Hastert in the hot seat: 'I'm not going to' resign

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert brushed aside resignation talk Tuesday, even as the Republicans' No. 2 House leader contradicted him in the page scandal.

Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said he wouldn't resign as speaker in the controversy over Rep. Mark Foley's salacious computer exchanges with former pages.

''I'm not going to do that,'' Hastert said.

Back home in Illinois, the scandal is becoming an issue in the campaign to replace GOP Rep. Henry Hyde. Democrat Tammy Duckworth argued opponent Peter Roskam would be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Hastert. But a Roskam spokesman said he does not see how Roskam can be tied to the Foley scandal; Roskam is not in the U.S. House.

AP

'Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account ... or he deliberately looked the other way.'' -- editorial from Washington Times

"The fact that they just walked away from this, it sounds like they were trying to protect one of their own members rather than these young boys." -- conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie

"If you took the impropriety of every congressman and senator in Washington, D.C., [as an excuse to demand resignations], I don't think anybody would be left. He's been very fair to the city of Chicago." -- Mayor Daley

''No one in the leadership, including Speaker Hastert, had any knowledge of the warped and sexually explicit instant messages.'' -- GOP House leader John Boehner, a few hours after criticizing Hastert