It's not like there aren't people across the political spectrum who let power go to their head; there are. Elliot Spitzer is a prime example. But he has shown far more remorse and subsequent humility than this lot of holier than thou hypocrites.
This seems particularly classic as we have the pious hypocrite the Nut Gingrich prancing about the national stage in his vindictive, imperious over reaching classic manner, a style which has not changed from the era when he was critical of the lesser misconduct of President Bill Clinton, while having an extended and more serious affair of his own. I note that whatever Clinton did, and he should certainly not have had the relationships with women that he did, he remained married to Hilary, and certainly as regards Monica Lewinsky, his sexual misconduct did not go as far, as that of the Hypocrite Supreme, serial cheater, and dishonest, censured politician, Nut Gingrich.
I see nothing more moral in the right wing support for the Nut Gingrich than I see in them having had this creepy homosexual pedophile for a political committee boss.
Via MSNBC.com
NJ school official quits amid charges he videotaped boys in shower
Somerset Co. Prosecutor's Office / AP
Patrick J. Lott, of Somerville, N.J., an assistant principal at a public middle school, allegedly secretly video recorded teenage boys in the shower at Immaculata High School in Somerville for nearly three years.
BENARDSVILLE, N.J. -- A middle school assistant principal has quit his job after being jailed on accusations of secretly video recording teenage boys at a Catholic high school where he volunteered as a coach, officials said Saturday.
Patrick Lott, 54, submitted his letter of resignation dated Jan. 27 from his job at Bernardsville Middle School, and the Somerset Hills Regional School District board accepted it Thursday, Superintendent Peter Miller told The Star-Ledger newspaper.
Lott allegedly recorded 22 boys showering, including nine under age 16, beginning in January 2008 at Immaculata High School in Somerville, where he was a basketball coach and a volunteer, the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office says.
Authorities have not commented on how Lott allegedly installed cameras at the high school.
Lott, also active in local and county politics, is the former chairman of the Somerville Republican Committee.He remains jailed on $500,000 bail in Somerset County jail.
Video recordings were recovered from his home before his Dec. 23 arrest, officials said.
The school district placed him on unpaid leave from his $120,000-a-year job on Jan. 9.
Promoting family values in politics has been used by Republicans for too long ... suggested reading - David Kuo's Tempting Faith ... Kuo was part of the Bush team and "thought" GWB would be different ... in the end, as part of the White House Faith-based Initiative program, he saw first hand how they were scammed.
ReplyDeleteI have a bigger concern with the Republican nominee this term. Not Gingrich, his antics were entirely within his own "family" ... but instead Mitt Romney and his interpretation of Mormon doctrine and deciding how a family should be raised. Are you familiar with Peggie Hayes ?
From the book, The Real Romney :
Peggie Hayes had joined the church as a teenager along with her mother and siblings. They’d had a difficult life. Mormonism offered the serenity and stability her mother craved. “It was,” Hayes said, “the answer to everything.” Her family, though poorer than many of the well-off members, felt accepted within the faith. Everyone was so nice. The church provided emotional and, at times, financial support. As a teenager, Hayes babysat for Mitt and Ann Romney and other couples in the ward. Then Hayes’s mother abruptly moved the family to Salt Lake City for Hayes’s senior year of high school. Restless and unhappy, Hayes moved to Los Angeles once she turned 18. She got married, had a daughter, and then got divorced shortly after. But she remained part of the church.
By 1983, Hayes was 23 and back in the Boston area, raising a 3-year-old daughter on her own and working as a nurse’s aide. Then she got pregnant again. Single motherhood was no picnic, but Hayes said she had wanted a second child and wasn’t upset at the news. “I kind of felt like I could do it,” she said. “And I wanted to.” By that point Mitt Romney, the man whose kids Hayes used to watch, was, as bishop of her ward, her church leader. But it didn’t feel so formal at first. She earned some money while she was pregnant organizing the Romneys’ basement. The Romneys also arranged for her to do odd jobs for other church members, who knew she needed the cash. “Mitt was really good to us. He did a lot for us,” Hayes said. Then Romney called Hayes one winter day and said he wanted to come over and talk. He arrived at her apartment in Somerville, a dense, largely working-class city just north of Boston. They chitchatted for a few minutes. Then Romney said something about the church’s adoption agency. Hayes initially thought she must have misunderstood. But Romney’s intent became apparent: he was urging her to give up her soon-to-be-born son for adoption, saying that was what the church wanted. Indeed, the church encourages adoption in cases where “a successful marriage is unlikely.”
Hayes was deeply insulted. She told him she would never surrender her child. Sure, her life wasn’t exactly the picture of Rockwellian harmony, but she felt she was on a path to stability. In that moment, she also felt intimidated. Here was Romney, who held great power as her church leader and was the head of a wealthy, prominent Belmont family, sitting in her gritty apartment making grave demands. “And then he says, ‘Well, this is what the church wants you to do, and if you don’t, then you could be excommunicated for failing to follow the leadership of the church,’?” Hayes recalled. It was a serious threat. At that point Hayes still valued her place within the Mormon Church. “This is not playing around,” she said. “This is not like ‘You don’t get to take Communion.’ This is like ‘You will not be saved. You will never see the face of God.’?” Romney would later deny that he had threatened Hayes with excommunication, but Hayes said his message was crystal clear: “Give up your son or give up your God.”
So, Mitt Romney would follow church protocol and separate a birth-Mother from her son because she would be a single Mother (even though she was a divorced-Mother) ... and uses his power as a church leader to intimidate an expectant Mother.
Peggy Hayes rejected Mitt Romney's instructions ... and Romney may have had a reaction to that decision ... once again from the book, The Real Romney
ReplyDeleteNot long after, Hayes gave birth to a son. She named him Dane. At nine months old, Dane needed serious, and risky, surgery. The bones in his head were fused together, restricting the growth of his brain, and would need to be separated. Hayes was scared. She sought emotional and spiritual support from the church once again. Looking past their uncomfortable conversation before Dane’s birth, she called Romney and asked him to come to the hospital to confer a blessing on her baby. Hayes was expecting him. Instead, two people she didn’t know showed up. She was crushed. “I needed him,” she said. “It was very significant that he didn’t come.” Sitting there in the hospital, Hayes decided she was finished with the Mormon Church. The decision was easy, yet she made it with a heavy heart. To this day, she remains grateful to Romney and others in the church for all they did for her family. But she shudders at what they were asking her to do in return, especially when she pulls out pictures of Dane, now a 27-year-old electrician in Salt Lake City. “There’s my baby,” she said.
This story should not be interpreted to mean that a Romney presidency would mean legislation to allow government in-reach to separate a Mother and child, but instead how a man interprets church doctrine and would use his power to implement policy.
In this case, it might be better to have someone that is a hypocrite rather than a Believer in charge.