Illegal immigrants made him do it

In an attempt to change the terms of the debate over the Mark Foley scandal, President George W. Bush said today that the Foley matter "only reaffirms my belief that we must crack down on illegal immigration."

Bush's decision to link the Foley scandal with the issue of illegal immigration struck some in Washington as unorthodox, but the president remained resolute that America's immigration crisis, and not the behavior of Foley, was the true root cause of the scandal.

"The question we need to be asking ourselves is not if Mark Foley behaved improperly," Bush said. "The question we need to ask is, were these congressional pages in our country legally?"

Bush said he would ask Congress to appropriate $84 million to investigate the legal status of all congressional pages at once: "What we may be seeing is an orchestrated attempt by 16-year-old boys with hot bodies to swarm into our country and tempt our lawmakers."

Minutes after the president's remarks, which Bush made at a Boys Club of America luncheon in Washington, D.C., Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert praised the president for pointing the finger at the true culprits in this case.

"It's not hard for a bunch of scheming young men with hot bodies to corrupt an older man through no fault of his own," Hastert said. "As a former high school wrestling coach, I speak from experience."

Elsewhere, Brad Pitt said that he and Angelina Jolie would adopt three babies next year, "but definitely not Tori Spelling's."

Humorist, television personality and film actor Andy Borowitz is author of "The Republican Playbook.," To find out more about Borowitz and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com