1:46 PM Foley update

I really didn't want to be doing this today, Iraq is REALLY in the crapper, but...

Fordham resigns, and Denny Hastert is trying to tie it all up with a neat little bow around Fordham's neck.

Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.

"He begged them not to tell the page board," said one of the Republican sources.....

People familiar with Fordham's side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

They said Fordham had repeatedly warned Hastert's staff about Foley's "problem" with pages, but little was done.

As Aravosis says: "You mean the entire House leadership wanted to report the scary child sex predator but a single staffer recommended otherwise, so there was nothing they could do?" (He has more.)

And, what exactly is David Corn saying about this list that's going around "of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay?" "There's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice."

Are the Republicans really about to conduct a gay witch hunt trying to blame a gay conspiracy rather than their leadership? (Maybe the Republicans would know who to trust if all the homosexuals wore a pink triangle.)

And, One more bit to banish another effort to dimish all this. There's been an effort to claim that the Page in question was 21. That claim on a blog has been pulled down.

RAW STORY can verify that the young man in question is not the Congressional page from the emails that originally surfaced. The recipient of those is currently 17 (and was 16 at the time of the correspondence)......

ABC has stated that they are in possession of chat logs from as much as five years back.