I'm leery of being in the position of defending Hastert, but I'm increasingly convinced that a greater share of the blame for this needs to be put on Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Turncoat). Given that there were many other sources of information on Foley's antics (eg, Fordham, Trandahl), this does nothing to actually help Hastert out, but in this one case it seems he was underinformed by Alexander and didn't get the information he should have received.

There is a world of difference between the following statements:

1) "I have a page who has been getting inappropriate emails from Foley. The parents don't want to pursue it, they just want it to stop."

2) " I have a page who has been getting inappropriate emails from Foley, and reports from previous pages that this is not the first time he's done it. My page's parents don't want their son involved any further, but we might need to look into the pattern."

I think you can give the parents a pass on this if they asked that no further action be taken regarding their son. But Alexander and Hastert seem to be claiming that it was at the parents' request that they didn't do any further investigation. As I argued in my original post on this, why on earth would any parents request that? I have trouble believing they requested anything beyond "leave our son out of it."

If Hastert is telling the truth that Alexander didn't even show him the emails, and further didn't report the content of the emails that indicated it was a pattern, then Alexander is the worst of the bad guys in this particular instance.