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Giuliani Comes To Aid Of Accused Child Molester

2007-10-23T16:56:00.001-07:00

From ABC News:

Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties.
The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events.
[...]
At a campaign appearance in Milwaukee last week, Giuliani continued to defend Placa, who he described to reporters as a close friend for 39 years.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell Behind Terrorizing 12 Year Old

2007-10-11T06:30:00.001-07:00

Mounting evidence suggests that the right-wing smear campaign may have been orchestrated by a staffer in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) office.

First, ABC News reported earlier this week that a staffer in Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) office received an email that was not intended for him. The email from a "Senate Republican leadership aide" showed the minority leader's office was intently tracking the smear campaign well before it had gained widespread attention.

Christy Hardin Smith writes, "Is anyone in the media going to actually dig into this and find out how involved the McConnell oppo shop has been in all of this?"

Republican congressional offices say they had nothing to do with the investigative reporting work of the conservative bloggers. But at the same time, they did nothing to distance themselves from the byproduct of that work. 'We're clearly going to promote the truth and show Democrats didn't do their research' into whether the Frost family should be receiving subsidized health care, said one Senate GOP aide. 'We're going to ride this story.'"

Mitt Romney's communist connection

2007-09-29T06:32:00.001-07:00

Posted by Charles Cooper

Most Americans probably are not intimately familiar with Huawei (pronounced "Wa-way," as if Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame were asked to pronounce the name). The company's founder, Ren Zhengfei is a former officer of the People's Liberation Army.
Tough to know what to make of that. When it comes to speaking with the press, Ren is a regular Greta Garbo. A mini-profile Forbes ran three years ago noted that many of Huawei's major customers are state-run businesses in China. And while Ren owns 1 percent of the company, the rest belongs to an unidentified "union."
Go figure.

Meanwhile, Ren has gone about building Huawei into a success story disregarding the usual corporate niceties. In 2000--three years before the WMD craze got us all nutso about taking out Saddam--the CIA accused Huawei of secretly selling a communications system to Iraq. In the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, Huawei and two other Chinese companies were singled out for carrying out "extensive work in and around Baghdad"--mainly telecommunication switches and the installation of fiber-optic cable.
Then in 2003, Cisco socked Huawei with a patent infringement lawsuit. Cisco claimed Huawei ripped off its intellectual property to make a lineup of routers and switches. Huawei denied the allegations though in the end caved.

But if at all possible, business doesn't let politics intrude. So it is that Friday we learned that Bain Capital is paying $2.2 billion to acquire 3Com. Part of the deal involves China's Huawei Technologies, which will acquire a minority stake in 3Com.
And, oh, by the way, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination--he headed Bain Capital for 14 years.
Six degrees of separation. In this case only 2--but who's counting.
I wonder whether a future President Romney might have commented on Huawei figuring in a major U.S. tech acquisition. I'm darned sure candidate Romney has since turned off his cell
phone for an early start to the weekend.

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911 Families Confront Giuliani, Calls Him A Scumbag

2007-09-25T04:39:00.001-07:00

In the name of the victims of September 11 and their families, activists Luke Rudkowski and Sabrina Rivera of WeAreChange.org confronted Giuliani on his unfathomable disregard for human life-- and attempted to bring accountability and justice for his criminal neglect.

Rep. McHenry, Soon To Be Outed

2007-09-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

If last week and the week before weren't bad enough for 10th District disgrace Pat McHenry, now a national and highly respected blogger Pam Spaulding has turned her internet attention to McHenry's involvement in the bizarrely underreported Florida murder suicide.She's written the best overview yet and crossposted it at Americablog.What with this last week's extreme DUI of his Deputy Field Director Brett Keeter. Then the subsequent two-week suspension without pay. But as MissM points out at BlueNC, why not wait until a verdict? Innocent until proven guilty and all that American patriotic stuff.I wondered if a 31-year-old blows a point one three perhaps he should be fired. It's not like it's the first overindulgence of a young man, new to college or trying to recover from his first big break-up. But Robert P and lcloud at BlueNC make the find points that McHenry should be helping this guy get the therapy he needs. That we as democrats might want to practice what we preach and think in terms of rehabilitation. Good ideas, if we were dealing with people who could consider that others can change and improve. That, of course is the obvious solution. Just not likely.Then, we have to look at the week before last, which might have led to this overindulgence of mind-altering substances in a staffer.The week before last you learned that Pat might not live where he votes. That's potentially the fourth case voter fraud he's been tied to. And over the weekend, McHenry spokesman Aaron Latham tried to put that pesky old voter fraud/residency question to rest. Latham told the Gaston Gazette's Amanda Millard that Pat "lives in Cherryville. That's still his primary residence." But, he told her, McHenry splits his time between Cherryville and Hickory when he comes home on weekends. Boy, Pat, that's a lot of splitting. You live in DC, you split your weekend time between Cherryville and Hickory. You own the Hickory condo but your legal residence for voting is a house in Cherryville you don't own and that other people use. I wonder what the North Carolina laws regard as a legal residence. We'll have to find out.And the one question still unanswered: how'd you get that financing for the Hickory condo. Since you're on the House banking committee, I think your banking deals (especially ones you've been trying to cover up) should be public record. After all, you were all excited about disclosing the people behind earmarks. What about disclosing the financing deal on an asset you haven't told anyone about. Because if the Hickory condo was your legal residence and as Latham told Millard, it's been this way for some time, you had plenty of time to update your bio and your website to say you live in Cherryville AND Hickory, not just Cherryville.

There are a lot of reports from the week before last that still have not been cleared up. Like Pat's involvement with recent murder victim Ralph Gonzalez of Florida and Georgia ethics issues (including ties to Jack Abramoff and vote manipulation. But the North Carolina Conservative told us that not only McHenry was also tied to Jason Drake, who police say was the shooter.People have commented extensively on this website and elsewhere that Drake's ties to a gay porn murder in Pennsylvania have only one source.

That source has a lot of people who hate him OR he's a lying, website-destroyer.Either way, these questions are not dependent on tying Drake to other murders and the porn industry, are extremely relevant and remain unanswered:

What exactly are McHenry ties to high level murdered Republican dirty tricks consultant Ralph Gonzalez and of his alleged shooter Jason Robert Drake. And why has McHenry tried to hide his political past by stating on his website and official bio that he is either a real estate broker, a small businessman or in sales.
Why have the police given such premature and unprofessional comments to the media in this case?*
What is going on with the traditional media’s response to this news item. Google and see for yourself. Can you imagine them ignoring the murder of two prominent young gay Democratic operatives. Of course not.

Is the disinformation campaign about Drake initiated by a gay porn blogger or by McHenry's staff?
The former makes no sense, the latter is sheer stupidity but IS muddying the waters somewhat. And is one more reason for questioning a traditional media's response. Who can ignore a story that includes a gay porn blogger? Come on.
Why have no media outlets in the 10th Congressional District will covered, much less done any research on this story.*The police said August 23 that the murder/suicide was the result of a lover's triangle.

On August 27 they told the Orlando Sentinel:
What prompted him to go in and commit that crime remains undetermined and may never be known," Picanzo said. "We have had so many different and conflicting statements from people.Since when do the police say the crime motive will never been known this early in an investigation? It makes no sense.

GAY double murder and suicide, may blow the lid off the GOP

2007-09-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Authorities in Orlando, Florida believe the double murder and suicide that took place inside the home of GOP consultant Ralph Gonzalez last week was committed by one of the men found the residence at 2420 Hickory Oak Blvd. That man was ex-Marine Jason Drake, age 30. Drake allegedly threatened to kill “a friend” with whom he was “having troubles” six weeks ago.

The first CrimeBlog.US entry about the three dead men found at Gonzalez’s home, (Gonzalez, Drake, and Gonzalez’s roommate, attorney David Abrami) was cross-posted to The Brad Blog, run by Brad Friedman.

Because The Strategum Group (Ralph Gonzalez’s political consulting company) once worked for Florida congressman Tom Feeney, the story was of particular interest to regular readers of Brad Friedman’s site. Friedman has tracked the Jack Abramoff-connected Feeney for quite some time, sometimes blogging daily during the contentious election Feeney won against opponent Clint Curtis in 2006.

Friedman documented Feeney/Strategum Group moves like creating a website named:
CrazyClintCurtis.com.

Naturally, that URL shared mailservers with Gonzalez’s Strategumusa.com.
Some readers of the version of that blog entry posted at The Brad Blog felt that the murder-suicide in Orlando was more evidence somehow of Feeney’s corruption (an assassination, perhaps a triple homicide disguised as murder-suicide), but one commentator, using the screen name Zenoble, had an entirely different take on the matter:

My solid, but unconfirmed, sources say the Drake was trying to hit Gonzalez up for cash to raise money to defend a kid who is on trial for murder up in Pennsylvania. The 26 year old “kid” ran a gay escort and porn business in Virginia Beach and may have had several Republican clients–Drake being one. (See www.norfolkmaleescorts.com and www.boybatter.com). . .

Zenoble explained a little about the murder charges facing men named Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes. Then he wrote:

My sources say Drake may have approached Gonzalez for funds for Cuadra’s defense, threatening to blow the lid off everthing by MAKING THE REPUBLICAN CLIENT LIST OF THE GAY ESCORT BUSINESS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.
What happened in that house earlier this week in Orlando, we may never know. However, Drake, knowing that his gay lover, Harlow Cuadra, is more than likely going to fry for the murder of Kocis, may have gone off the deep end and killed Gonzalez and Abrami in desperation…

The e-mail address Zenoble use to post his comment tracked to a MySpace account for a young man name David. He has been e-mailed via that address, but no response had been received as of Sunday.

Blogs tend to be stereotyped — much of the time correctly — as the go-to destinations for rumors and unfounded allegations. If posts made by bloggers are often not taken seriously as sources of information, comments left on those posts are frequently viewed as even less likely to be credible.

Zenoble could have been making things up. He may have just attempted some sleuthing of his own, put two and two together and gotten five.
He may have been on to something.
Drake

The name “Drake” has been mysteriously associated with the January 24, 2007 murder of gay porn producer Bryan Kocis since early in the investigation.

Bryan Kocis was 44 when he was stabbed 28 times and his home in Luzerne County PA set on fire. He’d already been in trouble with the law himself.

In 2001 Kocis taped himself having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Kocis pled guilty in 2002 to the charge that he’d sexually abused a child, and Judge Michael Conahan gave Kocis one year of probation. A mitigating circumstance in Kocis’s case allegedly was his claim that he didn’t know the boy was underage.

When Bryan Kocis was murdered, (his house was also burgled before it was burned), he was embroiled in another controversy — a gay porn actor, Brent Corrigan (real name: Sean Lockhart), was alleging that he was still underage when he made some movies for Bryan Kocis’s Cobra Video.

Naturally, some suspicion first fell on Corrigan after Kocis was murdered. It appeared that his conflict with Kocis was still in the Internet pissing match stage on January 24, but it would be an understatement to say that some gay-themed blogs were abuzz like agitated hives of Africanized honeybees over the whole deal after it was learned that Kocis had been the victim of a homicide.

But when two men were arrested in connection with the murder of Bryan Kocis, they were picked up in Virginia. Harlow Cuadra, 26, and Cuadra’s business partner and housemate Joseph Kerekes, age 33, are currently in Pennsylvania awaiting trial on charges inculding conspiracy, homicide, arson, and abuse of a corpse.

Investigators believe that while Cuadra and Kerekes ran a male prostitution service out of their home at 1028 Stratem Court in Virginia Beach they were also plotting to take out Bryan Kocis.
Kocis and Cobra Video were competition for Cuadra and Kerekes.

Online, Joseph Kerekes used the e-mail nick stareyes23510 (source for this information was the domain registration record for NorfolkMaleEscorts.com). A Web search for that handle revealed many ads placed by a male escort in Northern Virginia named “Trent,” who advertised himself as “your typical All-American pretty boy.” “Trent” aimed to fulfill his clients’ “wildest dreams.” The same search also showed that Kerekes (and presumably Cuadra) were associated with the URL boisrus.com. The domain registration info for that URL showed it was run by “Norfolk Companions,” and the same stareyes23510 screen name was entered in the boisrus.com registration record.

A Google search of “Norfolk Companions” indicated that it was the name for a manufacturer of gay porn DVDs with titles like Young Bucks in Heat. Products being sold by Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes via the “Norfolk Companions” name would have indeed been in direct competition with Cobra Video products. Both seemed to target a specific audience in the gay community — viewers who liked porn featuring men who were supposed to be legal adults but appeared to be younger than 18 years of age.

One theory about the murder of Bryan Kocis does incorporate the conflict he was having with “Brent Corrigan.” It appears that in addition to Cobra Video producing movies targeting the same audience coveted by Norfolk Companions, Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes had their eyes on having Corrigan be in their movies.
Where would “Drake” have fit into this bizarre series of events and allegations?
Authorities in Pennsylvania began looking for Kocis’s killer with only the name “Drake” to go on.

Prior to his death Kocis had planned a meeting at his home in Dallas Township with a man named Drake. He’d received a photo of Drake via e-mail and Drake was supposed to talk over a modeling job with Kocis.
The fire at Kocis’s residence on January 24 was first reported over an hour after that scheduled meeting with “Drake.”

The photo Kocis allegedly received of Drake may have been a photo of Harlow Cuadra.
In March of 2007 The Virginian-Pilot published an article addressing Cuadra and “Drake.” A quote from that piece, authored by Duane Bourne and Jon Frank:
[Cuadra] has not denied being the man in the photograph. […] Cuadra’s photo is easily available on the Internet and […] Cuadra has often had it stolen before and used by other people involved in the male modeling and escort businesses.
[…]
Cuadra told the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre that he was not acquainted with Kocis and was with a client for three hours in Virginia Beach on the night Kocis was killed.
A telephone message at Norfolk Male Escorts said Cuadra was one of 40 male escorts and is now starring in a new porno-graphic film with “Drake.” Cuadra told the Times Leader that he met Drake at a recent adult film convention.

The plot may have thickened a bit in the comments left on yet another blog.
El Mysterio (link basically NSFW) says he is “Just you’re [sic] above average super sexy super-model type who does not want to be judged on his extraordinary beauty but on his really extremely high intellect.”

On April 7, 2007, El Mysterio wrote an entry about Bryan Kocis’s murder titled “Lies Trickery Fabrication Deceit.” The blogger made some interesting points about the conflict between Kocis and Corrigan/Lockhart, but just as interesting was this comment left on the post by “mark@www.boisrus.com” on April 9. It alluded to the first time authorities entered the home shared by Cuadra and Kerekes and added a first name for the “Drake” associated with both Kocis and Cuadra — emphasis has been added:

TO INTERJECT ON A HAPPY NOTE!!! Harlow & Joe are staying put in their home in Va Beach and are repairing the SWAT damage this week! ALSO AS I WRITE THIS MEMO …Harlow is filming his newest XXX blockbuster in Va Beach with NEW STUD Jakob Drake and Harlow…wild stuff too!!!!
Jason Drake is not too different from “Jakob.”
Norfolk to Orlando?

If a fatal dispute finally bubbled up between Ralph Gonzalez and Drake last week, the dispute could have been purely financial, and had nothing to do with sexuality. Such volatile situations typically seem to revolve around two fundamental human motivations — greed and lust.

The AP published a story on August 24 indicating that the murder-suicide in Orlando might have been a lovers’ quarrel. But as Towleroad noted, they later scrubbed any references in the story to homosexuality, or the murders and suicide being related to a “lovers’ quarrel.”
So in the traditional media, references to any of the dead men in Ralph Gonzalez’s home being gay have been almost non-existent. In part that may have been because one of the men, David Abrami, was not gay, and many newswriters on deadline don’t have the time or inclination to stop and make distinctions. (It may have been Abrami’s girlfriend in North Carolina who first alerted police to something being wrong at the house in Orlando. See the comments left on the first CrimeBlog.US version of the entry about the murder-suicide for statements regarding Abrami and his friendship with Gonzalez.)

Comments left on this blog, discussions on other blogs and some news accounts did suggest that Gonzalez was “out” to his friends, and that Jason Drake was formerly a roommate of Gonzalez’s.

WFTV reported that Drake did a four-year stint in the Marines. The TV station’s article stated that Drake had been living with his aunt and uncle in East Orlando for at least 6 months and had worked as tiler for his uncle.

As a Marine, the chances for Drake to pass through Norfolk, VA were many. No less than the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command is located in Norfolk, at the Naval Station there. If Drake was at Camp LeJeune or perhaps stationed in San Diego, then the likelihood of his somehow having been connected to Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes was slim. If Drake’s time in the Corps was spent stateside in Norfolk and he was gay, the possibility that Drake may have known about “Norfolk Companions” or NorfolkMaleEscorts.com increases.

Dates of hearings in the Cuadra/Kocis case line up to some degree with the assertions made by Zenoble in his comment on the Brad Blog post. They may also square with one statement Drake reportedly made.

Zenoble: “Drake was trying to hit Gonzalez up for cash to raise money to defend a kid who is on trial for murder up in Pennsylvania.”
Preliminary hearings in the Kocis murder began Monday, August 20. Two days prior to that, it was reported that the house owned by Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes was on the market. Police in Orlando believe Gonzalez, Abrami, and Drake may have died on Tuesday, August 21. The hearings in Pennsylvania continued on August 23.
It was hard to not make note of one of Drake’s relatives reporting that he’d said 6 weeks ago that he was having problems with a friend that apparently made him angry enough to be homicidal.

Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes were finally extradited from Virginia to Pennsylvania about 6 weeks prior to the murder-suicide in Orlando, in early July, 2007. Around that time it became clear that the assets owned by both men were also up for forfeiture, allegations of prostitution in part making up the state of Virginia’s argument for seizing the pair’s assets.

If Jason Drake was indeed trying to get Ralph Gonzalez to give some financial aid to Harlow Cuadra and/or Joe Kerekes, it seems logical to think that the issue would have come up between Drake and Gonzalez over 6 weeks ago, when it became clear the men in Virginia were being extradited and losing their money, as well. It makes sense too that Drake would have been in crisis mode again on August 21st — gruesome testimony about Kocis’s murder (he was nearly decapitated) given on August 20 in the preliminary hearings for Cuadra and Kerekes in Pennsylvania already seemed to be pointing towards the men heading to trial.
Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes had up to 40 escorts in their employ at one point. As the Jeff Gannon/Guckert scandal from a few years ago demonstrated, there seems to be some market in Northern Virginia for male escorts with military “looks” — close-cropped or shaven heads, clean-cut appearances overall, muscular physiques. If Drake was gay, could he have been making money on the side, and come to know Cuadra and Kerekes that way?

Clandestine ties between men ultimately linking a violent homicide in Pennsylvania with a double murder and suicide in Florida 7 months later may not be the politically-charged conspiracy some seem ready to believe this story to be. If those ties do exist, though, it doesn’t matter if politics are only incidental to the story of Ralph Gonzalez, Jason Drake, and David Abrami. The story would still be as weird and complicated as any tale of murder ever gets.
Finally, while some of the statements made by “Zenoble” at The Brad Blog could be made to dovetail with what was known about the murders in Florida and the murder last January in Pennsylvania, one of his assertions couldn’t be addressed. Zenoble wrote that Drake might make “THE REPUBLICAN CLIENT LIST OF THE GAY ESCORT BUSINESS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE” if Ralph Gonzalez didn’t help fund the defense of Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes.

This statement can be taken one of at least two ways — either the person making it is full of it and spinning a conspiracy theory, or there may be a client list of Republicans who used the services of NorfolkMaleEscorts.com.
If the latter possibility came true, then another story of prostitution and “client lists” from earlier in 2007 would pale in comparison.
We shall see.

Someone named Harlow R. Cuadra lived in Florida until at least 2002, about 90-100 miles from Orlando. The Harlow Cuadra who lived in Florida was born in the same month and year as the man in jail in Pennsylvania for the murder of Bryan Kocis. Several Florida addresses from the first 5 years of this decade for a Jason R. Drake put him as close as 25 miles from street addresses for Harlow Cuadra.

For what it’s worth, there were also Florida addresses in the same area as Harlow Cuadra for a Joe Kerekes whose age was the same as the Kerekes jailed in Pennsylvania.
Also for what it’s worth — one Jason R. Drake address put him in Oviedo, the same hometown as congressman Tom Feeney, a Strategum Group/Ralph Gonzalez client.
All this proves, of course, absolutely nothing. It may add a new level of proximity between one of the main suspects in the Kocis case and at least 2 of the men who died in Orlando.
Were it not for the fact that there is a policy for this blog of not deleting entries unless absolutely necessary, even if they have bad information in them, this entry might have been taken down by now. It was so speculative that its fate was pretty tenuous, policy notwithstanding.

This new tidbit about Cuadra and Kerekes possibly having lived in Florida, however, is enough to keep this post up and possibly updated again if the information that prompted this first addition is confirmed and clarified.
Sources not otherwise linked or referenced:

Wilkes-Barre PA Citizens Voice;
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot;
The Bitchless Blog (may not be safe for work);
365Gay.com;
HandJtrial.blogspot.com, a blog about the upcoming trials of Cuadra and Kerekes;
Associated Press reports.

Robo-john drama and stereotypes

2007-07-20T05:27:00.001-07:00

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle has been spending a lot of time lately thinking about sex. Anonymous sex. Illegal sex. In public restrooms. Between men.

And he's not just thinking about "t-room" (for toilet-room) sex. He's also talking about it at public meetings, in interviews, and even in e-mails to residents to let us know he thinks "homosexual activity" is a plague on public restrooms.

He's thought so much about t-room sex that he wanted the City Commission to approve $250,000 for a robo-john, a high-tech restroom that plays music and has automated systems that clean the toilet seat and open the door after a few minutes. This last feature, Naugle figures, won't allow enough time for the t-room sex he's been so pre-occupied with lately (city commissioners voted Tuesday to delete the toilet from the proposed budget).

As Naugle explained to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "We're trying to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom, without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act." And he claims the high-tech toilet's timed door will deter the anonymous sex he thinks will occur at the robo-john's planned location, "the rainbow parking lot." That's what Naugle called the parking lot directly across A1A from a section of beach at Sebastian Street favored primarily by gay men, residents and tourists alike.

But one problem Naugle had in trying to justify buying a robo-john due only to his belief that it will stop the rampant anonymous t-room sex he's been thinking about is that the rampant anonymous t-room sex he's been thinking about isn't a problem. According to Sgt. Frank Sousa, "There's no evidence, no reports or arrests made for any men having sex in any restrooms."

Another problem Naugle has is his propensity for stereotyping.

Who can forget Mayor Antoinette's recent pronouncement that the only folks in South Florida with an affordable housing problem are beer-guzzling "schlock" couch-potatoes "who won't work more than 40 hours a week." Or his haughty dismissal of a mayor's pact in favor of the Kyoto Agreement to reduce greenhouse gases now signed by more than 520 mayors nationwide as favoring "anti-American stuff" that was contrived by "a bunch of scientists meeting in Paris who've had too much wine," and embraced by "environmental wackos."

Now, to justify a costly expenditure, Naugle stereotyped gay men (a term he won't use because he believes we're unhappy) and inclusively demeans all those spending a great deal of time, money and effort to help revitalize sections of the city, those with enough concern and vision to become community leaders, and the gay tourists who leave millions of dollars in the city's coffers.

But research done in the 1960s, and later verified by police data, reveals the men involved in tearoom sex primarily are married family men, who've said they were in sexless marriages and were looking for something a little less lonely than self-gratification. Consider the recent arrest of Florida state representative Bob Allen (R-Merritt Island), a married father who was charged with soliciting for offering $20 to perform a sex act on a male undercover cop in a Titusville restroom. Yet anyone today looking for anonymous sex can go online and find alternatives more appealing than a spritzed outhouse blaring canned music.

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Romney's Hardcore Porn Profits

2007-07-16T14:49:00.001-07:00

Romney's Hardcore Porn Profits Not Mentioned in New Ad

Mitt Romney has a history of profiting from hardcore pornography. While a member of the board of Marriott for nearly ten years, he failed to voice any objections to providing the x-rated videos to those interested in renting them. Industry-wide, hotel chains make about $500 million dollars a year from this, and where was this culture warrior when he had a chance to actually do something about it?

No longer content with just profiting from money, now he's trying to profit politically with a new ad that talks about how the children are suffering due to a culture that has -- you guessed it -- pornography. It's fitting with the transformation he's been undertaking recently; just a few months ago hhe blamed pornography for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

But what ever happened to personal responsibility? Namely, Mitt Romney's. If he's going to rail against it now, shouldn't he be forced to explain this obvious contradiction between his rhetoric and his record? The Deseret Morning News, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has already begun criticizing Romney for his hardcore porn profits, and look for more to come.

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Fred Thompson Skirts The Rules, Delays Filing For Presidential Run

2007-07-16T14:48:00.001-07:00

Do As I Say, Not As I Do; Campaign Finance Reform Advocate Freddy Skirts The Rules, Delays Filing For Presidential Run

Thompson claims he's not really a candidate for President yet; he's just "testing the waters". Now, friends, that's not a made-up term -- under the FEC rules, you can delay your initial campaign filings if you're truly not sure if you want to run, and want to raise and spend a little money to determine if your candidacy would be viable. But the ability to use this loophole ceases if it's clear that you've decided to become a candidate, and there are extrinsic factors are used by the FEC to determine if that's the case. I'll focus on three:

If you raise funds in excess of amounts reasonably required for exploratory activity or amass funds for use after candidacy is established;
If you conduct activities over a protracted period of time (or shortly before an election); and
If you make or authorize statements that refer to yourself as a candidate.

Raising Funds Beyond What You Need To "Explore"
Well, Thompson claims to have "taken in at least several million dollars", and the New York Post confirms that the campaign had "made significant strides toward the nearly $5 million that Thompson's 'First Day Founders' have committed to raising as seed money for a full-fledged presidential campaign." Indeed, almost a month ago, the WaPo reported the campaign's acknowledgement that it "seems on track to reach his goal of raising about $5 million in just one month, according to advisers."

Long-Term Planning
When your campaign "signed a long-term lease on a building in Nashville that will serve as its national headquarters", you're engaging in protracted campaign activity.

Calling Yourself A "Candidate"
Here's some of what Thompson has said already:

June 26, 2007: "You're either running or not running. I think the steps we're taking are pretty obvious."
June 4, 2007: Thompson referred in the past tense to having decided "I'm going to do this," and then again talks about "when I did" decide to run for President. Also in that interview, Thompson claims his Internet presence "has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime." [Query -- does blogging on a site with only 23K visits/day count as a "presence"?]
June 6, 2007: Thompson tells CNBC's Kudlow and Cramer that his campaign is a foregone conclusion, saying "Well, I don't want to get into a lot of details in terms of a plan before I even announce my candidacy."
July 12, 2007: Thompson advisor Mary Matalin tells the WaPo, "He has made up his mind. And one can appreciate that planning the announcement of what's on his mind needs to take place in a deliberative fashion."

As one campaign finance attorney put it today, Thompson is "playing footsie" with the campaign rules. Thompson allegedly believes in "more disclosure" in the campaign finance realm. Let's see him prove it. What could he possibly be hiding?

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More Dirt On GOP Hopefuls

2007-07-09T17:23:00.001-07:00

1) Fred Thompson knocked up his high school girlfriend out of wedlock. They got married and subsequently divorced before Thompson married his current wife, 24 years his junior.
source 1 and source 2.

2) Rudy Giuliani's first wife (of three) was his second cousin (Regina Peruggi). They were married for 14 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani

3) Ron Paul has more cash on hand for his campaign than John McCain.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/ron-paul-tops-m.html.

4) Rudy Giuliani has been married more times (3 times) than Mitt Romney has gone hunting (2 times).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
http://democrats.org/a/2007/04/more_money_same.php

5) Fred Thompson once worked as a lobbyist for the pro-choice National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Not terribly shocking given that, to varying degrees, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and even John McCain have all offered pro-choice commentary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/us/politics/07thompson.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/10/114157/044

6) Rudy Giuliani is the cross-dressingest public servant since J. Edgar Hoover.
http://www.myspace.com/rudyinadress

7) According to their Wikipedia pages, Fred Thompson (2), Rudy Giuliani (3), John McCain (2), and Newt Gingrich (3) combine to average 2.5 marriages each.

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2007-07-08T12:48:00.001-07:00

Revist 9/11

Fred Thompson Gay: yuck!

2007-07-06T09:39:00.001-07:00

RUMORS ABOUT FRED THOMPSON'S SEXUALITY ARE TOO MUCH

Andrew Sullivan:

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They're not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I'm sure we will soon find out.

Translated: COUGH COUGH GAY COUGH COUGH FRED THOMPSON IS GAY GAY GAY COUGH COUGH

But that's not all.

Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

2007-07-01T09:25:00.001-07:00

Roswell PR officer dies, releasing sworn affadavit
Claims alien story true, saw bodies
UFO pieces handed around at high-level meeting

EXACTLY 60 years ago, a light aircraft was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 3000m.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the aircraft.

Visibility was good and as pilot Kenneth Arnold scanned the sky to find the source of the light, he saw a group of nine shiny metallic objects flying information.

He estimated their speed as being around 2600km/h - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time.

Soon, similar reports began to come in from all over America.

This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting, this was the birth of a phenomenon, one that still exercises an extraordinary fascination.

Military authorities issued a press release, which began: "The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc."

The headlines screamed: "Flying Disc captured by Air Force".

Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they'd first thought was a "flying disc" was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

The key witness was Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage.

He described the metal as being wafer thin but incredibly tough.

It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut or burned.

These and similar accounts of the incident have largely been dismissed by all except the most dedicated believers.

Astonishing new twist

But last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies.

Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered.

But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

UFO pieces handed around

Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.

Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.

He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.

The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.

The clean-up operation

Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.

This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself.

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide.

He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

Haug 'saw the alien bodies'

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin.

They are described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.

Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".

What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims.

Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.

Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?

The US government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the '90s.

In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction In The New Mexico Desert.

Weather balloon 'cover story'

The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening forevidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second US Air Force report concluded claims bodies were recovered were generated by people having seen crash test dummies that were dropped from the balloons.

Sceptics, of course, will dismiss the testimony left by Haut.

After all, fascinating though it is, it's just a story. There's no proof.

But if nothing else, this latest revelation shows that, 60 years on, this mystery endures.

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