There were telltale signs that the “Real Time with Bill Maher” road show to Washington from its usual Los Angeles was going to be good. For one thing, the green room inside the studio at Atlantic Video was more of a cocktail-party scene than a room where guests mingle awkwardly before a show. 

For another, one of the show’s guests last Friday night, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), wore a relaxed expression as she lounged with aides before going on set knowing she’d being the lone Republican lawmaker facing a pack of Democratic sympathizers moving in like attack dogs on the Mark Foley scandal.

“I’m thrilled to be on the show,” Ros-Lehtinen declared. “No public official should ever be afraid to talk about any issue in the public domain.”

Other guests included comedian Robin Williams, fresh from alcohol rehab, Richard Clarke, President Bush’s former counterterrorism chief, and from their respective remote locations, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and centrist Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.). At the helm was Maher, the Libertarian host who routinely insults Bush and the Republican Party. Obscene. Brash. Maher always crosses the line.

And tonight, that line would involve young pages.

“I think I shocked some people,” said Maher in a late-night interview in a dirty back stairwell of Chinatown’s upscale restaurant and bar IndeBleu.

This was the understatement of the evening. Maher was referring to his declaration that pages who e-mailed with Foley were not innocent, but instead, fully aware of the congressman’s sexual attraction. “I always believe what I say and I know I’m right.”

Oh, but why stop there? “This guy used his gaydar to sus out who were the gay kids,” said Maher. “This is the kind of job that bright sophisticated kids take. [Foley] seemed awfully nice to them in e-mails.”

Maher doesn’t entirely blame the pages. “He’s guilty of using his position of authority to hit on people,” he said, but “he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy if you don’t put out he’d be vindictive.”

What’s Maher’s forecast for the upcoming midterm elections?

“The Democrats are going to win,” he says. “It’s what everyone wants.”

Maher’s favorite Capitol Hill lawmaker is Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is openly gay. “He’s very bright and really does the work,” he said. “So many people who you meet in politics are dead from the neck up. Barney is very bright.”

Just as he praises, he insults.

Earlier in the evening, during the show, he referred to Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) as “a nice man, but not the brightest bulb.”

Before the show, an overly energetic Maher staffer warmed up the crowd with obvious political humor. He spoke of his stay at the Willard Hotel that morning, where the entire show stayed, and said, “I had the Dick Cheney breakfast this morning. That’s where they pepper your face.”

Later he told the audience to turn off their cell phones, to not act like ass#*!@$, adding, “So strip down, get relaxed. It’s very different from Congress. I’m going to ask you to turn off your pages.”

Maher began his monologue by catering to the politically knowledgeable D.C. crowd. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, there’s a scandal going on. Nobody knows where Mark Foley is. Has anyone looked behind [House Speaker] Dennis Hastert [R-Ill.]? It’s when did he know and when did he eat it?”

The show began, and Maher plunged right in. “Didn’t everybody know about the creepy uncle who wanted to get into the Underoos?”

Countered Ros-Lehtinen, “Absolutely not. Being gay and being a pedophile have nothing to do with the other.”

She held her own in the tough crowd, adding, “Mark Foley put himself up as the protector of children. It’s outrageous, sickening.” And then she took a swing at Democrats, asking, “How about $90,000 in the freezer of [Rep.] William Jefferson [D-La.]?”

Williams also wanted to weigh in on Foley: “I didn’t see anything. He didn’t grab my ass.” He offered a suggestion to Congress, saying, “One solution is to bring [former Rep.] Tom DeLay [R-Texas] back as head of the House Ethics Committee.”

At the after-party, Maher’s handlers catered to his every whim as the famous host sequestered himself at a large table in a far corner of the darkened bar.

“He wants the music lower, it’s too loud,” a member of his staff told a bar employee.

Just then, two busty blonds circled around him and asked to take their photograph with him. Maher obliged without protest, all the while keeping an eye on the exotic African-American woman, Floretta, who was there as his girlfriend. In a tightly fitted blue-jean dress, she whizzed by and when asked for her surname replied, “I don’t have a last name, I’m just Flo.”

For much of the evening, Maher accepted guests to his corner table. They included Andrew Sullivan, the right-wing openly gay blogger; Jeff Gannon, a phony White House correspondent whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort websites; and soul singer John Legend.

Other notables at the soiree were Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” and his wife, Kathleen, who will leave WJLA-TV for Marriot International later this year, Jane Podesta of People magazine, her husband Don, of The Washington Post, and National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg.

Williams and Ros-Lehtinen, meanwhile, never showed to the after-party.