Quotes of the Morning: Taken with a Grain of Assault

“A Republican congressman accused of abusing his ex-mistress agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day, a person familiar with the terms of the deal told The Associated Press.
Rep. Don Sherwood is locked in a tight re-election race against a Democratic opponent who has seized on the four-term congressman's relationship with the woman. While Sherwood acknowledged the woman was his mistress, he denied abusing her and said that he had settled her $5.5 million lawsuit on confidential terms.
The settlement, reached in November 2005, called for Cynthia Ore to be paid in installments, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal is confidential. She has received less than half the money so far, and will not get the rest until after the Nov. 7 election, the person said Thursday.”
-Associated Press, November 2, 2006

“So? I mean, doesn’t everyone buy off their accusers when their election needs demand it? No story here. Move on.”
-Skippy

“A woman who says she was assaulted and propositioned by a Republican congressman running for Nevada governor said Wednesday she was physically threatened, pressured and offered money to drop her accusations and change her story.
Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino cocktail waitress, said a friend, Pennie Puhek, who claimed to have connections to Rep. Jim Gibbons' gubernatorial campaign, told her she would be paid if she dropped her accusations and signed a statement changing her account, said Mazzeo's lawyer, Richard Wright.”
-Associated Press, October 26, 2006

“Didn’t we already go over this? No story. This is just another woman claiming to be physically assaulted by a Republican Congressman. I am sure that Bill Clinton put them up to it. He has eerie supernatural powers over women. I mean, if this were another gay sex scandal it might have some legs (the press LOOOOVES the gay sex scandals), but this is just another case of much ado about nothing (except women being assaulted by Republican congressmen).”
-Skippy

“The leader of America’s powerful National Association of Evangelicals, a vocal supporter of George Bush and opponent of same-sex marriage, has resigned after being accused of paying for sex with a man.
The Rev Ted Haggard, a married father of five who is seen as one of the most influential conservative Christians in the nation, vigorously denied the allegations but said he could not ‘continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations.’
[…]
The claims were made by Mike Jones, a male escort from Denver, who told the media that Mr Haggard had paid him to have sex every month for nearly three years. He claimed that the Reverend had snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters in order to heighten the experience, an allegation also denied by Mr Haggard.
Mr. Jones said that he had voicemail messages from Mr Haggard as well as an envelope allegedly used to send him cash, which provided evidence of their secret trysts. ‘There’s some stuff on there (the voice mails) that’s pretty damning,’ he said.”
-Times Online (UK), November 3, 2006

“Ha! Thought you had me, didn’t you? Haggard isn’t a Republican politician! He’s just one of the most influential evangelical (and rabidly anti-gay) ministers in the United States who has consistently endorsed Bush. Completely different. This is just a blanket accusation anyway. There isn’t any proof (beyond a few letters and some audiotape).
Now think about this for a minute… This is all coming from the ‘moral’ party. Man, I’d hate to see the evil things that the Democrats must be doing.
Still, if you want to be safe then you are just going to deal with this kind of thing. What else are you going to do? Trust the Democrats? As we have been told a thousand times before (by the Republicans), the Democrats cannot be trusted on national defense. Only the Republicans are serious about national defense. You’re just going to have to put up with the hypocrisy and assaults. It is all for the good of the country.”
-Skippy

“Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to ‘leverage the Internet’ to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
[…]
One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts ‘were shocked’ at the public disclosures.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
‘For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,’ said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. ‘There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.’”
-New York Times, November 3, 2006