Demagogue

This is the first installment of Spinmeister, a weekly honor that we'll bestow on the most ridiculous, laughable-on-its-face quote within the world of government and current events. This week's Spinmeister is John Feehery, a staffer for House Speaker-in-Name-Only Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

This past Wednesday, Hastert dutifully performed the task that was assigned to him by the world's greatest asshole -- purge Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) from the House Ethics Committee. As chair of the committee last year, Hefley had refused to whitewash ethics allegations against Tom DeLay.

Asked to comment on the Speaker's decision to purge Hefley, Feehery offered this explanation to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"It wasn't really removing him. It was more like relieving him of his duty. The speaker doesn't like to have people who are such talented legislators like him have to spend so much time on ethics."

Good point. Why should an elected official waste precious time and energy on such a silly area like ethics?

Well, a new week has begun, and hundreds of spinmeisters are working assiduously to distort reality. If you happen to come across one of their quotes, please bring it to my attention by providing the pertinent info as a "comment" to one of my posts.