Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert And Some New Questions
Now that prosecutors have filed papers asserting that Dennis Hastert, during his time as a wrestling coach, had sexual relations with at least 4 underage students, it's time to look back to a story from a decade ago.
In September of 2006 news rocked the nation that a Republican member of the House was soliciting sex from House pages, a program for High School juniors to live and work at the people’s house. Soon after, Mark Foley of Florida, a staunch defender of children against predators, resigned amid evidence he himself was a predator.
Fast forward ten years and we have news of another Republican child predator:
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert sexually abused at least four boys when he worked as a wrestling coach at a high school in Illinois decades ago, federal prosecutors said.
In documents released Friday, prosecutors detailed stunning allegations against Hastert, the longest-running Republican speaker of the House.
One of the boys, the one at the center of this, was 14 at the time.
While you maybe thinking that the two incidents are two different people, ten years apart, there is something here that does tie the two. At the time of the Foley scandal, Dennis Hastert was the man in charge. He was Speaker of the House and one of his members was found to have engaged in this activity.
Now I’m not one to jump on the “the boss must be guilty if the employee is” bandwagon, but this is no normal case. Hence, I present you this:
Mr. Boehner has said that he had a conversation with Mr. Hastert about the matter and had been assured the situation was “taken care of.” Mr. Hastert has said that he does not recall the conversation, but did not dispute that it may have taken place.
Prior to this Hastert claimed he didn’t learn about Foley until the news broke. But then an investigation pursues and you end up with the second ranking Republican in the House disputing the claims of the top ranking Republican. Things like this just didn’t happen at that time in our history, especially amongst Republicans.
So now that the truth is out about Hastert, we should be asking if he did in fact know about Foley and refuse to act. You know what they say about birds of a feather. And if that’s the case, then thankfully the media was able to break this story in time, or we would have had another Penn State type scandal happening right inside the people’s house.
