Lawmaker Makes Lewd Comment To 17 Year-Old Girl: ‘I Got A Snake Sitting Under My Desk Here’
State Rep. Ernest Hewett (D-CT) was stripped of his leadership position as Deputy Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives this week after he was caught on tape making an inappropriate remark to a high school student testifying before a legislative committee.
The 17 year-old student was at the hearing to ask the committee to continue a funding to the Connecticut Science Center, where she said she was “usually a very shy person” but the Center’s program enabled her to teach “children about certain things like snakes.”
When she was done testifying, Hewett told the teen "
i)f you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here."
full: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/01/1660811/lawmaker-makes-lewd-comment-to-17-year-old-girl-i-got-a-snake-sitting-under-my-desk-here/
See also Hartford Courant: "Legislator Accused Of Lewd Remark Loses His Deputy Speaker's Post"
Who should replace him, Neville Flynn?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to alp227 (Original post)
haven't been able to come up with a logical explanation for what else it could mean 
and did so horribly and awkwardly.
I have so many things to add . . . but I'll limit it to one:
She was/is underage.
He said that to a child!
"I purposely will not have female interns. My intern now is a male. I want to keep it like that. I've had female interns in the past that sit in my office all day. I thought it was totally weird and I didn't want another. As a matter of fact, I went four, maybe six years without having an intern at all because of stuff like that. I have a male intern, the last two I've had were male."
He went on to say that he could not choose to hire only male interns, but would prefer not to be assigned females, because "that way that keeps me good and that keeps everybody else good."
... What Hewett meant by his comment in the first place is still not entirely clear. He claims it simply came out wrong, and some journalists have argued that his intentions were innocent, and that the comment was merely odd, not inappropriate. Dave Weigel at Slate, for example, argues that Hewett is is "completely getting railroaded," and is the victim of an "overreaction to an errant word."
(Some may respectfully disagree)
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/ernest-hewett-female-interns_n_2798849.html
On edit: corrected the above link. Duh. Sorry.
