Political Glance
The Tennessee state senator said he was opposed to sex outside marriage, but his private life told a different story: He was having an affair with his 22-year-old intern.
When an extortion plot exposed married Republican Sen. Paul Stanley's illicit relationship, he said he would be "clearing up" misimpressions later. He's now clearing out his office, the latest politician caught in a sex scandal, this one made worse by not coming clean.
"If you can't explain what you've done to your constituents in 30 seconds or less in a way they would accept, then don't do it," said Bruce Oppenheimer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University. "It's amazing how many elected officials violate that very important conventional wisdom."
TVNL Comment: Isn't it about time policians stop talking about anything related to personal life? Haven't these people shown that they are in no way shape or form qualified to make decisions on how we the people should or could live our personal lives. From marriage to sex, these people never practice what they preach. Yet the people keep supporting them. Amazing.
Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.
There’s “been speculation that he would decline to answer questions on Fifth Amendment grounds,” Luskin said. “That’s a personal privilege; he will not assert it.”
It is supposed to be the Treasury’s role to represent the public interest. Unfortunately, appointing Treasury Secretaries from the ranks of Wall Street management – or giving Wall Street veto power over the nominee – undermines this mission. Elsewhere in what is supposed to be the regulatory system of public-private checks and balances, the simple tactic of underfunding the criminal justice system, the FBI, state and local prosecutors – or actively blocking them, as George Bush did – leaves the economy without adequate protection against financial fraud and predatory credit. Putting the Congressional financial committee heads up for sale to the highest campaign contributors caps the process of transforming economic democracy into oligarchy.
