Once more:All Hastert has was the onnocuous stuff. The boy's parents refused to allow them to go further because they wanted to respect their son's privacy. They asked only that someone speak to Foley and get him to cut off communication. They did so and he promised to have no further contact with the boy.
They didn't go further with it because there was no way to do so. Even people charged with "overly friendly" emailing have rights, too.
Sorry, I can't agree with you on this one. "Overly friendly" means cause for concern. I can appreciate the parents not wanting their son involved, and it only means the leadership couldn't do anything further with respect to this one page. Any administrator worth his salt would worry that there was more, and would check with current and past pages to see if there was a pattern of problem behavior. If not, then OK, it's just a little strange and you can let it go. But you must check first to protect other pages.
If you want to be pig headed, it's your head. OTOH, if you want to be fair you have to acknowledge that neither the newspapers which had these first emails nor the the Republican leadership had any reason to bury the story.
I guess I'm pigheaded, but I feel I can very fairly say the leadership could have seen the bad publicity as a good reason to bury the story.
There was not a hint of any behavior which couldn't and wasn't explained away as innocent.
True, if you're looking for a way to "explain it away." If you're looking for the facts of the matter, you'd interview other pages.
The artilce makes perfectly clear that Hastert and the leadership were concerned enough about the emails that they investigated further but *didnt find anything*.
They got assurances from Foley (oops) and had no further evidence that would warrant publicly disclosing, forcing resignation etc.
They were completely unaware of the IM, and even today there is no evidence nor even allegation of actual advances beyond what was in the IM messages. This doesnt go as far as what Gerry Studds, gay Democrat, did in 1980s, having sex with pages.
hindsight is 20/20, but I dont see how the leadership could have anticipated something that was beign kept in store for a campaign.