Proving that the conservative paper is just as capable as the liberal media of entering the Alice in Wonderland world of "First the sentence, then the trial", the Washington Times has called for the resignation of Speaker Dennis Hastert over the Tom Foley case.

The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress. Red flags emerged in late 2005, perhaps even earlier, in suggestive and wholly inappropriate e-mail messages to underage congressional pages. His aberrant, predatory -- and possibly criminal -- behavior was an open secret among the pages who were his prey. The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never happened.

I'm sorry -- the initial emails were not sufficient to take any such actions. Indeed, media outlests that had them found them to be insufficient to even write stories about them. Rather than blame those who found the emails "overly friendly" until the disgusting IMs came out last week, I think it is more important to find out who has had the clearly inappropriate IMs and why they were held back from the authorities untim now. After all, some of them date back a couple of years, which means that they, not the Speaker or any other member of the leadership team, endangered every page.

By the way, what did the initial FBI inquiry into the initial batch of emails conclude last summer?

An FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the field office concluded that the e-mails "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." The bureau announced Sunday that it would begin a preliminary investigation into Foley's more explicit electronic exchanges with teenagers.

In other words, the FBI concurred with the judgement made by Hastert and others (including members of the media who had the emails but chose not to run them) -- there was nothing in the emails that needed to be pursued. So what you had with the original batch of materials was a unanimous conclusion by the House Leadership, the FBI, and the press that there simply was not anything in the emails that rose to the level of misconduct.

The release of the IMs changes that.

Unfortunately, it may be a while before the results of the investigation of this matter come out. Let's behave like rational adults and wait for those results rather than engaging in hysterical recriminations over a couple of emails (absent the IMs) that seem less like a sexual predator seeking a victim and more like a responsible adult expressing concern about a young man whose family had just survived one of our nation's biggest natural disasters.