Pages Behaving Badly

Look, basically the Congressional Page Program is like band camp for government geeks. While I'm sure a couple of the pages are, like, popular football players or prom queens or whatever, the page program is mostly for kids that think it's cool wearing these uniforms and delivering mail and being around Congress Members despite the fact that most of them are, themselves, decidedly uncool. And then, at night, the horny teenagers high on "access" go back to their dorms and misbehave while the adults turn a semi-blind eye and that's the tradition.

But ever since Mark Foley got caught fucking pages, everyone has started paying attention to the fact that nerds misbehave just as much as the cool kids (says the girl who always show up an hour late for school, forged hall passes from teachers and excuses from her mother and got away with it because she was a huge nerd). And so it is that four such pages (as well as a rumored fifth) were dismissed so far this year for shoplifting and public oral sex-having.

The Republicans that were on the House Page Board resigned because they weren't kept well-enough informed about the sexual and shopping peccadilloes of the young pages. And, you know, in an effort to get the press to do to the Democrats what Foley did to them (dick them over in the next election). But, while shoplifting and public sexual conduct are dismissal-worthy offenses, they aren't exactly full court press-worthy (or probably even uncommon) offenses.

In addition, Minority Leader Boehner and the two resignees (Capito and Brown-Waite) are threatening to not reappoint any Republicans to the Page Board as a way to call more attention to the ever-so-important issue of teenage misbehavior. It will also, incidentally, fuck over the teenagers who are expecting to start their page-ships next semester, but who give a fuck about those kids, anyway. These kids are the ones who Republicans think can help them regain the moral high ground or something.

 Partisan Fallout Over House Page Misconduct [Washington Post]