Get the Alligator Clips, Crank Up the Generator - We're Gonna Have Some Dancin'

Ex-Republican Congressman Mark Foley had better head for the hills. U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has written to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to launch an investigation into Foley's relationship with congressional pages. We all know how Gonzales prefers to investigate:

Cambodian Waterboard

Both Gonzales and Bush and just about every Republican in the House approves of waterboarding as a means to extract information. Why not give Foley a little time on the rack? He'd talk - that's for sure. That'd teach him not to fool with young boys.

The poor Republicans. Five weeks away from mid-term elections and struggling to pull themselves out of the hole they've dug for themselves. Along comes Foley and they have to start digging that hole even deeper.

Let's be fair. It's not as though he was trying to marry these boys. No sir, nothing like that. He was only chatting them up, talking about pulling their pants off and asking if he made them horny. Mere pillow talk, eh?

The worst part of the scandal may be the knowledge of other House Republicans. Speaker Dennis Hastert started off saying he'd just heard about the messages. It turns out that some House Republicans have known about this stuff - perhaps not all the details - since last fall. It's now claimed that Hastert himself was told about it this spring and yet did nothing.

The ever sanctimonious GOP House Speaker, Hastert, has been caught with his pants down on this one. The best he can come up with is to claim he doesn't remember being told about this business in the spring. It's looking dark for the Republicans. They knew Foley was gay. They've been aware for a year that he was sending inappropriate e-mails to congressional pages. They did nothing to investigate, nothing to ensure the safety of the young boys who serve as pages.

Will there be more resignations as the Foley scandal spreads? Probably. Some prominent Republicans have already come forward to say that Hastert's handling of this situation is intolerable.

And so - as they say - it goes