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Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. "These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military...

The Hustler founder has made an X-rated movie using an adult-film actress who resembles the governor of Alaska. Flynt's team had posted an anonymous advert on the website Craigslist just days after Mrs Palin took the Republican convention by storm last month. The ad read: "Looking for a Sarah Palin look-alike for an adult film to be shot in the next 10 days." The actress would be paid $3,000 (£1,700) for the part. Flynt's spokesman confirmed to the New York Daily News that the film had been shot, but he would not yet reveal the title. Bloggers have already suggested...

Malignant, malevolent, mendacious - this creep is a cancer on British life Last updated at 2:03 AM on 04th October 2008 * Comments (0) * Add to My Stories On the day Peter Mandelson was forced to resign in disgrace for the second time, I can remember writing that he wouldn’t be out of work long. He’d get his reward either in Brussels or the House of Lords. Even I didn’t imagine that one day he’d achieve both. Nor that it would be Gordon Brown who brought him back from Brussels and swathed him in ermine. Yes, that Gordon Brown....

ABC Radio news just announced Sen. John Edwards will admit to the affair with Rielle Hunter in an interview with the network, but insists the child is not his. We return you to your regularly-scheduled FReeping.

SIX days ahead of the North Carolina primary comes a story of real sleaze—not Jeremiah Wright-style buffoonery, but Nixon-style illegality designed to dupe and disenfranchise voters—that should surprise precisely nobody who has been following and covering this campaign. A group called Women's Voices Women's Vote (WVWV), which claims to have been "created to activate unmarried Americans in their government and in our democracy" has been placing robocalls to voters across North Carolina that seem designed to fool them into thinking they have not yet registered to vote. Many of the voters who received those calls are black. Voters in 11...

Cindy Stankoski, the attorney general's office employee who has accused her boss of sexual harassment, filed a criminal complaint against him yesterday with Columbus police. A spokeswoman for attorney Mark L. Collins confirmed that Collins and Stankoski met briefly yesterday morning with Columbus Sgt. David D. Pelphrey. A written report will not be available until next week, police said. The development means that criminal conduct now has been officially alleged to have occurred where Ohio's top law-enforcement officer lived. The complaint by Stankoski, 26, an employee in the telecommunications section, focuses on the night of Sept. 10, 2007, when her...

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state's new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs. In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago. In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with "a woman other than my wife," beginning in 1999. mo here

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes. Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after. Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly -- to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the...

Tehran's police chief, Reza Zarei, has been arrested after he was found nude in a local brothel with six naked prostitutes, according to report on the Iranian Farda News. Farda News is a website said to be close to the mayor of Tehran and former chief of the police forces, Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf. Following the raid, Zarei stepped down from his post as police chief. The news of his arrest however was not reported by any official Iranian news agency. According to a popular Iranian website Gooya, the order to raid the brothel was given directly by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi...

ALBANY — On Dec. 3, Richard P. Richman, a real estate developer from Connecticut, wrote a check to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s campaign account. The check was for $10,000, less than one-fifth of the maximum donation allowed under New York State law. But it was all he could give to the governor, who had imposed strict limits on what he would accept from donors as part of his highly publicized pledge to end the excesses of special-interest money in Albany. So Mr. Richman took out his checkbook again. This time he gave $15,000, but sent it to the state Democratic Party,...

Hillary Clinton’s recent primary losses to Barack Obama may say as much about Democrats’ desires to be done with the Clintons as they do about the cult of personality that is Obama. Some say Hillary is now paying for the sins of her husband. I agree that may be true to some degree, but in many cases she was an accomplice to those sins and has only herself to blame. I have wondered for some time whether or not Americans would want another soap opera presidency and I think we are seeing the answer in the most recent primary vote...

Last year, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of renting out some of her lists. The transaction once again highlights the Clintons' connections to a businessman who now faces questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SAN ANTONIO — Mikal Watts didn’t have a fighting chance — politics were in his life from the start. As a toddler, he rode in a stroller as his mother marched in a farm workers’ rights march in Austin. Politics made for dinner table conversation and filled the pages of books in the family library. He attended fundraising barbecues with his parents. Before the age of 18, he knocked on doors registering people to vote. In the years since, Watts has risen from law-school whiz kid (he received a degree at 21) to nationally known product liability lawyer and political...

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them. Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his...

NEW LABOUR DONATIONS ALLEGATIONSLabour is facing fresh pressure over disguised donations after it was reported party officials had helped draw up legal agreements underpinning the practice in 2003. The Guardian newspaper said "middle-ranking officials" sought approval from lawyers and senior colleagues for covenants used by David Abrahams to conceal his identity. Scotland Yard is investigating how the property developer was able to channel hundreds of thousands of pounds through third parties to keep his name from regulators. Mr Abrahams suggested at the weekend that about 10 party figures were aware of the practice - renewing speculation about who knew within...

Don't quit, Brown begs Scottish Labour leader as she faces criminal investigation into sleaze rowGordon Brown has begged one of his key allies not to quit as she faces a criminal investigation into an illegal donation from a millionaire tax exile. Two police forces and the Electoral Commission have launched official inquiries after Wendy Alexander, Labour's leader in Scotland, admitted breaking the law by accepting the money for her leadership campaign. The Prime Minister is said to fear that if she resigns it will spark a "domino effect" - forcing Labour ministers to stand down over the secret donations scandal...

According to The Politico, New York Post columnist and FOX News contributor Dick Morris has been secretly advising former client Mike Huckabee on his Presidential campaign. Morris claims he is acting in an entirely voluntary capacity by simply offering free advice. Keep in mind that nationally syndicated columnist George Will was pilloried by the media when it became public that he had secretly and voluntarily helped Ronald Reagan prepare for his Presidential debates in 1980. A prominent national GOP insider tells Politics1 that he believes Morris -- despite his claims to the contrary -- is paid for his services through...

Among the top tier Republican candidates, Rush says that only Fred has been a consistent conservative. You have been given your marching orders. Now you know who to vote for. RUSH: …the genuine moderate as opposed to conservative aspects of three of the top-tier, four of the top-tier candidates were on full-fledged display last night. There was one candidate who did not display any moderateness or liberalism or have any of his past forays into those areas displayed, and that candidate was Fred Thompson. … …we have a campaign now where most of the candidates are not genuine conservatives. They...

Chicago (AP) -- The son of an Illinois congressman is accused of having sexual contact with two female inmates and inappropriate contact with a third while working for the state Department of Corrections, officials announced Friday. Jeffrey M. Rush, 41, the son of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, was a supervisor of security at the Fox Valley Adult Transition Center in Aurora, a facility which houses female offenders. Between February and June, Rush met two inmates for sexual contact on numerous occasions and offered a third inmate a ride, according to the Kane County state's attorney's office. Rush drove a state-issued...

House Republican leaders have publicly called on Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) to apologize for his comments today regarding American troops in Iraq or resign from his position. Stark said the following today on the floor of the House (which can be viewed on video here): “I yield myself two minutes. Madam speaker, I, first of all, I’m just amazed that they can't figure out -- the Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to...

CASSELBERRY - In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn't breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow. Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall. The boy's grandparents, named in the suit, are mystified and angry. "The loss we've suffered, and...

Excerpt - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., expressed concern about older Americans being "scammed" in a Des Moines, Iowa, speech Wednesday morning, even though her campaign has benefited from the largesse of a Democratic donor whose company is being investigated by the Iowa attorney general for its role in the very same issue -- defrauding seniors. "Fraudsters prey on seniors," Clinton told more than 300 Iowans at Waukee High School. "They offer prizes and sweepstakes and lotteries that lure people into a web of deception." Clinton warned the crowd, "We've got to send out the alarm: seniors should be extremely careful...

Larry Flynt’s last effort to buy dirt on Washington politicians was what you might call a bust. But the Hustler publisher launched a new effort Sunday, offering $1 million for provable Potomac sleaze. Readers of the print edition of Sunday’s Washington Post, will have seen the all-type, full-page ad as they turned from “Russia’s Champion of Hopeless Causes Is Targeted for Disbarment” to “U.S. Warship Fires Missiles at Fighters in Somalia.” “Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine announce a cash offer up to $1 Million,” the headline on page A17 says. The ad explains: “Have you had a sexual encounter with...

NRI entrepreneur flays NYT over 'smear campaign Vinod 'Vin' Gupta, 60, the multi-millionaire chairman and CEO of infoUSA and focus of a major article in the New York Times in the Washington Post on May 26 regarding a lawsuit that brands his using the company's private jet to fly former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on personal, business and campaign trips as a 'waste of corporate assets,' has said it's all an effort to embarrass Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. infoUSA is one of America's leading marketing information companies that provide electronic, print...

Excerpt - For the past four years, the Clintons have jetted around on Vinod Gupta's corporate plane, to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica, Mexico -- $900,000 worth of travel. The former president secured a $3.3 million consulting deal with Gupta's technology firm. His presidential library got a six-figure gift, too. Gupta, whose big donations to the Democratic Party earned him a Lincoln Bedroom overnight when Bill Clinton was president, has emerged as a key benefactor of Clinton's post-presidency -- and Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential candidacy. Gupta's generosity toward the Clintons has proved so controversial within his firm -- a major provider of...

Raising G-Rated Kids In A X-Rated World http://www.cbn.com/family/parenting/Burns_G-RatedKids.aspx By Jim Burns HomeWord Fri, Apr 13, 2007 CBN.com – Raising kids in today’s culture is not easy. There’s no question that the way we parent is influenced by the world we live in. And what a world it is! We need to help our children deal with drugs, sexuality, movies, television, video games, the Internet, terrorism, and war. It’s our goal as parents to raise our kids in this X-rated culture to become G-rated people. It can feel overwhelming trying to give our teenagers the tools they need to make godly...

UNION, N.J. -- Former Gov. James E. McGreevey is teaching ethics, law and leadership at Kean University. The Star-Ledger of Newark reported the nation's first openly gay governor earns $17,500 and has been an executive in residence since Nov. 1. When he was in office, McGreevey was often criticized for the appearance of ethical lapses. "It seems to me, Jim McGreevey teaching law and ethics is a little bit like Doctor Kevorkian teaching health maintenance," state Republican chairman Tom Wilson told the newspaper. The job requires McGreevey to work up to 15 hours a week and helps the 49-year-old accrue...

<p>He wanted to be considered because he wanted his name out there," a senior Democrat close to the vice presidential process said of Richardson. "And once his name was out there, he withdrew. So there was never a full vetting."</p>

“It Happens. So it’s Part of What We Are.” Said Robinson Devor on behalf of his new film about bestiality inflicted by men upon horses. Now, I’ve heard every miserable and pathetic excuse in the book. We have successfully defined deviancy down to the bedrock and don’t have a sharp enough drill bit to sink it any lower. Daniel Patrick Moynihan would turn over in his grave, but not if Robinson Devor, the director of the movie “Zoo,” were anywhere near his final resting place. Devor’s decent into the depths of human depravity was unveiled at this year’s Sundance Film...

Liberals just can’t stand Senator McCarthy. They hate how he blacklisted all those people and tried to wreck their lives and careers. We know that good and noble liberals would ever engage in that sort of conduct themselves. Or do we? According to David Corn, there’s a list going around. It is a list containing the names of homosexual aides to GOP congressional staffs; a list that 99.999999% of humanity was totally unaware of, and that had no meaning in their daily lives. But it was a list that David Corn just had to make public on his blog. He...

So what do you do if you're an old and washed-up, or not-so-old, but increasingly forgotten actor anxious to regain the spotlight of celebrity? As a rule, you look to associate yourself with a project that might jump-start your career. It is nice to be asked to participate in a project popular with the public. You jump at the chance for a supporting role in a Steven Spielberg movie. It's even better when the show is the rage of Hollywood itself and generating the all-important "buzz" among Tinseltown's sycophantic critics. If you're desperate enough, you'll latch on to this project,...

Responding to what Democrats and a political expert alike are calling a smear campaign, the state Republican Party is verbally disavowing an e-mail sent by one of its staffers that makes personal allegations against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland and his wife. But Republican party officials did not distribute a follow-up e-mail or take any other action to repudiate the e-mail, which suggests that the Stricklands are gay. "Every time we think we’ve reached the sewer, there’s a lower level of sewer," said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who has written...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

Behind the stalking case that shook the state Detectives were watching when the suspect walked to the car of the chairman of the state Democratic Party, opened the unlocked door and left a note inside. Karen Golding, a $100,000-a-year lobbyist for Prudential Financial and a well-known player in the New Jersey Democratic Party, was taken to the prosecutor's office in Elizabeth and charged with sending anonymous letters and e-mail messages over a span of 15 months to the party chairman, Joseph Cryan, and two women he dated.Even by New Jersey standards, the story of the fallout from the relationship between...

LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, struggling to overcome two major ministerial scandals, suffered a fresh blow when a poll showed most people think his Labour government is "sleazy and incompetent". The poll for the Sunday Times, which also shows a slide in his personal ratings to a historic low, comes just five days before local elections that are seen as a test of how long Blair can cling on to power. Blair has said he will not stand for a fourth term at the next election, expected in 2009, but it is unclear when he will step aside. Finance...

Here in the DFW area we have a new Spanish-language newspaper, La Tribuna. Unlike the two current Spanish-language dailies in our area, La Estrella and Al Dia (published by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News respectively), La Tribuna is published independently in Arlington. A tabloid with a marked pro-illegal slant (headine of first edition: "Ya Basta Bush!", "Stop Bush Now!"), it's chock-full of the usual propaganda about how Mexicans were here first, no human being is illegal, burning the Mexican flag is wrong, etc. It's also full of ads -- many from well-known local merchants. One of...

Cool begins to catch up to India By Anand Giridharadas International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2006 UDAIPUR, India When the wedding swept through this shimmering city of lakes, Rajasthan, "the land of Indian kings," became Blingistan, the land of Indian bling. At a pool party in a hilltop fortress during the festivities last month, rap throbbed, mojitos gushed, bikini-clad international models frolicked, and Indian matriarchs, swathed in heirloom saris, waddled about pinching cheeks. Gala after gala, veteran New York nightlife photographers flown in by the bridegroom struggled to identify unfamiliar new celebrities. Here, the Indian minister of aviation. There,...

News reports say that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi "reversed course" yesterday by endorsing Rep. John Murtha's call for an "immediate redeployment" of U.S. forces out of Iraq. "We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make American safer, to make our military stronger and to make Iraq more stable," Pelosi said. "That is what the American people and our troops deserve." However, the San Francisco Democrat's "reversal" was really nothing of the kind. In fact, Pelosi and Murtha began scheming to put President Bush on the defensive over the Iraq war...

Whether the left was busy overdosing on Tofurkey, or protesting at shopping malls (we're certain they weren't with Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, nobody was), the Radio Equalizer isn't sure. They were very, very late to the Franken-Scalia party, however. After widespread New York City media criticism (previously covered here), along comes The Nation a week later, claiming Al Franken was actually right to confront US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Yes, we can read Al's mind: "Hey, where the #!%#&?! were you guys last week?" Why didn't more lefties race to Franken's rescue when this first broke? Did even they...

Whether a cosmic coincidence or calculated strategy, something's clearly changed in talk radio. With three major stars giving rare interviews in the same week, listeners are wondering about these sudden, sometimes emotional outpourings. Whatever the reasons, we've gained a bit of insight into what makes Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage tick. There's no doubt Sean Hannity got a major boost Tuesday from his candid televised discussion with Rush Limbaugh. Liberal complaints about the absence of co-host Alan Colmes should be met with laughter, since Colmes-bashing has long been a leftist spectator sport. Suddenly, they need him?

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) -- A suburban Detroit man described as one of the nation's leading senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, says an FBI raid on his home-office has halted his operation. Warrants unsealed last week show that a September raid on Alan M. Ralsky's home in West Bloomfield included the seizure of financial records, computers and disks. Agents also raided the West Bloomfield home of his son-in-law, Scott Bradley. "We're out of business at this point in time," Ralsky told The Detroit News for a story Sunday. "They didn't shut us down. They took all our equipment,...

Ex-president Clinton's decision to ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for a high-dollar donation to his presidential library came just months after Saudi leaders rebuffed his request to take custody of Osama bin Laden - when officials in Sudan, where the al Qaeda chief was then living, offered him to the U.S. Former FBI director Louis Freeh revealed on Thursday that Clinton personally put the touch on Abdullah after failing to get the Saudi leader's cooperation in the probe into the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, which - according to the 9/11 Commission - was a joint al Qaida-Hezbollah operation. The...

WHO'S NOT! 3.SANDY BERGER Yet another Clinton Administration bigwig has bitten the dust, receiving an unexpectedly stiff punishment from a federal court for his crimes and lies. Justice has finally caught up with former National Security Adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who had smuggled classified terrorism documents out of the National Archives back in 2003 by stuffing them in his pants. He shredded some of them at his office and later denied that he ever had them at all. Berger was eventually confronted with irrefutable evidence of his theft, concealment, and destruction of key documents that revealed the government's knowledge...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay indicted on one count of criminal conspiracy by Texas grand jury, according to Travis County clerk's office.

Rather than taking on one of the left's sleaziest characters, is maintaining a stuffy media pecking order more important? Or can this blunder be chalked up to pure ignorance? Exposing a key danger of conservative disunity, a Wall Street Journal columnist has needlessly allowed Air America talk show host Al Franken to score points at his expense. And it's forced the Radio Equalizer to address one of the conservative media's biggest weaknesses: structural quirks that interfere with good story judgment. Is it about rivalries, or other issues?

Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. According to a report in New Scientist, the research has added to road-safety campaigners' calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents. The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as "emotion-induced blindness". David Zald, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville,...

THE Conservative Party suspended an MEP yesterday after he supported the UK Independence Party in a censure motion against José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. The UKIP had succeeded in overcoming overwhelming opposition from the Brussels political establishment to make Senhor Barroso defend himself against sleaze allegations days before European referendums in France and the Netherlands. In an extraordinary piece of political drama, Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader in the European Parliament, faced booing in the chamber and was denounced as a demagogue and accused of trying to undermine the Commission’s reputation before the referendums. Roger Helmer,...

The following cautionary tale must surely rate in the top five of "most embarrassing things that can happen to you in public - ever". According to UK tabloid the Sun, a 33-year-old Welsh housewife ended up in hospital after wearing Ann Summers vibrating Passion Pants to her local Asda supermarket in Swansea. Unfortunately, she became "so aroused by the 2½-inch vibrating bullet inside that she fainted" then "fell against shelves and banged her head". This prompted the attendance of the paramedics who "found the black leatherette panties still buzzing". Having disabled the orgasmatronic underwear, they then whisked the senseless shopper...

What’s the most significant event in U.S. history? The Declaration of Independence or victory over the Nazis, you might answer. What’s the greatest event in pop culture? The 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey victory over the Soviets in the Lake Placid Semi-finals, you might say. Well, you would be wrong. At least, according to “8 Mile” and “24” producer Brian Grazer and his co-horts in the production of “Inside ‘Deep Throat’”. To them, “Deep Throat,” the notorious porno flick about oral sex, is the greatest moment in U.S. history. At least, you’d think so, if you saw this absurd “documentary” about...