Respecting the rights of the parents...

Former Republican congressman JC Watts just said on CNN that it was okay for Denny Hastert and congressional republicans to do nothing in the face of evidence that ex-congressman Mark Foley was preying on kids. Why? Because they were "respecting the rights of the parents." Supposedly the one kids' parents didn't want to make a public stink.

Okay, then what about the parents of the other hundreds of kids who over the years are in intimate contact with Mark Foley? Why wasn't the Republican leadership worried about what Foley might do to THOSE kids, or what he may have ALREADY DONE to those kids?

Say you've got a school. And the superintendent and senior staff are given evidence that a fellow teacher may be abusing students. But the parents of the student are worried about publicity. Do you:

A) Respect the parents' wishes and not call the cops, but at the very least, out of concern for the well-being of every other student in the teacher's class and the entire school, you check with all those other students, and take other steps, to make sure that the teacher hasn't abused any other children, and do you make sure that the teacher isn't given the chance to abuse any future students by at the very least removing him from the classroom?

Or do you:

B) Ask the teacher if he abuses kids, and when he says "no," you say "okay, just don't do it again," then leave him in the same job he had before, interacting with even more kids, and ignoring whether he has abused any other kids and whether he may abuse again?

If you're Republicans Denny Hastert, John Boehner, Tom Reynolds, John Shimkus and Rodney Alexander you chose B.

How did you score?