quote:

Opponent Outs Florida GOP Governor Candidate
365Gay.com
October 12, 2006

(Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist has been the subject of speculation for several years but on Wednesday a political opponent used National Coming Out Day to say he's known for years that Crist is gay.

Appearing on WFTL, a South Florida news-talk station, independent gubernatorial candidate Max Linn said it is common knowledge in Tallahassee that Crist is gay.

And, Linn said it is time Crist acknowledged it.

"Charlie come out, come out from wherever you are," Linn said during an interview on the station.

Linn said he has known Crist for 25 years and even worked to help get him elected to other offices and that he's "a good guy."

The Crist campaign said Thursday it would not comment. A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, the Democrat running for governor, also declined to comment.

In an August radio interview in Miami Crist denied rumors he is gay when the question was directly put to him.

"The point is, I'm not. There's the answer. How do you like it?" Crist said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, as they say on Seinfeld. But I just happen not to be."

During the gubernatorial primary Crist's opponent for the GOP nomination, Tom Gallagher, continually assailed Crist as "soft on homosexuals".

Although both candidates oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoption Crist would "allow" civil unions in Florida. Gallagher maintained there was no difference between the two.

In public opinion polls Crist leads Davis 53 - 43. Davis also opposes same-sex marriage.

quote:

Senator backing marriage amendment getting divorce
April 14, 2005, 10:25
http://www.wsmv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3211261&nav=1TcR...ll=Email&Format=Text

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A state senator sponsoring a constitutional amendment aimed at "solemnizing the relationship of one man and one woman" is accused in a divorce case of cheating on his wife.


State Sen. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Cleveland, is accused of "inappropriate marital conduct" in a divorce complaint filed Feb. 25 in Bradley County.

The senator's March 2 answer to the complaint "vehemently denies" any inappropriate marital conduct.

"He is very hypocritical, fighting for the sanctity of marriage and not keeping his own," the senator's wife of 15 years, Bridgitte Suzanne Miller, said in a report in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Jeff Miller, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, acknowledged the divorce in a statement Thursday.

"Divorce is a very difficult time for everyone," he said. "It is a very private matter which is played out in public proceedings. My chief concern right now is the best interest of our children."

The senator's wife said Wednesday her husband was involved with a woman in Nashville. She said family members saw him with the woman at a Martina McBride concert.

"He told them that she was just a friend," Ms. Miller said. "That really bothered me."

The state Senate approved Miller's marriage protection amendment Feb. 22. In addition to defining marriage as "the historical institutional and legal contract solemnizing the relationship of one man and one woman," it would also forbid state recognition of same-sex marriages.

Miller stopped an attempt to include a constitutional ban on adultery in the amendment.

Court records show his wife has custody of the couple's three minor children, and the senator has agreed to pay $3,000 a month in child support, with Saturday visitation privileges.

"We are very amicable and are talking every day. We remain close throughout this period," Miller said in his statement. "We have tried to work things out, however it has become apparent over the last week or so that we have irreconcilable differences."

Miller, 42, is acting as his own lawyer in the case.

There is legislation pending in the Tennessee House and Senate that would give judges in divorce cases discretion in deciding how to split assets whenever there is clear and convincing evidence that one of the parties has committed adultery, abandonment or physical abuse.

That bill is being sponsored by another southeast Tennessee Republican, Chris Clem of Lookout Mountain.

"People need to know there is a line ... physical abuse, abandonment or adultery ... the first person who crosses that line is going to have to pay."

quote:

Former Brown County District Attorney, Republican Sky Sudderth, Arrested
stevesmarketanddeli.com
Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Sudderth arrested on sex offense
Former DA in Brownwood accused of assault against a minor near Austin

By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com


Former 35th District Attorney Skylar Barclay Sudderth of Brownwood, who resigned in 2004 after being charged with several offenses, has been arrested on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Sudderth remains in jail in Williamson County, officials said Monday. Williamson County, with Georgetown as the county seat, is about 30 miles north of Austin.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said Sudderth, 39, was arrested after a complaint was filed last week charging that he committed aggravated sexual assault against a relative who is a minor. The complaint was filed by a detective with the Leander Police Department following an investigation.
''He has not been indicted by a grand jury,'' Bradley said. ''We will be presenting this to a grand jury within the next 30 to 90 days.''

A spokesperson at the Williamson County Sheriff's Department said Sudderth was arrested at 12:50 p.m. on June 5 and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child and evading arrest. He remains in custody in lieu of bonds totaling $400,000.

This is not Sudderth's first run-in with the law.

In December of 2003, Sudderth was indicted by a Brown County grand jury on charges of aggravated perjury, tampering with governmental records and tampering and fabricating physical evidence regarding a case in which he made a plea bargain with a sex offender.

All three charges against Sudderth were officially dismissed in June 2004 after he resigned and paid fines and court costs of more than $3,000, according to orders filed at the district clerk's office.
Sudderth, the Republican candidate, defeated Brown County District Attorney Lee Haney in November of 2000 and took office Jan. 1, 2001.

quote:

Doolittle Defended Friend Accused of Sexual Assault

LATimes.com


Rep. John T. Doolittle — under fire for his connection to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff — has been attacking his Democratic opponent, Charlie Brown, for belonging to the ACLU. To Doolittle, Brown's membership in the ACLU is enough to characterize him as an extremist liberal, since the group has defended sexual predators such as the North American Man Boy Love Assn. in the past.

"It is astounding that anyone could defend a group dedicated to aiding and abetting pedophiles," Doolittle said in a recent press release.

But Doolittle himself came to the defense of a dentist accused of sexually assaulting six patients while they were in his chair. Doolittle told a criminal jury in 1987 about his friend: "I consider him to be a very truthful individual," according to a transcript of his testimony.

Doolittle, then a state senator and attorney, served as an important character witness for the friend, David Roy Phipps, who eventually was sentenced to three years' probation. Phipps also had his dental license placed on probation for five years by the state dental board, which required him to attend to patients only with an assistant at his side.

"I've known him of, I guess, approximately three years," Doolittle testified at the August 1987 trial.

"And how is it that you know Dr. Phipps?" a defense attorney asked.

"I got acquainted with him initially through our mutual involvement in the church, and then we became personal friends as well," Doolittle replied. "...I consider him to be a very truthful individual."

"If Dr. Phipps were to give you his word on something, would you believe that?" the attorney asked.

"Without question," Doolittle replied.

Doolittle's efforts may have proved effective for his friend in 1987. But in 1994, Phipps assaulted another patient, according to court documents filed with the 3rd Appellate District Court of Appeal.

One patient in 1994, listed as Marie Y., said after being administered nitrous oxide she "felt Phipps's hand go underneath the dental bib to give her breast a sudden squeeze or caress, putting his hand completely over it; he squeezed her right breast three times and her left breast once."

In December of that year, Phipps was charged with attempted sexual battery by restraint, a felony, and misdemeanor sexual battery. The case went to trial in 1995, and Phipps eventually pleaded no contest to two counts of misdemeanor sexual battery. He served 365 days in the Placer County jail, the documents show.

A psychologist hired by Phipps testified before the dental board, which again had initiated disciplinary action. The psychologist said Phipps experienced "some arousal" from the touching and that he saw himself as a "pleaser" to women patients.

A spokeswoman for Doolittle called back to gather information about this story, but then did not respond for further comment after several hours. Phipps could not be reached.

One historical footnote: The judge in the 1987 case was Earl Warren Jr., the son of the legendary former California governor and U.S. chief justice.

(Photo: Dennis Cook / AP)

Oct 17, 2006

quote:

GERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Gibbons: I walked away
Congressman rejects waitress's version of Friday incident
By BRIAN HAYNES, MOLLY BALL,
DAVID KIHARA and FRANCIS McCABE
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Jim Gibbons

A casino cocktail waitress told police a drunken U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons grabbed her, shoved her against a wall and threatened her in a Las Vegas parking garage after she rebuffed his advances at a restaurant Friday night.

But Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, told investigators she did not want to press charges against the Reno congressman "mainly because of who he is. 'Cause of who he is, and I just don't want to go up against something like that."

Gibbons, 61, the Republican candidate for governor, denied her version of the story and told police he merely helped a woman to her vehicle and grabbed her arm when she tripped and fell.

"She tripped," he told detectives. "I grabbed her to straighten her up. I said, 'Are you OK?' She walked away. I walked away. And I went into the, into the hotel, came up here and went to bed. And that's the end of the story."

Though Gibbons' Democratic opponent, state Sen. Dina Titus, declined to comment on the allegations, a political analyst said the incident could change the dynamics of the governor's race in the last stages of the campaign.

"It's a distraction even if it's not true," creating damaging headlines and overshadowing other news about the race, said David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "If there's any truth to it, it brings his judgment into question in a very big way. It could be really bad for him."

Damore said that for any candidate to have a drink with an unknown member of the opposite sex three weeks before an election was an error in judgment.

"Maybe she was setting him up or whatever, but he made himself vulnerable," he said.

The incident began Friday at McCormick & Schmick's restaurant near Paradise and Flamingo roads, where Gibbons and his political campaign adviser, Sig Rogich, had dinner with six campaign donors. After the donors left, the two men planned to leave about 8 p.m. but went back inside because of the heavy rains that were soaking the parking lot. Inside they sat down with a lawyer and legal secretary whom Rogich knew because they work in his building.

At some point, Mazzeo and her friend, Pennie Puhek, approached the table. Puhek knew one of the women, and she and Mazzeo pulled up chairs and "basically invited themselves" to the booth, Rogich said.

But Mazzeo told police that Rogich and Gibbons invited them over after Puhek bought them a round of drinks.

Mazzeo, a cocktail waitress at Wynn Las Vegas, sat next to Gibbons. She told police that he flirted with her throughout the evening, put his hand on her thigh and played footsie with her, according to a police report.

"He just, just started talking about how his, his marriage wasn't successful and how he had two children," Mazzeo told police. "He was married for 20 years and that, uh, marriage wasn't everything that it was cracked up to be, and then that's when he gave me his card."

Gibbons told her she could campaign for him, she said. Mazzeo said she tried to change the subject and move away from Gibbons when he touched her.

"He put his hand on my leg," she said. "And then I just scooted closer to Pennie."

Mazzeo told police that when she moved away, Gibbons said, "I wish I could have that kind of affection from her."

At some point, patrons at a nearby table started taking pictures of Gibbons with their camera phones.

"So I presume they knew who I was," he told police. "They were, you know, gonna sell it to, uh, you know, the, the trade magazines and say, 'Here's Jim Gibbons out cavorting with the women.' You know? And I just laughed at it. I said, 'Well, you know, I'm 60, close to 62 years old, married, this isn't gonna fly very far.' But I didn't think much about it. But they said something about it. And I looked over and I didn't see 'em taking any pictures, so I didn't think much about it."

Shortly after the picture taking, Rogich suggested he and Gibbons leave, Mazzeo said.

Gibbons then said he was staying at the nearby Residence Inn by Marriott, and "we could basically crawl back to his hotel room," Mazzeo said, explaining to police that she was not sure whether Gibbons was asking her to go to his room.

Rogich and Gibbons went outside, but Rogich went back in to pay the bill, which totaled $302.12. Gibbons waited outside. Mazzeo said she stayed at the table with Puhek for 15 or 20 minutes before walking outside, where she ran into Gibbons.

"Are you looking for me?" she said he told her.

"No," she replied.

Gibbons offered to help her find her truck, which was parked in the parking garage behind the restaurant. A witness told police he saw Gibbons walking toward the garage with Mazzeo following several feet behind him.

Mazzeo told police they walked in silence to the garage, but when they got to the garage elevator, Gibbons grabbed her arms and pushed her against a wall.

"I thought he was joking at first," she told police. "That's when he said, um, he, he said, 'You have two choices.'"

Gibbons told her she could try to leave or do what he said, she told police.

"Are you really, you know, rape me at this time?" Mazzeo said she told Gibbons. "That was the time, and I said, 'Are you serious?' I said, 'I, I just survived cancer for 11 years, and you're really going to do this right now?" she told police. "And he said, 'Lucky you. You survived cancer.'"

Mazzeo said she then saw three people walking by and ran away. She made the first of three 911 calls that night at 10:23 p.m.

Mazzeo, breathing heavily and sounding frazzled, nervous and drunk, slurs her words and struggles to make coherent sentences.

When the 911 operator asked her where she is, Mazzeo talks about her job and mistakenly says she "went on a date with Jim Gibson" (who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Titus), though later she clarified the man was Gibbons. "I'm not lying about (expletive)."

In between breaths and words, Mazzeo laughed nervously.

"OK. Why are you laughing?" the 911 operator asks.

Mazzeo responds: "I am not laughing. I'm running. And if you don't know my personality, I apologize."

The 911 operator continues to quiz Mazzeo about her location. Mazzeo first says she is at a Starbucks on Paradise but later says she is at a La Quinta Inn.

"OK. What do you need police for right now?" the operator asks.

"He just assaulted me in the ... (expletive) goddamn police ... in the goddamn (expletive) parking lot," Mazzeo says.

Mazzeo calls police again 29 minutes later. In that call, she tells the operator she is at the La Quinta Inn, then quickly changes her location to a Starbucks bathroom.

"Well, I never even went into the La Quinta, I was just running down the street," she tells the operator.

The operator asks how far she is from La Quinta and Mazzeo says she is going there. The operator asks whether Mazzeo sees an officer, and she responds, "Yeah, right there," and the call ends.

When Mazzeo makes the third 911 call 22 minutes later, she's in front of the Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. She sounds calmer and is more coherent.

She spends nearly 10 minutes talking to a 911 operator, recalling the story she would tell investigators in later interviews.

"He kept telling me I just (expletive) up, and then I started running," Mazzeo says. "But I'm hoping that there are elevator cameras that show the assault."

Investigators checked the cameras in the garage but found that the cameras were not recording at the time and that surveillance cameras at the restaurant had not worked for a year.

Mazzeo tells the operator that both she and Gibbons had been drinking.

"He didn't seem like he was under the influence of anything other than alcohol, correct?" the operator asks.

"Oh, probably power," Mazzeo says laughing. "But I don't know."

Officers soon arrived and found Mazzeo.

Investigators noticed scratches on Mazzeo's shoulder and back, but she did not explain how she got them.

On Saturday, Mazzeo told police she did not want to press charges. She told police that no one pressured her to change her mind, but she was a single mother with a 3-year-old daughter and worried the incident would become a "three-ring circus."

Mazzeo declined to comment about the case on Wednesday and referred calls to her attorney, who could not be located.

"I was told not to talk to anyone," she said.

Mazzeo filed for bankruptcy last year, claiming more than $110,000 in debt, including credit cards, medical bills and student loans.

Puhek declined to comment earlier this week.

Las Vegas police Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy said police would not have filed criminal charges even if Mazzeo had pursued them because they found no evidence to support her story. Investigators would have referred the case to the district attorney's office for review, he said.

"We have her word. We have his," McCurdy said. "Somewhere is the truth."

On Wednesday, Rogich said Gibbons, who was campaigning in Mesquite and Laughlin, would not be available to tell his side of the story.

In his interview with police, Gibbons denied flirting with Mazzeo.

"We talked about just generalities," he said. "And it, it was a very pleasant and, she's a certainly, a nice lady. ... I don't have any problem with her. She's a wonderful young lady, and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm surprised that, uh, she would think that I would do something wrong. Uh, and I certainly if, if, you know, if there's an opportunity for me to apologize to her I'd be happy to do that. If she thought that would help. Uh, but, you know, I just thought we were all having a good time with casual conversation."

He said his leg inadvertently might have bumped Mazzeo's under the table, but he denied touching her in any other way. She touched him, he said, at times putting her hand on his arm.

When he saw her outside the restaurant, Gibbons offered to help her find her truck though she had been drinking.

"She was not, uh, in, she, I, I don't, uh you know, like I said, uh, she might have been tipsy," he told police. "Uh, she didn't walk in a straight line. That's for sure. Cause she, you know, bump into ya when you're walking along and, you know, I didn't think anything of that. And just helping this lady, and that was all."

"Gosh I learned an important lesson, never to offer a helping hand to anybody ever again."

Rogich denied Gibbons made flirtatious remarks, told dirty jokes, touched Mazzeo's leg or played footsie with her in the restaurant.

In a statement to police, waitress Julie Vick said that everyone at the table had been drinking heavily and that the atmosphere was "flirty -- dirty jokes, etc."

As for how the evening ended, Rogich said, "I walked outside. Jim walked ahead of me. I went back in. I went to the bathroom. I paid the tab. I went back outside. Jim was gone. Chrissy was gone."

The three other women and Rogich went to their cars, Rogich said.

Rogich said the allegations are totally inconsistent with the personality of Gibbons, whom Rogich has known since the late 1980s.

"It's impossible," Rogich said. "Anyone who knows him knows it's laughable. This is a man who gets kidded about being so straight. He very rarely drinks, and even then it's a glass of wine with dinner. He never goes out without a coat and tie because he takes his position seriously. He's been married to the same woman for 20 years, and he tells people they have a great marriage."

State Sen. Bob Beers, chairman of the Republicans' Victory 2006 effort, agreed the allegations strained credulity because it would be "highly out of character for the Jim Gibbons I know."

Beers described Gibbons as "reserved, formal, very serious, not flirtatious, very professional."

In Washington, where Gibbons has spent his professional life for the past decade, he is seen as a private person with few personal connections to others in the Nevada delegation and in Congress, sources from both parties said.

"People either loved him or were not particularly fond of him," said a former congressional aide who is a Republican. "He was definitely a maverick, like the John McCain of Nevada, off doing his own thing."

Said a Democrat: "It was almost like a running joke. Does somebody know Jim Gibbons? Nobody knows Jim Gibbons."

Stephens Washington Bureau chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.

quote:

Another GOP child molester
March 31, 2004
This time it's the First Selectman of Stonington, Connecticut, Republican Peter Dibble. Dibble was arrested this week for impairing the morals of a minor. The 13 year-old girl who filed the complaint against Dibble said the incidents occured when she was 10 years' old. Apparently Dibble "napped" with the girl 10-20 times, naps which included kissing and inappropriate touching. Read about it here and here. That is, if you can stomach it.

quote:

Blagojevich blasts Ryan volunteer
Campaign worker is charged with sex misconduct
By John Chase and James Janega
Tribune staff reporters
http://www.armchairsubversive.com/John_Butler2.htm
Published November 2, 2002

The already ugly race for Illinois governor got even more unsightly Friday as Democrat Rod Blagojevich and Republican Jim Ryan exchanged attacks over dirty tricks and the alleged sexual misconduct of a campaign worker.

The Blagojevich campaign ripped Ryan for accepting volunteer help from former Cass County GOP chairman John Butler, who was charged earlier this week with criminal sexual assault on a teenage female relative. Butler received pardons last year from Gov. George Ryan for burglary convictions....

quote:

"Segregation (and Hypocrisy) Forever"
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
By KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY
CounterPunch.org

Mandinkas were the fiercest warriors of Africa. After a Caribbean slave revolt in the 1800s, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the leading intellectual of the Southern gentry, invoked the specter of Mandingo slaughtering white masters as justification for their enslavement. Black male sexual prowess was also a big part of the myth. The often used colloquialism, "once you go black you never go back"--is the myth of the big black, well-endowed buck, Mandingo.

In the 1970s, the myth became the movie "Mandingo" in which one-time heavyweight champ Ken Norton played a noble slave who burns down the white man's plantation and escapes to freedom with the blond Southern belle in his arms. My mother took us kids to see the "controversial" movie when it was shown at the local drive-in theatre. And at the top of her stack of romance novels was a cover showing a muscular, caramel-colored black man caressing a buxom, blond lass, her ample white breast barely covered by the straps of her torn hoop dress, her long blond ringlets cascading over her shoulder with the title "Mandingo" emblazoned across the cover.

The Mandingo stereotype entraps black males to this day as evidenced by the pop culture embrace of the pimp, gangsta rappers along with a host of psycho-sexual-social illusions. The myth fuels denial over homosexuality and feeds rampant homophobia in the black community. As black gay and bisexual men practice a dangerous sexual secrecy, the AIDS crisis in the black community worsens. As a friend told me, "One of the worst thing to be is a gay black man in the south. The preacher wants you to lead the choir, and maybe even give him a blowjob every now and again, while condemning, denying or damning your very existence from the pulpit."

As for white women, during slavery a white woman marrying or consensually having a child by a black man usually found herself in legally sanctioned bondage. "Defilement" or being "spoiled" during the Jim Crow era most often meant banishment--or stripped of being "white" for one's "nigger-loving" ways. White men used "protecting white womanhood," the first plank in the Klan platform, as a pretext for controlling white women, but in some respects it trapped the men in a psychotic effort to prove their own sexual dominance.

In Thurmond's youth and political prime, lynching and the fear of it was the primary weapon to discourage black men from looking the "wrong way" at white women let alone having sexual relations. And lynching was accepted at all levels of white society as a means of controlling race mixing. Even in the late seventies, my first organizing job, with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference back when Ralph Abernathy was the head, was over the death of a black man, Mickey McClendon, murdered for dating a white woman. McClendon, from Chester, South Carolina, was shot, tied behind a pick-up truck, set on fire and dragged down a road, much the way James Byrd Jr. was in Jasper, Texas, in 1998. Today, whether it's Kobe Bryant in Colorado or high school football star Marcus Dixon in Georgia, whenever a black man is accused of the rape of a white woman, black Americans view the alleged crime in the context of history.

Sex is the prevailing theme of Thurmond's life. While he was alive and after death, the local press gleefully retold the story of a young Strom "sneaking out his upstairs bedroom for a romantic tryst with unnamed women." Thurmond's "virility," his marrying a twenty-two-year-old, Nancy Moore, at age sixty-six, having four children even as an old man and his "secret" black child were all a testimony to Southern white male power.

Thurmond's initiation in the "customs and traditions" of segregation, sex and white supremacy began with his political mentor Benjamin Ryan Tillman. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, a virulent white supremacist, also from Edgefield, Thurmond's home county, constitutionally (and otherwise) reinstituted white rule after Reconstruction. Pitchfork" Ben was proud to have driven blacks demanding rights out of the state at gunpoint. He and his Sweetwater Sabre Club members wore white shirts stained in red to represent the blood of black men. When Tillman came to power as Governor in 1890, blacks were the majority in the state. Today, blacks represent a third of the population. The decrease is directly due to Tillman's political legacy. Tillman's assault on black rights was immediate. He quickly revised the state constitution to ensure legal segregation of the races, stripping blacks of all political and economic power. As a U.S. Senator, Tillman declared, "We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men, and we never will."

Thurmond's father, J. William, himself a state legislator, once served as Tillman's campaign manager. Tillman later rewarded J. William by naming him U.S. Attorney (a job currently held by Strom's son--Strom Jr.) in a new South Carolina district even though Thurmond had killed a man in an argument over Tillman's politics. Tillman was a frequent visitor to the Thurmond home, a "symbolic part of the family," according to Cohodas, and a godfather of sorts to the Thurmond children. But to blacks, "Pitchfork" Ben was the prime purveyor of Negrophobia. And wrapped around Tillmanism was the ideal of the "pure, defenseless southern white woman." "There is only one crime that warrants lynching, " he said, "and governor as I am, I would lead a mob to lynch the Negro who ravishes a white woman." During Tillman's first term there had been five lynchings, in his second term there were thirteen.

Still, black South Carolinians were initially optimistic about Thurmond, who began his career as a Democrat. As a South Carolina state senator in 1938, despite the Tillman influence, he publicly opposed lynching and declared that the Ku Klux Klan stood for "the most abominable type of lawlessness." Thurmond called himself a "progressive" and upon election to governor in 1946 he declared, "We need a progressive outlook, a progressive program, a progressive leadership." He spoke of improving black schools, revising the Tillman Constitution of 1895 and abolishing the Tillman" poll tax that was used to keep blacks from voting. He supported "equal right for women in every respect," saying, "women should serve on boards, commissions, and other positions of importance in the state government." He also called for "equal pay for equal work for women."

At his inaugural Thurmond said, "more attention should be given to Negro education. The low standing of South Carolina educationally is due primarily to the high illiteracy and lack of education among our Negroes. If we provide better educational facilities for them, not only will much be accomplished in human values, but we shall raise our per capita income as well as the educational standing of the state." But Thurmond was not calling for an end to segregation, he was hoping for a new and improved "separate but equal." It would take the federal courts to strike down "separate but equal" and to force desegregation, or "integration", as the Thurmond forces would define it.

Thurmond stood squarely with Tillman on race mixing--he was against it and let stand the constitutional prohibition against it. It took 103 years before South Carolina finally voted to remove a ban on interracial marriage from its state constitution. Although it was not actively enforced, Tillman added the clause to the state's constitution in 1895 prohibiting "marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or a person who shall have one-eighth or more of Negro blood." Up until 1997, state legislators refused to allow voters to decide whether to remove the ban. A constitutional amendment, passed in 1998, finally deleted the line.

Still, at the start of his career blacks gave Thurmond high marks for his handling of the Willie Earle lynching, which stamped his administration as "liberal without being radical" by whites outside the south. On February 16, 1947, a young black man from Pickens County was arrested and charged with the murder of Thomas Brown, a white Greenville taxicab driver. The next day a mob broke into the Pickens County jail, took Earle, shot him, stabbed him and then beat him to death on the outskirts of town. The FBI and state officials investigated the crime at the behest of Thurmond, who also called for the prosecution of those accused of lynching. But after a highly public trial the jury acquitted the accused men.

However, when President Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces and announced his broad civil rights program in 1948, Thurmond could not tolerate the challenge thus posed to the "customs and traditions" that defined his deepest beliefs. Thurmond ran for President that year as the "Dixiecrat" States Rights candidate, admonishing the faithful that holding power boiled down to one thing--race and he would make sure that only white men held it. As Northern Democrats pushed for civil rights, Thurmond and his fellow Southern Democratic governors cried "states' rights" just as their ancestors did to justify African enslavement. As author Kari Frederickson wrote, Thurmond and other Dixiecrat governors appealed to racist, "conservative white men suffering from a self-diagnosed case of political impotency."

Thurmond as Tillman's political heir was the icon of the new "anti-miscegenation" movement. In his acceptance speech at the Birmingham meeting announcing his presidential bid he speechified, "All the bayonets in the Army cannot force the 'Negarah' into our home, our schools, our churches and our places of recreation."

Candidate Thurmond's platform stood for segregation and against race mixing. When the votes were counted Thurmond had 1.1 million votes, won 4 states and garnered 38 electoral votes. 1.1 million Americans voted in favor of segregation--it was not enough to defeat Truman, but the Democratic Party was never the same.

Eventually Thurmond was elected to the Senate as a write-in candidate in 1954, a post he would retain for a half century, until his retirement in January 2003. Throughout his congressional career, he opposed almost every major civil rights initiative. In 1956, he authored the infamous Southern Manifesto--a document signed by 19 of the 22 southern senators that urged the south to defy--as they put it--the Supreme Court's "clear abuse of judicial power" in outlawing segregation in public schools. In 1957, he executed the longest filibuster in history while trying to halt the first Civil Rights Act proposed in the Senate and backed by Eisenhower.

Lyndon Johnson's success in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the last straw for Thurmond. He left the Democratic Party and signed on with Republican Barry Goldwater. Upon leaving, Thurmond declared, "The party of our fathers is dead."

Thurmond's departure signaled a major shift in American politics. It was the birth of South Carolinian Lee Atwater, Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott's Republican Party. The Thurmond defection prompted the GOP appeal to white Southern conservatives and foreshadowed Richard Nixon's race-inspired "southern strategy." This framework exists today. Race supremacy is the ideological glue that keeps white men in the south in the Republican Party. Today they are called the "Bubba vote" and NASCAR dads, but the appeal is build on Tillmanism, the Dixiecrat Movement, the Southern Manifesto. It's almost always couched in the language of "states rights," but race and social control is the subtext.

Race politics explains Ronald Reagan beginning his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place where civil rights workers' Michael Schwerner, James Earl Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered. His declaration then, "I believe in states rights," sent the same message as George W. Bush's 2000 sojourn to the fundamentalist college Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school's founder has often been linked to the Klan and for years provided a Biblical sanction for racism. The school refused to admit blacks until 1971 and banned interracial dating until 2000.

In the 70s, as the country's racial attitudes changed Thurmond did as the self-serving do to stay in office--he changed--at least cosmetically. With blacks representing a third of the voters in South Carolina he hired the first black man ever employed by a southern senator and actively re-courted the black vote. Thomas Moss, a Korean War veteran and organizer with the meat packers union (in the "right to work state") in Orangeburg, SC, headed the Voter Education Project, a program that encouraged blacks to register to vote. Working with Moss, Thurmond began championing grants to black colleges, businesses, and municipalities. He voted in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act--a law that guaranteed the federal government's right to enforce a citizen's right to vote. He also voted in favor of the Fair Housing Act and the Martin Luther King federal holiday. His reward, during his 1978 re-election bid, 10 of South Carolina's 11 black mayors endorsed him.

Back in 1996, I was organizing a national conference on the epidemic of church fires in the South. As it just so happened, South Carolina led the nation in the number of church fires and the National Council of Churches was sponsoring the conference being held in the state. An old friend and NAACP member Joann Watson of Detroit made the trip down south. And as fate would have it, Joann and I were talking in the lobby of the Downtown Holiday Inn when who should stroll in--Strom in the flesh, looking kind of dazed but still moving, his aide not a step away. Joann immediately threw her two arms up in the air and cried like Moses appealing to Pharaoh in a strong but not loud voice, "Senator, let my people go!" Strom, leaning just a little, stopped, stuck his hand out to Joann and said in a clear twangy voice, "Go where? I love everybody. Everybody's my friend!"

Thurmond was the epitome of the classic pork belly politician. Graduate from high school and you'd probably get a letter from Thurmond. If a parent had trouble reaching a kid in the military, call Thurmond's office. Need help with the V.A.--call ole Strom. The "rural myth" is that Strom shook the hand of almost every South Carolinian. His apologists want us to remember that Thurmond.

When black State Senator Kay Patterson of Columbia agreed to eulogize Thurmond it was front-page news all across, the state. Patterson said, "Strom's experience is "on the road to Damascus. I have supported him since he left his segregationist ways and became a real American citizen and tried to be the senator for all the people of the state." Patterson attitude mirrored African Americans optimistic hope for Thurmond when he began his career.

But a new generation was reminded of Thurmond's legacy and iconic status at his 100th birthday party. Mississippi Senator Trent Lott praised Thurmond's 1948 campaign saying; "I want to say this about my state. When Strom ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of him. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Although Lott fell on his sword and apologized all over himself, his signal was unmistakable. Had it not been for blacks getting rights and race mixing, the world of white men with total power would be intact.

In the end, regardless of whatever changes Thurmond made later in life, his legacy can be described in two words--"Segregation Forever." Or maybe, "Segregation and Hypocrisy Forever!" Even if Essie Mae Washington-Williams' name is chiseled along side the names of his other children onto the Strom Thurmond statue that stands facing the Confederate Women's Monument on the Statehouse grounds, his contradictions and hypocrisy will still be etched in stone. But maybe, in a way, the day they chisel that name will be the day white South Carolina finally begin to confront its own contradictions?

Kevin Alexander Gray is a CounterPunch contributer and civil rights organizer in Columbia, South Carolina. He can be reached at: kagamba@bellsouth.net

quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history, an American serial killer and rapist who murdered numerous young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. His total number of victims is unknown. After over a decade of vigorous denials, Bundy eventually confessed to over 30 murders. Bundy is considered by some to be the prototypical serial killer.

Bundy is believed to have been a sociopath. He is usually described as an educated, handsome and charming young man despite the brutality of his crimes. Typically, he murdered young women and girls by bludgeoning them, and sometimes by strangulation.

...Bundy worked and campaigned for the Washington State Republican Party as an adult....

The following is a chronological list of the victims of Ted Bundy. This list is based on the 1992 "Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report" (see External Links below), a document assembled by the FBI and various state agencies from states where Bundy committed murders. The Team Report lists Bundy as having confessed to twenty known, identified victims, two unknown hitchhikers dated to May 1973 and September 1974, and seven other unknown, undated victims (not listed below) for a total of twenty-nine murders. Five other women, listed below, are known or suspected to have survived attacks from Ted Bundy.

Bundy never made a comprehensive confession of his crimes. The true toll of Ted Bundy's victims will never be known, but the names listed below are victims whom almost all authorities attribute to Bundy. All the victims listed were killed, unless otherwise noted.

* May 1973: Unknown hitchhiker (suspected). This young woman was actually murdered by another killer, William E. Cosden Jr. DNA tied him to the murder in 2001.
* July 1973: Unknown hitchhiker. Abducted from California.
* Jan. 4, 1974: Karen Sparks (survived). Battered in her bed as she slept. Remained comatose for several months, but eventually awoke.
* Feb. 1, 1974: Lynda Healy (21). Battered unconscious while asleep and abducted from the house she shared with other University of Washington co-eds.
* Mar. 12, 1974: Donna Manson (19). Abducted after walking to a jazz concert on Evergreen campus, Washington.
* Apr. 17, 1974: Susan Rancourt (18). Disappeared as she walked across Central Washington State College lawns.
* May. 6, 1974: Roberta Kathleen Parks (22). Vanishes while walking to another dorm hall to have coffee with friends.
* June. 1, 1974: Brenda Ball (22). Disappears from the Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington.
* June. 11, 1974: Georgeann Hawkins (18). Disappears from behind her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta in Seattle, Washington.
* July. 14, 1974: Janice Ott (23) and Denise Naslund (19), both from Lake Sammamish State Park.
* Aug. 2, 1974: Carol Valenzuela (20). Last seen at a welfare office in Vancouver.
* Sept. 2, 1974: Unknown hitchhiker (17-23). Abducted from Boise, Idaho.
* Oct. 2, 1974: Nancy Wilcox (16). Disappeared in Holladay, Utah.
* Oct. 18, 1974: Melissa Smith (17). Vanished from Midvale, Utah on her way to a friends house.
* Oct. 31, 1974: Laura Aime (17). Disappeared from a Halloween party at Orem, Utah.
* Nov. 8, 1974: Carol DaRonch (19, survived). Escaped Bundy by jumping from his moving car.
* Nov. 8, 1974: Debbie Kent (17). Vanished hours after DaRonch escaped from Bundy.
* Jan. 12, 1975: Caryn Campbell (23). Abducted while on a ski trip in Aspen, Colorado.
* Mar. 15, 1975: Julie Cunningham (26). Disappeared while on her way to a nearby tavern in Vail, Colorado.
* Apr. 4, 1975: Denise Oliverson (25). Abducted while visiting her parents in Grand Junction.
* May. 6, 1975: Lynette Culver (13). Snatched from a school playground at Alameda Junior High School, Pocatello, Idaho.
* June. 27, 1975: Susan Curtis (15). Abducted from the campus of Brigham Young University.
* Jan. 15, 1978: Lisa Levy (20), Margaret Bowman (21), Karen Chandler (survived), Kathy Kleiner (survived). The Chi Omega killings.
* Jan. 15, 1978: Cheryl Thomas (survived). Bludgeoned in her bed, eight blocks away from the Chi Omega house.
* Feb. 9, 1978: Kimberly Leach (12).

quote:

Robert William "Bob" Packwood (born September 11, 1932) was an American politician from Oregon and a member of the Republican Party. He was forced to resign from the United States Senate in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment of women emerged.

Senator Packwood's diary became a key issue: whether a diary can be subpoenaed, whether Packwood attempted to blackmail his fellow senators with threats concerning the purported content of his diaries, and his blatant excisions from it. The diary is a chronicle showing that many women find an aphrodisiac in the success and power of a public figure like the Senator. In Packwood's own commentaries, he muses over the blessing of having sexual access to a carefully counted number of women, between 90 and 100, arising out of his work in Congress.

Soon after leaving the Senate, Packwood founded a lobbying firm called Sunrise Research Corporation. Among other projects, he played a key role in the 2001 fight to repeal the estate tax.

In all at least 29 women accused Sen. Bob Packwood had sexually assaulted and abused them.

A paraphrase from Senator Packwood's sex diary: After working late, several of the staff stayed to have drinks and socialize. One attractive woman lingered and hoovered around me as the others left one by one. When the two of us were alone near midnight, she said she was very impressed to be able to work with such a powerful man. Then we began to touch each other. After kissing and rubbing, with no one else in the office, we dropped to the carpet for a intense session. Once done, still she stayed and talked, not wanting to leave me. Soon we dropped to the floor for a great second round.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Packwood

quote:

Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.
Ed_Schrock

Edward Lee Schrock (born April 6, 1941) is a Republican politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from January 2001 to January 2005, representing the Second Congressional District of Virginia.

Born in Middletown, Ohio, he earned a degree from Alderson-Broaddus College in 1964 and a Masters Degree in Public Relations from American University in 1975; and served in the U.S. Navy from 1964 to 1988, including two tours of duty in Vietnam. Schrock also worked as an investment broker and served in the Virginia State Senate from 1995 to 2001. During his four years in Congress, he served on the House Armed Services Committee, House Budget Committee, House Small Business Committee, and House Reforms Committee. In his first term in Congress, Schrock was elected President of the Republican Freshman Class. [1]

Schrock announced on August 30, 2004, that he would abort his 2004 attempt for a third term in Congress amid rumors of homosexuality. In the weeks before his announcement, Michael Rogers' blogACTIVE.com had reported that Schrock is gay—or at least a bisexual—despite having opposed various gay-rights issues in Congress such as same-sex marriage and gays in the military.[2]. After Schrock's announcement, blogACTIVE.com posted links to audio recordings of what the site said was Schrock soliciting sex on a gay phone-sex chatline.

On November 2, in the general election, fellow Republican Thelma Drake was elected to replace Schrock. Drake took office in January 2005.

Ed Schrock's recorded outgoing voicemail on a gay phone dating service:

quote:

George Roche III, carried on a 19 year affair with his son's wife, while serving as president of Hillsdale College, which "emphasizes the importance of the common moral truths that bind all Americans, while recognizing the importance of religion for the maintenance of a free society."
George_Roche_III

George C. Roche III (1935-May 5, 2006) was the 11th president of Hillsdale College, serving from 1971 to 1999. Although Roche led Hillsdale out of a near financial collapse and raised the college to national prominence, his vast contributions are often overshadowed by a scandal surrounding an alleged affair between Roche and his daughter-in-law, Lissa Jackson Roche, which led him to resign.

The Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar program and the college's widely circulated speech digest, Imprimis, were started during Roche's years as college president. Under his leadership, many new buildings were constructed, including the George C. Roche Sports Complex, named in his honor. Roche authored many books, such as Legacy of Freedom, The Bewildered Society, and The Book of Heroes, although it is believed that Lissa Roche, who worked at the college, was the ghost writer for his later books.

The famous scandal broke out in 1999 when the wife of George Roche IV, Lissa Jackson Roche, claimed to have had an affair spanning 19 years with her husband's father. Shortly after, she was found dead in the college's arboretum with a handgun, and the death was ruled a suicide. Following his resignation in November 1999, Roche left public life and moved to Colorado. The widely publicized scandal brought national attention to Roche and Hillsdale. A 2000 book, Hillsdale: Greek Tragedy in America's Heartland, was published concerning the controversial events. The book questioned whether Lissa Roche's death was actually a suicide.

Many question whether the death was in fact a suicide, but Roche was never convicted of any crime. Lissa Roche was also alleged by some to have had mental health problems. Furthermore, the alleged 19-year affair was never positively verified. In spite of this, Roche's reputation was never fully vindicated.

The scandal resulted in Roche's move to a remote cabin in Colorado where he spent the remaining days of his life. Roche returned to Michigan briefly in 2005 to celebrate his seventieth birthday. He passed way on May 5, 2006, in Colorado.

quote:

Candidate's Lone Issue is that She Had Sex With Packers Football Team. . . and the Republican Party is Behind Her!
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 10/11/2006 - 1:32pm. Analysis

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Some stories just write themselves. Especially when Republicans are involved.

The newest is Sandy Sullivan, the 65-year-old Republican nominee for secretary of state in Wisconsin. With no political experience, her sole claim to fame rests on her 2004 memoir titled "Green Bay Love Stories and Other Affairs," in which she recalls an allegedly bountiful sexual history with members of the Packers football team during the '60s.

Sullivan's website features no other policy position or agenda. "For this office, there are no issues," she says in a video linked from her homepage. Luckily, she offers these comforting words to prospective voters: "I'm somewhat on thin ice because I don't know what I'm doing." Her online bio proudly lists her "Life-long passion for, and friendship with, Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers" as personal background.

After all, it's not what you know, it's who you "know." In football terms, one might say this is either a case of illegal procedure or too many men on the field.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sullivan's website prominently features a picture of her standing next to Packers legend Bart Starr, along with his encouragement. More revealing are the endorsements of two former Republican Governors:

"I am confident that you have the experience and positive vision necessary to help make the state a better place. I know that you are qualified to hold public office because of your outstanding work as an educator and author." - Tommy Thompson (also former Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush Administration)

"I am wholeheartedly endorsing you for this office. . . I know you will place the best interests of the people of Wisconsin first." - Lee S. Dreyfus

It appears that these famous Wisonsinites are also trying to get a piece of the action. Not to be left out, even the current head of the state's Republican Party, Rick Wiley, is getting behind Sullivan, who Wiley says serves a "useful civic purpose."

"She's been a fantastic candidate for an office that not many people take a long look at," he said. "Everyone has a past out there," he noted, perhaps with George Bush in mind (hey, Bush was a cheerleader). One can only imagine what Rick Wiley was doing during the '60s.

What in the world is wrong with Republicans these days? They support a candidate running solely on a platform that she has fornicated with members of Green Bay's beloved football team, and cybersex with young boys is so unexceptional that those who knew about it found no need to act. And that doesn't even touch on the massive corruption.

Could we be seeing a case of trickle-down ethics? Bush and his cronies have set a miserable example for their party and the rest of the nation. Even Katherine Harris was shunned by the leadership, but Sandy Sullivan gets a glowing endorsement? The Republicans have some major issues, and not in a good way.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS