Back in October 2006, I posted a blog item, “Foley and Hastert,” implying that if you read between the lines of the coverage of then-current Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) pederasty scandal, there seemed to be an unstated implication that Foley’s ally, Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, also was believed to have had some kind of gay scandal in his past.

From today’s NYT, the story of a woman who claims her brother was (at least) a second student who had a gay relationship with Coach Hastert (i.e., her brother can’t be the “Individual A” who blackmailed Hastert in 2010 because her brother died of AIDS in 1995):

In the interview on ABC, Ms. Burdge called Mr. Hastert, who taught and coached at Yorkville high school from 1966 until 1981, a father figure to her brother. She said she learned of the years of abuse when her brother revealed to her that he was gay eight years after he left high school. “I asked him, ‘When was your first same-sex experience?’ ” she said. “He looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert.’ I was stunned.” She continued, “And he just turned around and kind of looked at me and said, ‘Who is ever going to believe me?’ ” Ms. Burdge said she believed the abuse ended when her brother moved away after his high school graduation in 1971. Mr. Reinboldt died of AIDS at age 42. She also said she confronted Mr. Hastert when he unexpectedly came to her brother’s funeral, telling him, “I want you to know that your secret didn’t die here with my brother.” Ms. Burdge said she tried for years to get news organizations, including ABC News, and advocacy groups to pursue the story. She began in 2006 after it was revealed that Mr. Hastert had covered up claims that Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, had sent sexually explicit emails to congressional pages. She said she had given up on exposing Mr. Hastert. Then, two weeks ago, just before Mr. Hastert was indicted, she was contacted by the F.B.I.

So it’s possible that I was picking up on Ms. Burdge’s unpublished allegations via hints being dropped by rival politicians (perhaps John Boehner?) and journalists. We know now that the Foley scandal had been slowly coming to a boil since 2005 — Rahm Emanuel appears to have heard about it vaguely then — but it didn’t break through until the 2006 midterms were at their height. Now we know at least one individual was spreading stories about Hastert after the Foley scandal broke in September 2006.

Or maybe not. I can’t remember my thought processes that well behind that one post.

There’s also this fun bit:

In interviews, former students say Mr. Hastert was popular, partly because his classes often consisted of little more than watching movies, and because his teams kept winning. He also seemed to have a new Porsche almost every year, each a different color, and would let certain boys drive it — not just around the parking lot, but on long rides. “Some guys got to drive the Porsche and some didn’t,” said Jeff Nix, who was a student at the time. “We always wondered what you had to do to get to drive the Porsche. Steve got to drive the Porsche.”

No explanation is offered on how Coach Hastert could afford a new Porsche most years. Was he from a wealthy family?

From the Washington Post, it appears the Chinese government is trying to apply industrial scale Big Data processes to finding blackmailable and bribeable Americans.