By Lynnell Mickelsen

Well, it only took about 12 years, but Cokie Roberts finally put down the Republican Kool-Aid for a brief moment and directed her moral outrage at Denny Hastert and his fellow sex predator enablers.

Here's the highlight video from yesterday's appearance on ABC's This Week. Short version: She's a mom and speaking for America's moms'' she's pissed.

John Aravois of Americablog says if the Repubs have lost the Cokie Moms, the Repubs are in trouble But all I can say is, who you be calling a Cokie Mom? And also, what took Cokie so long?

I mean, I'm the middle-aged, Midwestern mother of three teenage boys and yes, I'm pissed off by the Foley thing. But I'm even more furious that a few weeks ago, our Congress decided it's okay for Americans to force prisoners to stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by U.S. interrogators.

Funny, but torture thing never seemed to bother Cokie at all. Neither did spying on millions of Americans' phone-records. Neither has practically anything else that has happened in the last six years of the Bush administration. No weapons of mass destruction? Oh well. More than 2,700 dead American soldiers and 4,000 more horribly injured? Ho hum. Billions of US tax dollars missing in Iraq? Hey, stuff happens. Huge tax cuts for the rich while the poor and middle-class were totally screwed? Nothing but a big yawn from the Cokester.

Call me unforgiving, but I still remember Cokie on NPR during the post-election 2000 debacle. She kept pronouncing that what the country really needed was "closure." According to Cokie, average citizens like me didn't need any of those ballot thingies actually counted in Florida. Because the suspense was killing us. We needed some "closure" and a chance to "move on."

In short, I'm tired of Cokie speaking for me. I ain't no Cokie mom. Frankly, I don't understand mothers'"or anyone else for that matter --who goes bat-shit crazy over this scandal after steadfastly ignoring so many cases of moral depravity.

On the otherhand, Cokie has backed the Bush administration nearly 100 percent of the time while always trying to look "fair and balanced" so if the Foley scandal make her wander of the GOP reservation, even if briefly, I suppose I should be grateful.

But here's a question I have for other long-time NPR listeners: has Cokie Roberts always such a sanctimonious, annoying suck-up and I somehow missed it? I remember a long time ago'"say in the early 1980s'"when I thought she was a good journalist? Was I just nave? Or did she change when she started doing more TV and less radio?