Monday, October 02, 2006

Hypocrisy, thy name is conservative

Worth noting: the right-wing Beltway organ the Washington Times is calling for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert in the wake of the Predatorgate Scandal.

Normally, one might simply welcome this news. Hey, at least some conservatives -- unlike, say, Gary Bauer -- understand that Hastert's role in covering up the scandal and allowing a known predator to remain in the positions he held goes beyond mere misfeasance.

But then, one also has to note that this is coming from a paper whose own human-resources director, Randall Casseday, was recently arrested on charges of soliciting sex with a 13-year-old girl via the Internet.

Casseday, as Max Blumenthal reports, played a central role in creating an abusive culture at the Times newsroom:
According to two sources who have dealt directly with Casseday, the accused sex criminal has played a central role in stonewalling internal investigations into the racist and sexually predatory behavior of Times managing editor Fran Coombs, and did so on orders from Joo and Pruden.

"Whatever Joo, Pruden and Coombs wanted, Casseday did," a senior staffer in the Times newsroom told me today. "Casseday literally was their hatchet man, the hit man for Pruden, Coombs and Joo. Now the whole story is exploding that they had a ticking time bomb all these years and they did nothing. There was no background check or anything."

So, you have a paper tainted by sex-predator scandal accusing politicians who covered up their own sex-predator scandal of gross impropriety.

Whew. What a stink is coming from the right side of the fence these days.

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