It’s a familiar theme. What did he know and when did he know it?

Some conservatives, including conservative newspaper the Washington Times, are calling for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign because of his action or lack of action when he first learned that Congressman Mark Foley had sent “overly friendly” emails to a House page. (The email was sent when the page was back at home). As best as I can determine, the worst thing in the email Foley sent was that he asked for a picture of the page.

It is worth noting that the media had this email months ago and decided not to run with it because it was not newsworthy.

The uproar started last week when text messages allegedly from the Congressman to the page were released that were more than “overly friendly”.

Speaker Hastert was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt about this. Hastert said that he only knew about the email, but never knew about the text messages until they were released last week.

Hewitt: “Did you or any other member of the House leadership or staff, to your knowledge, know anything about these IM’s until they began to be leaked to ABC News?”

Hastert: “Absolutely not. We didn’t know anything about them until they were dropped sometime Friday. And at that point, we confronted Foley, and he left.”

Read about this here on Hugh Hewitt’s blog.

Dems, smelling blood, are railing on about the scandal. I’m not sure how, but I am waiting for them to start blaming George Bush.

Stay tuned. It’s a good bet that both sides are holding other damaging information that will come out before the election.

Dan England blogs at Getting Elected Blogline and Townhall. Dan’s website is GettingElected.com.