Jack Abramoff, international man of mystery?

I must say, this Hastert transcript will be choice pickings for humor posts over the next day or so. Here's one question the Speaker got today at his press conference.

QUESTION: Mr. Speaker, if I could ask you a question, the Abramoff scandal is what has forced you into this position. A year ago, the things that you're proposing would not have been politically possible for you to talk about.

Why is the Congress reacting and why didn't it act initially if all these are good ideas?

HASTERT: Well, you know, a year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was and didn't know who his associates were or what connections there are.

As this thing unrolls, people understand that we need to learn from what happened in the past and try to rectify that if we can.

That's great. People on Capitol Hill didn't know who Jack Abramoff was or who his associates were? The guy was one of the biggest lobbyists in DC, moved huge amounts of money around Capitol Hill, was close to most of the key Republican power-brokers in and out of Congress. But no one knew who he was. And no one knew who his associates were?

This is a deeper vein than it looks like on the surface. Denny Hastert is like the Mr. Magoo of DC Republican corruption. The DeLay Machine was the muscle and sinew of the House on his watch. The Abramoff clique ran deep tentacles all through the institution. But Hastert didn't know anything about it. It's all news to him.