Fatty Hastert's Fone a Fake
On October 5, Speaker Hastert announced that, in the wake of the Foley scandal, the House had set up a hotline. According to the NY Times transcript:
We've asked the Ethics Committee to look into this matter and we asked for criminal investigations to be opened by the Justice Department, the FBI and the State of Florida. We have a toll-free number where people can confidently call. And we've reached out to experts around the country to put a system in place to make sure this never happens again.
The tip number is 1-866-384-0481.
Try calling the tip number. It's still a fax machine.
Now, it's possible the NY Times transcript has the number wrong. It's also possible that Hastert got the number wrong. But there's also a third possibility: there is no toll-free telephone established, and Hastert was blustering to make it look like he'd taken action.
Via email, I've urged Josh Micah Marshall of "Talking Points Memo" to sic his muckrakers on this. Stay tuned. (And go read his blog, which has had excellent coverage of the North Korea situation -- even if he stole my timeline theme.)
***UPDATE***
Ok, Hastert burped the wrong number out first time around. The line is now up and running at 1-866-348-0481. And it's pretty funny -- "If you have information about Congressman Foley, please press 1."
We've asked the Ethics Committee to look into this matter and we asked for criminal investigations to be opened by the Justice Department, the FBI and the State of Florida. We have a toll-free number where people can confidently call. And we've reached out to experts around the country to put a system in place to make sure this never happens again.
The tip number is 1-866-384-0481.
Try calling the tip number. It's still a fax machine.
Now, it's possible the NY Times transcript has the number wrong. It's also possible that Hastert got the number wrong. But there's also a third possibility: there is no toll-free telephone established, and Hastert was blustering to make it look like he'd taken action.
Via email, I've urged Josh Micah Marshall of "Talking Points Memo" to sic his muckrakers on this. Stay tuned. (And go read his blog, which has had excellent coverage of the North Korea situation -- even if he stole my timeline theme.)
***UPDATE***
Ok, Hastert burped the wrong number out first time around. The line is now up and running at 1-866-348-0481. And it's pretty funny -- "If you have information about Congressman Foley, please press 1."
posted by Ben at 1:28 PM
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