{"id":5771,"date":"2011-08-11T22:42:19","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T02:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=5771"},"modified":"2011-08-10T14:42:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T18:42:14","slug":"pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","title":{"rendered":"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi say they will end the congressional page program, an initiative that brings high school students to Capitol Hill to work alongside elected officials.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The decision is a historic mistake and brings to an untimely end a nearly two-century-old American tradition,&#8221; writes Miles Taylor for the <em>Daily Caller<\/em> internet news site:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ever since the country\u2019s founding, when young boys worked as \u201cmessengers\u201d in the First Continental Congress, America\u2019s youth have played a role in the legislative process as \u201cpages\u201d and have had a chance to see the operations of the world\u2019s greatest democracy up close.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the decision to axe the program seems to have been made without consulting most members of Congress, many of whom have long cherished the program\u2019s value and its unique place in American history.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the weak rationale used to kick America\u2019s young people out of the legislative process was formulated by two private consulting firms, which counseled Boehner and Pelosi that the program was no longer needed, in part due to \u201cadvances in technology\u201d that have made having pages in the U.S. House less essential.<\/p>\n<p>The same simplistic logic could be used to conclude that, in an age of Skype and Twitter, members of Congress themselves need not come all the way to Washington to cast their votes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2011\/08\/09\/killing-the-page-program-means-ending-an-american-tradition\/#ixzz1UeIbF3Er\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi say they will end the congressional page program, an initiative that brings high school students to Capitol Hill to work alongside elected officials. &#8220;The decision is a historic mistake and brings to an untimely end a nearly two-century-old American tradition,&#8221; writes Miles Taylor for the Daily&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[100,5],"tags":[1376,2201],"class_list":["post-5771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-politics","tag-congressional-pages","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi say they will end the congressional page program, an initiative that brings high school students to Capitol Hill to work alongside elected officials. &#8220;The decision is a historic mistake and brings to an untimely end a nearly two-century-old American tradition,&#8221; writes Miles Taylor for the Daily&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-12T02:42:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-10T18:42:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition","og_description":"House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi say they will end the congressional page program, an initiative that brings high school students to Capitol Hill to work alongside elected officials. &#8220;The decision is a historic mistake and brings to an untimely end a nearly two-century-old American tradition,&#8221; writes Miles Taylor for the Daily&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-12T02:42:19+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-10T18:42:14+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition","name":"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-12T02:42:19+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-10T18:42:14+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/pelosi-and-boehner-terminate-200-year-old-congressional-pages-tradition#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pelosi and Boehner terminate 200-year-old Congressional pages tradition"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5804,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771\/revisions\/5804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}