{"id":9587,"date":"2015-06-03T03:49:58","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T03:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9587"},"modified":"2015-06-03T03:49:58","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T03:49:58","slug":"hastert-scandal-drips-with-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9587","title":{"rendered":"Hastert scandal drips with irony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>If you think for a moment about the scandal involving former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, you come away scratching your head at the incredible irony.<\/p>\n<p>A grand jury has indicted Hastert on charges that he spent money illegally to keep someone quiet about an alleged sexual encounter between Hastert and the then-student at the high school where Hastert was a teacher and a coach.<\/p>\n<p>That part of it is weird enough.<\/p>\n<p>But consider the context of the time he was selected to become speaker of the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>* The House had impeached President Clinton for lying to a federal grand jury about an extramarital dalliance he was having with a White House intern.<\/p>\n<p>* The then-speaker, Newt Gingrich, who railed incessantly against the president for his moral failings, resigned from public office after it was revealed that he, too, was fooling around with a woman who wasn&#8217;t his wife.<\/p>\n<p>* Up stepped Rep. Bob Livingston, who was set to become speaker. But oops! He dropped the effort because he also was involved in an extramarital affair.<\/p>\n<p>Man, sex was in the air.<\/p>\n<p>Then came the Boy Scout, Denny Hastert. He was chosen to become speaker &#8212; and the first person, after the vice president, in line of succession to the presidency of the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>I guess they didn&#8217;t vet him at all, let alone thoroughly.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the irony.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you think for a moment about the scandal involving former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, you come away scratching your head at the incredible irony. A grand jury has indicted Hastert on charges that he spent money illegally to keep someone quiet about an alleged sexual encounter between Hastert and the then-student at the high &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9587\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hastert scandal drips with irony<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[631,689,1345,1986,2253,3299,4239],"class_list":["post-9587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","tag-bill-clinton","tag-bob-livingston","tag-dennis-hastert","tag-grand-jury-indictment","tag-impeachment","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-sexual-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}