Let’s play a game. I will edit this New York Times piece a bit, and you will try to name the Ivy League rock star the article features. Okay? Okay. Here:

Soon, Mr. X had testified before a grand jury, and the rough outlines of what would become a giant scandal had been published in a local newspaper.

That same month, Mr. X . . began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. X and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the investigation, had reached an agreement.

Mr. X was to be paid $3 million at the end of . . 2011[.] Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. X over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box . . for him and his family to use over the next 25 years. . .

Board members who raised questions about whether the university ought to go forward with the payments were quickly shut down, according to two people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

In the end, the board of trustees — bombarded with hate mail and threatened with a defamation lawsuit by Mr. X’s family — gave the family virtually everything it wanted, with a package worth roughly $5.5 million.

Did you guess? Yes? What super-genius Alfred Einstein was worth millions and millions of dollars to a stodgy intellectual powerhouse? Which lecture celebrity extracted decades of family private plane trips and luxury box accommodations from an obeisant, genuflecting administration? Whose professorial preening likely cashed in piles of valuable university scholarships for the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, eager and needy? Hmm? Oh, please. Like you can’t remember Joe Paterno.

Tomorrow is the fortieth anniversary of the Nixon administration’s attempt to slam-dunk America, the democracy. 1972 was an election year, and some people were planning to vote against Republicans. So there were chores to do. Somebody had to break into the Democratic Party headquarters and steal the November election.

It’s amazing how few wingnuts will mention the crime. The Nixon pals meant to thwart democracy by breaking into the opposition’s HQ and killing their chances to choose our political executive. And though I don’t know you, I’ll risk insult by saying if you believe Republicans are any different today you’re dumb.

Which is why tomorrow I expect plenty of interesting opinions on the scandal that brought down a shitty American. This one, for contrast, is a real snoozer. As Fred Thompson is mostly turtle though, it’s OK:

The press will be praised as having stood between us and Armageddon. Someone will say, in effect, that we were on the verge of losing our civil liberties — spying on peaceful anti-war demonstrators and such. There are certainly elements of truth to all of this.

Fred’s trying to pretend the scandal’s been overplayed. Like it’s Waterworld. The break-in alone rates a jaw-dropper. As Watergate played out and the revelations piled up, everybody’s jaws hit the floor. The paranoiac Nixon had used the government for his personal bludgeon, breaking the law over and over again. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people had been happy to help him. It was evil.

. . the soldiers in the Watergate wars overstate their case, happy to add layer upon layer of Shakespearean pathos and drama to the events, while failing to add any critical thinking or historical context, pushing instead the same, tired conventional wisdom.

38 people pleaded guilty or were indicted for the crimes of Watergate. This is not a convention, it’s a fact. I think it’s funny Fred is trying to spin history some other way, it’s no easy job. You have to be pretty clever to manage that. Nixon himself called the Tennessee senator “dumb as hell,” so he’s running uphill.

Watergate was in large part about the arrogance of power. It demonstrated, once again, that Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts. Older men, full of themselves, and their youthful, ambitious subordinates thought that the ends justified the means and that they could get away with illegal wiretappings, break-ins, and the targeting of their political enemies because they controlled the levers of power.

Well, that’s simple enough. There’s really nothing for anyone to learn, good evening. People gain access to “the levers of power,” then crimes get committed. Sunrise, sunset. Here’s an irrelevance: Authoritarians know what’s best for the world, to the point of blowing up the freaking Brookings Institution. There’s a lever for that I think. What does a U.S. president do by the way? Swab the floors, yes.

CNN contributor and conservative radio host Dana Loesch said on her show that she not only thinks the Marines who urinated on dead Taliban soldiers are cool, but she’d be willing to join them.

After playing a news clip describing the video, Loesch said, “I’d drop trou and do it too. That’s me, though. I want a million cool points for these guys.”

Dana Loesch: The Golden Pundit. Can we get a million kewl points for theze guys? OK. Here ya go, cha-ching for you and you and you and you. What now, d00d? Buy some t-shirts that say ‘Wetcha? You betcha.’ Epic. War, the fraternity party. I’m guessing 10% of the Beta Meta Meathead population would gladly put on some Taliban fatigues this weekend and play dead in whatever town Dana’s in.

She wondered why there was any kind of scandal surrounding the incident.

“C’mon people, this is a war,” she said. “Do I have a problem with that as a citizen of the United States? No, I don’t.”

I know virtually nothing about being a military man or fighting in a war. But I know enough to know that pissing on people you shoot, taking video of it and passing it around can get Americans killed. I know soldiers know it’s illegal. And I know better than to hoot it up over something that the military works hard to prevent.

Dana Loesch isn’t just a strutting bimbo. She’s working against the armed forces, their honor and traditions. When it comes to prosecuting a war, I assume they know better than she does.

KABUL — An Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops has said he did it because of a recent video showing US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents, security sources told AFP.

The attack on the soldiers, who were unarmed, came on Friday at a base in eastern Afghanistan and left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously . .

The report was backed by an intelligence source and another with access to information from the Afghan ministry of defence, both of whom requested anonymity.

“In his initial confessions, he said that he was strongly motivated to kill the soldiers when he saw the video of foreign soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses,” the intelligence source said.

Let me guess, Dana. Now you’re going to be angry.

Oh, how I loathe the future. Months and months of Jerry Sandusky reports, the lurid trial dragging on and on, the sight of grown men crying on the stand, the replaying of heartbreaking testimonies on the nightly news. Please spare us, it’s all too horrible.

I fear particularly for what’s approaching given the newest, most reckless player in the tragedy: Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lawyer. He is flawed, cavalier and stupid:

“Anyone who is naive enough to think for a minute that Tim Curley, Joe Paterno, Gary Schultz and, for that matter, Graham Spanier, the university president, were told by Mike McQueary that he observed Jerry Sandusky having anal sex with a 10-year-old-looking kid in a shower at Penn State . . “

“10-year-old looking kid”? Maybe pint-sized twinks cruise the Penn State locker room? How can we be sure, after all? The whole thing might be a misunderstanding of local gay culture that happens to overlap the football program. Hell, even straight guys like Jerry Sandusky might enjoy “anal sex.” I’m getting nauseated by my own snark.

Joe: we know who the victim was. And 10 year-old boys (and girls) do not engage in “anal sex.” They get raped.

” . . and their response was to simply tell Jerry Sandusky that, ‘Don’t go in the shower room any more with kids.’ I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY. Because that makes absolutely no sense.”

. . so, somebody dials 1-800-REALITY. And it’s a gay sex line, the “hottest place for triple-X action.” We’re back to hot sexy square one, and the bile is rising.

Is this the worst lawyer? Hard to imagine a more despicable choice. Let’s see: as a 49 year-old, Joe represented a 16 year-old teen seeking emancipation, had sex with her and got her pregnant. They later married, had another kid and divorced, which is excellent. Before you start holding your head, let’s be fair: while she was one-third his age, Sandusky’s victims were one-fifth his age. So there’s really no parallel. I see no reason to worry about having an attorney like that maintain your innocence.

After taking this case, Joe thought it would be a good idea to have Jerry defend himself on TV. That effort produced two of the most horrifying defendant’s clips ever seen. So that was a fine strategy.

Tuesday: Joe, his defendant, the prosecution and the victims all showed up for the first big day of the long legal process, the preliminary hearing. Seeing the media circus, Joe stepped inside and suddenly waived the proceeding. Nothing to see here today, people, no reason to hang around, ‘bye. That, of course, produced a media circus. Victim four:

“This is the most difficult time of my life. I can’t put into words how unbearable this has been on my life, both physically and mentally. I can’t believe they put us through this only to waive the hearing.”

Joe, again, allowed his client to comment:

“We fully intend to put together the best possible defense that we can do, to stay the course, to fight for four quarters.”

Ready for months of football metaphors from the Penn State child rapist? Ugh.

Inspires more disgust this holiday season: Christmas songs, or Jerry Sandusky videos?

That is very hard to watch.

When someone says they had a 13 year affair with you, they’re either honest or whacko.

Ginger White doesn’t seem crazy. She seems like she had little choice other than to admit the embarrassing truth given the media noose tightening around her.

“I’m not proud,” White told Russell. “I didn’t want to come out with this. I did not.”

White was worried a political tsunami was headed her way. So, she decided to head it off, by confessing she was involved in a 13-year-long affair with presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

“It was pretty simple,” White said. “It wasn’t complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship.”

Herman went on with ‘Blitz’ to categorically deny it all:

That blanket denial isn’t wise. Look at the evidence:

–“She showed us some of her cell phone bills that included 61 phone calls or text messages to or from a number starting with 678. She says it is Herman Cain’s private cell phone. The calls were made during four different months — calls or texts made as early as 4:26 in the early morning, and as late as 7:52 at night. The latest were in September of this year.”

Good luck explaining the communications and their timing, Herman.

–“She says in his hotel room, he pulled out a calendar and invited her to meet him in Palm Springs. She accepted, and she says the affair began.

‘He made it very intriguing,’ White told FOX 5. ‘It was fun. It was something that took me away from my humdrum life at the time. And it was exciting.’”

How did Ginger White end up in all those cities where Cain was appearing? They were ‘friends’ that vacationed together? In the same hotels?

–“She says during the next 13 years, he would fly her to cities where he was speaking and he lavished her with gifts. She says they often stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead and dined at The Four Seasons restaurant.”

While not a rich woman, Ginger bought herself the gifts? And the expensive hotel accomodations? Totally unlikely.

Cain’s lawyer is smarter than his client:

. . this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.

Yeah, that’s what you say.

Washington Examiner now reports yet another other allegation tonight. And, frankly, this is not much to write your lascivious mother about. But coming after allegation number four, where Sharon Bialek, a Republican, shunned opportunities to parlay her story into tabloid lucre to tell the world this:

When they saw each other in the evening, Bialek said he put his hand on her leg, “reached for [her] genitals” and pushed her head toward his crotch.

When Bialek objected, Cain asked her: “You want a job, right?”

. . the newest account of Herman’s strange behavior will play badly. When Americans are looking for sober and responsible individuals to run The Greatest Country Ever®, they’re not impressed by a candidate who sees himself as David Lee Roth.

Say ladies, you sure look fine, but there was an especially lovely young woman I spied in the audience. Fetch her and send her to my dining room or sitting/kneeling room or the Playtex Thunderdome, or what have you please:

. . 40-year-old Donna Donella, of Arlington, Va. — told the paper that the moment came after Cain gave a paid speech in Egypt that year. A woman in the crowd posed a query to Cain during the speech, the Examiner said.

Donella told them: “And after the seminar was over, Cain came over to me and a colleague and said, ‘Could you put me in touch with that lovely young lady who asked the question, so I can give her a more thorough answer over dinner?’”

She was “suspicious of Cain’s motives and declined to set up the date,” the Examiner reporter wrote.

That prompted Cain to reply, “Then you and I can have dinner.” Instead, some of Donella’s co-workers suggested a group outing.

Smoooth. Cain, of course, has been married for a hundred years. (David Lee Roth is not yet familiar with the term “football,” sports or nuclear-capability wise, touche’.)

Sure, this is your phallo-centric narcissistic behavior. The surprise is that Cain has gotten this far without it being divulged. Apparently, the business world is more protective of its sexual criminals than the political world.

There will be talk of this story, and it will pile atop the others as a believable tale about a spunky candidate with dirty habits. But if there’s one more Sharon Bialek out there, and she decides to go public, Cain is done. It’ll be too much for moderates and independents to take. Herman will sputter along at 15-20% from then on, tourniquetted by so many finding him so disgusting.

And did you know? Rock stars don’t pick up tabs:

She said she didn’t witness any “inappropriate sexual behavior” at the group dinner. But she claimed he asked the waiter for two $400 bottles of wine, and then stiffed the rest of the group when it came time to pay.

Cain! \m/(-o-)\m/

With proper attention being paid to a shocking BBC Two documentary, the suddenly exposed truth of what went on in Spain between 1940 and 1990 hit many of us like a bombshell. Reading articles on tonight’s debut broadcast, I couldn’t believe it: the Catholic Church had stolen and sold up to 300,000 babies.

Today, BBC news continued to tell the story:

Spain’s stolen babies and the families who lived a lie
By Katya Adler | BBC News, Spain

I first met Manoli Pagador in Getafe, in a working-class suburb of Madrid. She was attending a meeting for people affected by the scandal Spaniards call “ninos robados” – stolen children. She has three daughters and lots of grandchildren, but she has never got over the loss of her first-born – a son – nearly 40 years ago.

She had come to think she was crazy for believing he was alive, instead of dead and buried as hospital doctors had told her. “Now,” she said, gripping my hand tightly. “Look around the room at the other women here. All like me. The same background. The same experience. I’m not mad and my family finally believes me.”

In 1971 Manoli, who was 23 at the time and not long married, gave birth to what she was told was a healthy baby boy, but he was immediately taken away for what were called routine tests. Nine interminable hours passed. “Then, a nun, who was also a nurse, coldly informed me that my baby had died,” she says.

They would not let her have her son’s body, nor would they tell her when the funeral would be . .

“Doctors, nuns?” she says, almost in horror. “I couldn’t accuse them of lying. This was Franco’s Spain. A dictatorship. Even now we Spaniards tend not to question authority.”

Manoli’s child was gone. Like so many other children, her son had been stolen and sold to a ‘better’ Catholic family, somewhere else.

The scale of the baby trafficking was unknown until this year, when two men – Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, childhood friends from a seaside town near Barcelona – discovered that they had been bought from a nun. Their parents weren’t their real parents, and their life had been built on a lie.

Juan Luis Moreno discovered the truth when the man he had been brought to call “father” was on his deathbed. “He said, ‘I bought you from a priest in Zaragoza’. He said that Antonio had been bought as well.”

The pair were hurt and angry. They say they felt like two dogs that had been bought at a pet shop.

See the article here. I am trying to dig up a source to view the documentary. When I find it, I’ll post it.

I am, again, just this close to dumbstruck. Whatever gets torn in an attempt to grasp boundless evil, this tears it. Where to begin to speak of crimes so depraved and so towering in number?

In a period between 1940 and 1990, in perhaps the most successful human trafficking effort since America’s slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, Spain’s Catholic Church stole up to 300,000 newborn babies from their mothers. The children were then sold to Spanish Catholic customers.

The BBC have produced a documentary on the half century of nearly unspeakable crimes. It’s slated to air on Tuesday night:

Journalist Katya Adler, who has investigated the scandal, says: ‘The situation is incredibly sad for thousands of people.

‘There are men and women across Spain whose lives have been turned upside-down by discovering the people they thought were their parents actually bought them for cash. There are also many mothers who have maintained for years that their babies did not die – and were labelled “hysterical” – but are now discovering that their child has probably been alive and brought up by somebody else all this time.’

I’m having a hard time fathoming this. If it had come to light that one — only one — child had been abducted by American hospital administrators and sold to their friends, I can’t imagine the holocaust of press people and news coverage and police and Oprahs and governmental agencies and politicians that would descend upon the scandal. Criminal trials, civil trials, interviews, reunions — these would go on for years. The Catholic Church perhaps stole and sold as many children as there are people currently living in Pittsburgh.

How? How could this be possible? How will these people become reunited with their true mothers, fathers and families, their own flesh and blood? How will the legal system deal with it? How will people live with the decisions they made and the actions that were forced upon them? What an agonizing mess.

One thing we know: how the Catholic Church will react. They will, slowly and surely, across the years, over the decades, offer occasional and slightly more heartfelt apologies. Meanwhile, they’ll be furiously lobbying against criminal and civil sanctions with authorities. That’s what they always do.

I’ve had enough of this for now, my head’s pounding.

James and Rupert Murdoch may be done testifying to British Parliament, but the phone hacking controversy grows. Rupert’s son may have been caught in a devastating lie.

James told parliament that he knew nothing of the actual hacking, had never been made aware of its existence. In this oblivious state, he was too trusting of News of the World executives who prevailed upon him to make payments to victims as if they were “legally necessary.” The payments were tantamount to hush money.

The claim centrally involves the NotW’s editor, Colin Myler, and its lead attorney, Tom Crone.

James Murdoch’s crucial claim to the committee was that although he had personally agreed to a massive payout of £700,000 to hacking victim Gordon Taylor, he had done so in ignorance of the true facts. He said Crone and Myler had told him the payout was legally necessary . .

Murdoch, sitting alongside his father Rupert, claimed that Crone and Myler had concealed from him the crucial piece of evidence in the case: that an email had come to light with a voicemail hacking transcript, marked “for Neville” [Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World's chief reporter].

The existence of this email, had it been made public at the time, would have exploded the “rogue reporter” defence and begun to implicate the rest of the NoW newsroom. It was, and is, the smoking gun in the whole hacking case.

On Thursday, Crone and Myler called bullshit:

“Just by way of clarification relating to Tuesday’s CMS Select Committee hearing, we would like to point out that James Murdoch’s recollection of what he was told when agreeing to settle the Gordon Taylor litigation was mistaken.

“In fact, we did inform him of the ‘for Neville’ email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor’s lawyers.”

This is trouble for the Murdochs. Lying to parliament is a big deal. This, for the first time, indicates the Murdochs knew of their paper’s phone hacking problem, but cared too little to do anything about it. If anything, they sought to conceal it.

Rupert Murdoch’s enormous, paranoid, right-wing media conglomeration trembles before us. Aw, poor asshole jillionaire. After Rupert’s crown jewel British tabloid, News of the World, got exposed for hacking into thousands of people’s phone messages, folks throughout the Empire — throughout the world — got pissed. Furious. News Corp. doesn’t look so harmless any more.

It never was so. And it won’t be, in whatever future it retains, because Rupert is a lying, partisan shit. And here’s the latest proof.

The clip isn’t remarkable for its attempt at deception, which is S.O.P. for Fox News. It’s notable for its pitiable incompetence. They trotted out a codgerly public relations expert (Bob Dilenschneider) to push back against reality. No, not a journalist, not a former employee, not a member of Scotland Yard, not a gossip columnist — an American p.r. hack.

Gee, can you imagine what his take will be on the mess? Something honest and forthright. Maybe he’ll say it rates a trifle? Everything’s okay, nothing to see here? Blimey, you’re right.

The best part: the old turd doesn’t even understand ‘hacking,’ the cause of the scandal. Has no clue about the differences between anonymous cyberassholes breaking into corporations’ files so they can steal credit cards and yellow journalists snatching citizens’ cell phone messages so they can ignite a scandal. One of those crimes is your ‘strong preying upon the weak’ outrage. Rupert’s massive News of the World hacked and deleted the voicemails of a 13 year-old murder victim. Big, big difference.

Shouldn’t we get beyond it and really deal with the issue of hacking? Citicorp’s been hacked into, Bank of America’s been hacked into, American Express has been hacked into, insurance companies been hacked into. We’ve got a serious hacking problem in this country. And this morning, the government’s obviously been hacked into for 24,000 files. So we’ve got to figure out a way to deal with this hacking problem. That’s what we’ve got to do.

Thank you, Bob Liveinpreviouscentury. Perhaps you’d also address ‘Identity Theft’, Bob?

“A person’s identity is who he is. It can never be taken away. On rare occasions, a person could get hit on the head with a rock, or a witch might cast a spell, making him believe he was somebody else. In these cases, I seem to recall (I was a consultant for ‘Bewitched’) that a second hit on the head, or a potion supplemented to one’s morning coffee, puts things right.”

You can contact Bob at wherever Bob can be contacted.

“If Anthony Weiner decides to make it a jihad against me,” Breitbart said, adding: “I will take that … as you said an insurance policy, maybe.” He said he could not see a circumstance in which he would release the X-rated image.

“I don’t think I want to put his family through that type of thing,” Breitbart said when asked why he doesn’t release the photo. “I could put that out there and his career would have been over today.”

What a solid guy. That’s the decent way to behave in trying times. There’s little doubt that the image of Rep. Weiner’s engorged penis would wallpaper the internet instantly and end his career, a career that Democrats, even now, are fans of.

There’s also Weiner’s family to consider. His pregnant wife is trying to hold the marriage together during the media maelstrom. And can you imagine what that poor kid will have to go through in the future, seeing Dad’s dick every time he gets on a computer? It is true: the internet is forever. Breitbart is sparing these innocent people a nightmare. What a good, good guy.

Anthony Weiner’s Cock Shot Emerges
Adrian Chen | June 8 2011

. . here it is: Andrew Breitbart showed a couple of radio DJs a picture of what is likely Anthony Weiner’s dick, then they leaked it on Twitter.

The picture comes courtesy of Sirus XM shock jocks Opie and Anthony, who had Breitbart on their show . . they took their own snapshot and put it on Twitter. A meta leak, if you will.

Oh no. He was just being nice to the shock jockeys. Andrew happened to have the photo on him, so he showed it to ‘Opie’ and ‘Anthony.’ Hard to understand why they’d photograph it and post their own copy online.

Breitbart, understandably, is horrified. He worked for hours, almost days, to prevent the heartache that Weiner’s family will now endure. Makes me think of this:

“I’d like an apology from him,” Breitbart said. “This was his strategy, to blame me…so I’m here for some vindication.”

That was Monday at Weiner’s mea culpa press conference. Weiner surprised people by apologizing to Andrew, who’d been threatening his career. Andrew accepted it like the man he is.

But now, this. How awful Andrew Breitbart must feel. I feel sad for everybody.