Dennis Hastert Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison Despite GOP Clemency Appeals

Dennis Hastert pictured at right

As noted recently, Republicans at both the state and federal level have sought tom demonize transgender individuals as would be sexual predators seeking to molest women and young girls in restroom facilities even as they have appealed to a federal judge to be lenient on admitted sexual molester Dennis Hastert, former GOP Speaker of the House - a man who was once second in line for the presidency in the event of the death or incapacity of the president and vice president of the United States.   Thankfully, the judge ignored these hypocrisy filled calls for leniency and Hastert was sentenced to 1 5 months in prison.  In truth, he should have been sentenced to at least a five year prison term, especially since he admitted to his sexual molestation of one of his students.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement: 

Dennis Hastert has just been sentenced in a hush money case involving his past sexual molestation of teenaged boys while he was a wrestling coach decades ago. A federal judge, calling the former Republican Speaker of the House a "serial child molester," sentenced him to two years of supervised release and 15 months jail time – not for his actions of sexual abuse, but for evading bank reporting requirements and making false statements to federal authorities.

In sentencing Hastert, Judge Thomas M. Durkin of the Northern District of Illinois also said the former Speaker should participate in a sex offender treatment program, CNN reports.

"I'm deeply ashamed to be standing before you here today," Hastert said in court during his sentencing. "I know I'm here because I mistreated some of my athletes as a coach." 

The court received dozens of letters of support from former [GOP] colleagues of Hastert, including one from Tom Delay, the former Senate Majority Leader who is now an anti-gay Christian activist.

"He is a good man that loves the Lord," DeLay wrote to the judge. "He gets his integrity and values from Him. He doesn't deserve what he is going through. I ask that you consider the man that is before you and give him leniency where you can."

Right Wing Watch reports that "days after the Supreme Court delivered its landmark marriage equality decision, DeLay claimed that he knew of 'a secret memo coming out of the Justice Department' that would legalize '12 new perversions,' including 'having sexual with little boys.'" 

 Sadly, I suspect that Hastert is but the tip of the ice berg when it comes to anti-LGBT Republicans who are either serial adulterers, seeking gay sex "on the down low" ore sexually molesting minors.  Hypocrisy and disingenuous lies are now a hallmark of today's GOP.