Payback is a b*tch. Former presidential scandal Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton -- which she was previously offered $5 million for -- up on the auction block.
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Hong Kong sex scandal. Edison Chen's cache of private photos may be the biggest Asian sex scandal ever. Starting roughly on Feb. 5, developing, developing. Some pix NSFW but pixelated, and you'll have to google if you want the real images.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

Bob Greene Returns
posted on Feb 2, 2008 - View this thread

Pimping ain't easy. In a cluster of lawsuits gathered up by The Associated Press, the former chief financial officer of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. is depicted as a corporate Casanova -- a world-class, love-'em-and-leave-'em sort of guy who romanced dozens of women around the country simultaneously, made them extravagant promises and then went back on his word with all the compassion of a health insurance company denying a claim.
posted on Jan 28, 2008 - View this thread

Vanity Fair sits down with Larry Flynt --his history and hits and misses, how much he pays for scandals involving hypocritical public figures, and a new (and limp) Nixon anecdote -- and tons of other juicy tidbits, of course).
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

Morrissey makes some controversial remarks to the NME. Defensive explanations by the interviewer, attempts at defusing the situation and threats of legal action ensue, as does satire.
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

Mayor Ken Williams of Centerton, Arkansas, recently resigned over allegations of identity theft and other weirdness. He claims that a truth serum injection helped him to recognize that he was formerly The Rev. Don LaRose. He runs a website telling the "amazing story" (in 11 chapters) of his abduction by satan-worshippers three decades ago.
posted on Nov 26, 2007 - View this thread

Closeted gay GOP elected official with an anti-gay voting record #756,394 --(Special Halloween Edition!) GOP Washington State Representative Richard Curtis says he’s not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women’s lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis’ activities publicly…. He resigned today.--Curtis is the third conservative lawmaker in just as many months to resign amid allegations of soliciting gay sex.
Bubbling up--and being sat on--by the DC Press Corps is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate.
posted on Oct 31, 2007 - View this thread

McHenry and his "roommates" -- GOP Rep Patrick McHenry (NC), co-owner of a DC home with Scott G. Stewart, former chair of the College Republican Nat'l Cttee (and bilker of many senior citizens), received a DC home-ownership reduction improperly. McHenry's actual home in North Carolina was apparently also home to quite a collection of young men: (convicted fraudulent voter) Michael Aaron Lay, Neil Everett Capano, Matthew Allen Hamilton, and (multiple violations, including "death by vehicle") Jason Jent Deans. Also, McHenry's 04 consultant Ralph Gonzales was one of the men involved in a recent FL murder/suicide, and links to Robert Drake, the killer (political work in NC and escort service connections), are still being documented. Stay tuned!
posted on Sep 28, 2007 - View this thread

A gay Republican news story that you probably didn't read about in the paper: In late August, Ralph Gonzalez--Republican strategist, former Georgia GOP executive director, and "political powerhouse"--was murdered (along with his roommate, David Abrami, another Republican political consultant) by Gonzalez' "friend" and former Marine Jason Robert Drake. Characterized as the result of a "lovers' quarrel," it's a bizarre crime story that should've made at least a ripple in the national news, given some other recent incidents. But it never did.
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

British football players pay with credit card, American politicians still pay with checks. (First link slightly NSFW.)
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

Newsfilter: Attorney General Gonzales resigns
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

Ted Haggard returns --with a cash for heaven offer to support him while he helps "broken people". Unfortunately, the procedure outlined is illegal, and the charity (Families With a Mission) is unregistered and run by a convicted sex offender. Meanwhile, Mike Jones, Haggard's favorite whore, pops up at a dirty bar trivia night (questions about Haggard and him, maybe nsfw, textwise)
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

You probably heard the news today and saw earlier threads about Michael Vick, but ESPN has done an amazing job wrapping up the entire case into a handy one-page FAQ. Written by a sports lawyer, it explains all the interesting aspects of the case: what happened, when did it happen, and what results we'll likely see.
posted on Aug 20, 2007 - View this thread

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ends tonight, and Aaron Sorkin will be leaving television production for a while. His current project is Charlie Wilson's War, a movie starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on the late George Crile's excellent, funny nonfic book of the same name. The movie will trace "party animal" Congressman Charles "Good Time Charlie" Wilson's (D, TX) rise from a scandal (he was caught in "a hot tub tryst with two cocaine-sniffing showgirls in Las Vegas",) to his role in the 1980's covertly funding Afghanistan guerrillas so they could expand their war with the Soviet Union. Wilson's actions would eventually help collapse the Afghan PDPA government, a power vacuum which would be filled by the Taliban. Who would have thought ending the Cold War would be so easy?
posted on Jun 28, 2007 - View this thread

Scandalfilter: Former South Dakota legislator Ted Klaudt is arrested for raping his own foster children, along with a legislative page.
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too." The World Bank opted to fuck with Wolfowitz anyway.
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results --...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted on Apr 23, 2007 - View this thread

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is in the middle of his testimony before Congress on firing of eight US Attorneys. The questioning has gotten heated at times, and TPM Muckraker has many highlights from the testimony. DailyKos has been giddily blogging live, and there are many sites carrying the live video feed. Conservative blogs have been mysteriously quiet about this.
posted on Apr 19, 2007 - View this thread

The Purgegate Primer is a helpful document from The Morning News to assist all us armchair pundits in making sense of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Brought to us by the letter Q and recently-mentioned defective yeti, who it seems is about more than just laughs. (Also see his Plamegate Cheatsheet.)
posted on Apr 3, 2007 - View this thread

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations...
Sampson sent an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 that ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers "exhibited loyalty" to the administration; low performers were "weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc." A third group merited no opinion.

Newsfilter: Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear. Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth. Oy! More here. This isn't the first time an Israeli ambassador has gotten in trouble, either. Previously on Metafilter: The Swedish Art Incident
posted on Mar 12, 2007 - View this thread

The Hatto Hoax. Joyce Hatto has been described as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." Her performances of piano works by Liszt, Schubert, and Rachmaninov were praised by classical afficionados for their "addictively beautiful sonority, cultured musicianship, and total instrumental mastery." Since she died in June 2006, however, Hatto has been at the center of one of the stranger scandals to hit classical music in years. It's starting to look like some or all of her treasured, hard-to-find recordings made since 1990 are not her playing at all. [Via]
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

Where are you going? Where we came from. Where have we come from? Every place and no place, so come, let’s go.
posted on Nov 20, 2006 - View this thread

The Enron Explorer from Trampoline Systems "lets you investigate the actions and reactions of Enron's senior management team as the noose began to tighten" (through some 200,000 public domain corporate emails) using Trampoline's SONAR social network mapping platform. (via FutureFeeder)
posted on Oct 31, 2006 - View this thread

Mexican government bans American Catholics who sued Mexico City Prelate The Mexican government took the unprecedented and controversial step of banning Dave Clohessy of SNAP and Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer specializing in abuse cases, from entering the country for five years. The men had filed a lawsuit against Mexico City Archbishop Norbeto Rivera, who they allege covered up sex abuse in his diocese.
posted on Oct 16, 2006 - View this thread

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. He was a comic actor, who, despite his girth, was capable of acts of astounding physical grace (link goes to tiny Quicktime clips). But what Fatty Arbuckle is best remembered for is scandal. On Labor Day of 1921, Arbuckle hosted a party that ended with the death of an actress, Virginia Rappe. On this day in 1921, Arbuckle was arrested for her rape. Although he was acquitted twice, the event would ruin his career. (Previously.)
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

"I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in 'Who's Who in America.'" Bob "Prince of Darkness" Novak comes clean (sort of) on his role in the Plame scandal. Novak asserts that Fitzgerald knew the identities of his source for Plame's identity. "That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act," Novak says. Further, he says that his source spilled the beans inadvertently: "After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part."
posted on Jul 11, 2006 - View this thread

Big news in the cycling world. Favorites Basso, Ullrich out of the Tour de France. Should make for an interesting July.
posted on Jun 30, 2006 - View this thread

At approximately 9:20 PM (ET) on January 6th, David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime reporter for the Washington bureau of the New York Times, was found lying on a sidewalk in Washington, DC. He was disoriented. He was bleeding from the head. He was vomiting. And, as it turned out, he had been assaulted and robbed. [more inside]
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter: Rove won't be charged in CIA leak case. More coverage here, here, and here.
posted on Jun 13, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter. Surveillenve of everything you do online: "It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement." Offline: "I'm John Doe, and if I had told you before today that the F.B.I. was requesting library records, I could have gone to jail." Previously, here. On your phone? We've already discussed that, too.
posted on Jun 2, 2006 - View this thread

O'Reilly and Associates apologize about threats to keep an Irish non-profit from stealing O'Reilly's "Web 2.0" service mark. The usually-forgiving blogosphere cabal is not amused.
posted on May 27, 2006 - View this thread

U.S. Marines "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood", according to Rep. Murtha (D - Pa.), whose previous comments regarding the "unwinnable" nature of the Iraq conflict drew retaliation and accusations of treason from the GOP and associates. From reports verified by the military, troops "shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl", despite initial reports that officially claimed a firefight had killed Iraqi civilians. Some have suggested this incident echoes the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War.
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

Remember back in the '90s when the GOP was still the party of fiscal conservatism, and the shiny new code word was "family values"? Well, they still believe in family values part: Exhibit 1. Exhibit 2. Exhibit 3.
posted on Mar 23, 2006 - View this thread

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program appears to be illegal. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Specter called the administration's legal reasoning "strained and unrealistic" and said the program appears to be "in flat violation" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
posted on Feb 5, 2006 - View this thread

Can you score your way out of disgrace? Kobe Bryant's 81 points tonight were the second most points ever scored by a single player in the 59 year history of the NBA, and the most scored since Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point night 44 years ago (when the league was much whiter than it is today). With a new campaign from one time sponsor Nike and sports writers increasingly touting Bryant as a leading MVP candidate, two of the three elements of modern sports superstardom (sponsorship, good press) have returned to Kobe since the rape allegations that threatened to end his career. Will the final piece of the puzzle (public sympathy) be next?
posted on Jan 22, 2006 - View this thread

The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
posted on Dec 31, 2005 - View this thread

Corporate Scandal 2006. The year of Enron. Some articles (and at least one documentary) attempt to outline the size and proportion of the economic, financial and political dimensions of the scandal involving notorious names. As Sam Buell, a former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department's Enron Task Force puts it ""The deepest, most complex, most system-related case would be the last one to be resolved in all of this". Meanwhile Calpine company operating 90 power plants in U.S.A. recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with debts measured in billions of dollars. Among other problems the company wasn't able to predict negative consequences of an increase of natural gas price on at least eight significant contracts. (But hey they're new to this gas market things, it's my first day at work and I signed eight big contracts ! D'oh !). Who routinely gets it up the arse ?
posted on Dec 26, 2005 - View this thread

The New York Times (reg required) is reporting that the National Security Agency has eavesdropped on far more domestic telecommunications at the directive of President Bush than has been previously admitted. "The N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications... N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation."
posted on Dec 23, 2005 - View this thread

Abramoff is negotiating a possible deal with the Justice Department, in which he would agree to plead guilty and cooperate in the wide-ranging political corruption investigation focused on his dealings with members of Congress and executive branch officials, people familiar with the talks said last night. Abramoff's entry in the Wikipedia. WaPo's chart outlining Abramoff's dealings. A dKos diary pointing out some omissions in the chart. [Newsfilter]
posted on Dec 21, 2005 - View this thread

The Libby/Rove/Plame scandal for dummies courtesy of Der Spiegel.
posted on Nov 1, 2005 - View this thread

The first Gomery report is out today. The US doesn't yet have a monopoly on political scandal. Today, the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities releases its first report. At 10:15 this morning, Judge Gomery reads his statement. Who are the players? And will it bring down the government?
posted on Nov 1, 2005 - View this thread

Philadelphia Priest scandal unfolds The Philadelphia Archdiocese concealed sexual abuse by priests for four decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released Wednesday. With 63 confirmed and as many as 170 suspected - all accused of multiple acts, Priests in the city of brotherly love are making a mockery of the city's moniker. It's being reported that Both Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Kroll not only ignored the abuse but were complicit in preventing the abuse from being reported to the police.
posted on Sep 21, 2005 - View this thread

Wall Street's Complicity in Financial Scandals. While the blame is parsed amongst the CEOs of companies like Worldcom, Tyco, Healthsouth, Enron, that swindled their investors for billions of dollars, prosecutors are also heading after the banks that funded their rise. Citicorp was just forced to pay $2 billion to investors for their association with Enron (NYT), for encouraging people to invest against good judgment in companies that Citicorp would profit from.
posted on Jun 10, 2005 - View this thread

And just when you thought it was safe to go back near Canada's House of Commons... When last we checked, a rookie Conservative MP (a former contender for her party's leadership and, some gossipped, the attentions of a certain ex-President) crossed the floor on the eve of a vote on the survival of the Liberal government...
posted on Jun 7, 2005 - View this thread

Invest $50 million of a workers comp trust fund in rare coins and collectibles. Lose some of the coins in the mail. Havoc ensues. Prominent Ohio Republican fundraiser and Bush-Cheney 'pioneer' Thomas Noe is under state scrutiny for $10-12 million in missing funds and subject of a federal probe for potential illegal Bush campaign contributions. Oh, and did I mention his wife Bernadette was chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections during the 2004 election? Suddenly the once-popular donor finds himself a political pariah as heads begin to roll - could this be the tip of an iceberg that will unravel the red state infrastructure? Follow the Toledo Blade's stellar investigative journalism as this story unfolds. Maybe the national media can watch and learn.
posted on May 31, 2005 - View this thread

"This is a form of undercover journalism that, thankfully, went out of vogue in the early 1980's." This is one reason newspapers suck in the early 2000's.
posted on May 10, 2005 - View this thread

KXLY News 4 Mayor Jim West of Spokane Washington has been accused of sexual abuse of a male child. Mayor West announced in the local Spokesman Review newpaper that he plans on staying on as Mayor.
posted on May 7, 2005 - View this thread

Prime Minister Paul Martin addresses the sponsorship scandal with a televised speech to the Canadian people. The Opposition is calling for Liberal blood. Here's some political fun from North of the Border. Will the Gomery Inquiry reveal the Liberals as a crooked party or did they just get caught for something every party does? This is stuff I though only happened to other countries...boy, was I wrong!
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread