They knew ...

... five freaking years ago.

Your "morals and values" party.

THE JOY OF SEMANTICS. Watch carefully for a jaw-dropping example of pure semantic weaselitude in that video above (kids, don't try this at home). In that ABC news piece, reporter Liz Marlantes totally misrepresents the latest ass-covering by the GOP when she claims that House Speaker Dennis Hastert released a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking that Gonzales investigate anyone who may have had knowledge of "this matter." (Note that those are the precise words Marlantes used -- you'll see why that's important shortly.)

Wow. That's mighty upstanding and courageous of Hastert. Or it would be if it weren't a total crock, as Josh Marshall points out here.

As you can read if you follow the link to Hastert's letter, Hastert is clearly distinguishing between earlier Foley e-mails that most of those cretins continue to describe as merely "overfriendly" or "inappropriate," and the more recent e-mails that were clearly horrifyingly sexually explicit in nature. And once that dichotomy is firmly established, well, you can guess what's coming, can't you? (emphasis added)

“Therefore, I also request that the Department undertake an investigation into who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement. I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, or anyone outside the Congress.

See what Hastert's done? Oooooh, that's so clever -- he's redefined the scope of the problem to just the more recent sexually explicit e-mails, and then magnanimously asks for an investigation into only that "matter." Is that sneaky or what? Any issues related to all of those earlier e-mails, and who might have known about them, have been quietly removed from the table. Damn, that's cute, isn't it?

When it comes to pure, downright, unadulterated unethical sleaze, you just can't touch the conservatives. Then again, they've had decades of practice so it's not really a fair contest, is it?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You cannot make this stuff up.

FUCKING DOUCHEBAGS. Apparently, that link above was just too embarrassing so it's been yanked. No problem, there's an online Word version of it here. And if that suddenly vanishes down the memory hole, well, let me give you just the opening:

Keeping Kids Safe in Cyberspace
Join Congressman Hastert for a Community Meeting on Internet Safety

Tuesday, August 29, 2006
... etc etc ...

Who needs comedy when you have right-wing sexual predators, and their bosses covering up for them?