McCain's irresponsible choice

He's going to win, but he was going to win anyway, even before he put All About Eve on the ticket.



John McCain won the election when Russian tanks rolled into Georgia and a Russian general threatened a nuclear attack on Poland. Barack Obama has no military or national security experience and he is forty-seven years old. He will not be able to convince the country to trust him with the keys to the Pentagon.

Senator Obama might have won the election on his opposition to the war in Iraq, except that the U.S. election will take place during a temporary period of quiet in Iraq created by the police presence of U.S. troops. Two years from now, when Moqtada al-Sadr returns from Iran and blows up Baghdad in an effort to take control of Iraq's oil revenue, John McCain will be safely in the Oval Office calling on Americans to sacrifice.

Unless he's dead.

That happens sometimes.

And if it happens to John McCain, he has placed the country's future in the hands of a 44-year-old mother of five from Alaska who told voters in Pittsburgh on Saturday that it was "great to see another part of the country."

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin could become president of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces after less than two years as the governor of a state with the population of Memphis.

Senator McCain did nothing to buttress his argument that Sarah Palin is ready to be president at the event announcing her selection, when he stood behind her fingering his wedding ring and glancing repeatedly at the back of her hips.



But he's going to win.

The good news: Sarah Palin's views on oil drilling and global warming are an indication that John McCain will move the country toward an energy policy based on reality instead of one based on wishfulness, subsidies, mandates and punitive taxation.

The bad news: the next president of the United States just made a reckless decision that may have been based on a narcissistic desire to be seen as young, cool and exciting.

John McCain's first wife says he left her for a younger woman because he was forty and he wanted to be twenty-five.

Today he called Sarah Palin "a partner and a soul mate."

Cindy McCain should kick him to the curb right now. She already has her own plane and she doesn't have to take this.


Copyright 2008

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Sarah Palin's Supreme Court

If Senator John McCain is elected in November, the people of the United States will be one 72-year-old heartbeat away from having justices on the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by his vice presidential pick, 44-year-old Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Governor Palin was described today as "militantly anti-choice" on the issue of abortion, and she said during her campaign for governor that she favors students being exposed to all sides of the "evolution argument."

Is everybody fine with that?

If you're not, you might want to read "Why There is No Constitutional Right to Privacy, and How to Get One," and "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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John McCain flirts in the mud

Something odd is going on.

The Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, is openly flirting with the idea of selecting a running mate who favors abortion rights.

On Saturday he will reportedly appear in Pennsylvania with pro-choice former governor Tom Ridge, a man who looked positively euphoric in a television interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. She grilled him about his vice presidential prospects and he declined to answer, smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary.

And columnist Robert Novak reported that McCain was seriously considering asking Senator Joe Lieberman to be his running mate. Lieberman, a former Democrat, a former Democratic V.P. candidate, and a supporter of abortion rights, reportedly received a phone call last week from Karl Rove pleading with him to call Senator McCain and withdraw his name from consideration. According to the story in Politico, Senator Lieberman declined to make that call.

What makes this odd is Senator McCain's record. He is solidly, unbendingly, opposed to abortion rights. This is a subject on which he has no differences with the conservative base that distrusts him on so many other issues.

Yet he is poking his finger in the eye of conservative Republicans by advertising that he'd be perfectly willing to have a pro-choice running mate.

Why?

Maybe because Senator McCain wants to muddy up his perfect pro-life record in order to convince female voters -- like the ones who supported Hillary Clinton -- that he's just not all that serious about his anti-abortion views.

Maybe he wants to give the impression that pro-life is one of those positions Republicans have to support publicly in order to win, but -- wink-wink -- everybody knows he doesn't really feel that way. In his heart -- wink-wink -- he's really not opposed to abortion rights, but of course -- wink-wink -- he can't say that.

Pretty clever.

Senator McCain has convinced conservatives that he's seriously considering a pro-choice running mate, and you can hear them thundering in outrage from the Rush Limbaugh show to the Fox News Channel green room.

Of course, the more the conservatives pound on the table, the more the pro-choice voters will believe that McCain secretly favors abortion rights.

Senator McCain said Wednesday night he will announce the name of his running mate on Friday morning.

Even if he picks a pro-life conservative, pro-choice voters can tell each other from now until November that he almost picked Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge.

Wink-wink.

There's a price to be paid for this kind of politics. John McCain may win the election. But he'll be the one pounding the table when nobody trusts a word he says and he can't even put together enough votes to re-name a highway.


Copyright 2008

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The staging of Ozzie and Harriet

Sometimes America Wants To Know is sorry that women ever got the vote.

You have to wonder if an all-male electorate would have to sit through this scripted exhibition of family values that passes for a political convention, or if politicians would instead spend their time discussing taxes, wars, trade policy and other things over which the federal government actually has some control.

Too late now.

The people who know how to get candidates elected have culled the pictures in the family album and edited the heart-warming memories, and on Monday night in Denver, Barack and Michelle Obama were on the screen talking about dating and ice cream and tucking their children into bed.

Until Monday they were two Ivy-League lawyers with drive and ambition and somebody to watch the kids.

Now they're Ozzie and Harriet.



Just for the sake of keeping our sanity, let's remember that Ozzie and Harriet were actors. Actors with writers.



Let's also acknowledge that Norman Rockwell's painting of a perfect family having Thanksgiving dinner is probably responsible for more holiday depression than aging and weight gain combined.



Even Grant Wood's iconic painting, American Gothic, is not what it appears to be.



That's Grant Wood's sister on the left. That's his dentist on the right.

American Gothic was exhibited in 1930 in a competition for a three-hundred-dollar prize. Thanks to Grant Wood's artful staging, he won.

And it's been like this ever since.


Copyright 2008

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You didn't know Robert Morse was on Broadway?

It has been called to our attention that some of the people watching AMC's outstanding series, Mad Men, don't know that Robert Morse, who plays ad agency head Bertram Cooper, is one of the greatest Broadway stars of all time.

While it's nice that the show is reaching its target demographic, this cannot be allowed to stand.

Ladies and gentlemen (boys and girls), Mr. Robert Morse:


(Click the picture to watch the video.)

To paraphrase Damon Runyon, there are two kinds of people in the world -- people who love musical comedy, and people you shouldn't associate with.

By the way, the character actor on the left...



...is the legendary 1920s crooner Rudy Vallee...



...who co-starred on Broadway with Robert Morse in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," playing roughly the same role that Mr. Morse is now playing on Mad Men.

Get it?

America Wants to Know salutes Robert Morse, one of the very, very best ever to carry an Actors Equity card. We think his scenes on Mad Men are the most riveting part of the show. Spin-off, anybody?


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The Lincoln quote you didn't hear

Senator Barack Obama introduced his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, at an event in Springfield, Illinois, today. Senator Biden quoted Abraham Lincoln, who said "put your feet in the right place and stand firm."

Here's something else Lincoln said, in 1859:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and the black races...I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and the black races, which, I believe, will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Just a reminder that politicians will say anything to get elected.



Source note: Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859. The text of the speech may be found in Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, editors. (New York: Francis D. Tandy Company, 1894) 5:143-144. Lincoln's papers can be found online at Northern Illinois University's site, http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu, and the Columbus speech can be found here.

Editor's note: For more of America's untold history, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," the appendix to the novel The 37th Amendment, online at www.The37thAmendment.com.

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The Saturday announcement

Last Thursday on MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews lectured the Obama campaign on the proper day of the week to make a major announcement.

He said the vice presidential pick should be announced on Thursday, because that's the day newspaper columnists are writing their Sunday columns and TV producers are arranging their Sunday show rundowns.

Nobody announces anything big on a Friday, Matthews said, and certainly not on a Saturday.

He'd be right except for one thing.

The Obama campaign promised to make the first announcement of the candidate's vice presidential pick by sending text messages to the cell phones of supporters.

Imagine what might happen to the nation's cell phone networks when millions of those messages go out at the same time, and when everyone receiving the message forwards it to five people and then calls somebody to chat about it.

Crash! No service! Millions of cell phone users around the country simultaneously cursing Barack Obama's name!

On Saturday, when cell phone and Internet traffic are lightest, the risk of an electronic public relations disaster is much lower.

Barack Obama is very smart.

We just hope he's smart enough not to pick Joe Biden.


Copyright 2008

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Tabloid update: "Bush & Laura SPLIT!"

America Wants To Know was idly pushing a shopping cart around the neighborhood supermarket this evening when what should jump into it but the Globe tabloid.

Absolutely under its own power. We never touched it, we swear.

"Bush & Laura SPLIT!" the cover shouted in bold yellow letters. "Separate bedrooms - Final showdown - Now she's buying HER OWN HOUSE in Dallas."

Inside we learn that the first couple have been secretly living apart ever since the "fed-up first lady" moved out of the White House six weeks ago to escape her "boozing" husband.

"That's the biggest bombshell ever from Globe's Beltway sources," the tabloid exults.

A "well-connected insider" tells the Globe that Laura has "taken up residence on the top floor of a posh Washington, D.C., hotel and a luxury suite in Dallas." She has also spent time at the home of a "Republican financier."

The source reports that the first lady's wanderings have become "a nightmare for the Secret Service, who have to scramble to secure the next place Laura wishes to lay her head."

They really shouldn't set us up like that.

The Globe says the first lady is shopping for a house in Dallas, which is something President Bush let slip when he was speaking at a private event in Houston last month. He joked that he told Laura to "go slow" on the spending because they'd been on a government salary for fourteen years. The president gave the impression that the Dallas home was for both of them, but according to the Globe, that's not the plan.

The Globe says Laura has suspected the president of cheating on her with "his pretty secretary of state," Condoleezza Rice, but that's not what pushed her over the edge. It was "the president's drinking and verbal abuse" that did it.

According to the tabloid, the whole thing "came to a head" (really, they shouldn't set us up like that) in mid-June of this year, when the first lady told the president, "It's the bottle or me," and the president "laid into her with yet another obscenity-laced tirade." The Globe says Laura Bush stormed out of the White House and vowed that she would not be back.

Yes, the first lady was by the president's side at the Olympics opening ceremonies over the weekend, but the Globe says she's just maintaining appearances to avoid embarrassing the nation.

That's more than you can say for the president, who was photographed almost groping the bikini-clad U.S. women's volleyball team.





For some reason, Mrs. Bush wasn't with the president when he was congratulating the volleyball players on their, um, accomplishments. Maybe she'll be with him in December when he presents the Kennedy Center Honors to the cast of Donn Arden's Jubilee!.



Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Laura Claws Boozing Bush."

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Inside the Clinton campaign

If you've been staying up nights wondering what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, you'll want to read Joshua Green's impressively detailed account in the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly, accompanied by extraordinary documentation in the form of campaign e-mails and other insider correspondence.

Green writes:

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence -- on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Irony, huh? Not a more technical, barnyard term?

Well, why quibble. It's a great article, well worth your time.

The picture that emerges is one of a roomful of extraordinary, specialized political talents, all working for a woman who did not have the ability to think clearly or to think ahead. Senator Clinton watched and waffled and put off the hard decisions until it was too late, then screamed at people and ordered them to fix it.

And it's everybody else's fault. The staff. The press. The sexists.

Anyone who has ever worked in a mid-sized or larger company will recognize the type: the overwhelmed manager who is one promotion past his or her level of competence.

This sort of person doesn't know that he's incompetent. He believes he is as good at his job as anyone could possibly be. That's why the many problems and conflicts that occur on his watch are attributed not to his own failure to anticipate likely events, but to outside forces. You can always recognize the overwhelmed manager when you hear him say, "No one could have anticipated that," "Everyone makes mistakes," and "Anyone would have done the same thing."

Another characteristic of overwhelmed managers is the tendency to promote people who flatter them while making life a living hell for people who tell them the truth.

It's not difficult to see how that turns out.

Hillary Clinton's supporters really ought to simmer down and stop talking about open conventions and roll-call votes. She's not up to the job of president, and two in a row like this could kill us all.


Copyright 2008

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John Edwards goes out of business

Running for president is a pretty good gig.

You don't have to win to win big.

All you have to do is establish enough credibility to make people believe that you might end up on the ticket or in the Cabinet, and you can spend the rest of your life collecting big checks from all the donors who think they have an interest in staying on your good side.

Even when you're not actively campaigning, you can set up some political action committee or foundation that will pay your living expenses and even employ your family members. Then, when the campaign starts, you can elevate your profile with TV appearances and speeches, making even more people believe that you might end up on the ticket or in the Cabinet, generating even more big checks from donors who want to stay on your good side.

Acting skills are helpful.

It's important to convince the public that you're spending every waking moment thinking about how to eradicate poverty and bring free health care and fair wages to everyone in America. That gives the donors the cover they need to write checks to your foundation or political action committee in the years between presidential races, and let's face it, somebody's got to pay for those haircuts and travel expenses.

And mistresses.

After the Democrats' defeat in the 2004 presidential election, John Edwards set up a foundation to fight poverty, and it's a good thing he did, because in 2006 he met a girl in New York who was dead broke.

Fortunately he was able to find a position for her.

One thing led to another and on Friday the former senator told ABC News he is more than willing to take a paternity test to prove that he is not the father of the woman's baby, born in February and photographed in Senator Edwards' arms by a National Enquirer camera in July.

That's when the senator's anti-poverty expertise came in handy again. The woman, now living in a Santa Barbara mansion despite having a history of financial problems and no apparent employment, just announced through her attorney that she will not permit a paternity test, now or in the future.

It's a good try, but it's too late.

No one will now believe that Senator Edwards has a credible chance at a spot on the ticket, a job in the Cabinet, or election to public office any time in the foreseeable future.

So that's the end of his paid speaking engagements, his foundation, his political action committee, and anything else he's got going that relies on the threat that one day he might refuse to return the calls of anyone who failed to write him a check when he asked for one.

If he wants to eradicate poverty now, he's going to have to get a job.

Maybe the Clinton Library needs a tour guide.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Tabloid update: Cover-ups!"

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Adolf Hitler would have been so proud

Did you enjoy the Olympics opening ceremonies? WHY NOT? Who told you to say that? Who do you work for?



This Olympic spirit was brought to you by Kaiser Permanente, Budweiser, Old Navy, VISA, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, BMW, T Mobile, Nissan, General Motors, General Electric, Lexus, Bank of America, Lenovo, Tylenol, Hilton, Vizio, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Pantene, Kia, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Panasonic, Samsung, UPS, Volkswagen, Adidas, Staples and NBC.

The blood of the victims of China's next crackdown is on the hands of all of them. For what they've paid for Olympic sponsorship, their logos ought to be prominently displayed over the bodies.

We would also like to note that the Bush administration is ending as it began. George W. Bush, the man who apologized to China after the Chinese government shot down a U.S. plane and held the American crew hostage, honored the authoritarian regime again by becoming the first U.S. president to attend an Olympic Games outside the United States. NBC's cameras showed him at the opening ceremonies chatting amiably with Russian Prime Minister (for life) Vladimir Putin, who earlier in the day sent troops, tanks and airstrikes into the sovereign republic of Georgia.



Just a bunch of guys enjoying a show together.

From where they sit, authoritarianism looks pretty good.


Copyright 2008

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Tabloid update: "Obama Love Child Scandal!"

This week's Globe tabloid devotes half its cover to a picture of Barack Obama and the words "Obama Love Child Scandal!" spelled out in block letters.

Inside, nothing.

On pages 16 and 17 you'll find a picture of Barack Obama with his daughter Sasha, and a 1979 photo of Senator Obama with some of his high school senior year classmates in Honolulu. "There is no suggestion that any of the girls in the photo were romantically involved with Obama," the caption reports.

Everyone in the high school photo is dressed up, or what passed for dressed up in the 1970s. There is a tea set on the coffee table, and someone on the left side of the photo is holding a plate of cookies.

WELL!!

So where's the love child?

There's no love child.

The "love child scandal" the Globe is reporting is a $1 million reward offered by "a well-financed political hit squad" for "any detailed information about an illicit child."

So far, nothing.

The Globe did find a source to divulge this: "Obama has freely admitted to love affairs when he was a single student, and that is where the investigators are concentrating their efforts. There was a Russian girl in New York he fell for when he was a college student. Also, he dated during his high school years in Hawaii."

Holy Hustler, the Democrats have nominated someone who dated in high school!

Will they never learn???!!!

We're so disappointed.

We thought the Globe really had something this time. We thought they were going to report Barack Obama's attempted rape of Exxon Mobil shareholders.

Maybe next week.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Analyzing Senator Obama's handwriting," and "Tabloid update: 'Obama Marriage Explodes!'"

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Hillary's Greek drama

Hillary Clinton told supporters at a California fundraiser last week that she's not ruling out placing her name in nomination at the Democratic convention. It would be "a catharsis" for her supporters to "yell and scream and have their opportunity," she explained, "It's as old as, you know, as Greek drama."

Actually, it looks more like a Hollywood drama. It looks like Gone With the Wind.

It looks like the scene when Ashley Wilkes comes home from the war and Scarlett tries to follow Melanie down the road to throw her arms around him, only to be restrained by Mammy with the words, "He's her husband, honey."

But Hillary Clinton's lifelong dream of finding love in the arms of the Democratic convention is not going away.

Tonight the web sites of Time magazine and ABC News featured stories about Senator Clinton's bizarre bargaining for her delegates to be "respected" at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month.

Instead of congratulating Barack Obama and unconditionally supporting him, Senator Clinton is reportedly negotiating, demanding, maneuvering, and threatening to steal the rosy spotlight from the Democratic nominee for president during the priceless televised hours of the national convention.

Of course, she claims this is all driven by the intense feelings of her supporters, but that sounds a lot like the game show host who says "We've gotten cards and letters from viewers..." to explain changes in the show that were ordered by the network.

We can think of three reasons that Hillary Clinton is doing this destructive, self-absorbed tango on Barack Obama's dance floor.

Our first and best guess (see "Why Hillary won't go") is that she illegally spent the money she raised for the general election during the primary campaign, off the books. If that's the case, and she filed false reports with the FEC, she will be in serious trouble if she doesn't come up with nearly $23 million by August 28, when she's obligated to refund that money to donors who do not consent to transfer their contributions to her 2012 Senate campaign account.

Our second guess is that she is unable to accept that she's no longer the big cheese in charge of the Democratic party machinery. Since 1992, when her husband locked up the nomination for president, Hillary Clinton has been in a position to reward her friends and hurt her enemies through the money, jobs and mailing lists controlled by the Democratic National Committee. Now, of course, those goodies are Barack Obama's to hand out.

Our third guess is that she's loopier than a Slinky.

If she makes her entrance at the convention from the top of a staircase, watch for that.



Copyright 2008

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Paging Nancy Pelosi

Let's be clear about one thing.

The impeachable offense is misleading the U.S. Congress into authorizing a war.

Sure, there are dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands, of untruths and evasions and defiant refusals to enforce or abide by the laws of the United States.

But the Bush administration's single greatest crime is misleading the Congress and the country into supporting an invasion of Iraq, when the full truth would have led to a very different decision.

If that's what happened.

Today, author Ron Suskind's new book, "The Way of the World," hits bookstores. In it the author claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter to Saddam Hussein from the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind writes. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq."

In fact, Suskind writes, "There is no link."

The White House denies the claim. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: "The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd."

Is it.

Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, formerly with the Wall Street Journal.

The United States is in year six of a costly, blood-soaked military occupation of a country whose former regime, we now know, had no weapons of mass destruction and no operational relationship with al Qaeda terrorists.

The best that can be said for the administration is that in the atmosphere of post-9/11 Washington, the president was unwilling to trust any intelligence suggesting that Saddam Hussein had no active nuclear program and no current stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

The worst that can be said for the administration is that they knew Saddam Hussein's regime posed no immediate threat to the United States, but lied to the Congress and the country -- and the U.N. -- in order to play some geopolitical game of chess with other people's children as pawns.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, currently on a book tour of her own, has said repeatedly that impeachment is off the table.

She might want to come back to Washington and look at that table again.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "George Tenet: Portrait of a clawing careerist," "Dick Cheney's impeachable offense, and "Congressman John Murtha does his job."


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Tabloid update: Cover-ups!

The best tabloid scoops lately have been on the Internet, not in the supermarket check-out line, so even if you don't do your own grocery shopping you may already know that the National Enquirer caught John Edwards visiting his mistress and love child at a Beverly Hills hotel, and that a former NASA astronaut accused the U.S. government of covering up visits from alien spacecraft.

But in case you missed it....

The National Enquirer got its revenge against former U.S. Senator, former vice-presidential candidate and former presidential candidate John Edwards last month. Apparently the tabloid's editors were piqued at the way Senator Edwards impugned their journalistic integrity last December after they reported this:

The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant — and she's told a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!

The ENQUIRER's political bombshell comes just weeks after Edwards emphatically denied having an affair with Rielle, who formerly worked on his campaign and told another close pal that she was romantically involved with the married ex-senator.

The Enquirer said in December that Rielle Hunter was in hiding, having relocated from New York City to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she was living in the same gated community as a close political associate of Senator Edwards, 41-year-old Andrew Young. Ms. Hunter told the tabloid that Mr. Young was the father of her child.

That prompted the Enquirer's reporters to knock on Mr. Young's door, whereupon "he became furious — and denied he was Andrew Young." The Enquirer said "he also denied knowing 'any Rielle Hunter,' yelling at the top of his voice: 'You don't even know who I am!' But when his wife called him 'Andrew,' he shot her a dirty look."

Yes, Mr. Young is married. With three children.

Eventually everyone got their story straight and Mr. Young told the Enquirer he was in fact the father of Rielle Hunter's child, but nobody would take a polygraph test and the Enquirer may be trashy but it isn't stupid.

The tabloid reporters stayed on the trail, assisted by people who called in tips after reading the Enquirer's December story.

And on the evening of July 21, a small army of Enquirer reporters caught Senator Edwards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel "visiting his mistress and secret love child."

"Rielle had driven to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara with a male friend for the rendezvous with Edwards," the tabloid reported, in order for "the ex-senator to spend some time with both his mistress and the love child who he refuses to publicly acknowledge as his own."

The Enquirer's editors didn't rely on the usual "close sources" for the story. They sent their own reporters:

Rielle had reserved rooms 246 and 252 under the name of the friend who had accompanied her from Santa Barbara, Bob McGovern. Rielle was in one room and McGovern was in another with her baby. This allowed her and Edwards to spend time alone, a source revealed.

Edwards went out of the hotel briefly with Rielle, they were observed by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER and then went back to her room, where he stayed until attempting to sneak out of the hotel unseen at 2:40 a.m. (PST). But when he emerged alone from an elevator into the hotel basement he was greeted by several reporters from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

Senior NATIONAL ENQUIRER Reporter Alexander Hitchen asked Edwards why he was visiting Rielle and whether he was ready to confirm that he was the father of her baby.

Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Rielle.

Edwards did not answer and then ran into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel. A group of hotel security men eventually escorted him from the men's room, while preventing the NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters from following him out of the hotel.

And yet, Senator Edwards continued to impugn the journalistic integrity of the Enquirer, and no other publication reported the story.

So the Enquirer filed a criminal complaint with the Beverly Hills police, charging the hotel security guards with violating the law by restraining the reporters, who were registered guests at the hotel, in order to keep them away from Senator Edwards, who was not.

That prompted Fox News to report the story, in a marginal and distanced kind of way. It was on their website, and it made it into The Grapevine segment of Brit Hume's show.

Last week the Enquirer took another shot at Senator Edwards, accusing him of arranging a massive cover-up and funneling $15,000 a month in hush money to Rielle Hunter, who continues to insist that Andrew Young is the father of her child.

Then on Thursday, the Charlotte Observer obtained the California birth certificate for Rielle Hunter's child and discovered that the space for "Name of Father" had been left blank.




Cover-ups are just not as easy as they used to be.

Senator Edwards' expensive cover-up effort failed because the Drudge Report posted links to the National Enquirer story online and helped the story rocket around the globe in a fraction of the time it takes to tell you about it.

The Drudge Report, if you've just landed on the planet Earth, is a web site run by Matt Drudge, a man who tells you what's going on instead of spending two weeks in editorial meetings anguishing over whether to tell you what's going on.

We mention this because if you've just landed on the planet Earth, it would really save a lot of time and trouble if you'd just e-mail Matt Drudge some home video of your spaceship instead of landing on a restricted military base and pretending to be dead.

If you missed it, former NASA astronaut and one-time moon-walker Ed Mitchell told the British media recently that we have been visited by space aliens and our governments have been covering it up for sixty years (click the picture to see the video):



Ed Mitchell is 77 years old, but he's sharp enough to have a web site, and if you're interested he'll sell you an autographed photo of himself for $55.00; or if you're a space alien frustrated with the U.S. government's persistent cover-up of your existence, you can contact Ed Mitchell and tell him you're ready to go public. Of course, if you really want to break through the cover-up, you should get in touch with Matt Drudge. He's the one everybody reads.

There remains just one mystery left to solve.

If John Edwards was cheating on his wife at the very same time she was battling cancer and the effects of chemotherapy to travel the country campaigning for him for president, how could the Westminster Kennel Club give its blue ribbon for prize dog to a beagle?



Maybe it just wasn't the year for blow-dried dogs.


Copyright 2008

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