Skip to main content

Dennis Hastert

Image result for dennis hastert coach

So Hastert has pleaded guilty to one of the two counts in front of him.

I'm not at all an expert in the federal criminal laws designed to protect the banking system but I'll say this, I find certain aspects of this case odd.

They won't be clarified by the sort of investigation now under way by various media outlets, because what those outlets seem to be interested in is: what did Hastert do that made him the extortion target? They want to uncover precisely the res that Hastert has worked so hard to hide all these years, and ideally give a name and face to the blackmailer and victim (everyone is assuming arguendo that they are the same person, or at least that they are kin). That's just gossip at this point.

Hastert has pleaded guilty to structuring his withdrawals in such a way as to avoid reporting requirements. But isn't it generally lawful to act in such a way as to avoid breaking the law? This seems an odd sort of offense. I am reminded somewhat of Robin Williams, in character as the genie in Aladdin, cautioning the aponymous hero of that story, "ixnay on wishing for more wishes."

If Big Brother says, "your withdrawals are an issue for the public if you do X," then doing anything short of X would seem to leave your withdrawals a non-public matter. Or the creation of the rules with X in them would seem hypocritical.  

It is just a happy irony that Hastert is in the news again at a moment when the House is selecting itself a new Speaker, who is vowing to obey something known as the Hastert Rule. Which has no direct connection to banking or extortion.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
24 comments
Read more

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
10 comments
Read more

The Growing Block Theory of Time

My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...
8 comments
Read more