Boston Herald! GOP Witless vs. DC Clueless

[pnwmom]

http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=160776&srvc=home

Boston Herald is the conservative rag in Boston, so hopefully this editorial is a good sign! They are disgusted . . .

"In the Alice in Wonderland world that is Washington, it is now the congressional page program that is endangered - not congressional predators and their enablers in the House leadership.

Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) said in an interview with CNN, “Some members betray their trust by taking advantage of them . We should not subject young men and women to this kind of activity, this kind of vulnerability.”

Therefore, LaHood insisted it’s the program that should be shut down, presumably until Congress finds a way to keep its more predatory members from preying on them. Yes, within the Washington Beltway, up is down and down is up. Let’s blame the victims for being victimized and send them all home where they will be safe.

Then, of course, there’s Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who clearly has put his party’s need to hold on to power above the welfare of the young men and women who work as pages. Beyond the scandal brought to his doorstep by the now departed Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), Hastert risks making a genuine fool of himself in the process - because, of course, it’s all a big conspiracy.

SNIP

There isn't a word against the Democrats in this editorial -- they put all the blame squarely where it belongs.

[Demit]

1. Maybe shutting down the program isn't such a bad idea.

Or at least reforming it drastically, as Jonathan Turley suggests at the end of the editorial.

Not because it looks like a punishment of the victims, the pages, but because of how the program has been likely used—as a kind of stepping stone for politically connected kids who then are vulnerable to being exploited by those who hold the power to either help them or hurt them, in their futures. So the kids who are maybe planning a career in politics, kids who want to get ahead, are confronted with a situation at simply too young an age. The choice: to say no unequivocally; to play along; or to hopefully finesse the situation by seeming to play along. If the page program initially started out as a way to introduce youngsters to how government works—and I'm assuming here that the motive was pure—it has turned into something too fraught with implications for terrible abuse of power. The temptation to wield power for its own sake is already too strong for some elected officials to resist. To provide a constantly renewed pool of freshfaced youngsters who will be awed or even cowed by that power is, even without any sexual component, too potentially corrupting for everyone.

They originally lowered the age of pages, thinking that that would deter congress members from seeking sexual liaisons. We see the consequences of that. I think they should up the age at least into the early twenties. Make it a plum job for adults. Washington is a place for trading favors and always will be; adults are better equipped to know if and how and how far they want to go in doing that. They've seen enough by then to be cynical for a reason. As it exists now the program is making kids cynical far too young and that is heartbreaking.