No place for politics

MONTHS AGO, Republican leaders of the House of Representatives learned that one of their colleagues, Mark Foley of Florida, had sent a 16-year-old page from Louisiana some e-mails that caused the boy such concern that he informed his parents and his congressman. These were not the lurid electronic messages Foley is accused of having sent to other youths. But even these ``over friendly" e-mails, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert has described them, should have set off more alarm bells on Capitol Hill than they did.

After all, Foley was -- until he resigned his congressional seat last Friday -- co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Knowing that Foley held that position, Hastert and the other leaders should have realized that the reputations of the caucus and the House as a whole were at stake. Instead of simply telling the congressman to cease contact with the boy, House leaders should have investigated further to determine whether Foley had had inappropriate communications or contacts with other House pages. While the boy's parents did not seek stronger action against Foley, that should not have kept the leadership from reviewing his relations with current and past pages more closely.

Such an inquiry would likely have turned up the more explicit messages , which date back to 2003, and House leaders could have taken stronger action. The leaders' failure to take the initial revelations more seriously should be investigated both by the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee, which has a poor record of holding House members to a high standard.

Congressional Democrats have accused the Republicans of doing their best to minimize and hush up the matter for fear that a more searching examination would have put Foley's re election at risk in November and hampered the GOP's ability to retain its majority . A more charitable explanation is that Foley seems to have been well liked by fellow House members. In any case, the public deserves answers to the questions behind every cover-up or attempted cover-up of a political scandal: Who knew what and when, and why did they not put the public's interest -- especially children's -- ahead of their party's?