"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
The fedora and Sicilian hand gestures are classic in this interview from Wednesday morning. The FOX-25 host credits Pete’s Tuesday New York Post column with helping prompt the press-conference meltdown by making the basic facts understandable to the average reader:
Congressman attacked by Twitter?: MyFoxBOSTON.com
If you’ll look closely, you’ll see the rosary around his neck. And at the end, you’ll hear a mention of the cannoli. He brought a box to the studio with him.
TOP NEWS
Japan’s PM Survives No-Confidence Vote By Offering Resignation
Promises to quit after post-tsunami cleanup is finished, mollifying dissidents in Democratic Party.
Nikkei falls sharply on political turmoil
Killer Tornadoes Hit Central, Western Massachusetts
33 dead in Springfield; Gov. Patrick mobilizes National Guard
Romney To Officially Kick Off 2012 Campaign Today In New Hampshire
Already upstaged by Sarah Palin
POLITICS
Attorney General Proposes Early Release For Crackheads
Up to 12,000 could be released under last year’s Fair Sentencing Act
LaHood Rebukes DoT In Wake Of Deadly Bus Crash
GOP Prods Obama On Cuts In White House Visit; Ryan Accuses President Of Demagoguery
Gates: General’s Role Did Not Cost Him Chairman’s Job
Commission Declares Drug War A Failure, Urges Legalization
NJ Cops Defend Christie’s Use Of Chopper For School Visit
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Euro Stocks Expected To Open Lower
Moody’s Cuts Greece Debt Rating, Estimates Risk Of Default At 50%
PRC Hackers Attack GMail
Nokia Chief Denies Microsoft Takeover
Investors Flee Dollars, Euros For Swiss Francs, Yen
ADP Data Suggests Stall In Jobs Growth
Mining Boom Fuels New Mongol Hoard
Microsoft Previews Windows 8
Apotheker: HP Open To Licensing WebOS Software
AMD’s Fusion Chip On The Rise As Netbooks Fade
SPORTS
Canucks Stun Bruins With Late Goal, Take Game 1
Torres scores winning goal with just 19 seconds left in game
Shaq Tweets His Retirement (Video)
Lyle’s Rise No Surprise To Astros
Jimenez Earns First Win With Shutout Of Dodgers
Collins Goes Off On Mets, Vows Changes
NFL Owners Meet Secretly In Chicago
More Controversy For OSU Quarterback Pryor
Lannan Beats Phillies For First Time As Nats Pull Out 2-1 Win
FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Aniston & Cox No Longer BFFs?
Cox’ breakup behavior affecting the friendship?
Justin Timberlake: The Vanity Fair Interview
Schwartzenegger Calls Family Meeting To Discuss Divorce With Daughters
Blake Lively: “I’m So Sick Of Myself”
Paris Hilton, Mom Weep Over Sex Tape Memories
“Cosby Show” Actress Clarice Taylor Dies, 53
Josh Lucas To Star In NBC’s “The Firm”
Charlie & Brooke Strike Custody Deal For Kids
NBC’s “The Event” May Continue As Mini-series On Syfy
Octomom’s Fertility Doctor To Lose License
Lady Gaga Admits Tour Costumes Drove Her Into Bankruptcy
FOREIGNERS
Thousands Of Armed Tribesmen Head For Yemen’s Capital
British Families Told To Wash Salad As E.Coli Outbreak Sweeps Europe; 17 Dead So Far
Images Of Children Killed In Crackdown Inflame Syrian Protesters
Libya’s Top Oil Official Defects
Guru Baba Ramdev To Go On Anti-Corruption Hunger Strike
Pakistan’s ISI Denies Killing Journalist
24 Arrested During Jerusalem Day Violence
Peruvian Markets Down On Election Fears
BLOGS & STUFF
Ann Coulter: Weiner’s Penis Photo Dispute To Be Settled In Small Claims Court
Another Black Conservative: Congressman Turns Down White House Visit; Not Interested In Being Lectured By President
Weasel Zippers: Obama Lectures Republicans During Meeting On Why He’s Better Than Reagan
Professor Bainbridge: Ryancare Polling
Cold Fury: Better And Better
Volokh Conspiracy: HHS & Indiana To Tangle Over Planned Parenthood
Michelle Malkin: Welcome To Another Wreckovery Summer
Don Surber: Liberal Dumps On Racial Gerrymandering
NRO Corner: Chris Christie, Kingmaker?
Jammie Wearing Fool: Unexpected! Little Job Growth In May
PJ Tatler: Weinergate – Following The Jokes And Political Implications
Ed Morrissey: WaPo, Factcheck Agree – DNC Chair Threw Truth To The Wolves
Lonely Conservative: Taxpayers Lose $14 Billion On Chrysler, GM Bailouts
Big Hollywood: TV Honchos Admit Hollywood Discriminates Against, Belittles Conservatives
— compiled by Wombat-socho
It ain’t Anthony Weiner, that’s for sure. Here’s a video highlight reel from Politico:
And here is the ABC Evening News version of the story:
Didn’t I tell you this story would not just “go away”? And wasn’t I right? Look at the Google News queue. Look at the Memeorandum aggregation.
In case you are tempted to buy into some complicated theory of how Weiner might possibly be innocent, Internet Detective Ace of Spades has solved the mystery.
Thanks to Tim Daniel at Left Coast Rebel for locating this video of Luke Russert’s devastating interview with Rep. Anthony Weiner:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Big props to Luke Russert for asking tough questions. Compare and contrast to the utter uselessness of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer whose Weiner interview is transcribed by Ace of Spades.
Now, I have gotten a bit of kidding from my friends about being in all-Weiner, all-the-time mode the past few days:
The Other McCain Is Big on Weiner Coverage
Har-de-har-har. That’s OK. Take a look at Memeorandum:
Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com broke the story in the wee hours Saturday, but now? Oh, everybody else is covering the story like they discovered it themselves. I was one of a relative handful of bloggers — and we were all those horrible, nasty right-wingers — who jumped on this story Saturday and bulldogged it relentlessly, aggregating, analyzing, expanding the story and trying to push it forward, while Luke Russert was enjoying a nice Memorial Day weekend at the beach. I make no apologies, and I’m not going to turn the story loose just because the MSM are now bigfooting all over it. And I remind readers of what I wrote earlier today:
Notice how George Stephanopoulos (scarcely a right-winger) featured the WeinerGate story today on Good Morning America . . .
You see that, as Stephanopoulos says, Weiner is a “high-profile Democrat” whose avowed ambition is to become mayor of New York City — America’s most lucrative media market.
The supply-and-demand incentives for coverage of this story are therefore so strong that, liberal bias or not, the major news networks can’t simply ignore it. In fact, I had the TV in my office tuned to MSNBC for a couple hours today, then turned over to Fox News, and MSNBC actually had more coverage of the story than Fox!
You might say that Weiner is too big for his own good.
This story isn’t going away, because everybody loves a big Weiner story.
UPDATE: It is amusing to see that, on the very day that Weiner refuses to deny the authenticy of the bulging-crotch photo, a left-wing blog claims to have proof that Weiner was “framed.”
Caleb Howe at Red State doesn’t much buy into the alleged proof.
Permit me to suggest the possibility that (a) the photo actually is of Weiner’s package, however (b) the photo Tweet to Gennette Cordova actually was sent by someone other than Weiner, and yet (c) that doesn’t mean Weiner hasn’t sent photos of his package to other women.
The story, then, would be about much more than this one Tweet — something I started suspecting Sunday, although I don’t know that I have ever previously said as much here on the blog. This one Tweet to Cordova may have been the work of a hacker, but if the bulging-crotch photo is actually Weiner, it could have been obtained from someone to whom Weiner actually did send it on purpose.
This theory of the incident would explain Weiner’s visibly desperate desire to avoid a law-enforcement investigation, which would require him to answer such questions as, “Have you ever sent such photos to anyone else?” and also might involve a forensic examination of Weiner’s computer and ISP records.
UPDATE II: Ann Coulter seems to be belittling Weiner:
Weiner’s Penis Photo Dispute To Be
Settled In Small Claims Court
(Hat-tip: If You Seek Peace) But I am concerned that, by making teeny-weeny jokes about Weiner’s wiener, Miss Coulter may be creating an impression she does not wish to create. She is an unmarried woman and her derogation of Weiner as diminuitive may cause some to infer that she has extensive experience in . . . well, comparison shopping.
There is a reason, after all, that I have made no comment on the size of Weiner’s alleged bulge. If I’m going to spend four days writing about this subject, it would ill behoove me to appear personally interested in the . . . er, underlying facts of the story.
UPDATE III: Speaking of underlying facts, our friend Bob Belvedere provides several photos of Ginger Lee, the porn star who was (allegedly) exchanging DMs on Twitter with Weiner. I’m reasonably sure Ginger Lee wasn’t impressed with the size of Weiner’s wiener. A quite difficult woman to impress that way, is Ms. Lee.
(Trying not to be judgmental here, OK?)
PREVIOUSLY:
by Smitty (via Insty)
Props to SECDEF Gates. He has done an outstanding job. But I don’t think his analysis went far enough.
Gates spoke of “institutional obstacles in the Pentagon — cultural, procedural, ideological — to getting done what needed to get done” and the need for “fundamentally reshaping the priorities of the Pentagon.”
He insisted that the defense budget “is not the cause of this country’s fiscal woes,” but conceded that “as a matter of simple arithmetic and political reality,” defense cuts “must be at least part of the solution.”
The situation at the Pentagon is the Iron Triangle meets the Iron Law.
The United States is still, nominally, the hegemon, of the Western world for forty years and the full monty for the last twenty.
While not specifically disagreeing with any points the SECDEF has made, one wonders what substantially different course he proffers. If the U.S. is not the hegemon, then who? The full Ron Paul approach seems abrupt, but what alternative makes sense?
A line drawn from the National Security Act, through the War Powers Resolution of 1973, through two Gulf Wars, to the latest saber rattling in Libya traces an unhappy arc.
In his memoir “From the Shadows,” written after he left the CIA directorship in 1993, Gates likened the U.S. national security apparatus to a giant ship that changes course only with great difficulty and much less sharply from one administration to another than suggested by political rhetoric.
The good news about the DoD is that the national defense is clearly a Constitutional task. Yet, the U.S. government appears to be collapsing into an imperial federal government.
The 2012 candidate who deals most honestly with the situation and articulates an alternative path that sees the U.S. gradually unwinding its foreign entanglements will be a potent candidate, indeed.
What am I saying? Don’t we all figure that the game of globalized musical chairs is going to have a sudden, ‘unexpected’, disastrous turn Real Soon Now?
And on that cheery note, I’m off.
UPDATE 3:50 p.m. ET: Here is a video clip from the interview with NBC’s Luke Russert in which Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) refused to say “with certitude” that the photo of a man’s bulging underwear sent from his Twitter account was not actually his own crotch:
Hat-tip to Ace of Spades who asks:
What? Andrew Breitbart had a picture of his junk? How did Andrew Breitbart get that? What other people does Andrew Breitbart have junk-pictures of?
The sarcasm is kind of thick there.
UPDATE 4:27 p.m. ET: The New York Post:
Denying he ever sent a bawdy crotch photo of himself to a co-ed via his Twitter account, embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner said today he “can’t say with certitude” whether or not he is the person in the picture.
Asked in an interview with MSNBC that aired this afternoon whether he could confirm or deny if the crotch shot was his, Weiner said, “I can’t say with certitude.”
Despite the bizarre claim, Weiner added, “I didn’t send that picture out.” . . .
“We don’t know exactly what happened here,” he said in the interview, repeating what he has said over the past four days. “It was a prank.”
With this admission — and if he’s not denying it, isn’t that the same as admitting it? — Weiner has deepened the mystery, and thereby given new life to the story. Reporters can’t just leave this hanging there, unexplained.
Donald Douglas at American Power calls attention to this ABC News video. Notice how George Stephanopoulos (scarcely a right-winger) featured the WeinerGate story today on Good Morning America:
You see that, as Stephanopoulos says, Weiner is a “high-profile Democrat” whose avowed ambition is to become mayor of New York City — America’s most lucrative media market.
The supply-and-demand incentives for coverage of this story are therefore so strong that, liberal bias or not, the major news networks can’t simply ignore it. In fact, I had the TV in my office tuned to MSNBC for a couple hours today, then turned over to Fox News, and MSNBC actually had more coverage of the story than Fox!
You might say that Weiner is too big for his own good.
UPDATE 7:50 p.m. ET: Now a Memeorandum thread, and thanks to Left Coast Rebel who found a better quality video of the Russert/Weiner interview.
PREVIOUSLY (2:10 p.m. ET): The things you learn watching MSNBC. Just saw clips of Anthony Weiner’s interview with Luke Russert of NBC News, and here is a brief item from Huffington Post:
A day after telling reporters that he’s “not going to talk about this anymore,” Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) broke his silence Wednesday about the controversy surrounding a lewd photo sent from his Twitter account.
“This was a circumstance where someone committed a prank on the internet,” he told MSNBC’s Luke Russert. “I didn’t send [that] picture out” the congressman said, though he does not know who did. Is the photo of him? “I can’t say with certitude” he told Russert.
Weiner told Russert that the pattern of who he follows — a pattern that the New York Post noted today — is “completely random.”
Yeah. Right.
UPDATE: First things first: Let’s just state the obvious, OK? If Weiner will not deny “with certitude” that the now-infamous photo is of his own package, we can safely conclude that it is his package.
But watching the whole interview — and we’ll have the video soon enough — I think I’ve finally developed a theory of the case. If my theory is correct, then there is an obvious reason why Weiner would not want law enforcement agencies to investigate this incident.
Ask yourself this: If that was a photo of Weiner’s package, and yet he was not the one responsible for that Tweet to Gennette Cordova, how did someone else get that photo of Weiner’s package?
Time for members of Congress to demand that law-enforcement agencies investigate this incident.
UPDATE I: You will see that, in the comments below, “Charles Johnson” (who may or may not actually be the Charles Johnson) explains a theory of how Weiner’s YFrog account could have been used by someone else to send that photo.
That theory was first related to me via an e-mail tip over the weekend. I didn’t report it previously, because it wasn’t necessarily relevant. Now that Weiner has point-blank refused to deny the authenticity of the photo, however, it becomes quite relevant.
Also now arguably quite relevant? The fact that Anthony Weiner was exchanging private Twitter direct messages (DMs) with porn star Ginger Lee. I’m not prepared quite yet to explain my whole theory of this scandal — still want to aggregate more news here — but if Weiner was in private communications with women such as Ms. Lee, we might fairly suppose that he also communicated in similar manner with other women.
And here’s the key: What if some of Weiner’s lovely female Twitter “fans” were not actually fans? What if, in fact, they were quite the opposite? Could this explain how a photo of Weiner’s package ended up in the hands of the congressman’s enemies?
It’s a “honey trap,” in other words. Permit me to suggest that there must be at least one more shoe to drop — someone must have a cache of DMs or e-mails in which Weiner communicated privately with a female he presumed to be a fan. The exposure of Weiner may, therefore, only be beginning.
As Ed Driscoll says, “Plenty of Room Left on Fredo’s Boat.”
UPDATE III: Politico and CBS News are now both reporting Weiner’s “can’t say with certitude” interview (hat-tip: Donald Douglas at American Power). There is a crappy video version of the Russert interview at Real Clear Politics, but not yet an embeddable version.
Linked by Nice Deb — thanks!
PREVIOUSLY:
Weiner calls lewd photo
on Twitter a ‘distraction’
— Washington Post
Lawmaker in Twitter Case Assails Reporters
— New York Times
Yesterday’s televised meltdown was, I think, complete vindication for those of us in the online community who spent Memorial Day weekend trying to convince people that #WeinerGate was an honest-to-goodness genuine news story.
It’s not only real, it’s spectacular.
(Bryan Preston: “So, yeah, this story has gone mainstream.”)
A question I asked on Twitter last night: Does anyone still believe that Anthony Weiner was the innocent victim of hackers? Anyone?
Ace of Spades last night delivered a seminar to the “reality-based community” about the behavioral clues that made him so intensely suspicious of Weiner’s reaction to this alleged act of online identity theft:
I love how we’re all wingnutz because we’ve been out of the house enough to know how human beings behave. Like if they’re seriously victimized in a malicious crime, they tend to get rather angry. They don’t toss off casual jokes about it and try to change the subject right away. . . .
You should read the whole thing, because what else is the difference between conservatives and liberals, except our different understandings of human nature? Conservatism fundamentally involves a belief in the tragic permanence — the fixed and flawed quality — of the human condition. It is irremediable. There is nothing new under the sun, and people will tend to react certain ways under certain conditions.
Whereas, every day is a new day for liberals, who are always so surprised when an allegedly selfless humanitarian seeker of social justice turns out to be as flawed and corrupt as those mere mortals whom he professes himself capable of redeeming through his heaven-on-earth schemes.
What matters to the liberal is that he has good intentions. The conservative smiles at this, and asks the liberal if he knows where that road paved with good intentions proverbially leads.
OK, sermon over. If I’d wanted to be a moral philosopher, I’d have gone to grad school. Instead, I’ve spent the past 25 years in the news business and you know what? Experience matters. Continue reading #WeinerGate: Where the Story Goes Next →
(Hat-tip: Ladd Ehlinger Jr.)