Free Republic

SHH! It’s the John Edwards sex scandal. Bu don’t tell anyone… Says Ken: If you only read Respectable Newspapers and avoid the morally corrupting influences of blogs, tabloids and Jay Leno, it might be news to you that Democratic boy wonder John Edwards is the alleged star of a creepy sex scandal. The story has everything a cable-news producer or magazine editor or soap-opera writer could ask for: adultery, political power, a monstrous mansion, betrayal, cash transfers, terrible lies, vanishing evidence, a fall guy, a saintly wife dying of cancer, a late-night hotel rendezvous in Beverly Hills, even a “love...

Elsewhere on the Internet you can find postings about a story in the National Enquirer about former Sen. John Edwards, alleging unpleasantness about his personal life. You can also find a story by FOX News that purports to confirm a small portion of that National Enquirer story. The allegations concern the kinds of moral and ethical issues I frequently blog about, but I haven't written about these and I'm not going to do so here. Why? It's not because I'm an Edwards fan. It's because I still think that standards still matter in journalism. My screed is at the jump....

The New York Times cites the "public's right to know" every time they reveal national security documents that aid and abet terrorists. However, when it comes to the John Edwards affair, the "public's right to know" be damned. --R.E. Bierce The state of the media coverage--or rather, non-coverage--six days after the National Enquirer's reporters catch John Edwards at the Beverly Hilton visiting his mistress and their love child. Two daily newspapers from the U.K. cover the news the American mainstream media won't. More specifically, the John Edwards Love Child news. The Independent Sunday edition contained "Love child and mistress claims...

John Edwards was fighting for his political future yesterday as America's mainstream media began reporting a colourful scandal involving his alleged mistress, a disputed "secret love child", and an altercation at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The married former Democratic presidential candidate, who is among leading contenders to be Barack Obama's running mate, saw his private life given more attention than he would like when Fox News claimed to have "independently verified" details of last week's National Enquirer story headlined: "John Edwards caught with mistress and love child." Reporters from the supermarket tabloid had...

I think Mickey Kaus is correct about this. Under normal circumstances, John Edwards would have a prominent role in the Democratic convention in Denver — remember the adoring, break-into-the-news coverage of Edwards' decision to endorse Obama? But these are not normal circumstances for Edwards. I think most people in the media believe the National Enquirer story about him is accurate, even as they have adopted a this-is-not-happening editorial policy. But the policy would be harder to maintain were Edwards to take a high-profile role at the convention. It is impossible to imagine that the Obama campaign would want Edwards to...

RUSH: An update on the John Edwards situation out in Los Angeles broken by the National Enquirer. Two interesting things here: "A hotel security guard at the Beverly Hilton told FoxNews.com that he intervened this week between a man he identified as [the Breck Girl] and tabloid reporters who chased down the former presidential hopeful after what they're calling a rendezvous with his mistress and love child. The Beverly Hilton hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced [Breck Girl] who he did not immediately recognize in a hotel men's room early Tuesday morning about 2:30 and was in...

LA Times Blog EditorVia Mickey Kaus, we learn that the Los Angeles Times has apparently banned its bloggers from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story.

There’s been a lot of talk lately that former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) will have some sort of role in the Obama administration, if there is one. A few months ago, Edwards, the Democratic Party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate, seemed to pull himself out of the VP race. But then, a couple of weeks ago, Edwards quietly put himself back in, telling National Public Radio, “I’m prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.” “Anything” could, of course, mean running for vice president. But Edwards has done that before, and he didn’t exactly put...

Everybody had a good laugh last August when Roll Call broke the story about Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, getting arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for playing footsies in a toilet stall. The late-night talk show hosts mined the material for days; Slate produced a re-enactment of the bathroom ballet; and newspapers, magazines, and cable channels shredded Craig. The angle taken by most reporters and commentators wasn't that Craig's restroom conduct was particularly shameful. The press doesn't object to same-sex sex at all, nor should it. Craig's true offense, said the press and the clowns, was hypocrisy, which they...

Barack Obama's VP shortlist might have gotten shorter: The National Enquirer yesterday published a story claiming it had caught John Edwards meeting with an alleged mistress and illegitimate child. Then again, the Enquirer hasn't been able to produce quotes, photos or even eyewitness accounts. And the mainstream media seems to be ignoring it, for the most part. TalkLeft, among others, hopes it isn't true. And thus far, the claims don't seem to have hurt Edwards politically — although the Corner has something worth noting: ...after first seeming to take himself out of the running, he put himself back in the...

Watch the video. http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=137423

Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Busted: HuffPo 's Sam Stein, who got the story rolling, appears to be vindicated. ... P.S.: Always trust content from kausfiles! Never trust content from Jerome Armstrong. ... P.P.S.: Will this be the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interesting theoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why. If this is that...

No details yet...developing. Wonder what he was doing at Beverly Hilton? Woman involved? Ailing Elizabeth no where to be seen.

EAGLE PASS, TEX. — The family link that connects the mother of a man who recently identified himself as John F. Kennedy's son to the former president has its dusty roots in this scrubby town on the southern border of Texas. It was here, in the late 1930s, over country club visits and long lunches across the Rio Grande at the famous El Moderno restaurant, that Lyndon Johnson began his friendship with Robert Bibb, a fierce Democrat and county judge whose 22-year political career cemented his reputation as a local legend. Judge Bibb, who gave up his seat in 1964,...

Born exactly two years before Dallas. The man at the centre of a John F. Kennedy mystery is revealing new details, including his name and his birthday – an astonishing date should he indeed be related to the Kennedy clan. Jack Worthington also agreed to allow The Globe and Mail to take his photograph, but only after his name was revealed by a Vancouver publication. He had been speaking with The Globe over the past few days on condition of anonymity. The British Columbia man is asking the Kennedys to provide a DNA sample so tests can be run to...

The latest JFK tale tells of a tall, handsome, illegitimate Camelot kid now well into his 40s, living a life of seclusion in cold Canada. A call by the Herald to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Washington, D.C. office yesterday was met with “nobody is available now.” Yet the New York Post reports the Bay State’s senior senator is trying to prevent Vanity Fair magazine from publishing the story of the alleged love child of the assassinated president. The Post proclaims Vanity Fair’s David Friend has been working on the article for more than a year and even sent photographer Harry Benson...

Was a report by the National Enquirer suggesting Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards possibly fathered a "love child" planted by an opposing campaign for political advantage? The issue is being discussed on America's airwaves after the Drudge Report posted a picture of the senator and a woman who is purportedly six months pregnant on the tabloid's cover. The report links Edwards to the woman, who has reportedly gone into hiding and who says someone other than Edwards is the father of her child. "Everybody thinks that this is a typical 'Clinton Inc.' type of event, and it is," said radio...

Presidential candidate John Edwards is caught up in a love child scandal, a blockbuster ENQUIRER investigation has discovered. 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 has now confirmed...

An East Sandwich woman and her son are suing The National Enquirer saying the supermarket tabloid printed “outright fabrications” alleging that she gave birth to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s “love child” then participated in a “20-year coverup” of the scandal. “Virtually every critical fact which these stories reported is false and each is defamatory,” says the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston by Caroline Bilodeau-Allen and her son, Christopher. The lawsuit contends that Christopher is not Kennedy’s biological son, that there is “no paternity test which proves that Sen. Kennedy fathered Mrs. Bilodeau-Allen’s son.” That “Sen. Kennedy never ‘paid’...

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