Another mustachoed, hypocrite, republican lawmaker is about ready to resign after being accused of soliciting gay sex.
CNN is reporting that…
Washington State lawmaker Richard Curtis resigned his office tonight after a man he allegedly paid for sex spoke to the media about the encounter. Curtis is the third conservative lawmaker in just as many months to resign amid allegations of soliciting gay sex.
“I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused,” Curtis wrote in a statement. “This has been damaging to my family, and I don’t want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office.”
The Associated Press reports, “Three days earlier, Curtis had insisted to his local newspaper that he was not gay and that sex was not involved in what he said was an extortion attempt by a man last week. But in police reports, Curtis said he was being extorted by a man he had sex with in a Spokane hotel room. The other man contends Curtis reneged on a promise to pay $1,000 for sex.”
Enough said.
Here’s the video:
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Bill Sloat has the fedora on and is doing the virtual beat walking. So far, my take is he’s getting sunshine blown up his skirt relative to LaTourette’s involvement in getting Jeff Coryell fired from the PeeDee’s failed “Wide Shut” experiment.
All he said was “wassup wid dat”?
Yeah. Right. Whatchoo Talkin’ ’bout Willis?!
The Congressman is looking for cover because he knows this thing has blown up in both his and the PeeDee’s faces. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have a strong challenger this time out. He’s staring at Bill “Mo’ money from Mo’ bodies” O’Neill in ‘08. Not a cakewalk.
The better cover might have been for the PeeDee to shut down “Wide Shut” entirely and claim business reorganization or some shit. Firing Coryell was blatant and meant to do only one thing: preemptively silence one of the congressman’s biggest critics. What the LaTourette folks don’t want you to hear about is going to be heard. You can bet on that.
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The “Wide Shut” project will now either die or become purely wingnut…either of which will render it useless. Jill has resigned:
Earlier today, I resigned as a freelance blogger for the Wide Open blog. Jean Dubail gave me the choice to post about my decision, or let him do it. I decided to write about it, and that’s why this post is here.
You can read the rest at Jill’s place, but she does agree with me that the mad experiment is over:
This experiment is, in my estimation, over. It may continue on, but it will be something else, some other experiment because every reader will know that every one who blogs here has restraints hanging over them, just like traditional journalists, restraints which Jeff and I reject as tolerable in what is suppose to be a Wide Open forum.
A fitting end, really. Kudos to Jill for doing the right thing. She won’t be a bit sorry. If Dave Stacy or Nixguy and Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog had any integrity at all as bloggers they’d follow suit. They’re probably somewhere foaming at the mouth at the prospect of creating their own little pajamas media party at the PeeDee…
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Sorry for the deviation into personal stuff, but this is important to me – and I’m pretty devastated. If I don’t post for a while, you can assume I’m taking another spontaneous mental health sabbatical.
A picture of my dogs, Buddy (left) and Ozzy (right). This was taken last January, just a week or two prior to Ozzy herniating a disc in his back and being paralyzed. We put Ozzy to sleep today – he just recently started exhibiting signs of extreme pain, and x-rays showed a calcified disc above his paralysis, and he didn’t react well to steroids after his emergency disc surgery. So we decided to do the only thing guaranteed to end his pain.
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ONN is reporting that utility companies are donating tons of cash to Ohio’s GOP lawmakers who are responsible for shaping the state’s new energy policy.
Investor-owned utilities most affected by changes coming in Ohio’s $14 billion electric power industry have lavished thousands of dollars on the political campaigns of Republicans who will steer those changes.
Campaign finance records show that the political action committees of FirstEnergy Corp., American Electric Power Co. and Duke Energy have given at least $80,250 to the campaigns of House and Senate leaders and their caucus campaign funds so far this year.
The Senate version of the bill received a nod from Governor Strickland and should soon go to the house.
But House Speaker Jon Husted appears to be in no hurry to get the bill passed. On Monday he “announced a schedule for hearings on the energy bill beginning next week and into January.”
It looks like he’s going to delay as long as possible hoping the utility companies keep on making contributions.
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Voices as disparate as Chris Baker and Matt Naugle have already called for it and I will echo those sentiments. The Wide Open experiment is over. They failed. Steve LaTourette jerked and the PeeDee blinked. Game over. There will be no more credibility in the failed experiment.
Baker is, as one might expect, on point:
The right thing to do for Jeff’s fellow Wide Open bloggers is to resign. The actions by the Plain Dealer have proven the exercise to be a farce. Before last years Governor’s race I had a lot of respect for NixGuy and BizzyBlog, and as I like to say, it’s never to late to do the right thing.
Add my voice to what I hope will be a loud chorus of those who think the right thing for the remaining bloggers to do is resign in protest and continue their blogging where they began. Most of the good stuff was cross posted anyways.
Let it die in dignity. RIP “Wide Shut”.
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Earlier this week Dennis Kucinich questionioned George Bush’s ‘mental health’ in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health. There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.”
I don’t necessarily disagree with Dennis on this. I’ve seen the President do some pretty crazy stuff.
I mean the guy DOES believe God told him to invade Iraq. That sounds pretty crazy to me.
But here’s the problem: there is nothing anyone can do about it except Dick Cheney.
Section four of the 25th Amendment does allow for involuntary withdrawal of the president- but it requires the Vice President to be involved…
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
And, since Cheney is already running the show anyway- there’s really no reason for him to make some kind of 24-style power grab.
Looks like we’re stuck with him for one more year.
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I’ve been hearing horror stories about this year’s pumpkin crop being destroyed by bad weather across the U.S. (Average Jane over at PO has a good overview of the situation ).
Despite the bad news for pumpkin growers- and the predictions of pumpkin shortages across the country- I had no problem finding pumpkins in Columbus, Ohio…
Happy Halloween!
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The Ohio Money Tree is still bearing fruit. Data is current as of last month too I hear. Turns out 4 PeeDee employees have given to political campaigns. Two are writers. How wide and how deep does Goldberg want this to go? We haven’t even begun to have fun with spouse names in case they are playing big games. Are we having fun yet?
Oh, and speaking of scrub a dub dub. Susan might wanna have Jean rewrite this. I’m sure it doesn’t apply anymore:
WIDE OPEN will be a no-holds-barred discussion of Ohio politics we hope to continue through the 2008 election and beyond.
I’d say LaTourette figured out a way to hold the bars.
On second thought, don’t scrub it. I’d just make you look silly:
Update: Cindy has a good catch as well (I personally think, from having talked to them both and knowing Jill for a while now that they are fully capable of their own contributions that match their own values. It will be interesting to see what Jill does.)
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