Free Republic

Somali Adulterer Stoned To Death Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth. Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka. An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby. Islamist groups run much of southern Somalia, while the UN-backed government only control parts of the capital. This is the third time Islamists have stoned a person to death for adultery in the past year....

(CNN) -- If you were to judge the success rate of monogamy by the sex lives of public figures, perhaps couples should change their marriage vows to say, "Till a tempting new partner do us part." Talk-show host David Letterman recently joined former presidential candidate John Edwards, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer on a long list of politicians and entertainers (think Jude Law) who have admitted having sex outside their marriage or committed relationship. But do they just illustrate the realities of modern life? In the age of hookups, friends with benefits and...

Ayn Rand has drifted in and out of favor, but she may be more relevant today than ever before.In my experience, people who've read Ayn Rand's books either love them or hate them. I'm one of the few who fall somewhere in between. When I first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the 1980s, I was blown away. Those books portray the power of the free individual in ways I had never thought about before. Since then, I've grown more critical of Rand's outlook because it doesn't include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any...

In a draft chapter that failed to make the final editor’s cut, the late Senator Ted Kennedy boasted that he had slept with more than 1,000 women during his life. The Senator also recounted that he was quite pleased that it only cost him a total of $10 million in hush money. “In a way, the drowning of Mary Jo helped keep down the costs,” Kennedy wrote. “My ability to skate on that convinced many of my subsequent conquests to be reasonable in their demands lest a similar fate befall them.” The chapter also expressed some regret over the Kopechne...

Well, it's not the renowned and, as it turns out, downright horny host of CBS' "Late Night With David Letterman" show. It's probably Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, former vice-presidential candidate and current full-time mom who, back in June, showed Letterman the wrath of an angry mom. Letterman, who probably needs better joke writers as well as some kind of male chastity belt, wisecracked that New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez "knocked up" Palin's daughter during a seventh-inning stretch. Palin went ballistic, figuring Letterman was referring to her 14-year-old daughter Willow. Letterman countered by saying he was referring to...

Ted Kennedy slept with more than a thousand women - and spent at least $10 million in hush money over the years to keep his skirt-chasing a secret! The late senator made those sensational confessions in a chapter of his autobiography, but horrified family members and advisers cut them out. Before he died of brain cancer at age 77 on Aug. 25, the womanizing politician also revealed that he planned to seduce Mary Jo Kopechne on the night she drowned, said a close source. "While dictating his memoirs into a tape recorder, Ted decided to tell the whole truth about...

A CBS News employee is accused of trying to extort $2 million from David Letterman, forcing the late-night host to admit in an extraordinary monologue before millions of viewers that he had sexual relationships with female employees.

Are humans born to cheat? What do Americans think about marital infidelity? Those who oppose the practice of adultery often base their arguments on religious prohibitions. Others, confident that religion is worthless, or worse, turn to science to support their contentions that monogamy is not biologically “natural.” The ABC News television program Nightline is currently running a series on the Ten Commandments that “explores the biblical commandments from [a] modern-day perspective.”[1] The fourth installment of the series looked at...

Adultery did not fare well during a September 25 “Nightline” broadcast about the issue, but that didn’t keep ABC’s Cynthia McFadden from asking an evangelical pastor if he felt “a little intolerant” for his conservative views on the subject. McFadden moderated a debate that tried to answer the question, “Are we born to cheat?” but appeared to mock Pastor Ed Young’s responses whenever she could. The proponents of adultery who appeared on the panel included Jenny Block, an author and participant in an open marriage, and Noel Biderman, the president and CEO of Ashley Madison, a Web site designed to...

Findings from a nationwide study reveal that clergy sexual misconduct is more prevalent than many people believe.According to research by Baylor University, 3.1 percent of adult women who attend religious services at least once a month have been victims of clergy sexual misconduct since turning 18. In other words, seven women in every congregation of 400 adults have been victimized.Ninety-two percent of the sexual advances were made in secret and 67 percent of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance."Because many people are familiar with some of the high-profile cases of sexual misconduct, most...

A pro-family values California lawmaker who resigned after being caught on tape boasting about his sexual conquests denied Thursday that he had extramarital affairs, saying that "my offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling." Mike Duvall stepped down Wednesday after a videotape surfaced in which was overheard telling a lawmaker about having sex with a lobbyist and another woman, including salacious details about how one mistress wears skimpy underwear and likes to be spanked. The 54-year-old Republican is married with two adult children. But Duvall said Thursday that his "decision to resign is in no way an admission that I had...

Statement from Assemblyman Mike Duvall regarding his resignation from office today: September 9, 2009 "I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly, who are working hard on the very serious problems facing our state. I have come to the conclusion that it would not be fair to my family, my constituents or to my friends on both sides of the aisle to remain in office. Therefore, I have decided to resign my office, effective immediately, so that the Assembly can get back to work."

WASHINGTON – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in a new book that he was not romantically involved with young Mary Jo Kopechne and that he never escaped the despair he felt after she died in the 1969 car crash that has been seared into the national consciousness as "Chappaquiddick." He acknowledged that he enjoyed women and drink — sometimes too much so — but said reports of wild Kennedy excesses were exaggerated. Yet it was the specter of Chappaquiddick that Edward Kennedy, the youngest brother, never could shake. "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts...

Potential readers should not be deterred by the vaguely Hallmarkish cover—and subtitle—of this book, both of which may be blamed on the publisher. I’m assuming that Broadway Books has a packaging-and-editing style all its own, because on page 88 it makes Elizabeth Edwards tell us something that “Edmund Wilson, the incomparable twentieth-century literary critic, said.” Perhaps someone at the firm felt that this would explain just exactly who Wilson was to a reader who didn’t know, but the effect is to be condescending and to diminish the impact of reading a senator’s wife who is well able to cite Edmund...

Shame can be a powerful punishment. Just ask the guy who had to stand at the corner of Leesburg Pike and International Drive in Tysons Corner, Va., this morning. You know, the guy wearing the sign that said, "I CHEATED. THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT." A man who identified himself as William Taylor of Centreville, Va. told a passerby that he cheated on his wife -- and she found evidence of it on his cell phone. So the wife allegedly doled out a rather creative punishment: He had to stand at the intersection during morning rush, wearing the handmade sign. We...

Shame can be a powerful punishment. Just ask the guy who had to stand at the corner of Leesburg Pike and International Drive in Tysons Corner, Va., on Wednesday morning. You know, the guy wearing the sign that said, "I CHEATED. THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT." William Taylor, of Centreville, Va., told a passerby that he cheated on his wife -- and she found evidence of it on his cell phone. So the wife doled out a rather creative punishment: He had to stand at the intersection during morning rush, wearing the handmade sign. People reported seeing him as early as...

"My expectation is that, at some point, something happens," Elizabeth saidThe wife of philandering former Sen. John Edwards said she expects a paternity test will take place soon to determine the father of the 18-month-old child of her hubby's former mistress. In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Elizabeth Edwards confronted rumors that her cheating husband was set to claim paternity of little Frances, his alleged love child with ex-mistress Rielle Hunter. When asked about testing the paternity of the baby, Edwards said her "expectation is that, at some point, something happens. And I hope for the sake of...

John Edwards is moving the mother of his love child into his North Carolina neighborhood and will help raise their baby, The ENQUIRER reports exclusively. In a stunning change of heart, the disgraced 2 time presidential candidate loser - who's denied being the child's father for more than a year - has embraced fatherhood and wants to be intimately involved in the life of daughter Frances. The ENQUIRER also learned that his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth exploded in a rage when he told her of his parenting plans and that he's moving his mistress and baby to Wilmington, near his plush...

SNIP A female veteran Madoff employee tells Oppenheimer, "He had affairs in the office. There were two women I know of. They were gorgeous. They were blond. They were young. They were like baby Ruths -- the same type as Ruth, with the same hair color and eye color." A different Madoff insider said, "Ruth told him to stop [playing around], but he started having affairs all over the place," adding that Madoff would often give his girls cards with his private cellphone number on them. SNIP

JENNY Sanford Googled the Argentine woman who was having an affair with her husband, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, to see what she looked like. "What woman wouldn't want to know what her husband's mistress looks like?" a friend of Jenny's asks in September's Vogue. "She's pretty," was Jenny's reported verdict. SNIP But Jenny said Mark was the last person anyone would guess was a philanderer. "It never occurred to me that he would do something like that," she told the magazine. "The person I married was centered on a core of morals. The person who did this is not...

It's a long and ignominious list. First there was Newt Gingrich. Then came Larry Craig, Mark Foley, David Vitter, Chip Pickering and Vito Fossella. Now starring John Ensign and Mark Sanford. Politically, sex scandals are equal-opportunity destroyers. For every David Vitter, there is an Eliot Spitzer. For every John Ensign there's a John Edwards. For every Bill Clinton there's ... well, there's only one Slick Willie. But you get the point: Sexual scandal knows no party. Yet, a common denominator linking many political sex scandals of the last few years is the involvement of conservative Christian politicians who, it seemed,...

It's a long and ignominious list. First there was Newt Gingrich. Then came Larry Craig, Mark Foley, David Vitter, Chip Pickering and Vito Fossella. Now starring John Ensign and Mark Sanford. Politically, sex scandals are equal-opportunity destroyers. For every David Vitter, there is an Eliot Spitzer. For every John Ensign there's a John Edwards. For every Bill Clinton there's... well, there's only one Slick Willie. But you get the point: Sexual scandal knows no party. Yet, a common denominator linking many political sex scandals of the last few years is the involvement of conservative Christian politicians who, it seemed, had...

Ex-Hadassah CFO claims in new book she and Madoff got up-close-and-personalFirst Bernie Madoff had an affair with ex-Hadassah CFO Sheryl Weinstein. And then he took her house. Madoff, a former Nasdaq chairman, is currently serving a 150-year prison term for masterminding the $65 billion Ponzi scheme that cost thousands of people, including Weinstein and her family, their life savings, homes and sense of security. Perhaps the accountant is trying to recoup some of her money by publishing a tell-all book – "Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me." Or maybe she's trying to get back at Bernie by revealing...

Adultery: "Caught Cheating?" (song) Click to watch music video.Lyrics: Don't you wake me. I ain't moving. Got to me in my sleep -- Now I'm dead. And who's the guilty party? I was cheating. She found out. She murdered me With passion, And a steak knife. Got to me in my sleep -- Now I'm dead. And who's the guilty party? Dark, my casket, oh so dark. Man, she murdered me And I am hell bound now. She got to me in my sleep Now I'm dead. No, I don't wanna die. Now I'm dead. (Instrumental music by Trafic de...

President John F. Kennedy had secret trysts with Marilyn Monroe in a loft above the office of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Ronald Kessler reveals in his new book about the Secret Service. "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect," released Tuesday, features startling disclosures about presidents from JFK to Barack Obama.

Four Wisconsin women are accused of tying up and assaulting a married man after allegedly finding out he was romantically involved with each of them. The women are each charged with being party to false imprisonment, a felony with a maximum prison term of six years. One is charged with fourth-degree sexual assault. Calumet County prosecutors say 48-year-old Therese A. Ziemann of Menasha lured the man to a Stockbridge motel last Thursday. Prosecutors say she was soon joined by 43-year-old Michelle Belliveau of Neenah; 43-year-old Wendy L. Sewell of Kaukauna; and the man's wife. Authorities say Ziemann punched the man...

WAUSAU, Wis. — A married man who planned to rendezvous with one of his handful of lovers at an eastern Wisconsin motel instead found himself bound, blindfolded and assaulted by a group of women out for revenge, according to court documents. Four women, including his wife, eventually showed up to humiliate the man, who ended up with his penis glued to his stomach in a bizarre plot to punish him for a lover's quadrangle gone bad, according to the documents filed in Calumet County.

A married Wisconsin man who was also dating three women at the same time was busted by the ladies and subsequently tortured for his poor relationship skills. When the three women found out they were all being cheated on by the same man, they devised a plan to trick the man into coming to a motel room, being bound and blindfolded, and given a massage. Unfortunately this supposed massage turned into a torture game where the three women put Krazy Glue on his "sensitive parts," says ABC News. Therese Ziemann lured the man to the hotel and then cut off...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee state senator said he was opposed to sex outside marriage, but his private life told a different story: He was having an affair with his 22-year-old intern. When an extortion plot exposed married Republican Sen. Paul Stanley's illicit relationship, he said he would be "clearing up" misimpressions later. He's now clearing out his office, the latest politician caught in a sex scandal, this one made worse by not coming clean.

Former US president John F. Kennedy had an affair with a Swedish flight attendant, according to a new book based on interviews with current and former Secret Service agents. According to ex-agent Robert Lutz, President Kennedy took a liking to a Swedish Pan Am Flight attendant who was riding on the press pool airplane which typically follows US presidents while they travel. While Lutz, who was assigned to the press plane, had initially planned to ask the good looking Swede out for dinner, members of the Secret Service detail assigned to President Kennedy told Lutz to back off. “She’s part...

Four Wisconsin women are accused of tying up and assaulting a married man after allegedly finding out he was romantically involved with each of them. The women are each charged with being party to false imprisonment, a felony with a maximum prison term of six years. One is charged with fourth-degree sexual assault. Calumet County prosecutors say 48-year-old Therese A. Ziemann of Menasha lured the man to a Stockbridge motel last Thursday. Prosecutors say she was soon joined by 43-year-old Michelle Belliveau of Neenah; 43-year-old Wendy L. Sewell of Kaukauna; and the man's wife. Authorities say Ziemann punched the man...

It's now more than 50 years since the revolution began. Sexual "liberation" has been endlessly ballyhooed by the national media, promoted in the movies, embraced by Playboy guys and Cosmo girls as a freedom more delicious than Eden's apple. No American under 40 can honestly remember a time when sex on TV was taboo, when "living together" meant married, when "gay" meant happy, and when almost every child lived with both parents.   If truth be told, the revolution has been a disaster. Before the push to loosen America's sexual mores really got under way in the 1950s, the...

Earlier this week, ABC, CBS and NBC all noted the tenth anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. That Kennedy was an “icon” according to CBS’s Harry Smith, and “the Prince of Camelot” to ABC’s Chris Cuomo, a former cousin-in-law. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, killed July 18, 1969 after leaving a party with Senator Edward Kennedy. That night, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge, and left the scene with Kopechne still in the submerged vehicle; he did not call the police until the following morning. Over the course of...

Here is video of the speech Sen. Ted Kennedy made to try and rehabilitate himself following the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island after he drove her off a bridge in his car, leaving her to drown on July 19, 1969. Tomorrow will be 40 years since it happened. In this video, he says he finds his own behavior "indefensible" in waiting for hours to call authorities after getting out of the car himself, but leaving Kopechne in the car. Obviously, the entire speech was his attempt to indirectly defend himself. Below is a summary of "The Chappaquiddick...

JACKSON, Miss. – The estranged wife of former U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering claims in a lawsuit that the Mississippi Republican had an affair that ruined their marriage and derailed his political career. Leisha Pickering said in the lawsuit filed this week that her husband and the woman dated in college, reconnected and began having an affair while he was in Congress and living in a building where several Christian lawmakers reside on C Street near the U.S. Capitol. Chip Pickering is the third Republican with ties to the building at 133 C Street SE to find his personal life making...

Police confirmed Wednesday that ex-NFL star Steve McNair's 20-year-old girlfriend killed him before turning the gun on herself.They said they may never know what was going through Sahel Kazemi's mind when she shot McNair in his condominium early Saturday, but interviews with friends led detectives to conclude she was becoming increasingly distraught over events in her life, including financial problems. Police said she also suspected McNair was seeing another woman. Police earlier had labeled McNair's death a homicide, but awaited further tests and investigation before saying for sure what happened. At one point, Kazemi told an associate that her...

Amid a confused array of accusations last week, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) took to the podium to clarify the nature of his romantic life. With honesty that would make a pilgrim proud, he confirmed the media’s suspicion that his love had been divided between two parties: his Argentine paramour Maria Belen Chapur and – with recently compromised commitment – the hiking trail of the Appalachian Mountains. Sanford’s tearful, sniveling reference to Chapur as his “soul mate” made his attempted reconciliation with his wife a blanching display of equivocation; but there was one topic about which the governor was not conflicted—he...

During more than three hours of interviews over two days at his Statehouse office, Sanford said he is trying to fall back in love with his wife, Jenny, even as he grapples with his deep feelings for Chapur. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jVGOp2bl5_prbLYsoPOvD96f55bgD995A50O0

France, Italy and much of the European Union have much to snicker about these days. No, I’m not referring to the Obama Apology Tour or the stern letters we send off to the dangerously unbalanced (and poorly dressed) North Korean despot, Kim Jong-Il, warning him that the United States would be quite displeased if he sent yet another missile our way. Forget the carnage in the streets of Iran, or the persistent bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq. While you’re at it, just ignore the Obama Administration’s blitzkrieg on our personal freedoms, our nation’s economy and the quasi-nationalization of an increasing...

NYDN: Former presidential candidate John Edwards is out of luck if he hoped that the extramarital affairs of Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign would take people's minds off his own cheating scandal.

"The author is ending her marriage. Isn’t it time you did the same?” So The Atlantic provocatively introduces its July/August feature “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” It comes at a propitious moment. This seems to be the week for TMI — too much information. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has told more, much more, than we needed to know about his mistress (how he met her, how their relationship ripened), his views on God’s laws, on the Appalachian Trail, and on forgiveness. Why must wayward American public figures stage these auto autos-da-fé — these self-immolations on TV? Dignity, which...

By now, it's clear that Mark Sanford has about as much of a future in politics as he does in sumo wrestling. His confession of adultery was all it took to demolish any hopes he had of running for president -- and perhaps even to force him to step down as governor of South Carolina. But why? After all, we've had presidents who are revered by posterity despite being unreliable husbands. Hardly anyone even remembers now that Franklin Roosevelt had a mistress, that Dwight Eisenhower may have had one, or that John Kennedy had several. In the intervening decades, we've...

Unrepentant, and convinced that Muslims across the world are the victims of American oppression, the mind of Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber from South London, was shown today in a letter published in a Scottish legal magazine. The letter, written by Reid from his prison cell in America on October 24, 2002, and published by The Firm magazine today, was sent to the magazine's US correspondent instead of an interview. In the letter, Reid, now 31, gave a rambling but cogent reply to a note sent to him by Noel Young, The Firm's journalist, who offered Reid the chance...

On March 13, 2008, we had this to say when then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, resigned after getting caught patronizing high-priced prostitutes: His fall "reminds voters that politicians comprise the last class of people worthy of the deification they are afforded. ... Mr. Spitzer's downfall underscores how politicians care less about public service than getting elected and re-elected, and amassing power with all its corrupting influences. It shows how the incessant flattery of journalists and regal treatment of subordinates creates egomaniacs who believe themselves entitled to special treatment and exempt from everyday laws. Most of all, it emphasizes...

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 2 Samuel 11:2-3 This is perhaps one of the most well-known stories in the Old Testament. David sinned. It wasn't Bathsheba's fault because refusing the King could have meant death for her. No, David sinned. He should have been at war but he wasn't....

Sitting in Reno, Nevada, at the Conservative Leadership Conference (CLC) two years ago, I was awed by the governor of South Carolina. Here, at last, was someone who got it. Someone who understood the danger of big government and big spending, and that, yes, our civilization was on the line. Chuck Muth of Citizen Outreach, who hoped to turn the CLC into CPAC West, reminded us that at the first CPAC a future president (Ronald Reagan) spoke and suggested perhaps we’d heard one at CLC. He then gave Governor Mark Sanford the Barry Goldwater Award. After the event, I walked...

“Who is this guy?” That was my recurring thought watching Gov. Mark Sanford’s slo-mo train wreck of a press conference on Wednesday. I know Mark Sanford from my days as a GOP political consultant in South Carolina. I introduced him at a speech to the libertarian Cato Institute before he became governor. Mark Sanford was smooth. He was smart. Above all, Mark Sanford was cool. In many ways, he was the Republican Barack Obama. Sanford is a true small-government conservative, an ideology that, like Obama’s MoveOn.org liberalism, isn’t very popular. But like Obama, Mark Sanford had the political skills to...

The first thing that should be acknowledged about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission to an extramarital affair is that it could happen to any of us. That is not an excuse (and no, it has not happened to me, or to my wife). Every married person has heard the voice; the one that says you deserve something "better." Gov. Sanford should have been familiar with the voice because of the Bible studies he attended. The voice began seducing humanity a long time ago. It told our first parents that they needed more than the perfection of Eden. The voice...

Let me just say it before a commentator on Fox does: This whole Mark Sanford mess is a Barack Obama conspiracy. The sad spectacle of Mr. Sanford's teary confessional is designed, at least in some part, to make the President look even better by comparison than he already does. You think it was a coincidence that as the Governor was into the meat of his dishonor, the CNN scroll noted that President Obama was going to the Vatican to meet with the Pope? I have my own views about the Obama press machinery and resultant seduction quotient. But this latest...

ABC's Sam Donaldson appeared on Thursday's Good Morning America to talk about the developing Mark Sanford scandal and loudly assert that it's hard to forgive Bible-thumping Republicans for their sexual transgressions. He began by deriding, "The problem Republicans have, so many of them are sanctimonious." AUDIO AVAILABLE HERE : http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/06/2009-06-25-ABC-GMA-Donaldson.mp3 The longtime contributor continued his attack on members of the GOP who get caught up in sex scandals: "They thump the Bible. They condemn everyone else, and when they- human- they don’t have much credit in the bank for forgiveness." Donaldson, who appeared with fellow ABC contributor Cokie Roberts, did...