Black and Blue City Skyline wallpaper

Black and Blue City Skyline wallpaper

Ensign’s parents paid mistress $96K

Sen. John Ensign’s parents shelled out big bucks to pay off their son’s mistress, the latest twist in an unfolding scandal that has upended the political career of the one-time rising GOP star.

The scandal has also touched Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), another prominent conservative, who revealed that he had confronted Ensign about the affair and urged him to end it, but says he will refuse to divulge any conversations with Ensign — even under inquiry from ethics investigators.

To move out and then occasionally do some laundry at the parent’s house is understandable, but getting your parents to pay off your mistress would be an imposition for most. Coburn’s claim there was some kind of “physician and an ordained deacon” confidentiality that prevents him from revealing more then he already has also adds to the bad reality TV aspect of what seems to be an ever unfolding melodrama.

Yet another Republican sex scandal. That aspect 0f of Ensign’s behavior probably bores most people at this point. Its the pay offs and probable lies that keep the story going.

Supermax prison: Obama’s books objectionable

The federal government’s most secure prison has determined two books written by President Barack Obama contain material “potentially detrimental to national security” and rejected an inmate’s request to read them.

The inmate that requested the books is Ahmed Omar Abu Ali who is in prison for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate Bush 43. Thus the reason the FBI denied his request.

GOP Rep: Panetta Told Us Something CIA Hadn’t Told Congress

I just got off the phone with a GOP Congressman who was in that Intel committee meeting where CIA director Leon Panetta allegedly revealed that his agency had misled Congress for years. It was a cryptic conversation, but the Congressman did confirm Panetta revealed something to the members of Congress that the CIA hadn’t divulged to Congress before.

The Plumline and probably everyone else notes the careful parsing of words, but the indication is that Democrats were correct in claiming that the CIA had been less then candid from 2001 until June of this year.

10 Questions for Bill Keller ( That would be the Executive Editor for The New York Times).  Starting with the last question first,

Why is the Times so anti-American? Jim Main, ORLANDO, FLA.

Journalists at the Times love their country just as much as anybody else. We don’t see it as our job to be a cheerleader for everything America does.

Jim also frequently asks strangers how often they beat their wives. Question one,

Why do you think the press gave the Bush Administration a free pass on the misleading statements it made to get us into the war in Iraq? Randal Davis, PORTLAND, ORE.

It was partly the insatiable desire for scoops people in the Administration were feeding about the potential threat in Iraq. But a lot of it was just that we floated along with the conventional wisdom, the worst enemy of journalism.

Scoops aside we know that former NYT reporter Judith Miller basically took dictation from the Bush administration and the Times printed it as news. Not opinion, news. Judith Miller: Right Where She Belongs, With the Right to Lie

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller reported stories on the search for Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue, some of which were cited in a Times editor’s note acknowledging the flawed coverage. Miller, now with the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote when she left the paper that she had “become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war.”

In NYTs defense, they did a much better job of sorting out Miller’s ethical issues then the broadcast media did with the unchallenged expert opinions of military analysts who acted like extensions of White House fax machines.

Your tax dollars at work, Watchdog group: Dozens of active-duty troops found on neo-Nazi site

It is the Facebook for the fascist set, and the typical online profiles of its members reveal expected tastes.

Favorite book: “Mein Kampf”

Favorite movie: the Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will”

Interests: “white women”

Dislikes: “anyone who opposes the master race”

But there’s one other thing that dozens of members of newsaxon.org, a white supremacist social networking website, have in common: They proudly identify themselves as active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces.

I come from a military family and spent a fair share of time around military personnel and it should go without saying, the vast majority of the enlisted military are decent working class folks, regardless of politics.Its that crop of now well trained nut cases ( with public provided health-care at that) that should be cause for concern.