Um, he is taking responsibility for the mistakes of his staff. He's going to fire their asses if they were complicit in this. Just as any boss should, whether prince or demon.

I mean, come on. If an important project at work fails, and everyone tries to blame the project manager, is he going to "step down"? Of course not. He's going to give pink slips to anyone who caused the failure. Duh.

My point is that through either incompetence or bad management, Hastert did cause the failure. Either he, or the people he hired failed in their jobs and the party has been hurt by their failure.

I'll be honest, though - I haven't ever been a Hastert fan. Especially since the disgrace that was his full-throated defense of the right of Congress to hide evidence of criminal activity in their offices.

Well, I agree with both of you. I don't know yet whether Hastert should resign. Getting to the bottom of it and axing those responsible is necessary. He could have been more contrite, and publicly taken the heat all himself. It is kinda uncool to put the blame on anyone else, because you are at least admitting that shit got away from you.

You don't think there was any separation of powers issue with ol' 'money in the icebox' guy? It seemed like a tough call to me, and given the heat of the moment, it might be wise to give the legal points time to settle out. Still, it bites to see somebody get away scott free. Same sort of crap happens with illegal searches for us regular folks, though.