Two conservative op-ed pages come down on different sides of Speaker Hastert's responsibility in the Foley case. The Tony Blankley-led Washington Times issues a call for Hastert's resignation:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations -- or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

On the other hand, Paul Gigot and crew at the Wall Street Journal offer a limited defense of Hastert, suggesting there wasn't a whole lot more that could have been done at the time (late 2005) given that the only evidence available were a couple of emails to two former pages which Mr. Foley apparently defended as completely innocent:

What next was Mr. Hastert supposed to do with an elected Congressman? Assume that Mr. Foley was a potential sexual predator and bar him from having any private communication with pages? Refer him to the Ethics Committee? In retrospect, barring contact with pages would have been wise.

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one? [snip]

Yes, Mr. Hastert and his staff should have done more to quarantine Mr. Foley from male pages after the first email came to light. But if that's the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant.

While I'm still not yet convinced Hastert deserves to lose his leadership position over this, I find the WSJ's "political correctness prevented taking action against a gay man" argument unconvincing.

On one hand, many would argue Foley's sexual orientation made his contact with former male pages all that much more deserving of scrutiny. On the other hand, Foley's sexual orientation is somewhat beside the point: this story would be less exotic but just as damaging if Foley were chasing 16 year old girls around the Capitol, sending them salacious IM's about being horny and wanting them to take their clothes off.

The bigger point is that extracurricular contact with pages is forbidden by House rules for obvious reasons, and Foley should have either been investigated or at least given a final warning, issued in writing, telling him that the behavior was unacceptable and had to stop.

Instead, we have a situation where, once again, the House of Representatives looks like its being run as a big club where members get preferential treatment and the rules don't really apply. Whether it's a Congressman hopped up on booze and pills smashing his car into a barrier at 3am who gets a ride home instead of a ticket, or a Congresswoman who smacks a police officer with a cell phone and doesn't get tossed in the clink, or members of Congress (most notably the Speaker) throwing a fit because the FBI had the audacity to actually search a member's office for evidence in a criminal corruption investigation, there is a sense that the people's House operates of, by, and for its members.

Obviously, the Foley case is more damning in the salaciousness of the details and the fact it involves minors, but it's really all of the same piece.