“A Self-Protective Desire to Sweep the Problem Under the Rug

WaPo editorial questions GOP leadership: what did they know, when did they know it, and what did they do about it? A thorough and prompt accounting is needed of what colleagues knew about his behavior, when they knew it and what they did about it. initial reports about the institutional response to questions about Mr. Foley's behavior are extremely troubling -- suggestive of a self-protective desire to sweep the problem under the rug rather than to put the well-being of pages paramount. (…) What did the House leaders do with this information, and did they take steps to protect other pages? (…) This isn't a matter of judging whether an individual member complied with ethics rules so much as of assessing the House's institutional response to a problem in its midst. The better course would be to appoint an outside investigator to do the fact-finding. Meanwhile, lawmakers, from the speaker on down, should divulge, fully and quickly, their conduct in this affair.