chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) in the field of candidates expected to challenge Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) if Republicans lose control of the House...

If you hadn't noticed, the post FoleyGate polls are so bad for Republicans they're grasping for 'Mushroom Clouds'. Here's a round-up of the good poll news for Democrats from the past week. Ride the "Democratic Wave"...

BREAKING--New House polls will show looming Democratic landslide The new Majority Watch will be released in a few minutes. Based on 63 polls of 48 districts of 1,000 likely voters each, they will show Dems currently ahead in the House by 19 seats, 224-205... It is also a significant increase from the 219-214 seat lead for Democrats from late Aug. and early Sept. This 19-seat doesn't even include seven competitive, Repub-held districts that are currently being polled, and six districts that are currently tied. In fact, perhaps most stunningly, the districts with "safe" leads outside the margins of error break 217-198 in favor of Dems...
Internal Poll Suggests Hastert Could Devastate GOP House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster... "The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,... And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss...."
Poll: GOP Put Politics Over Safety Most Respondents Think GOP Leaders Knew About Foley's Explicit E-Mails. (CBS) An overwhelming majority of Americans think House Republican leaders put their own political interests ahead of the safety of congressional pages in their handling of the Mark Foley scandal...

House Speaker Denny Hastert insists he knew nothing about Mark Foley's predatory behavior until the scandal broke on 9/29/06.

But two-thirds of Americans believe Hastert is covering up the truth.

And now we know Hastert's Chief of Staff, Scott Palmer, confronted Foley about his abuses several years ago, according to a front page story in the Washington Post.

Palmer and Hastert are extraordinarily close; they are roommates in Washington DC. It's impossible to believe Hastert was unaware of Palmer's confrontation with Foley.

Thanks to Ted T. for bringing this up at just the right time.

From: don.jones2@... On behalf of congressional candidate JOHN LAESCH (but not from his political committee)

So, who is the candidate opposing Denny Hastert in Illinois's 14th congressional district? A U.S. Navy veteran, a labor union guy, a straight-shooter. What more could we ask for?

MORE MORE MORE

I just watched Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC and was astonished to see none other than closeted gay Republican Patrick McHenry (R-NC) vigorously defending Denny Hastert!

Have House Republicans gone completely insane???

McHenry has quite a reputation on Capitol Hill, according to The Hill, a pro-Republican publication:

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/pnum528.php

In response to his indefensible handling of a known child predator in their midst, Dennis Hastert whined today that liberals were out to "get to me". Isn't that just so precious? Little Denny Hastert is now the REAL victim in all of this, not the children exposed to the abuse of Mark Foley because of Hastert's own complicity.

The fact is that Foley began making inappropriate advances to underage pages from the day he entered Congress in 1995, and the Republican leadership knew so much about it that, as reported by the Washington Post, they were warning the pages to stay clear of Foley from day one.

Hastert today says "we took care of Mr. Foley" by asking him to resign. Of course that's exactly what he told John Boehner, "it had been taken care of", when fresh allegations surfaced 11 months ago, which Boehner at first admitted, then denied, then admitted again. This has been common knowledge among the Republican leadership for 10 years, it is only the Democrats and the American people who have been kept in the dark. So for Mr. Hastert "taking care of" something MEANS to sweep it under the rug yet again, all the while Foley is paying off the National Republican Congressional Committee.

From BuzzFlash.com:

Men And Women Of Faith: Sweep Out Morally Corrupted Republican Congress

by Brent Budowsky

It what may be one of the greatest disgraces in Congressional history there are now senior Republicans, including the Speaker’s best friend Congressman Lahood, suggesting the page program be abolished.

Think about it: the very idea that there are now Republicans claiming that their Congress is morally incapable of protecting young people only demonstrates how far these people have come from the moral bearing of our democratic nation.

Punish the pages and protect the politicians?

MORE MORE MORE

Christy surveys the ever-expanding list of GOP scandals and shakes her head in disbelief. We have truly gone through the Looking Glass.

We Democrats look at these scandals and assume the normal results will follow. For the individual politician, that means humiliation, resignation, and exile to oblivion. Then his closest colleagues are exposed and follow the same trajectory: humiliation, resignation, and exile. Then the party hangs its head in shame, removes all bad apples, and returns to the path of God.

By now, most people know that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives passed another tax cut for the wealthy late last week. They did this by almost eliminating the estate tax on multimillion dollar estates and, along the way -- to give their GOP brethren a chance to appear caring and noble before the November elections -- they grudgingly attached an increase in the minimum wage.

Their message to Democrats was clear: If you want low-income Americans, who have not seen the federal minimum wage rise in almost a decade, to get a tiny bit more money, you need to provide yet more tax breaks for the very richest families in the country.

The political ploy, which would raise the minimum wage over three years to $7.25 an hour from $5.15, outraged Democrats in both the House and the Senate.

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) called the Republican scheme "the most ethically repugnant, intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt ploy I have ever seen in a legislative body." He went on to say to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) that "… apparently shame has become entirely irrelevant to you and your party."

Despite a fierce counterattack from House Speaker Denny Hastert, ABC News is sticking to its story: that Hastert is under investigation by the FBI for his role in the Abramoff scandals:

Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress.