Well now, since I hail from good 'ole Illinois originally, I can tell ya that Denny was a Favorite Son for a damn long time...until the truth surfaced. Back in the day I always wondered how he ascended to Speaker of the House from being a former HS coach. That has nothing to do with the current Hastert debacle.

Yep, those good 'ole days weren't that good. Since this wasn't discovered until he was convicted of money laundering or whatever the charge was, income tax evasion...I forget what they got him for. He was paying hush money. But I'm not sure if during his stint as Speaker it was known that students were molested. Could be, wouldn't surprise me.

Hey MsBlank - what's your take on this?

More info on Hastert from my relative who lives in Illinois and might be paying more attention to this than I am right now.

Hastert did "money structuring" meaning he took out increments of under (I believe) $10,000 from the bank as to not alert authorities and then paid his blackmailer. When someone got wind of this, he was questioned by the Feds and lied. So he is facing two counts of bad stuff with the Feds...money structuring and lying about it when questioned. The amount was over $2.5 million.

As to the child victims, no one actually knows all of the details yet. But the new media is digging, I can assure you! Because this happened so many years ago when he was a HS coach, I wonder if the statute of limitations has run out, sort of a la Bill Cosby? I know one victim has died and his sister is pursuing some sort of legal action against Hastert.

My relative says he may only face 6 months in prison as it currently stands, for the Federal offenses. As to the victims, no one knows.

But back to Patti's original comment - I'm guessing both sides, the Dems and GOP, may not have known about this when Hastert was Speaker of the House.