|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Peter Gosselin $17.79
By Rebecca Skloot $15.21
$40
|
|
|
|
|
Satire by Andy Borowitz —
Thousands of Tiger Woods’ mistresses converged on Yankee Stadium to watch the golfing legend’s press conference on the stadium’s giant Jumbotron.
|
 Flickr / roblisameehan
|
The long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal within Dublin’s Archdiocese is still the Catholic Church’s problem, and on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI met with Irish bishops for the first part of a two-day strategy and damage-control session at the Vatican.
|
 house.gov
|
After serving almost exactly 36 years in the United States Congress, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania has died. He had been in intensive care following gall bladder surgery. He was the first Vietnam War veteran elected to Congress. (continued)
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — Jenny Sanford was my role model, until I read her book. I once wrote that the wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford offered “a new and improved version of the betrayed political spouse—neither enabler nor victim.” I was wrong.
|

|
Is it unfair to bring up Mel Gibson’s troubles? After all, it’s been more than three years since the superstar allegedly blamed those “fucking Jews” for “all the wars in the world.” Gibson loses it in this interview, saying “I’ve done all the necessary mea culpas.”
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — So the tables-turned, she-cheated-on-him political sex scandal we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived, albeit across the pond.
|
 AP / Koji Sasahara
|
By Mark Heisler — The world is living from development to development, suggesting something much more important is going on. What will it take, exactly, before we butt out?
|
 Flickr / Brani's fashion dolls
|
By Eugene Robinson — Tiger Woods has a Barbie thing so pronounced it suggests his philandering is as much about validation as lust.
|
 telegraph.co.uk
|
It’s not clear whether the editors of Newsweek believe they hold any diplomatic power, but they’ve gone ahead and told Italy to “dump” its scandal magnet of a prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in the magazine’s European edition this week. Let’s see whether Time can top this.
|
 AP / Matt Rourke
|
By T.L. Caswell — After doing prison time for dog fighting, he played Sunday in his first regular-season game in almost three years. But his re-emergence in the NFL has revived questions that arose when the scandal broke. And for one journalist, the issue was personal.
|
 AP / Kathy Willens
|
By Eugene Robinson — If widely reported revelations about John Edwards’ childbearing affair are true, then the two-time presidential candidate is simply a bad person with no redeeming social or political value.
|
 Project on Government Oversight
|
Much of the furor over the conduct of private embassy guards in Kabul appears preoccupied with what one whistle-blower describes as the “gay shit” rather than the exploitation of young Afghan women or the deteriorating security situation at the embassy. The latter, after all, was the major focus of the complaint that blew this story open.
|
 Center for American Progress
|
This is coming from the New York Post, so take it with a metric ton of salt, but the rag says former New York governor and “Client 9” Eliot Spitzer is thinking about getting back into politics, possibly challenging conservative Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Spitzer has repeatedly denied any interest in running again, but if the polling pans out he should. Here’s why…
|
 AP / Ron Edmonds
|
Internal e-mails released Tuesday show that Karl Rove and other senior Bush aides played an “earlier and more active role” in the 2006 U.S. attorney firing scandal than previously revealed. The messages detail a concerted, two-year effort by Rove and staff to dismiss attorneys for political reasons.
|
 White House archive / Oliver F. Atkins
|
By Stanley Kutler — President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the revelations of his “abuses of power” and obstruction of justice. For his involvement in criminal activities, Nixon earned his unique epitaph: an unindicted co-conspirator.
|
 visitbulgaria.info
|
For almost two years, insurance giant AIG has experienced quarterly losses—until now. The infamous company is reporting its first profitable quarter since 2007, a turnabout that will give the U.S. government a whopping $1.5 billion gain as a shareholder, while individual shareholders get to split $311 million among themselves.
|
|
“Political adviser Karl Rove and other high-ranking figures in the Bush White House played a greater role than previously understood in the firing of federal prosecutors almost three years ago, according to newly obtained e-mails that shed light on a scandal that led to mass Justice Department resignations and an ongoing criminal probe,” reports the Washington Post.
|

|
Bill Maher compares the letters of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who fell in love in Argentina, with the texts of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, who fell for congressional pages.
|
 senate.gov
|
Looks like the Roland Burris show isn’t going to be picked up for a second season. Washington strategists have taken a good look at the Illinois senator’s fundraising numbers (such as they are) and deduced that a 2010 re-election bid is unlikely.
|
 Background: Flickr / Tracy O
|
For a mere $250,000, lobbyists and captains of industry were invited to “an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of [Washington Post] CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.” Invitees were promised unfettered access to the paper’s reporters as well as “key Obama administration and congressional leaders.”
|
|
Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
|
 house.gov
|
U.S. taxpayers twice paid for Mark Sanford’s trips to Argentina, though they occurred before he met his mistress there. Another trip to the land of gauchos was funded by South Carolinians and took place after he met his lover, though before he claims to have, er, danced the tango with her.
|
|
Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
Posted on Jun 12, 2009
READ MORE
|
 World Economic Forum
|
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost three members of his Cabinet in three days, adding to a heap of political casualties that originally grew out of an expense claims scandal. The latest dropout, James Purnell, has called on his former boss to “stand aside to give our party a fighting chance. ... ”
|
 Wikimedia Commons / Agência Brasil
|
Bill Clinton’s got nothing on Silvio Berlusconi, if the Italian prime minister’s estranged wife’s claims are proved true. Rumors that the 72-year-old Berlusconi had improper relations with a minor, and invited some 40 young women to his villa for a New Year’s Eve party, aren’t significant for their titillation value so much as for the threat they may pose to his position as Italy’s head of state.
|
|
Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea’s ex-president, died Saturday after jumping off a cliff while hiking near his rural home in the country’s southeast. Roh had been implicated in a corruption scandal and left a suicide note behind, according to The New York Times.
|

|
So, Matt Lauer busted right out of the gates with the sex-scandal questions in his interview with Eliot Spitzer on Monday’s “Today” show, taking far too much time to extract mea culpas from the fallen former New York governor before getting to the better part of the program, during which Spitzer holds forth about the economy.
|

|
Here are the five most-read stories of the last seven days, including Chris Hedges on America’s moral meltdown and Robert Scheer on the economic incompetents who find easy employment in the Obama administration. Full list after the jump.
|
 AP photo / Mark Lennihan
|
In a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, reprinted here, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo shares what his office has discovered so far about AIG’s scandalous bonuses, which “made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout.”
|
|
Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Mar 16, 2009
READ MORE
|
 White House / Eric Draper
|
You may have heard about the scandalously overpriced presidential helicopters the U.S. had ordered from Italy, but did you know they may have been a payoff for forged intelligence used to sell the war in Iraq? It’s all a part of “a web of conspiracy and deceit,” says journalist Paolo Pontoniere.
|
 White House / Eric Draper
|
You may have heard about the scandalously overpriced presidential helicopters the U.S. had ordered from Italy, but did you know they may have been a payoff for forged intelligence used to sell the war in Iraq? It’s all a part of “a web of conspiracy and deceit,” says journalist Paolo Pontoniere.
|
 White House / Joyce N. Boghosian
|
Rep. John Conyers has not stopped investigating the U.S. attorneys scandal and he’s finally gotten former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to agree to testify. The two advisers previously ignored subpoenas to appear before Congress, citing executive privilege.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Roland Burris, the woefully forgetful Illinois senator, should go home and stay there, and I’d advise taking a vow of silence as well.
|
 Flickr / debaird
|
Nearly a quarter of the members of the House of Representatives find themselves embroiled in a lobbying scandal, with Rep. John Murtha at the center. One hundred four representatives earmarked more than $300 million in just one bill, allegedly in exchange for campaign contributions from a lobbying firm founded by a former Murtha protégé.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited.
|
 senate.gov
|
Surprise! Roland Burris has no credibility. The man who condemned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat—until he was appointed to it—has revealed that, contrary to what he told the United States Congress in sworn testimony, he tried to raise money, as requested, for the governor-turned-auctioneer.
|
|
By David Sirota — One thing is obvious after Michael Phelps’ marijuana “scandal”: Our society is addicted to fake outrage—and to break our dependence, we’re going to need far more potent medicine than the herb Phelps was smoking.
|
 latimes.com
|
Memo to anyone still angling for a top position in the Obama administration: Pay your taxes. Tom Daschle is the latest political player to find himself out of the running—in his case, to head the Department of Health and Human Services—after tax issues came to light.
|

|
A confession: We’ve been avoiding the news about embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose impeachment trial begins Monday. There are too many storm clouds on the horizon to waste time on this man’s circus. But we couldn’t help but pause to marvel at the chutzpah of the governor, who dropped this bombshell on Sunday.
|
 marcelinopena.files.wordpress.com
|
Forget that business with the maid whose work papers expired. The real scandal with Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s choice to head the Treasury Department, is his history of lax regulation—at least where his friends at Citigroup were concerned. ProPublica did some digging and found that Geithner’s New York Fed “eased the reins as the company blew billions. ...”
|
|
By Marie Cocco — I am supposed to be typing out words that articulate a highly audible and terribly alarmed tsk tsk. Instead, I am laughing with unrestrained amusement at the farce that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has engineered. Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun since New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s implosion.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|