It's not the offense, it's the cover-up

[Preechr]

Huh?

Everything would have been different if the page had been a girl, sure... It would be a different story, but it's not. The story is that a male page seems to have initiated sex talk on AIM with a Congressman in order to get him to type embarrassing stuff, which he did. The text logs were shared among the pages as humorous, but eventually fell into the hands of Democrats that chose to use them as a weapon against Republicans during this year's election campaigns.

The IMs were released to the media, and the Democrats went after Hastert saying he should have done something about the situation way back when he was first notified of the original e-mails which were not near as serious looking as the IMs are. The implied "danger" of the e-mails is not what was said but who sent them. Foley's homosexuality was no secret, apparently, but the IMs were until last Friday. Democrats demanding Hastert's resignation because he didn't come down harder on Foley for sending some innocent e-mails to a former page doesn't make any sense unless Hastert was supposed to know Foley was a pedophile. Without the IMs, Hastert could only have assumed that based upon Foley's homosexuality.

The Democrats have put themselves into the position of demanding Hastert's resignation because he let a gay man talk to a teenage boy. The IMs, prank or not, are out of the picture... unless someone coughs up proof Hastert's office had knowledge of the IMs prior to last week.