GOP, we have a problem!

From the NY Times today:

The drama of who knew what when intensified over the weekend when Republican leaders — including Representatives John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, and Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the party’s
Congressional campaign committee — acknowledged that they had been aware for months of e-mail traffic between Mr. Foley and the 16-year-old Louisiana boy.
Mr. Reynolds said in a statement Saturday that he had also personally raised the
issue with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

The speaker’s office has said Mr. Hastert did not recall any such discussion and had no previous knowledge of the matter.

This is what's known in political contexts as "getting nailed." (Inappropriate, yes, but TPV goes where other fear to tread.) You have high-profile GOP leaders covering their own ass, and the Speaker of the House claiming to have forgotten meetings about whether one of their members was a pedophile. Again: slice it this way, slice it that way -- any which way you slice it, the picture's not pretty for the GOP!

Meanwhile: Rep. Foley has resigned and is now claiming he's alcoholic. Does that make it better or worse? I say worse for the GOP! Instead of questions over resignation Foley's sucking air out of "What did Fatty Hastert read, and when did he become disgusted," the national medio can focus on the political angle -- plus, no one buys the alcoholism thing when it comes to repeated emails over many, many years (unlike, say, the forthcoming rehabilitation of Mel Gibson).

Legs, I tell you -- the story has legs!


*****UPDATE*****

ABC News, which owns this story, buries the lede in this report:

A former senior Republican official in Congress says Foley was one of a handful of members and staff whose behavior with pages was being closely watched.

Handful? Did you say handful! I want names! I want hearings! I want resignations!