I understand that, Penelope. But while they may have been somewhat hypocritical to criticize Mr. Clinton's affair, it is unfair to equate their hypocrisy to Mr. Clinton's illegal actions. Mr. Vitter may well be forced to leave his position, which may be what he deserves, but Mr. Clinton was not purged out of office for doing something at least as dishonorable as what Vitter did. That's all I'm saying.Penelope wrote:criddic, you ignoramus, it's not the issue of Clinton lying under oath, it's the issue of these men disparaging Clinton's reputation and attempting to destroy him while engaging in the same behavior--they were lying to the American people, and what makes it worse, they were doing so with the intention of destroying not just another person but crippling our government in the process.
The D.C. Madam
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
criddic, you ignoramus, it's not the issue of Clinton lying under oath, it's the issue of these men disparaging Clinton's reputation and attempting to destroy him while engaging in the same behavior--they were lying to the American people, and what makes it worse, they were doing so with the intention of destroying not just another person but crippling our government in the process.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
Clinton's biggest crime was not his infidelity, though morally distasteful, but his lying UNDER OATH about it. When will people get that through their heads?
The one thing we can say that Vitter hasn't done, as far as I know, is lie under oath. What he did was reprehensible by most standards, yes. What Clinton did was more so because he not only had sex in his workplace with an intern, but lied about it under oath while being questioned in a case about another infidelity accusation. I'm not defending anyone who breaks the law here, but I am correcting the asinine argument that has been prevalent in Clinton-sympathizers that he was targeted for a non-crime, which is not true. Newt Gingrich may have been cheating on his wife, but didn't lie under oath about it. That may seem like splitting hairs, but it's a major difference. None of these people made the right choice in their behavior. That doesn't make it okay to distort the nature of what happened nearly a decade ago.
The one thing we can say that Vitter hasn't done, as far as I know, is lie under oath. What he did was reprehensible by most standards, yes. What Clinton did was more so because he not only had sex in his workplace with an intern, but lied about it under oath while being questioned in a case about another infidelity accusation. I'm not defending anyone who breaks the law here, but I am correcting the asinine argument that has been prevalent in Clinton-sympathizers that he was targeted for a non-crime, which is not true. Newt Gingrich may have been cheating on his wife, but didn't lie under oath about it. That may seem like splitting hairs, but it's a major difference. None of these people made the right choice in their behavior. That doesn't make it okay to distort the nature of what happened nearly a decade ago.
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
From the New York Times:
I Did Have Sexual Relations With That Woman
By FRANK RICH
IT’S not just the resurgence of Al Qaeda that is taking us back full circle to the fateful first summer of the Bush presidency. It’s the hot sweat emanating from Washington. Once again the capital is titillated by a scandal featuring a member of Congress, a woman who is not his wife and a rumor of crime. Gary Condit, the former Democratic congressman from California, has passed the torch of below-the-Beltway sleaziness to David Vitter, an incumbent (as of Friday) Republican senator from Louisiana.
Mr. Vitter briefly faced the press to explain his “very serious sin,” accompanied by a wife who might double for the former Mrs. Jim McGreevey. He had no choice once snoops hired by the avenging pornographer Larry Flynt unearthed his number in the voluminous phone records of the so-called D.C. Madam, now the subject of a still-young criminal investigation. Newspapers back home also linked the senator to a defunct New Orleans brothel, a charge Mr. Vitter denies. That brothel’s former madam, while insisting he had been a client, was one of his few defenders last week. “Just because people visit a whorehouse doesn’t make them a bad person,” she helpfully told the Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate.
Mr. Vitter is not known for being so forgiving a soul when it comes to others’ transgressions. Even more than Mr. Condit, who once co-sponsored a bill calling for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, Mr. Vitter is a holier-than-thou family-values panderer. He recruited his preteen children for speaking roles in his campaign ads and, terrorism notwithstanding, declared that there is no “more important” issue facing America than altering the Constitution to defend marriage.
But hypocrisy is a hardy bipartisan perennial on Capitol Hill, and hardly news. This scandal may leave a more enduring imprint. It comes with a momentous pedigree. Mr. Vitter first went to Washington as a young congressman in 1999, to replace Robert Livingston, the Republican leader who had been anointed to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House. Mr. Livingston’s seat had abruptly become vacant after none other than Mr. Flynt outed him for committing adultery. Since we now know that Mr. Gingrich was also practicing infidelity back then — while leading the Clinton impeachment crusade, no less — the Vitter scandal can be seen as the culmination of an inexorable sea change in his party.
And it is President Bush who will be left holding the bag in history. As the new National Intelligence Estimate confirms the failure of the war against Al Qaeda and each day of quagmire signals the failure of the war in Iraq, so the case of the fallen senator from the Big Easy can stand as an epitaph for a third lost war in our 43rd president’s legacy: the war against sex.
During the 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush and his running mate made a point of promising to “set an example for our children” and to “uphold the honor and the dignity of the office.” They didn’t just mean that there would be no more extramarital sex in the White House. As a matter of public policy, abstinence was in; abortion rights, family planning and homosexuality were out. Mr. Bush’s Federal Communications Commission stood ready to punish the networks for four-letter words and wardrobe malfunctions. The surgeon general was forbidden to mention condoms or the morning-after pill.
To say that this ambitious program has fared no better than the creation of an Iraqi unity government is an understatement. The sole lasting benchmark to be met in the Bush White House’s antisex agenda was the elevation of anti-Roe judges to the federal bench. Otherwise, Sodom and Gomorrah are thrashing the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition day and night.
The one federal official caught on the D.C. Madam’s phone logs ahead of Mr. Vitter, Randall Tobias, was a Bush State Department official whose tasks had included enforcing a prostitution ban on countries receiving AIDS aid. Last month Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network succeeded in getting a federal court to throw out the F.C.C.’s “indecency” fines. Polls show unchanging majority support for abortion rights and growing support for legal recognition of same-sex unions exemplified by Mary Cheney’s.
Most amazing is the cultural makeover of Mr. Bush’s own party. The G.O.P. that began the century in the thrall of Rick Santorum, Bill Frist and George Allen has become the brand of Mark Foley and Mr. Vitter. Not a single Republican heavyweight showed up at Jerry Falwell’s funeral. Younger evangelical Christians, who may care more about protecting the environment than policing gay people, are up for political grabs.
Nowhere is this cultural revolution more visible — or more fun to watch — than in the G.O.P. campaign for the White House. Forty years late, the party establishment is finally having its own middle-aged version of the summer of love, and it’s a trip. The co-chairman of John McCain’s campaign in Florida has been charged with trying to solicit gay sex from a plainclothes police officer. Over at YouTube, viewers are flocking to a popular new mock-music video in which “Obama Girl” taunts her rival: “Giuliani Girl, you stop your fussin’/ At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”
As Margery Eagan, a columnist at The Boston Herald, has observed, even the front-runners’ wives are getting into the act, trying to one-up one another with displays of what she described as their “ample and aging” cleavage. The décolletage primary was kicked off early this year by the irrepressible Judith Giuliani, who posed for Harper’s Bazaar giving her husband a passionate kiss. “I’ve always liked strong, macho men,” she said. This was before we learned she had married two such men, not one, before catching the eye of America’s Mayor at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar, while he was still married to someone else.
Whatever the ultimate fate of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, it is the straw that stirs the bubbling brew that is the post-Bush Republican Party. The idea that a thrice-married, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights candidate is holding on as front-runner is understandably driving the G.O.P.’s increasingly marginalized cultural warriors insane. Not without reason do they fear that he is in the vanguard of a new Republican age of Addams-family values and moral relativism. Once a truculent law-and-order absolutist, Mr. Giuliani has even shrugged off the cocaine charges leveled against his departed South Carolina campaign chairman, the state treasurer Thomas Ravenel, as a “highly personal” matter.
The religious right’s own favorite sons, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, are no more likely to get the nomination than Ron Paul or, for that matter, RuPaul. The party’s faith-based oligarchs are getting frantic. Disregarding a warning from James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said in March that he didn’t consider Fred Thompson a Christian, they desperately started fixating on the former Tennessee senator as their savior. When it was reported this month that Mr. Thompson had worked as a lobbyist for an abortion rights organization in the 1990s, they credulously bought his denials and his spokesman’s reassurance that “there’s no documents to prove it, no billing records.” Last week The New York Times found the billing records.
No one is stepping more boldly into this values vacuum than Mitt Romney. In contrast to Mr. Giuliani, the former Massachusetts governor has not only disowned his past as a social liberal but is also running as a paragon of moral rectitude. He is even embracing one of the more costly failed Bush sex initiatives, abstinence education, just as states are abandoning it for being ineffective. He never stops reminding voters that he is the only top-tier candidate still married to his first wife.
In a Web video strikingly reminiscent of the Vitter campaign ads, the entire multigenerational Romney brood gathers round to enact their wholesome Christmas festivities. Last week Mr. Romney unveiled a new commercial decrying American culture as “a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.” Unlike Mr. Giuliani, you see, he gets along with his children, and unlike Mr. Thompson, he has never been in bed with the perverted Hollywood responsible for the likes of “Law & Order.”
There are those who argue Mr. Romney’s campaign is doomed because he is a Mormon, a religion some voters regard almost as suspiciously as Scientology, but two other problems may prove more threatening to his candidacy. The first is that in American public life piety always goeth before a fall. There had better not be any skeletons in his closet. Already Senator Brownback has accused Mr. Romney of pushing hard-core pornography because of his close association with (and large campaign contributions from) the Marriott family, whose hotel chain has prospered mightily from its X-rated video menu.
The other problem is more profound: Mr. Romney is swimming against a swift tide of history in both culture and politics. Just as the neocons had their moment in power in the Bush era and squandered it in Iraq, so the values crowd was handed its moment of ascendancy and imploded in debacles ranging from Terri Schiavo to Ted Haggard to David Vitter. By this point it’s safe to say that even some Republican primary voters are sick enough of their party’s preacher politicians that they’d consider hitting a cigar bar or two with Judith Giuliani.
I Did Have Sexual Relations With That Woman
By FRANK RICH
IT’S not just the resurgence of Al Qaeda that is taking us back full circle to the fateful first summer of the Bush presidency. It’s the hot sweat emanating from Washington. Once again the capital is titillated by a scandal featuring a member of Congress, a woman who is not his wife and a rumor of crime. Gary Condit, the former Democratic congressman from California, has passed the torch of below-the-Beltway sleaziness to David Vitter, an incumbent (as of Friday) Republican senator from Louisiana.
Mr. Vitter briefly faced the press to explain his “very serious sin,” accompanied by a wife who might double for the former Mrs. Jim McGreevey. He had no choice once snoops hired by the avenging pornographer Larry Flynt unearthed his number in the voluminous phone records of the so-called D.C. Madam, now the subject of a still-young criminal investigation. Newspapers back home also linked the senator to a defunct New Orleans brothel, a charge Mr. Vitter denies. That brothel’s former madam, while insisting he had been a client, was one of his few defenders last week. “Just because people visit a whorehouse doesn’t make them a bad person,” she helpfully told the Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate.
Mr. Vitter is not known for being so forgiving a soul when it comes to others’ transgressions. Even more than Mr. Condit, who once co-sponsored a bill calling for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, Mr. Vitter is a holier-than-thou family-values panderer. He recruited his preteen children for speaking roles in his campaign ads and, terrorism notwithstanding, declared that there is no “more important” issue facing America than altering the Constitution to defend marriage.
But hypocrisy is a hardy bipartisan perennial on Capitol Hill, and hardly news. This scandal may leave a more enduring imprint. It comes with a momentous pedigree. Mr. Vitter first went to Washington as a young congressman in 1999, to replace Robert Livingston, the Republican leader who had been anointed to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House. Mr. Livingston’s seat had abruptly become vacant after none other than Mr. Flynt outed him for committing adultery. Since we now know that Mr. Gingrich was also practicing infidelity back then — while leading the Clinton impeachment crusade, no less — the Vitter scandal can be seen as the culmination of an inexorable sea change in his party.
And it is President Bush who will be left holding the bag in history. As the new National Intelligence Estimate confirms the failure of the war against Al Qaeda and each day of quagmire signals the failure of the war in Iraq, so the case of the fallen senator from the Big Easy can stand as an epitaph for a third lost war in our 43rd president’s legacy: the war against sex.
During the 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush and his running mate made a point of promising to “set an example for our children” and to “uphold the honor and the dignity of the office.” They didn’t just mean that there would be no more extramarital sex in the White House. As a matter of public policy, abstinence was in; abortion rights, family planning and homosexuality were out. Mr. Bush’s Federal Communications Commission stood ready to punish the networks for four-letter words and wardrobe malfunctions. The surgeon general was forbidden to mention condoms or the morning-after pill.
To say that this ambitious program has fared no better than the creation of an Iraqi unity government is an understatement. The sole lasting benchmark to be met in the Bush White House’s antisex agenda was the elevation of anti-Roe judges to the federal bench. Otherwise, Sodom and Gomorrah are thrashing the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition day and night.
The one federal official caught on the D.C. Madam’s phone logs ahead of Mr. Vitter, Randall Tobias, was a Bush State Department official whose tasks had included enforcing a prostitution ban on countries receiving AIDS aid. Last month Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network succeeded in getting a federal court to throw out the F.C.C.’s “indecency” fines. Polls show unchanging majority support for abortion rights and growing support for legal recognition of same-sex unions exemplified by Mary Cheney’s.
Most amazing is the cultural makeover of Mr. Bush’s own party. The G.O.P. that began the century in the thrall of Rick Santorum, Bill Frist and George Allen has become the brand of Mark Foley and Mr. Vitter. Not a single Republican heavyweight showed up at Jerry Falwell’s funeral. Younger evangelical Christians, who may care more about protecting the environment than policing gay people, are up for political grabs.
Nowhere is this cultural revolution more visible — or more fun to watch — than in the G.O.P. campaign for the White House. Forty years late, the party establishment is finally having its own middle-aged version of the summer of love, and it’s a trip. The co-chairman of John McCain’s campaign in Florida has been charged with trying to solicit gay sex from a plainclothes police officer. Over at YouTube, viewers are flocking to a popular new mock-music video in which “Obama Girl” taunts her rival: “Giuliani Girl, you stop your fussin’/ At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”
As Margery Eagan, a columnist at The Boston Herald, has observed, even the front-runners’ wives are getting into the act, trying to one-up one another with displays of what she described as their “ample and aging” cleavage. The décolletage primary was kicked off early this year by the irrepressible Judith Giuliani, who posed for Harper’s Bazaar giving her husband a passionate kiss. “I’ve always liked strong, macho men,” she said. This was before we learned she had married two such men, not one, before catching the eye of America’s Mayor at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar, while he was still married to someone else.
Whatever the ultimate fate of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, it is the straw that stirs the bubbling brew that is the post-Bush Republican Party. The idea that a thrice-married, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights candidate is holding on as front-runner is understandably driving the G.O.P.’s increasingly marginalized cultural warriors insane. Not without reason do they fear that he is in the vanguard of a new Republican age of Addams-family values and moral relativism. Once a truculent law-and-order absolutist, Mr. Giuliani has even shrugged off the cocaine charges leveled against his departed South Carolina campaign chairman, the state treasurer Thomas Ravenel, as a “highly personal” matter.
The religious right’s own favorite sons, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, are no more likely to get the nomination than Ron Paul or, for that matter, RuPaul. The party’s faith-based oligarchs are getting frantic. Disregarding a warning from James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said in March that he didn’t consider Fred Thompson a Christian, they desperately started fixating on the former Tennessee senator as their savior. When it was reported this month that Mr. Thompson had worked as a lobbyist for an abortion rights organization in the 1990s, they credulously bought his denials and his spokesman’s reassurance that “there’s no documents to prove it, no billing records.” Last week The New York Times found the billing records.
No one is stepping more boldly into this values vacuum than Mitt Romney. In contrast to Mr. Giuliani, the former Massachusetts governor has not only disowned his past as a social liberal but is also running as a paragon of moral rectitude. He is even embracing one of the more costly failed Bush sex initiatives, abstinence education, just as states are abandoning it for being ineffective. He never stops reminding voters that he is the only top-tier candidate still married to his first wife.
In a Web video strikingly reminiscent of the Vitter campaign ads, the entire multigenerational Romney brood gathers round to enact their wholesome Christmas festivities. Last week Mr. Romney unveiled a new commercial decrying American culture as “a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.” Unlike Mr. Giuliani, you see, he gets along with his children, and unlike Mr. Thompson, he has never been in bed with the perverted Hollywood responsible for the likes of “Law & Order.”
There are those who argue Mr. Romney’s campaign is doomed because he is a Mormon, a religion some voters regard almost as suspiciously as Scientology, but two other problems may prove more threatening to his candidacy. The first is that in American public life piety always goeth before a fall. There had better not be any skeletons in his closet. Already Senator Brownback has accused Mr. Romney of pushing hard-core pornography because of his close association with (and large campaign contributions from) the Marriott family, whose hotel chain has prospered mightily from its X-rated video menu.
The other problem is more profound: Mr. Romney is swimming against a swift tide of history in both culture and politics. Just as the neocons had their moment in power in the Bush era and squandered it in Iraq, so the values crowd was handed its moment of ascendancy and imploded in debacles ranging from Terri Schiavo to Ted Haggard to David Vitter. By this point it’s safe to say that even some Republican primary voters are sick enough of their party’s preacher politicians that they’d consider hitting a cigar bar or two with Judith Giuliani.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Todd, I suspect the reason that the press seems satisfied with Vitter is because the heart of the story here really is not the hiring of prostitutes (even though it's illegal, I think most Washington media types and politicos would just shrug it off as a victimless crime) but rather Vitter's hypocrisy. This is, after all, a man who rode into office on high "moral" grounds and emphasizing the "sanctity of marriage) and demonizing others (eg, gays, Bill Clinton) so it is delightful for him to be revealed as the fraud and hypocrite he is.kaytodd wrote:Hard to feel sorry for Vitter, since his own behavior put him in this boat. But it is odd that there is no outcry from the media to make the other names on the list public. Are the columnists and TV talking heads who love these kind of scandals satisfied with the carcasses of a freshman Senator from a small southern state and two low level State Department officials? I'll bet there are much better names on that list.
Why haven't any of the other names been revealed? Who decides which names are revealed and when?
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Vitter may end up resigning. Looks like nobody else on the D.C. Madam's list is going to be made public, keeping 100% of the focus of this scandal on him alone. Hard to feel sorry for Vitter, since his own behavior put him in this boat. But it is odd that there is no outcry from the media to make the other names on the list public. Are the columnists and TV talking heads who love these kind of scandals satisfied with the carcasses of a freshman Senator from a small southern state and two low level State Department officials? I'll bet there are much better names on that list.
Why haven't any of the other names been revealed? Who decides which names are revealed and when?
Why haven't any of the other names been revealed? Who decides which names are revealed and when?
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
From the Harvard Business Review:
LARRY FLYNT FINDS FIVE VITTER PROSTITUTES
By Pam Spaulding
July 21, 2007
Does that mean the Louisiana family values senator was lying at his press conference when he said that all of his philandering was with a DC Madam call girl long ago, and he and his wife Wendy handled the indiscretion privately? That's what Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt said on Larry King Live. More after the jump.
Flynt's been working with local media down there (via the has a diaper fetish and would pay the women to dress him up like a baby, as well as a story that he had a child with one of the prostitute, Wendy Cortez, and that mother and child live in suburban Washington, where they receive financial support from Sen. Baby-Daddy.
I have to agree with DKos diarist davefromqueens:
Of course I'd choose not to do any of this [blog about it] if Vitter would abide by HIS own stated standards for public office and submit his resignation immediately. But to expect a right winger to have honesty and integrity may be asking the impossible.
...These RW conservatives believe in regulating the wombs, bedrooms, and sex lives of every adult American. If Vitter had openly come out in 1998 saying that what Bill Clinton did was no one else's business and that govt should not be regulating other people's bedrooms, I wouldn't be writing this diary. Vitter is responsible for HIS behavior and the consequences that flow from it.
Adding to the fun: Today, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Senate Ethics complaint against Vitter.
Engaging the services of a prostitute violates both District of Columbia and Louisiana criminal law.
The Senate Ethics Manual provides that certain conduct may be improper even though it does not violate specific Senate rules or regulations. (A .pdf version of the Senate Ethics Manual can be found at the website of the Senate Ethics Committee.)
That type of conduct by a Senator has been characterized as "improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate." This rule is intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the Senate as a whole. The Ethics Manual explains that "improper conduct" is given meaning by considering "generally accepted standards of conduct, the letter and spirit of laws and Rules..."
Whether or not Sen. Vitter is ultimately adjudicated to have broken any criminal laws, the Senate may still discipline him for improper conduct as it has other members in the past.
Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend, honored as "Best LGBT Blog" in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards.
LARRY FLYNT FINDS FIVE VITTER PROSTITUTES
By Pam Spaulding
July 21, 2007
Does that mean the Louisiana family values senator was lying at his press conference when he said that all of his philandering was with a DC Madam call girl long ago, and he and his wife Wendy handled the indiscretion privately? That's what Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt said on Larry King Live. More after the jump.
Flynt's been working with local media down there (via the has a diaper fetish and would pay the women to dress him up like a baby, as well as a story that he had a child with one of the prostitute, Wendy Cortez, and that mother and child live in suburban Washington, where they receive financial support from Sen. Baby-Daddy.
I have to agree with DKos diarist davefromqueens:
Of course I'd choose not to do any of this [blog about it] if Vitter would abide by HIS own stated standards for public office and submit his resignation immediately. But to expect a right winger to have honesty and integrity may be asking the impossible.
...These RW conservatives believe in regulating the wombs, bedrooms, and sex lives of every adult American. If Vitter had openly come out in 1998 saying that what Bill Clinton did was no one else's business and that govt should not be regulating other people's bedrooms, I wouldn't be writing this diary. Vitter is responsible for HIS behavior and the consequences that flow from it.
Adding to the fun: Today, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Senate Ethics complaint against Vitter.
Engaging the services of a prostitute violates both District of Columbia and Louisiana criminal law.
The Senate Ethics Manual provides that certain conduct may be improper even though it does not violate specific Senate rules or regulations. (A .pdf version of the Senate Ethics Manual can be found at the website of the Senate Ethics Committee.)
That type of conduct by a Senator has been characterized as "improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate." This rule is intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the Senate as a whole. The Ethics Manual explains that "improper conduct" is given meaning by considering "generally accepted standards of conduct, the letter and spirit of laws and Rules..."
Whether or not Sen. Vitter is ultimately adjudicated to have broken any criminal laws, the Senate may still discipline him for improper conduct as it has other members in the past.
Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend, honored as "Best LGBT Blog" in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
"There once was a man named Vitter/
Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter/
But with stories of women/
And all of his sinnin’/
He knows his career’s in the -- oh, never mind."
-- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), quoted by The Hill, on Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) prostitution scandal.
Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter/
But with stories of women/
And all of his sinnin’/
He knows his career’s in the -- oh, never mind."
-- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), quoted by The Hill, on Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) prostitution scandal.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
I fucking love the D.C. Madam. She's so poised and above it all in interviews. Apparently, she knew Senator Vitter only as "David from C Street". There are quite a lot of "working girls" in that section of town so I'm sure he diversified his selections from time to time.
Edited By flipp525 on 1184704759
Edited By flipp525 on 1184704759
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I understand there are over 15,000 phone numbers on the D.C. Madam's list. I cannot wait to see who else is on that list.
Larry Flynt is taking credit for forcing Vitter to go public about his use of prostitutes. Flynt is also taking credit for forcing Bob Livingston to go public about his having a mistress while he was married. He was the guy who was going to become Speaker of the House when the mistress became public during the climax of the Clinton impeachment hearings.
Disclosure: before he became a Senator, Vitter was a Congressman from Louisiana's First Congressional District. This is the same seat Livingston held. I live in that district.
Bobby Jindal (whose parents are immigrants from India), another right wing Republican, is now holding that seat and is a prohibitive favorite to become the next governor of Louisiana. I have never even heard rumors of Jindal being unfaithful (Vittter's and Livingston's infidelities were well known in Washington and down here) so I am hopeful Flynt will not have an opportunity for a hat trick in my Congressional district. Bobby better be careful. His wife is gorgeous but that does not stop a lot of married guys from playing around. Sounds like Bobby will be busted if he does.
Larry Flynt is taking credit for forcing Vitter to go public about his use of prostitutes. Flynt is also taking credit for forcing Bob Livingston to go public about his having a mistress while he was married. He was the guy who was going to become Speaker of the House when the mistress became public during the climax of the Clinton impeachment hearings.
Disclosure: before he became a Senator, Vitter was a Congressman from Louisiana's First Congressional District. This is the same seat Livingston held. I live in that district.
Bobby Jindal (whose parents are immigrants from India), another right wing Republican, is now holding that seat and is a prohibitive favorite to become the next governor of Louisiana. I have never even heard rumors of Jindal being unfaithful (Vittter's and Livingston's infidelities were well known in Washington and down here) so I am hopeful Flynt will not have an opportunity for a hat trick in my Congressional district. Bobby better be careful. His wife is gorgeous but that does not stop a lot of married guys from playing around. Sounds like Bobby will be busted if he does.
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
So what has Sen. David Vitter, this bastion of marital fidelity, had to say about loving members of the same sex being united in marriage? It's too easy to guess:
From Wikipedia:
In June 2006, in line with several of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, Vitter came out strongly in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same sex marriages. He said, "I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one ... I think this debate is very healthy, and it's winning a lot of hearts and minds. I think we're going to show real progress."
At a Lafayette Parish Republican Executive Committee luncheon, Vitter also compared gay marriage to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, stating, "It's the crossroads where Katrina meets Rita."
From Wikipedia:
In June 2006, in line with several of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, Vitter came out strongly in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same sex marriages. He said, "I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one ... I think this debate is very healthy, and it's winning a lot of hearts and minds. I think we're going to show real progress."
At a Lafayette Parish Republican Executive Committee luncheon, Vitter also compared gay marriage to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, stating, "It's the crossroads where Katrina meets Rita."
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Of course it's a right wing Republican "Christian":
SENATOR'S NUMBER ON ESCORT SERVICE LIST
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL,AP
2007-07-09
WASHINGTON (July 10) - Sen. David Vitter, R-La., apologized Monday night for "a very serious sin in my past" after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called "D.C. Madam."
Vitter's spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.
"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said in the statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there - with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."
The statement containing Vitter's apology said his telephone number was on old phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates before he ran for the Senate.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey was accused in federal court of racketeering by running a prostitution ring that netted more than $2 million over 13 years, beginning in 1993. She contends, however, that her escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, was a legitimate business.
Vitter, 46, a Republican in his first Senate term, was elected to the Senate in 2004. He represented Louisiana's 1st Congressional District in the House from 1999 to 2004.
Vitter and his wife, Wendy, live in Metairie, La., with their four children.
Palfrey's attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, told the AP, "I'm stunned that someone would be apologizing for this." He said Palfrey had posted the phone numbers of her escort service's clients online Monday, but he did not know whether Vitter's number was among them.
Vitter's statement was sent to the AP's New Orleans bureau Monday evening. As of late Monday night, the AP has been unable to connect to Palfrey's Web site.
Earlier this year Palfrey, 51, of Vallejo, Calif., asked the Supreme Court to delay the criminal case against her - a request the court denied in May. Her attorney had argued that it was unfair to proceed against Palfrey because her assets remain seized in a civil forfeiture case, meaning she lacks the money to hire an attorney of her choice.
Randall Tobias, a senior official in the State Department, resigned in April after ABC News confronted him about his use of the escort service. He admitted that he had hired women to come to his Washington condo and give him massages but denied that he had sex with the escorts.
Palfrey threatened for months to release her client list, which led prosecutors to accuse her of trying to intimidate potential witnesses.
Contending that her escort service was legal, Palfrey revealed details of its operation on ABC's news magazine "20/20" on May 4. At the time, ABC said it could not link any information provided by Palfrey to members of Congress or White House officials but did find links to prominent business executives, NASA officials and at least five military officers.
Prosecutors contend that Palfrey knew the 130 women she employed over 13 years were engaged in prostitution. She claims that she operated a "legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" and that the women signed contracts in which they promised not to have sex with clients. The service charged a flat rate of $275 for 90 minutes, she said.
Palfrey pleaded guilty to pimping charges in 1991 and was sentenced to 18 months in a California prison.
SENATOR'S NUMBER ON ESCORT SERVICE LIST
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL,AP
2007-07-09
WASHINGTON (July 10) - Sen. David Vitter, R-La., apologized Monday night for "a very serious sin in my past" after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called "D.C. Madam."
Vitter's spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.
"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said in the statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there - with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."
The statement containing Vitter's apology said his telephone number was on old phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates before he ran for the Senate.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey was accused in federal court of racketeering by running a prostitution ring that netted more than $2 million over 13 years, beginning in 1993. She contends, however, that her escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, was a legitimate business.
Vitter, 46, a Republican in his first Senate term, was elected to the Senate in 2004. He represented Louisiana's 1st Congressional District in the House from 1999 to 2004.
Vitter and his wife, Wendy, live in Metairie, La., with their four children.
Palfrey's attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, told the AP, "I'm stunned that someone would be apologizing for this." He said Palfrey had posted the phone numbers of her escort service's clients online Monday, but he did not know whether Vitter's number was among them.
Vitter's statement was sent to the AP's New Orleans bureau Monday evening. As of late Monday night, the AP has been unable to connect to Palfrey's Web site.
Earlier this year Palfrey, 51, of Vallejo, Calif., asked the Supreme Court to delay the criminal case against her - a request the court denied in May. Her attorney had argued that it was unfair to proceed against Palfrey because her assets remain seized in a civil forfeiture case, meaning she lacks the money to hire an attorney of her choice.
Randall Tobias, a senior official in the State Department, resigned in April after ABC News confronted him about his use of the escort service. He admitted that he had hired women to come to his Washington condo and give him massages but denied that he had sex with the escorts.
Palfrey threatened for months to release her client list, which led prosecutors to accuse her of trying to intimidate potential witnesses.
Contending that her escort service was legal, Palfrey revealed details of its operation on ABC's news magazine "20/20" on May 4. At the time, ABC said it could not link any information provided by Palfrey to members of Congress or White House officials but did find links to prominent business executives, NASA officials and at least five military officers.
Prosecutors contend that Palfrey knew the 130 women she employed over 13 years were engaged in prostitution. She claims that she operated a "legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" and that the women signed contracts in which they promised not to have sex with clients. The service charged a flat rate of $275 for 90 minutes, she said.
Palfrey pleaded guilty to pimping charges in 1991 and was sentenced to 18 months in a California prison.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell