Mr. Speaker, Welcome to the Pasture...

Hey, Big Denny, you can put on a brave face and keep fighting it, but the more we find out, I don't see how you can avoid it...

Aide says he reported Foley 2 years ago

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A senior congressional aide said Wednesday that he alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office in 2004 about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) with teenage pages — the earliest known alert to the GOP leadership.

Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene."

The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.

[...] The longtime Capitol Hill aide said he would fully disclose to the FBI and the House ethics committee "any and all meetings and phone calls" regarding Foley's behavior that he had with senior staffers in the House leadership.

"The fact is even prior to the existence of the Foley e-mail exchanges I had more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley's inappropriate behavior," Fordham said.