Enough Already!

You may think I'm pretending to be disgusted by this story, as a means to giving it more exposure, but I'm sincere. I don't care about the personal lives of politicians as long as they're not selling off a part of the country to maintain it.

Utah's House majority leader said late Thursday he paid a woman $150,000 to keep silent about going nude "hot-tubbing" with her when she was minor a quarter century ago.

In a shocking statement on the House floor, Kevin Garn, 55... said he paid her to keep quiet about the incident during his unsuccessful U.S. congressional bid in 2002, but did not have sexual contact with her.

Garn said the woman, who he didn't identify on the floor, has been calling news outlets and that he wanted to be open about the incident that occurred when he was 28 years old, before any stories appeared.

A woman identifying herself as Cheryl Maher told The Salt Lake Tribune that she and Garn were in a hot tub nude when she was 15 years old.

"This has just been a nightmare for me," Maher said in a telephone interview with the newspaper from New Hampshire. "I just want to tell the truth because it's part of the healing process for me."

Garn told The Associated Press early Friday that Maher was the woman and that they were nude during a "spur of the moment" skinny dip. He said she worked for him in a warehouse.

"We sat there and that was it," Garn said.

First of all I believe him. Second, personal lives etc etc. Third of all, it was a quarter of a century ago, when Garn was a private citizen. There are plenty of legitmate reasons to hound our elected officials - can't we focus on them?