Departed Hastert should butt out

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has projected himself as an active participant in the selection of the Republican candidate to run in the two primary elections next month and a budget-breaking special election caused by his recent resignation.

Is he ill and therefore unable to serve the full term for which he ran in 2006? Hopefully not.

Did he resign to do so under current law requiring an elected official serving in Washington wait only one year to register as a lobbyist?

If he had finished his term, legislation effective Jan. 1 would have required a two-year wait.

Just wondering.

His leadership of the 109th Congress was not up to his earlier terms.

This Congress met for only 242 days over a two-year period, the fewest since World War II.

However, it became the most corrupt Republican-controlled Congress of my lifetime.

The Republican Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, was given free rein to make deals with lobbyists and the resulting investigations and convictions of congressional Republicans is what gave the opposition an open door to clean up and "throw the rascals out."

President Bush added to the "get it while we can" ear-mark party by failing to veto a single appropriation bill. The Iraq war was a factor, but definitely not the determining one.

Republicans in the past have preached fiscal restraint. What happened to that mantra?

The Congress of our beloved country has become a cesspool of corruption by both parties where money and power to which more money flows is all that matters.

Political parties are what life in Washington is about. What is best for America gets lip service. The party is what elected officials respond to, not the people who elected them.

Caucuses, closed meetings of elected officials, are where positions are cast in stone and bi-partisanship is lost.

We need all-new senators and representatives in each election over the next decade and 12-year term limits in both houses of Congress.

I object to Hastert's involvement in this campaign, it is ill-advised in view of the 109th Congress' performance and corruption.

In earlier days, Hastert served our district extremely well, but he became too much of an insider.

Let all the candidates stand on their own.

Richard Lindholm

Batavia