• Papers call for Hart to step away slowly.

    The “progressive” (liberal) outfit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has called on Pennsylvania Republican Congressperson Melissa Hart to recuse herself from any investigation of Majority Leader Tom DeLay because her campaign once spent $1,500 at a restaurant owned by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist under Federal investigation and linked to DeLay and Indian Casinos

    These clownish outfits hold press conference and demand stuff all to generate the appearance in the press of something important. The press, in its myopic and gullible zeal, falls for every non sequitur because they think it makes them sound watchdoggy. In this instance, the New York Times cites an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

    The Democrats, who might have orchestrated this, will jump onto the bandwagon soon with more puerile indignation. It is nauseating.

  • Hastert’s DeLay decision.

  • According to columnist Robert Novak, the decision to scrap the new House Ethics Committee rules, the ones deemed by the Dems favorable to DeLay, and revert to the previous ones was entirely the decision of Speaker Dennis Hastert.

    The only dissent at Tuesday night’s closed-door leadership meeting came from Rep. Deborah Pryce, fourth-ranking in the leadership as House Republican Conference chairman. She suggested that the former rules should be amended in two or three ways. Hastert argued that would mean House floor debates that Democrats would use to repeat accusations against DeLay, who did not comment during the meeting. Pryce in the end agreed to Hastert’s course.

    This validates my reaction to the reversion, out of step with opinion of most other conservative commentators who agreed with the press this was a major defeat for the House GOP. I had written: “The impression which should be given is that of Speaker Hastert being the adult in this situation and saying, ‘Enough of the nonsense.’”

    The ball is in the Democrats’ court. Let’s see if they have anything — nothing presented so far means a whit — before allowing their dogs to feed of them.