Celtics Pick Up Knicks Trash

The Celtics have signed the loathesome Stephon Marbury. Hide the interns and up the insurance policies. This will not end well.

Boston Globe: Marbury signs with Celtics, likely to play

IOKIYAR

The corporate media was quick to run the National Enquirer story about John Edwards' affair. The same publication runs essentially the same story about Sarah Palin: silence. Same publication, same journalistic standards, one story trumpeted from coast to coast, the other ignored. This week the National Enquirer is reporting that Sarah Palin had an affair with her husband's business partner. The family values/rank hypocrisy party strikes again.

IOKIYAR

National Enquirer: SARAH PALIN LOVER REVEALED!

Drill, Baby, Drill!

You can't make this stuff up:



hat tip to OliverWillis.com

Puts The Expression "In Bed With The Oil Companies" In a Whole New Light

user USB, flickr: Bush Oil Stencil

WaPo: Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok
Interior Dept. Inquiry Finds Sex, Corruption

Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday.

Investigators from the Interior Department's inspector general's office said more than a dozen employees, including the former director of the oil royalty program, took meals, ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings from industry representatives. The report alleges that the former director, Gregory W. Smith, also netted more than $30,000 from improper outside work.

The report from Inspector General Earl E. Devaney contains fresh allegations about the practices at the beleaguered royalty-in-kind program of Interior's Minerals Management Service, which last year collected more than $4 billion worth of oil and natural gas from companies given contracts to tap energy on federal and Indian lands and offshore. The revelations come as Congress is set to consider opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and areas off the coast of Florida for drilling.

The royalty-in-kind program, based near Denver, allows energy companies to pay the government in oil and gas, rather than cash, for the privilege of drilling on government land. It has been the subject of multiple investigations since 2006 by the Interior Department's secretary, its inspector general, the Justice Department and Congress for alleged mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

In the report released yesterday, investigators said they "discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in which employees accepted gratuities "with prodigious frequency." The report cited one e-mail from a Shell Pipeline representative asking a woman in the royalty office to attend "tailgating festivities" at a Houston Texans football game: "You're invited . . . have you and the girls meet at my place at 6am for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding."

Besides Shell, the energy company employees mentioned in the report worked for Chevron, Hess and Gary-Williams Energy. The social outings detailed in the report included alcohol-, cocaine- and marijuana-filled parties where certain employees of the Minerals Management Service were nicknamed the "MMS Chicks" by the energy employees. The companies paid for federal workers to attend football and baseball games, PGA Tour events, Colorado ski trips, paintball outings and "treasure hunts," investigators found.

[]

The inspector general's release comprised three separate reports, including one devoted to the program's former director, Smith, 56, who resigned last year. It alleges that Smith improperly worked part time for Geomatrix Consultants, an Oakland, Calif.-based environmental and engineering firm, and marketed the company to government clients.

Additionally, the report said, Smith had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate whom he paid to buy cocaine, allegedly promising her a $250 bonus in return. The report stated that Smith admitted to the sexual encounter.

NYTimes: Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department

Fed Shoveling Our Money To Thieving Banks

And you thought it was bad on Friday when the Fed gave Bear Stearns $200,000,000 of our money. Today -- a Sunday! -- they gave J.P. Morgan $30 billion, yes, $30,000,000,000 of our money to subsidize a deal to take over Bear Stearns. Public money for a private buyout. To protect the shareholders. You know the Bushies's aren't going to go back and, I don't know, bankrupt the morons who drove the company into bankruptcy. That might interrupt their time at the country club, or at the bridge tables:

Last year, when he was still chief executive of Bear Stearns Cos., James Cayne took heat for hitting the bridge circuit during troubled times for his firm. Will the same rules apply to Cayne now that he’s chairman?

We’ll soon find out. Thursday and today, as Bear fought off a pending cash crisis that threatened to ruin its business, Mr. Cayne – who relinquished his CEO title in January and become the firm’s non-executive chairman – has been in Detroit, playing in the North American Bridge Championship.

So far, he’s faring better than his firm. In the “Imp Pairs” event Thursday, Mr. Cayne and a partner placed fourth out of 130, according to figures from the American Contract Bridge League web site. (Bear shares fell 7%.) The playing took place between about 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the afternoon and 7:30 to 11 p.m. in the evening, say insiders – a period in which Bear CEO Alan Schwartz convened a series of conference calls with directors, according to people familiar with the matter, to discuss a pending cash pledge from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Reserve Board. Still, Mr. Cayne participated in at least some of the dialogue, said one of these people.

Brings to mind Nero fiddling while Rome burns, doesn't it?

Times (uk): Bear Stearns sold to JPMorgan Chase under Federal Bank pressure

America's Federal Reserve last night orchestrated a rescue takeover of Bear Stearns, the stricken Wall Street investment bank, by JP Morgan Chase in an unprecedented move to prevent the implosion of the US financial system.

In New York last night, JP Morgan Chase announced that it is to buy Bear Stearns for $240 million in shares - representing 6 per cent of the struggling bank's closing market value on Friday, and just 1 per cent of the group's capitalisation at the beginning of the month.

As part of the deal, America's central bank has effectively underwritten $30 billion worth of Bear's toxic sub-prime mortgage-backed bonds, to protect JP Morgan Chase shareholders. It is also providing special financing to JP Morgan Chase - of an undisclosed sum. Terms of the deal are unknown, and it is not clear whether such special financing is to cover the cost of JP Morgan's emergency loan to Bear made late on Thursday night.

Greg Palast says this is why the feds really jumped all over Eliot Spitzer's bones last week. Spitzer opposed giving the robber barons free reign to bankrupt homeowners while they make billions. So he had to go:

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

[]

When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.

[]

But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Richard Russo on Eliot Spitzer

One of my favorite authors opines on the Eliot Spitzer saga.

WaPo: Imagining Eliot

Before everything begins to unravel, Eliot confides to [Russo's fictional character who is surely himself] Rick that he's made a mess of things, betrayed everyone he loves, that he isn't even sure who he is anymore. But Rick will tell him not to be melodramatic. It's true he's made mistakes, big ones, Rick explains, but they aren't what Eliot thinks they are. Rick admits he's outraged that Eliot has spent $80,000 on prostitutes, because it shouldn't cost that much to get laid in America. It's like one of those $500 Pentagon hammers. Downright wasteful. And why order a hammer from New Jersey and pay the shipping? There are perfectly good hammers in Washington -- it's a damned city of hammers when you think about it. Where on earth did Eliot get the idea that New Jersey hammers were superior? All he wanted to do was nail something, right?

Don't joke, Eliot tells Rick. This isn't funny; he could go to jail. But to Rick's way of thinking, that's the biggest joke of all. Your average CEO can claim millions in salary and stock options in the same year his company is going down the tubes, and it's all perfectly legal. You want to know what you're really guilty of, Eliot? Cluelessness. You didn't forget who you are, you forgot where you are. This is America, pal, where you can lead the nation into war on false pretenses and be rewarded with a second term in office, but where illicit sex is and has always been an impeachable offense. (Note to self: A little of this Rick character goes a long way.)

The Immoral Crimes The Corporate Media Should Be Reporting

Ben Stechshulte for The New York Times
At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, customers can drink imported Scotch, smoke water pipes and watch a show featuring young Iraqi woman gyrating to a 10-piece band on a garishly lighted stage.

Instead of reading saturation coverage of Eliot Spitzer's resignation for having paid sex with one sex worker, we should be reading about the real crimes taking place in the world. Here's a great take on what the media should be reporting; and not just every once in a while, but every day. Go to the original post for links to the articles documenting the facts about the Iraqis driven into prostitution by the disastrous policies of the Master of Global Disaster, George W. Bush.

Bob Fertik, Democrats.com: Bush Tied to Child Prostitution - Resignation or Impeachment Expected!

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls and is expected to resign or be impeached, according to Congressional sources.

The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

"70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

According to the Times, "inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates."

Driving women and girls into prostitution violates numerous human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. George Bush himself denounced sex trafficking at the United Nations in 2003.

'Sheer Hypocrisy'

Nora Ephron, HuffPo: Eliot Spitzer: The Short Goodbye

This is the problem these guys get into: they're so morally rigid and puritanical in real life (and on some level, so responsible for this priggish world we now live in) that when they get caught committing victimless crimes, everyone thinks they should be punished for sheer hypocrisy.

Of All People

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer addresses the media with his wife Silda Wall Spitzer at his office in New York, March 10, 2008.
(Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Eliot Spitzer? Mr. Clean? I spend a quiet afternoon in the studio & come home to the shocking news that Spitzer is named in a federal indictment as a man who was spending his hard-earned money on prostitutes. Very expensive prostitutes. (A friend noted, "He should shop around. There must be something out there for for less than that!")

Early speculation is that the investigation was triggered by suspiciously large cash transactions, that were reported by his bank to the feds. They thought he was being bribed, but he was being fluffed. (It's very hard to write about this without making bad jokes!)

The investigation is being run by Bush's politicized Justice Department. As one person noted in a comment at Harper's:

A reader emails with an interesting observation:

Amazing how Senator David Vitter’s name never leaked out of the Justice Department after the arrest of the D.C. Madam, but Eliot Spitzer’s name leaked out of the Justice Department within a week of the initial arrest in the Emperor V.I.P. case.

Vitter, recall, owned up to his dalliance with a prostitute after Hustler called him to ask for comment before publication. Not that employees of the George W. Bush Justice Department would ever act in a political fashion, of course. But it is curious.

Jane Hamsher raises more questions at firedoglake, and doesn't think this one passes the smell test. Glenn Greenwald asks, Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?

I'd like to note that the Bush/Cheney cabal has been screwing all of us for seven years, and we're not getting paid, they are! And they're leaving us with a huge bill, and the streets are littered with the broken bodies of veterans and Iraqis maimed in their immoral war. Those are the people who should be prosecuted, not some poor schmuck getting his shaft waxed.

Initial reports were that Spitzer would announce his resignation at 7:00 p.m. but he didn't. I hope he doesn't. If it's just sex, who cares. Maybe someday the American people will grow up and there will be a book for adults like the popular kids book, "Everyone Poops". Everybody fucks. Get over it.

Grand Ol' Pervert Party

It's hard trying to keep up with all the Republican sex scandals. But it's important to keep this in mind when you hear Republicans bleating about family values. Here are the most recent Republican hypocrites who got caught. Oh, let's just call them Republicans; hypocrite is just redundant.

(1) United States Senator David Vitter (R-La): His telephone number appears on the DC Madam's phone list 5 times between October 12, 1999, and February 27, 2001 (fun fact: that was Mardi Gras!); two of those phone calls were made during House roll call votes. He trotted his wife in front of cameras during a press conference (video link) in which he refused to take questions; the look on his wife's face belied her strong words of support.

Mrs. Vitter couldn't resist a little slam at Hillary in 2000 when Mr. Vitter the john was simultaneously running for office and employing prostitutes. I bet she regrets those words today:

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

A one-source story about Vitter's previous house of prostitution in New Orleans says that Vitter has a diaper fetish. Ewwww. I can't get the mental image of him standing on the floor of the Senate House outfitted in his diaper, calling Debra Palfrey's escort service during a Senate House rollcall, out of my mind. Wouldn't it be fun if, I don't know, Henry Hyde or some other Republican hypocrite (stop being redundant!), was presiding over the Senate at that very moment?

(2) Last week the chair of John McCain's campaign committee in Florida, Florida state Rep. Bob Allen was arrested for trying to give a police officer $20 to let Representive Allen perform a blow job on said police officer(CNN: 'an unspecified act'! They specified it plenty when it was Bill Clinton, and no money or public bathrooms involved.) in a public bathroom. Ewwww, in a public bathroom.

(3) Yesterday there was North Carolina State Representative David Almond, second term Republican. This headline from Alternet says it all: Republican State Rep. Exposed Himself to Female Employee, Chased Her Screaming, "Suck It"

Oh, but there's more. The female employee in question was reportedly his own legislative aide, a 63-year old widow. No wonder he was forced to resign, and

The State House wasted no time making changes. His name plate was removed from the voting board. All that remained on his desk was a bowl of Almond Joy candy bars.

(4) Today's addition is 74-year-old Republican North Carolina county commissioner (and retired Baptist minister) Coy Privette, who paid a prostitute for sex. He got caught when the prostitute apparently stole blank checks from him. He filed a forgery affidavit with his bank, which triggered a police fraud investigation. Bingo!

Charlotte Observer: Official accused of paying for sex
SBI: Cabarrus' Privette met with woman at motel in May and June

These are the people who think they have the right to judge others, and to ban same sex couples from marrying. Grand Ol' Perverts, indeed.

Bush "AIDS Czar" Who Discouraged Condom Use Around The World Resigns in Sex Scandal -- UPDATED, below

Last night Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias resigned, and the State Department issued a press release saying he had resigned for 'personal reasons'. Very personal reasons, it turns out:

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

Tobias' private cell number was among thousands of numbers listed in the telephone records provided to ABC News by Jeane Palfrey, the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," who is facing the federal charges.

How Tobias thought it would help his case to tell ABC he had been using Central American gals, I can't say. (Were the Pamela Martin prostitutes escorts illegal aliens?)

Who is Randall Tobias? He is the former CEO of Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, as well as the former Chairman of AT&T. A bigtime Bush contributor. A bigwig in Indiana politics. Founder of the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence at Indiana University (which his children head, nepotism is a great thing.) And, since 2003 United States Global AIDS coordinator with the US Agency for International Development (I'd refer you to his bio on USAID.gov, but it was removed last night!) and since 2006, Deputy Secretary of State (as well as Global AIDS cooreinator), as USAID was merged into the State Department.

And during his government service, he's been pushing the fundie hatred of condoms, and thereby condemning people around the world to be infected with HIV:

Tobias has consistently put the Bush administration agenda before science and facts in the global fight against AIDS, acting as the “front man for Bush’s ideology-driven policies on prevention and on treatment (of AIDS).”

His HIV-prevention policies have focused on “abstinence-only-until-marriage” leaving “large segments of the population at immediate risk of HIV infection.” He has also made inaccurate public statements on the effectiveness of condoms in AIDS prevention and has funded questionable organizations supported by President Bush, but lacking in technical competency in HIV prevention.

Let's hope he hasn't infected his wife. Hypocrite.

ABC is doing a big story this week on all the phone numbers from Pamela Martin's escort service. I wonder who else is going down? (Very punny.)

ThinkProgress: Rice Appoints Political Sycophant To Head U.S. Foreign Aid Efforts

ABC News: Senior Official Linked to Escort Service Resigns

WaPo: Rice Deputy Quits After Query Over Escort Service
Randall Tobias Oversaw U.S. Foreign Aid Programs

UPDATE: (I can't keep up!)

ThinkProgress: Official Caught Using Escort Service Demanded Anti-Prostitution ‘Loyalty Oaths’

Tobias required any group seeking US funding to take an anti-prostitution oath so broad that it outlawed outreach to sex workers; Brazil lost $40 million in funds it would have used to encourage condom use by sex workers.

During an “Ask the White House” online chat in 2004, Tobias defended the policy, saying the U.S. was “partnering with communities” to begin “fighting sex trafficking and prostitution, while still serving victims of these activities.” Tobias added that he was overseeing several “highly successful” relationship programs “aimed at men and boys to help them develop healthy relationships with women.”

A truly inspired idea, having someone who pays for “gals come over to the condo to give me a massage” run programs on developing “healthy relationships with women.”

Boston College Women's Ice Hockey Coach 'Resigns'

Photo: USA Hockey: In his fourth season at Boston College, head coach Tom Mutch has everyone on the same page.


Hours after the Boston Herald began making inquiries about sexual text messages found on the cell phone of Boston College women's ice hockey's leading scorer, head coach Tom Mutch abruptly resigned. Mutch had been named New England coach of the year and had led the team to the Frozen Four for the first time.

Apparently following the LSU model for crisis management, Boston College originally issued a statement saying Mutch was leaving to pursue other interests, and thanking Mutch for his contributions to the program. Did they think the story wouldn't get out?

The messages were on a cell phone that the player had given to a teammate, who discovered the messages. They were written from the player to Mutch. The Herald reports:

One source familiar with the messages described them as “filthy. They were very sexual in nature.”

Coach Mutch is 39 years old, and married to a 31-year-old former ice hockey player he met while he was her coach with the women's Olympic team in 1998; they have a 7-month-old baby. The player is a 19-year-old freshman. [I see no reason to name her here. You can read her name on the links. She's been humiliated enough, IMHO.] I bet her parents back home, entrusting their daughter to this guy, are furious, and rightly so. I'm sure his wife is furious, also.

These coaches who marry former players that they met while coaching them should be carefully monitored. They have either crossed or come close to crossing the line in the past. Don't schools do the math? Nine years ago his 31-year-old wife was 22 years old, the same age as many Boston College seniors. Schools must be more careful.

The Herald also reports:

A 2005 profile of Mutch in the BC publication “The Heights” said he was fond of singing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to his players.

In retrospect, this is seen as a red flag. I would say, the fact that he is married to a former player is a much bigger red flag.

Boston Herald: BC hockey coach quits after sexy messages surface

Boston Herald: Students mum on beleaguered BC hockey coach

Boston Globe: BC's Mutch quits amid allegations
Coach abruptly leaves women's hockey job

TheHeights.com: Mutch resigns amid controversy
Allegations of inappropriate relationship with player surface

after atalanta: Another player/coach incident

Bostonist.com: Too Mutch: BC Coach Resigns in Sex Scandal

Shaquanda Cotton Free

WFAA-TV
Radio personality Rickey Smiley embraces Shaquanda Cotton.
Public outcry worked! The 15-year-old was released from prison on Saturday after serving a year for shoving a hall monitor. The release was ordered by Jay Kimbrough, a special conservator appointed to overhaul the Texas Youth Commission because of -- get this-- a sex scandal in which prison officials coerced sex from inmates. Child inmates. 400 kids may be released by the end of the week, according to Kimbrough. All of them had been approved for release but had their captivity extended by the Texas Youth Commission staff.

A local radio DJ who led a rally outside the county courthouse last week interviewed Cotton after her release. You can watch the dangerous criminal who had to be locked up for a year here. (sample: Q: What did you do when you got home? A: Hugged my brother.)

Best article on the case and the locale: The Age (Australia): 14-year-old girl in jail for shoving teacher's aide

Houston Chronicle: Black teen who pushed hall monitor freed from juvenile prison

BlackAmericaWeb: Lawmaker Who Hastened Shaquanda Cotton’s Release: ‘This Never Should Have Happened’

The Church Has A Lot to Hide

Outing Cardinal Egan
A priest's lawsuit alleges the Catholic Church is hiding pedophile clergy—and offers a stunning reason why

Who knows whether Cardinal Edward Egan is sleeping soundly these days. But as head of the New York archdiocese—as the top Roman Catholic prelate in the state—he'd have every reason to be restless after the recent advent of a little-noticed lawsuit.

The suit, now pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, was filed on December 13 by Bob Hoatson—a 53-year-old New Jersey priest considered a stalwart ally among survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. Hoatson, the now-suspended chaplain for Catholic Charities in Newark, is suing Egan and nine other Catholic officials and institutions, claiming a pattern of "retaliation and harassment" that began after Hoatson alleged a cover-up of clergy abuse in New York and started helping victims.

But that's not all his lawsuit claims. Halfway through the 44-page complaint, the priest-turned-advocate drops a bomb on the cardinal: He alleges that Egan is "actively homosexual," and that he has "personal knowledge of this." His suit names two other top Catholic clerics in the region as actively gay—Albany bishop Howard Hubbard and Newark archbishop John Myers.

I was raised in a Catholic church, but this whole sex abuse scandal has led me to despise the church and its hierarchy. The cover-ups, putting pedophiles back into churches where they have contact with children, the utter hypocrisy. Now the church is on a witchhunt against gay priests. Gay priests aren't the problem. Pedophiles are the problem. Gay bishops who let pedophile priests prey on children to avoid being outed are a big problem.

And the Vatican installed our own pedophile enabler Bernie Law in a private apartment in Rome. Sickening.

Here's Hoatson's complaint, from BishopAccountability.org.

Rethugs Had a Boom-Boom Room?

Must.... reprint.... speculation from right-wing National Journal:

DC Sex Scandal About To Break?

Sometimes we read too many political clips and overlook some amazing things staring us in the face. Among those in Monday's edition, this little factoid, culled from Sunday's San Diego Union-Tribune blockbuster digging deeper into the Duke Cunningham's relationship with "co-conspirator No. 1," a.k.a. lobbyist Brent Wilkes.

According to the U-T, Wilkes also "ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in" DC -- "first in the Watergate Hotel and then" in a Capitol Hill hotel.

Come again? A "hospitality suite with several bedrooms"?

Talk about raising more questions, including:

-- Why does a lobbyist need a "hospitality suite with several bedrooms"?

-- Who uses those bedrooms and for what?

These lobbying scandals involving Cunningham and Wilkes and Abramoff are looking more and more like a bad movie script every day. Except with one difference from the movies: this stuff actually happened.

Season's greetings! (I'm trying to make the Bill O'Reilly enemies list with all these Christ-less Xmas endings. Will continue until January 1 or until I (or you, my loyal readers) get bored.)

Who Gave the Presstitute Special Treatment?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know.

Nights in White House satin: The comings and goings of Jeff Gannon

Okay, maybe there's no scandal here. Lots of people, mostly tourists, visit the White House. But it does seem odd that Gannon was there at least 32 times on days when there were no briefings, or returned later in the day to the presidential mansion after a briefing. Seems he'd spend about an hour or hour and a half in the White House on these occasions. Or he'd be there for an hour or hour and a half before or after the briefings. I suppose that it could be shown he was there to consult with someone about what sort of questions he might raise in the next briefing, that could produce a small scandal. But the media hasn't really taken on the president's manipulation of reporters to date and protested and exposed it effectively.

The records also show days when Gannon checked in but never properly checked out, beginning in July 2003 or five months after he started his White House journalistic activities. This doesn't necessarily cry out "Scandal!" since lots of people have slept over at the Bush White House. But usually they're big fundraisers or family members. For someone like Gannon to be there, apparently sleeping over, on twelve different nights seems curious. Surely he had his own lodgings nearby. But after all, in his "reporter" capacity he was a friend of the administration and like Jacko says, friends often let friends sleep over. Dowbenko indicates that the president was in his house on all these occasions, but I imagine Laura and the Secret Service people were there too. Of course it is a big house, room for everybody and a degree of privacy even in these terror-haunted, well-monitored times.

White House, Secret Service Stories on Gannon/Guckert Passes Don’t Match

Friday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told ePluribus Media that his office had never requested a 30-day security clearance for James D. Guckert, aka "Jeff Gannon," directly contradicting a statement made earlier that day by the U.S. Secret Service.

The Secret Service’s "30-day access list program," used by the White House press office, would have allowed Guckert to visit the briefing room for a 30-day period without undergoing daily criminal-history checks.

But not the Corporate Media, they're so over it:

Gannon's story left critics tarnished, too

The phrase in BOLD is the real truth about the corporate media's (non)coverage of the story:

Despite the sex pictures, the linchpin of the scandal was always the allegation that Bush and/or his press secretary, Scott McClellan, catered to Gannon so that his softball questions would make the president look good. Having Gannon in the press room allowed McClellan to change the subject whenever a mainstream reporter began to bore in with a tough line of questioning, according to the bloggers who promoted the story.

But the allegation was never proven. McClellan argued that he called on questioners in a routine manner, getting to Gannon only after fielding inquiries from larger news outlets in a fairly predictable order. Veteran White House correspondents backed him up. Meanwhile, McClellan maintained that his office did not give Gannon favorable treatment in getting a press pass. Former White House press secretaries from the Clinton administration generally sided with McClellan.

At that point, despite the lurid aspects of Gannon's past, most newspapers gave up on the matter as a news story.

Yes, this is the low to which the corporate media has fallen. If the source denies the story, IT'S OVER! Time to look for the next runaway bride.