You have to wonder what was going through Hastert's mind all this time. He and his staff acted irresponsibly with all the information they were given - what was their motive? Political, of course! Now that they've been caught in lie after lie, there is no reason to suspect they won't continue to cover up with lies. It's time for some real action against the fat man.

Hastert's professional associates are proving he is a liar. At what point does he concede or does he get to stick to his lies, no matter what?

Does the man have to be FORCED to admit this? And he was elected on public trust? He is a MODEL of INTEGRITY?

Are they all like that? Most certainly--if this one has the President backing him up in the face of testimony from many.

lOOKS LIKE THE PAINT IS PEELING OFF THE COVER UP, TOO BAD, THESE GUYS SMELL AND LET'S JUST HOPE MOST OF THEM ARE GONE SOON! They should put all women in charge of the page program, period. Granysue

Another Republican cover-up. Nixon is beginning to look better. This is worse than the "second rate buglary" of Watergate. This are the same people who impeached Clinton for a sexual affair with an adult woman who seduced him.

Again, all the Republican leadership needed to do was turn this over to the ethics committee. They had more than enough information to do so. The ethics committee, obviously would have found enough evidence to censure Foley if it just started asking questions, but it didn't because Hastert and company decided to bury it.

The opposite of burying it would have been to follow procedure and hand the matter over to the ethics committee, but they decided to not do that. In the end, this all comes down to this simple fact. They could have done the right thing but chose to hush the matter up.

Who cares???Isn't that his personal life anyway??? The kids probably taught him a few tricks!!! Get real!!!!

Hastert has to feel like an idiot about now. His lies are being uncovered. It's evident that he was informed about the page incident long before 2005.

It ain't over 'till the fat gentleman sings.

I vacillate between sadness and rage about this scandal, given that it's the party who stridently touts family values and religious beliefs. And neither they nor many of their followers see the glaring hypocrisy that's self-evident. They should be ashamed of applying their judgmental attitudes towards others while avoiding responsibility for their own reckless and immoral behavior.

My guess is that the repubs are going to plant a fake leak claiming democrats have been messing with pages during this time frame as well. It would be typical of them to make a last minute election claim that could not be proven just before the election. The repubs have been guilty of jamming phones, sending out fake literature saying the election day was a day later, etc., etc., etc. So it will be interesting with their horribly low approval that they will do something drastic. They brought us Nixon and McCarthy after all!!!

It's a vast left-wing conspiracy!

Well, it is significant that GOP leadership did not act responsibly in the matter of former Rep. Foley and the young pages, it is astonishing that our focus is once more on how public figures behave sexually, and not address their other moral transgressions.

Hastert is going down, probably the whole gop.

"CHARACTER COUNTS"

Remember???

Guess it only applies to married Deomocrat men who receive consensual BJs from overweight, twenty-something, wealthy, children-of-privilige who willingly offer them up.

It's easy to figure out the why's here. Foley's district is around 55% Republican, and he got like 65% of the vote.

If it was the reverse, where the district was 65% Republican, yet he was getting only 55% of the vote, he would have been sent packing a long time ago.

They would have figured any decent Republican would win easily.

Since losing the incumbent R in that district could have switched it to a D, they decided to cover it all up.

What was going through Hastert's mind?

Orders from DeLay-the de facto leader:
Keep a lid on problems, Denny, and we all keep our jobs.

The Congress of the United States is the most expensive brothel in the world. Almost anyone will sell any value to maintain (a) office with its ridiculous perks, and (b) access to the corporate interests that control them--in other words, their pimps.

I'm sure there are decent people there, but offhand I can't name more than three.

But disheartened and cynical as I am, I will vote and try to choose lesser evils. To this oldtimer voting is not a privilege but an obligation. And the only way to flush out the sewage in the system.

Wow, at this rate, we'll know the full breadth of the scandal by, say, late November...

No wonder this guy left Capitol Hill to work elsewhere--if we all saw what he saw, we'd have wised up much sooner to the lies and hypocrisy among the so-called moral majority.

Yea, GrannySue -- someone like Mary Kay LaTourneau. Cuz we know that women never do anything to kids.