Congress - Irrelevant Since 1982

page boy
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Because it's fun to follow political scandals, I was just doing a little reading up on now-former Congressman Mark Foley, Republican of Florida's 16th district. Mark crossed a line with one of his page boys, sending what were initially described as "inappropriate" emails and text messages, but what may in fact be better described as "sexually explicit," "harrassing," and "illegal."

What might be even more fun about this scandal is that it appears several members of the GOP/House leadership may have known about it, including Dennis "Jowls" Hastert and John "Hitting On Pages Gives Me A" Boehner.

The Congressional Page Program has been around since 1829, back when members of Congress could enjoy young boys at their leisure without the public knowing anything about it. All of that was ruined in 1971 when they started allowing girls to join in the fun. Once you add girls to the mix, moral standards become inherently raised. Because, you see, girls are a bunch of tattle-tales. So for eleven brutal years, members of Congress stopped using the pages for sexual gratification. Suddenly, a code was expected.

But a 142-year habit is hard to break. So in 1982, eleven years after U.S. Representatives stopped doing whatever they wanted to the young hotties in the Page Program, two members of Congress couldn't hold out any longer, banging a page each.

Republican Daniel Crane had sex with a female page, and appropriately-named Democrat Gerry Studds had sex with a male page during a summer recess tour in Europe.

Congress took action. Neither denied the charges, and both were censured. Rep. Crane lost his re-election bid that year. Rep. Studds served in the House until 1997. Only a man called Studds could weather that kind of storm with such aplomb.

But the more important outcome of the 1982 scandal was an overhaul of the Page Program. It was decided that the young pages were too hot. They were too enticing. Too flirtatious. Their innocence would be the downfall of the entire government if action wasn't taken. And stat.

So Congress raised the Page Program's minimum age requirement from fourteen to sixteen.

If only they had done that prior to 1982, the two Congressmen could've never had sex with their 17-year-old pages.