When the House Republicans need a good liar to step up to the plate, no one better than Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA).
From CNN …
Faced with fending off the backlash from the Mark Foley scandal, House Republicans took the offensive Friday, asking Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to testify about whether they engaged in partisan trickery by releasing Foley’s messages weeks before the midterm elections.
Top GOP leaders — including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, and Majority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio — have accused the Democrats of knowing about Foley’s correspondences with teen pages, and waiting to release them until it was politically advantageous.
As noted earlier, the reporters on the story know the claim is false and that Kingston et al. know it’s false. But they don’t share that with their readers and viewers.
Late Update: Sharp-eyed TPM Reader AA noticed this line down near the bottom of the article at CNN …
Top GOP leaders, including Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, have rushed to Hastert’s defense. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote a letter supporting Hastert, saying it was inappropriate to ask for the speaker’s resignation when similar scandals in the 1980s prompted a “dramatically different standard.”
Barton was referring to Democratic Reps. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Dan Crane of Illinois, both of whom were censured after having sexual relationships with 17-year-old pages. Crane lost his re-election bid, while Studds survived the scandal.
Yep, Democrat Dan Crane. Clearly a Democrat under the rule that Republicans who diddle congressional pages are transmogrified into Democrats. Like political transubstantiation.
