The Crookosphere

Evidence continues to accumulate that the Republican House Leadership has run the joint as a criminal conspiracy. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is the latest guy implicated in graft. Josh Marshall has a link to the Chicago Tribune story by James Kimberly and Andrew Zajac detailing the scheme.
The complex structure of a real estate transaction in Kendall County last December left House Speaker Dennis Hastert with a seven-figure profit and in prime position to reap further benefits as the exurban region west of Chicago continues its prairie-fire growth boosted by a Hastert-backed federally funded proposed highway.

Instead of cash, Hastert (R-Ill.) took most of his share of the proceeds in land, some of it less than 2 miles from the parcels he and two partners in a land trust sold for nearly $5 million to a developer who plans to build more than 1,500 homes and commercial space on the property near Little Rock and Galena roads in Plano.

Hastert received five-eighths of the proceeds of the sale, which worked out to a profit of more than $1.5 million for him on property that he and his partners accumulated in a little more than three years.

Delay, Cunningham, Ney, Lewis - the list just keeps on growing. Diogenes might search in vain for an honest Republican Congressman.

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