Ex-Speaker Hastert's Portrait Removed From House Hallway

[Rose Siding]

Source: ABC News

New Speaker Paul Ryan has had a portrait of Dennis Hastert removed from a hallway outside the House chamber, just days after the former speaker pleaded guilty to breaking banking laws in a hush money scheme.

The picture of Hastert, R-Ill., had hung for years in the Speaker's Lobby, a plush area just outside the House chamber where lawmakers and reporters often congregate during votes. That lobby's walls have portraits of 22 former speakers with another 28 hanging in corridors just outside the lobby.

....

Asked for details about why the portrait was taken down, Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said: "The speaker believed it was appropriate to rotate in a different portrait."

Hastert pleaded guilty last Wednesday to evading banking laws. He acknowledged in a written agreement that he tried paying someone $3.5 million to hide misconduct decades ago, around the period he was a high school wrestling coach.....

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/speaker-hasterts-portrait-removed-house-hallway-34924001

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Gotta whitewash Republican history.

I think a plaque with a giant asterisk should have been added below it instead, noting his crime and sentence.

[murielm99]

3. Nah.

I think taking the portrait down was enough. It may be the only decent thing Ryan does during his tenure.

[Demeter]

9. They could have edited it

Painted him in stripes, or orange jumpsuit. Added bars, perhaps?

Such a sad man...so inept.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. A crooked man, in a corrupt era.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. So does this mean they will also deep-six the "Hastert Rule"?

One would hope but then these are the GOP.

[Skittles]

5. I wonder who will end up removing Ryan's pic

[Rose Siding]

6. lol- I imagined a big heap of disgraced pukes portraits

tossed aside somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol

[dembotoz]

7. The speaker believed it was appropriate to rotate in a different portrait." lies in week 1

did not take long at all

[riversedge]

8. Ryan should have just been honest about it. This just makes him untrustworthy. yup.