Quote of the day: It's getting ugly down in D.C. as the "players" in the House Republican leadership sweat to cover their chunky butts

"This is what happens when one member tries to throw another member under a bus."
--"a House GOP leadership aide, who spoke [to the Washington Post] on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job," regarding the decision of New York Rep. Tom Reynolds (right), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, to say for the record that he indeed passed information about Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate e-mails on to Speaker Denny Hastert last spring

Apparently Planet Denny, who previously insisted he'd only just heard about this shocking matter, decided it was a fine idea for Reynolds to be left holding the bagful of incriminating information about the Foley case. Reynolds disagreed--to the extent of taking the extraordinary step of blowing the whistle on his leader.

What's more, House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio told the Post Friday "that he had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert, who appeared to know already of the concerns."But: "Hours later, Boehner contacted The Post to say he could not be sure he had spoken with Hastert."

Strange thing this, how each spin of the propaganda wheel changes what the House GOP warlords knew. However, no one seems to disagree that aides of the speaker were informed of the initial e-mail problem nearly a year ago, when Rep. Rodney Alexander passed on the material given to him by a House page he had sponsored from his Louisiana district. The suggestion is that the Hastert aides didn't think the matter important enough to bother the boss with.

Boy, wouldn't you guess that our Denny is cross with those aides? Why, if only he'd known, think of the action he could have taken all the way back then.