George Bush today proposed a new facility to store long term radioactive Republican politicians. The target would be the ability to contain Republican politicians whose high level danger to tax cuts and social security privatization reaches critical levels. Current Republican radioactive politicians are kept in temporary storage in Virginia, often with mansions constructed prior to their being declared publicly radioactive.

There have been inquires from Hewlett-Packard about whether private sector high level radioactive executives could be stored at the facility - noting that in the recent case there that even the standard industry procedure of using a golden parachute to shroud the radioactivity is in sufficient.

The press is already noting that these calls from the White House have been made more urgent by the very public meltdown of Mark Foley. The general belief in Washington is that the Fordham explosion, the by-product of trying to rapidly shut him down before any more damage was done, has only moved Dennis Hastert closer to critical.

While some Republicans believe Hastert's levels of radioactivity are tolerable until after the elections, arguing that if Hastert were removed now that the burst of radiation might be lethal to other members of the Republican leadership, particularly people like Rep. Johnson of Connecticut who were partially contaminated by their involvement in the page program oversight.

The other body of Republican opinion however, is that by giving a face to Republican radioactivity, that the current scandal will expose the voter's optic nerves, and this might sharpen their ability to remember in November. A White House insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity said that while Bush is supporting Hastert's handling of the scandal in statements to the press, privately he is angered that the cooling program of lower gasoline prices is being wasted by allowing the Foley reactor to get out of control.

The current situation shows the difference between the present ad hoc storage program, and the previous ways of handling radioactive politicians. Democrats have tended to either use jail, or academia, though in recent years they too have favored dumping radioactive politicians into K street storage. In no small part this is because the Republican radioactivity is exacerbated by its combination with hypocrisy - having come to Washington claiming reform, term limits and moral character as the solution to the endless treadmill of scandal, Foley being caught having stayed in Congress long after term limits would have sent him home, and having written the very legislation which his behavior violated is seen as symptomatic of a Republican party that can't keep the one real promise they made: that no one would get off an elected official inside a the White House or Capitol building.

The storage facility was previously discussed, but with the apperant containment of the Abramoff scandal - even with dozens of visits to the White House - the urgency seemed to fade. While the toxic clean up of Ohio seemed likely to cost the Republicans the governorship, it was not clear that there would be consequences beyond that, or perhaps Burns in Montana. While having to seal up Rep. Ney was a blow, over all the loses seemed acceptable.

Democrats are already objecting to the use of public money to deal with the after effects of what is a partisan effort to ignore the growing danger signs inside of Congress, and argue that there is no need for a federally funded facility to take care of a Republican problem. In part this is thought to be their position because it is well known that radioactive Democratic politicians, such as Rep. Jefferson, would not be eligible for storage in the new facility.

Of course the question that would have to be asked is how the Senate would act. Partially because there are growing worries that Senators Bill Frist and George Allen are reaching dangerous levels of radioactivity. Frist because of his connections with the health care industry, and Allen because of a string of racist comments that build on a long pattern of behavior going back to his college years. Senate Republicans would be loathe to move on an expensive facility which would store House waste, without having some plan for dealing with their own.

(Nods to the Onion).