On September 2, 2004, I got “ahead of the news cycle,” when I said:

Who ever said [Denny] Hastert was anything but a moron anyway?

I was right then, but boy, am I ever right now. Hastert has been claiming that the recent raid on William Jefferson’s office was an affront to the Constitution.

What’s wrong with Hastert’s assertion of that argument? Let’s see. First, legal scholars disagree with Hastert. Second, Hastert is needlessly giving Democrats political cover in this embarrassing situation, allowing them to make the issue about the overbearing Bush DoJ, rather than what it actually is about: a corrupt Democrat politician caught taking bribes on video.

Wrong on the law and terrible politics.

Yup, Hastert is a moron, all right.

And, unlike the last guy who got ahead of the news cycle, I didn’t need any double-secret anonymous sources to feed me information on this. I just figured it out myself.

UPDATE: Bush ain’t too bright himself.

UPDATE x2: Many have criticized Hastert, but few so well as Joe Katzman:

Perhaps [Hastert] was replaced by a double with no political training; nothing else seems to explain why he chose to take a bullet for Jefferson, assert a position that will look to the outside world like a defense of Congressional immunity from law enforcement, and work to confirm his party’s image as friendly to corruption. All within a day of the scandal breaking, no less.

Yup. That nails it.

The Enron guys went down hard today. I didn’t follow the trial, but I know this: my parents followed that stock all the way down. I didn’t even know they’d owned any until it was worth about 9 cents a share. They lost tens of thousands of dollars — money they could ill afford to lose.

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling can rot in prison for the rest of their lives as far as I’m concerned.

UPDATE: Commenter nosh has a valid complaint: these guys should be in custody. Where did Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling get $5 million each for bail? I’ll tell you where: from my parents and thousands of other people swindled by these hucksters. Throw Lay and Skilling in the slammer, take their money away, and distribute it amongst their victims. It’s called restitution, and it should start now.

Independent Sources looks again at the sheriff’s early release program, recently modified to look more closely at the records of inmates before release, and asks: was it really a surprise that letting criminals go early could result in more crime? The answer, of course, is no — Philadelphia had tried the same thing in the early 1990s, with similar results. Why didn’t Baca and the Supervisors look at Philadelphia?

Remember: it’s your fault for continuing to vote these people into office.

Read my previous post and comments thereto for the details.

I was going to simply suspend the guy from commenting until he proved or retracted his wild allegations about being threatened by commenters on this site — his justification for posting comments under a different name than he had used in the past. It soon became obvious he would do neither. His comments became increasingly incoherent, as he posted private information about himself, and then blamed me for commenters using that information to dig up more. Finally, he threatened my job. That was the final straw.

I have told him that his comments still show up in moderation. If he ever proves or retracts his allegations about being threatened by commenters here, I will post the comment or comments.

Otherwise, good riddance.

P.S. I want to make it clear that this is not about discouraging the expression of contrary opinion, it’s about dealing with someone who posted under different names, lied about the reasons for it, threatened my job, and otherwise provided a huge distraction.

The best way to make this point is to seek out more contrary opinions. So do me a favor: go to some reasonable lefties of your acquaintance, and tell them about this blog. Encourage them to comment. I want to see this blog be a place where people of different opinions can debate issues. I think it already is. Help me to continue that.

Thanks.