In a NYTimes story on the Congressional GOP's day-late-dollar-short rollout of an ethics reform package, House Speaker Denny Hastert lets America know how big a bunch of suckers he thinks we are.  Clearly thinking he was responding to an electorate and press corps that would believe any old garbage he tossed out, Hastert offered up the gem relayed in this excerpt...

Hastert, at his news conference, shrugged off criticisms that he had put off action on lobbying reform and was only responding when his own party faced a crisis.

''A year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was,'' he said.

Interesting, then, is a story from the website Hillzoo, which covers Congressional and Capitol Hill staff news, and which bills itself as "The Homepage of Capitol Hill; By Congressional Staff, For Congressional Staff".  The story, dated March 28, 2001, is an interview with lobbyist Jack Abramoff in a portion of the site called "The Buzz".  The lead-in to the interview reads...

This week, we have another special edition of The Buzz. Jack Abramoff was gracious enough to sit down with me to let me pick his brain for a short while. What follows are the answers to questions everyone's been dying to know about one of the most widely known lobbyist in Washington...

Is Denny Hastert so out of touch with reality that he thinks no one had heard of Jack Abramoff last year when hill staffers and writers were calling Abramoff "one of the most widely known in Washington" as far back as five years ago?

Or does he simply think he can bamboozle the Capitol press corps with this falsehood the same way the GOP has peddled lies about Abramoff's scandal being a bipartisan problem?