Oy

What the what now?

Federal prosecutors in Arizona have opened a preliminary investigation of a camping trip Congressman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., took 10 years ago that included two teenage congressional pages, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News.

…Kolbe took a tour down the Grand Canyon in July 1996 with a group that included two 17-year-old males who had recently left the congressional page program.

National Park Service employees also were on the three-day trip, along with several Kolbe staffers and the congressman's sister. Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican legislator in both houses of Congress, had not acknowledged his homosexuality publicly at the time.

Kolbe's office issued a statement to NBC News denying that anything improper had happened. "The rafting trip back in 1996 consisted of five current staff, two former pages, and his sister," a spokeswoman for Kolbe said. "There is absolutely no basis and no truth to any [allegations of] inappropriate behavior."

Um, House Republicans sure seem to have a very different idea of what constitutes “inappropriate behavior” than I do. I don’t actually think that an adult Congressman has to bugger two 17-year-old boys on a camping trip before it gets “inappropriate.” Just going camping with them alone strikes me as inappropriate. And it has nothing to do with his sexuality or the sex of the kids—although I imagine people wouldn’t think it was just fucking swell if he were straight and had gone cavorting in the wilderness with two 17-year-old teenage girls.

One of the pages says nothing happened. The other refuses to comment to the media because “I might possibly be considered for a job in the administration." Wev.