I have to agree with you there!



Well yes, but it seems like they have strung it out, and there isn't necessarily "a whole lot more yet to come". I do suspect that there are a few more things to come that could very well contradict some of what he said in his less than adequate "coming clean".



I have to say that here you have a good point too.

As my eight-year old daughter would say: "Awwww...."

JUST SO TYPICAL

Magmak1 had it all pegged a few years ago

names,dates,etc...

so so typcial

I remember there used to be a firm too
one of the first big internet dot coms that made a quick fortune

then went bankrupt

they had cute commercials too

sockpuppet.com

yes, I remember it well as Maurice used to sing

JOHN EDWARDS WHAT ARE YOU HIDING AND WHEN DID YOU HIDE IT???
Distort, distract, but ENQUIRING MINDS DO WANT TO KNOW
If only the MSM was as curious about all things in DC before it takes an enquirer to beat it to it

but then, that's why the enquirer got thrax'd and not the mainstream media
because the msm already is on THEIR SIDE
Witness Judith the mofo lying a-hole that was a mole for the bushies and planted on the times
and Jayson the mofo lying a-hole who was placed to discredit the times

Imagine if the Watergate hero like Carl Bernstein wasn't allowed to report
(OF COURSE, THEY REPORTED WHAT THEY WERE TOLD, UNFORTUNATELY THEY WERE LED TO INFO THAT TOSSED NIXON, BUT NIXON WAS NOT THE
CRIMINAL...THE BUSHIEBOYS WERE...FAST FORWARD...CLICK...CLICK...CLICK....TO THE PRESENT...

Have a Jolly Ollie Christmas, it's the best you ever hear...oh by golly have an Jolly Ollie Christmas, this year

Graham, does Tom Brokaw work for the National Enquirer?

Anyway, you're babbling, and not making any sense at all.

I think that if you took a deep breath and chilled a bit, you might come up with a thing or two that is useful. You have actually done that concerning this matter, on occasion.

Or you could simply continue to prattle nonsense. That is your right. Just don't expect others to treat it like it is not nonsense.

when the press needs the general to protect them, the press does what the general wants them to do
sort of the same as we citizens demanded immediate protection/revenge after 9-11 and got Iraq
and the thraxx got the patriot act and more war

and we believed ol' Mr. Powell, who we trusted so

Investigate this issue, and under oath, the entire she-bang will be revealed.

Graham, if "they" were so powerful as "they" are in your world, do you really think that there would be any chance of a real investigation anyway?

As I said, you are simply not making sense. My advice (which of course you are free to ignore) would be to attempt something more "bite-sized" here, instead of these grand, unwieldy theories that fall apart before you even start to look at them.

http://www.cagle.com/news/EdwardsAffair/main.asp

the noose is tightening- if this doesn't start to sound like using political money as hush money (a federal crime with prison time involved), I don't know what does

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=102x3439844
Lawyers’ Edwards Ties Suggest Extent of Hiding Affair


As tabloid reports of a sex scandal threatened former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign last December on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, two lawyers surfaced with written statements that appeared to exonerate the candidate.

One of them, Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Shortly thereafter, the other lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, sent word that her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father.

Seemingly issued independently of Mr. Edwards, the statements appeared to deflate the anonymously sourced reports of an Edwards tryst. But what went unnoticed was that the two lawyers shared an important connection to Mr. Edwards that suggests they were part of an orchestrated effort to protect him, one that is continuing even after he admitted last week that he had an affair with Ms. Hunter but denied that he fathered her child.

The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal. Mr. Gordon has worked with Mr. Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Ms. Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer.

-----

The review found that Mr. Edwards’s political action committee went to unusual lengths to make a final $14,000 payment to Ms. Hunter’s film company months after its contract with the committee had ended. The payment was issued while the committee was short on cash and could pay its bills only after receiving thousands of dollars from Mr. Edwards’s presidential campaign and donations from four people, including Mr. Baron’s wife.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/us/politics/15edwards...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/us/polit...amp;oref=slogin

August 15, 2008
Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and MIKE MCINTIRE
As tabloid reports of a sex scandal threatened former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign last December on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, two lawyers surfaced with written statements that appeared to exonerate the candidate.

One of them, Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Shortly thereafter, the other lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, sent word that her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father.

Seemingly issued independently of Mr. Edwards, the statements appeared to deflate the anonymously sourced reports of an Edwards tryst. But what went unnoticed was that the two lawyers shared an important connection to Mr. Edwards that suggests they were part of an orchestrated effort to protect him, one that is continuing even after he admitted last week that he had an affair with Ms. Hunter but denied that he fathered her child.

The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal. Mr. Gordon has worked with Mr. Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Ms. Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer.

After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young, Mr. Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role.

The revelations of ties among the lawyers emerged through public records and interviews with people close to Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter, which suggested that their affair went on longer than Mr. Edwards admitted and that the effort to conceal it by Mr. Edwards’s inner circle was much more extensive than has been reported.

The review found that Mr. Edwards’s political action committee went to unusual lengths to make a final $14,000 payment to Ms. Hunter’s film company months after its contract with the committee had ended. The payment was issued while the committee was short on cash and could pay its bills only after receiving thousands of dollars from Mr. Edwards’s presidential campaign and donations from four people, including Mr. Baron’s wife.

Furthermore, a woman who helped Ms. Hunter create a Web site on New Age spirituality in 2006 says she regularly corresponded with her about a married North Carolina man named John whom Ms. Hunter was dating in March of that year, if not earlier. Mr. Edwards has said his affair with Ms. Hunter did not begin until after she had started doing video work for his political action committee months later.

The woman, Pigeon O’Brien, who says she worked with Ms. Hunter to build her “Being Is Free” Web site and a related foundation, said that Ms. Hunter recounted how she had met “John” at the Regency Hotel in New York in early 2006 and that they had started dating soon after.

Ms. O’Brien said that Ms. Hunter made at least one trip to North Carolina in March 2006 to visit him and that, during the next few months, she never made any references to Mr. Young, who later claimed to be the father of the child, or indicated that she even knew him.

Ms. O’Brien recalled that Ms. Hunter, whom she had originally met in the 1980s in New York, had difficulties in dealing with the fact that John was married.

“There were stormy moments for her, a lot of tears and a lot of struggle,” Ms. O’Brien said.

Mr. Gordon, Ms. Hunter’s lawyer, declined to comment, citing the privacy of Ms. Hunter and her baby.

Ms. Hunter’s work for the political action committee involved making short videos of Mr. Edwards, known as Webisodes, in which she tried to capture what she considered to be his more natural side. Ms. Hunter can be seen in photographs videotaping Mr. Edwards in the final days of December 2006, right after he declared his candidacy for president on the 28th of that month. The committee made six payments totaling $100,000 to Midline Groove Productions, Ms. Hunter’s production company, before its contract ended on Dec. 31, and Ms. Hunter no longer appears in photographs of campaign events after that.

But three months later, on April 1, 2007, the committee made another payment to Midline for $14,086, which coincided with the receipt of $14,035 by the committee from Mr. Edwards’s presidential campaign to cover the cost of office furniture, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The infusion of cash from the presidential campaign was necessary to make the payment to Midline, because the committee began April with only $7,932 in the bank, the reports show. The only other money the committee took in during that quarter was donations totaling $18,000 from Mr. Baron’s wife and three other people.

A senior official in the Edwards campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the final payment to Ms. Hunter covered the cost of video clips she took of Mr. Edwards under her 2006 contract. The payment did not occur until April because it took that long for the committee to get Ms. Hunter to turn over the video, the former official said.

This person added that the two $14,000 transactions were necessary to cover the payment to Ms. Hunter because the One America Committee was winding down and no longer raising much money, except to pay for expenses left over from before Mr. Edwards announced his intention to run for president. Once he made that announcement, under federal election rules, he could no longer use his political action committee.

The public airing of the videos created by Ms. Hunter was short lived. By the fall of 2007, when the first reports of an Edwards affair began circulating, the videos had been removed from the Web and Ms. Hunter’s personal Web site, beingisfree.org, had been taken down.

The precise nature and origins of Ms. Hunter’s relationship with Mr. Young, Mr. Edwards’s campaign aide, is unclear, because neither has spoken publicly about it. But by mid-2007, Ms. Hunter had moved into the gated community in Chapel Hill, N.C., where Mr. Young rented a house with his wife and three children. The Youngs had moved there earlier that year, after selling their house in Raleigh.

After The National Enquirer reported in October 2007 that Mr. Edwards had had an affair, Mr. Baron helped to relocate Mr. Young and Ms. Hunter. Mr. Baron, who made millions pressing asbestos lawsuits, has long supported Mr. Edwards, a fellow lawyer who opposed efforts in the Senate to rein in damage awards in liability cases.

Although he said he used his own money to pay for Mr. Young and Ms. Hunter to move to California, Mr. Baron initially said he did not know how they had chosen their lawyers.

But he has since offered conflicting explanations about his involvement in arranging for the two lawyers to step in and effectively defuse an accusation that threatened to derail Mr. Edwards’s political career. Because neither Ms. Hunter nor Mr. Young have spoken publicly about it, the statements issued by their lawyers remain the only record of their denials that Mr. Edwards fathered Ms. Hunter’s child.

On Wednesday, Mr. Baron said he might have directed Ms. Hunter to Mr. Gordon.

“I have this recollection of somebody asking me for lawyers in New York, and I remember naming three or four, and he must have been one of them,” Mr. Baron said. Referring to Ms. Hunter, he added, “It was either her who called or somebody on her behalf.”

And on Thursday, Mr. Baron also provided a vague answer to the question of whether he was involved in introducing Mr. Young to Ms. Marple, who represented Mr. Young for a brief time and is no longer involved in the case.

“I remember getting a call from Pam and her telling me that she was representing him,” Mr. Baron said. “I may have sent him over there, but on the other hand I may not have. I don’t have an accurate recollection.”

Asked whether he had lent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young any money, Mr. Baron said, “I have a brief recollection of giving someone some cash. My assumption is I loaned some small amount of money to the both of them.” Ms. Marple declined to comment on her representation of Mr. Young. Mr. Gordon, Ms. Hunter’s lawyer, said: “Ms. Hunter called me. I represent her and only her, as I would any client.”

When Ms. Hunter, her baby and the Youngs moved to California around the end of last year, they all initially lived in the same residence, according to an associate of Mr. Young and Mr. Edwards.

But the arrangement strained relationships, and Ms. Hunter moved into a different residence, which cost about $6,000 a month in rent. The associate believed that the lease on the home where the Youngs had been staying was to run out on Friday.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

maybe a few well place supoena's with threat of jail time for Mr. Baron and Mr. Young might straighten out some
stories (though look at the guy who is covering up for Barry Bonds and of course other in the past people who
kept silent like Susan MacDougal spent months and months in jail not spilling the beans on Bill Clinton, but would
Mr.Baron and Mr.Young be willing to go to jail for a year to not say anything???ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

Graham, just what crimes are we talking about in connection with Mr. Baron and Mr. Young? It is simply not a crime in this country to lie (assuming even 1% of your suspicions are correct, which is plausible) about things that you want to know about because you don't a certain politician. Check it out and I guarantee that you won't find such a law.

The only possible crime I see here is that perhaps a payment to Hunter was made from the campaign that was hush money, not paying for her filmmaking services. And that may be something that would be extremely difficult to prove in any event.

It's been said that the Feds are checking into his campaign finances - to make sure they are in line with the McCain-Feingold bill. However that comes out it how it comes out - and it's really the only legal action I can see to take.

If he is guilty in that section then it will come out, if not it won't. Other than that - people can give money to other people however they choose. Edwards could have personally been giving her millions which would still not be illegal if it's from his own funds.

Hunter is not in hiding for her life, she doesn't want her daughter to have a paternity test and to force a test would be crossing a bunch of lines for me personally.

So - I'm okay with the Feds looking into his campaign money affairs - after that I don't see much recourse.

Sounds good to me!



Yes.



Yes.



Yes, absolutely.



Yes, and I think that pretty well sums everything up, unless actual new facts come out.

Dry Eyes Follow Edwards' Downfall
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con...dwards_downfall
A Commentary By Froma Harrop
Thursday, August 14, 2008 Email to a FriendAdvertisementIt's hard to recall a political burial as fast and cold as that of John Edwards. After all, the former North Carolina senator had been a serious contender for president until a few months ago and possibly for VP until last week. Had his cheesy affair not surfaced, he would have commanded a choice speaking slot at the Democrats' convention.

The tabloids and cable television are still having fun with the story, but the more serious news outlets express little sense of tragedy in Edwards' demise or even interest in it. Respectable media had long ignored the sordid details being reported in the National Enquirer, but not to protect Edwards. They just didn't care enough to check them out.

Why would this be for the man who had finished second in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, ahead of Hillary Clinton?

The reason is that the John Edwards story never quite held together. As a trial lawyer, Edwards had ridden the frustrations of the poor to fabulous wealth. But one could never be sure that, as a politician, his populist spiel wasn't part of a plan for further self-enrichment. He seemed to love money too much.

Last year, the Edwards family moved into a new 28,200-square-foot manse, the biggest and most expensive residence in North Carolina's Orange County. John's perfectly tailored suits and famous $400 haircut spoke of extreme self-pampering. In short, the sleek, rich lawyer in tasseled loafers clashed with the tribune of the oppressed.

Rich people can represent the poor. The downtrodden adored Franklin D. Roosevelt. And there's the tradition of country boys flaunting their newfound wealth. But while singer Alan Jackson can pose in ripped jeans and also occupy a baronial spread, a people's politician can't live in splendor without criticism. (Ask Jackson's Nashville neighbor Al Gore.)

I confess that I admired Edwards' "Two Americas" message. Here was someone willing to talk about bottom fifth, a group deemed politically radioactive by many Democrats and nearly all Republicans. Edwards defended this sad demographic all by his lonesome, as Clinton and Barack Obama made a mad dash for the middle class.

Edwards had laid out a detailed health plan that would have covered all Americans. And he talked about how it would be funded, through higher taxes on capital gains.

And yes, there was something touching about his seeming devotion to a wife suffering with breast cancer. With the proper wet-eyed apology, John's straying, by itself, wouldn't have been a candidacy killer. Americans don't care about casual infidelity the way they used to. The nature of the adultery, however, still matters.

As so often happens in these cases, the "other woman" is less attractive than the cheated-upon spouse. But the unflattering comparisons of Rielle Hunter with Elizabeth Edwards go well beyond looks. Hunter was an obvious flake with a reported history of drug use. She was a party girl and a blabbermouth -- in other words, the worst possible mistress for a politician.

There was no way she was going to wreck the Edwards marriage. But what about the candidate's relationship with the supporters who had worked long hours for little or no pay on his campaign? What does it say about what he thinks of them?

It says, "Not much." It says that Edwards thought he could be as sloppy and self-indulgent as he cared to be. Mentally, he lived in a gated compound, and the little people beyond its walls were invisible.

So despite an appealing message, the cracks were always visible in the Edwards edifice. That's why astute observers were not surprised when it came crashing down. They walked around the smoking ruins and never looked back.

COPYRIGHT 2008 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL CO.

reminds one of Susan MacDougal, of Whitewater fame

Why did she remain mute for over a year and go to jail JUST TO PROTECT BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON???

There are connections not always transparent for the naked eye.

symetry is a beautiful thing.

Why would Andy Young bring his wife and child to meet Rielle if Young and Rielle were having an affair- Hi Honey, I am cheating with this woman, bring her a cup of tea won't ya
Here kiddies, I am getting you a new sibbling, with this lovely lady I been screwing around on that is having a lovely convesation with her right now
Yea right.

And Bill and Hillary Clinton's Susan MacDougal remained silent, why? And Barry Bonds trainer remained silent why???

It's all about the money, follow the trail and silence is calling.

You might want to put clothes on that eye. Then those connections would be transparent, and better yet, invisible.



Fantasy, when you know that it is fantasy, is as well.



A campaign aid bringing his family to work. How unusual!



Who cares and what does that have to do with anything?



But you haven't even done a good job of following the trail that is visible, wondering why would the National Enquirer put this story out if someone else weren't behind it. The answer to that is blindingly obvious.

as Monica Lewinsky once sang at Bob Dylan fantasy rock and roll Kareoke night
"The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind"

I doubt that she really said that.

But if all one has in their head is wind then they need to put something else in it.

I believe there are going to be some new revelations in this story tomorrow...so wanted to find this thread before it dropped too far.

Heaven forbid that we should forget about this case about a candidate for President who dropped out of the race only a little over six months ago!

Tabloid stuff at this point..of interest maybe only if Edwards did something illegal. No one will suffer more from his bad decision than he and his family.

I think that people are interested regardless and that Graham has a perfect right to post stuff about it. I just happen to think that this is hardly one of the most burning issues around, and think that the attempt here to try to whip up anticipation as somewhat amusing. Now there could always be some kind of blockbuster revelations, but that would be evident in the actual article. You can hype up the trivial all you want, but it is still trivial.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/20...ts_have_do.html

Edwards Won't Ruin Democratic Convention After All
It's official: Democrats have dodged the John Edwards bullet at their party's national convention in Denver next week. Edwards, whose infidelity to his cancer-stricken wife has made him a leper among his own people, won't be anywhere on the sidelines.

"Unequivocally, he is not going to Denver," says Jonathan Prince, who served as deputy chief of staff on the Edwards 2008 presidential campaign.





John Edwards admits having an extramarital affair in an interview with ABC's Bob Woodruff in Chapel Hill, N.C., Aug. 8, 2008. (Photo -- AP/ABC News)

Despite his humiliating confessional ("I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic") earlier this month, Edwards still hoped to appear behind the scenes at the convention to help Bono's poverty-fighting One Campaign, sources tell the Sleuth.

Edwards, as recently as last week, according to knowledgeable sources, still expressed interest in participating in a One Campaign convention event on Tuesday of next week to assemble supply kits for AIDS caregivers around the world. Which, to put it mildly, would have been awkward.

After the Sleuth sent emails and placed phone calls to the One Campaign press office and separately to Edwards spokesman inquiring about Edwards' involvement, we eventually heard back from both. Their responses came within minutes of each other.

We heard first from Prince, who called to give his unequivocal statement that Edwards will not be attending the convention and, therefore, will not be participating in One Campaign events.

One Campaign spokesman Tom Gavin sent an email a few minutes later telling us, "A while back - May? - Senator Edwards was invited to participate in our service project in Denver...We still haven't heard back from him."

Though we were told by well-placed sources who asked to remain anonymous that Edwards did, indeed, express interest to One Campaign officials just last week in playing a role in Denver, where the former North Carolina senator is most certainly not welcome by party officials. (His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, is no longer scheduled to speak at the convention.)

Edwards, who made ending global poverty a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, appears in several postings on the organization's One Blog, including this must-read posting titled "Edwards Falls for ONE in Iowa Falls."

A source close to Edwards tells the Sleuth that rather than go to Denver to help Bono end poverty, "what [Edwards] really wants to do right now is concentrate on his family."

By Mary Ann Akers | August 19, 2008; 2:05 PM ET

The National Enquirer this week has several updates on the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter story, including pictures of Hunter's baby -- previously described as looking like "John Edwards in a onesie."



The day prior to Edwards bombshell admission to an affair on ABC's Nightline, Rielle Hunter and her 6 month old daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, were flown out of the US onboard a chartered Learjet.


The private flight cost $50,000 and was paid for by Edwards' pals. The Hunters were the solo passengers aboard the eight-hour flight.


Destination: St. Croix in the Virgin Islands!


THE ENQUIRER tracked Rielle to St. Croix where our reporters discovered Rielle and the baby stayed in a luxurious oceanfront home owned by controversial trial lawyer Lee Rohn, another close friend of Edwards.



bujeeboo
Well, this is an interesting tidbit about the cesspool Enquirer. (skip down to the part titled "TAB POLITICS IN EDWARDS AFFAIR"

Enquirer was told not to pursue any negative stories about the Royal Clintons?

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/con...secol_0815.html

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 04:59 PM on 08/20/2008

Yikes. This plays to one of my uglier suspicions. I was musing that, if HRC hoped Obama somehow dematerialized this summer, she'd improve the likelihood that the DNC would tap her as nominee by making sure that the closest also-ran was disabled--and that's Edwards. But, said I to myself, that would require a Clinton connection to the National Enquirer, since they seemed to own the story, and I knew of no such link.

Until now.

I am truly dreading the convention.

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:09 PM on 08/20/2008

is anyone surprised? yeah, possibly the puma sheeple.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/con...secol_0815.html

TAB POLITICS IN EDWARDS AFFAIR

Surprised that the Boca-based National Enquirer went all out to nail ex-presidential wannabe John Edwards?

Don't be.

The American Media Inc. tabloid first revealed during October's tough Democratic primary campaign that Edwards had an affair with campaign worker Rielle Hunter. At least two characters close to the company couldn't have been happier that the dirty laundry was being aired.

It so happens that both have ties to Hillary Clinton, who was then emerging as a front-runner, with Edwards close behind.

The first is Roger Altman. He's a New York businessman whose investment firm, Evercore Partners, poured $767 million into AMI in 1999. Until four years earlier, he had been assistant Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. He also was an economic adviser on Hillary's presidential campaign.

The other: Ron Burkle, a Los Angeles grocery store mogul who's a major fund-raiser for the Clintons. Burkle's main gig last year: Trying to buy AMI.

Said a former Enquirer honcho who keeps in touch with the current staff: "All I know is that the troops at the Enquirer were instructed not to do any anti-Hillary Clinton stories during the campaign."

The tab's editor, David Perel, wouldn't comment on internal edicts and denied that the Enquirer was manipulated.

"I wish people would plant things in this magazine," he said. "That'd make my life much easier."

Altman was traveling Thursday and couldn't be reached. Neither Burkle nor Hillary Clinton's campaign leftovers returned calls for comment.

NYT Hot On Story Of John Edwards And The Mysterious Duke Graduate
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008...us-duke-gra.php

New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski is on a story. Serge, you'll remember, is the reporter who brought us the tale of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the young working lady who consorted with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. What's Serge up to? It looks slightly out of his normal range of Metro and local politics stories (although he does at times go national). All we know is it's a story about John Edwards and a Duke graduate—and right now he's combing the New York Times newsroom for Duke graduates to speak with. (We guess Times employees aren't sortable on Facebook by college group!) Personal to Serge: There's Stephen Labaton, class of '86—but we think you're looking for perhaps a more recent graduate? Oh gosh, we hope this is a nice story about how John Edwards was kindly to a college student with like tuition and helpful advice and stuff.

All the Scandalous News That's Fit to Print
David Perel
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-perel/...t_b_120447.html
We hold these truths to be self evident.

And yet when all three of these variables collided in the perfect nexus of the John Edwards cheating affair, the resulting public shock and outcry was so great you would have thought Obama had chosen Britney as his running mate.

After the Enquirer's reports that Edwards had an extramarital affair were finally confirmed by his TV mea culpa, the gnashing of teeth from mainstream journalists was so loud you could barely hear the sobs of everyone who posts for the Daily Kos.

Journalists' reactions ranged from Elitist Defiant ("we were still right not to cover the story because it came from the National Enquirer") to self-flagellation ("we should pursue tips from anywhere") Overall, mainstream journalists engaged in more superficial self-examination than a young Alexander Portnoy (although with far less entertainment value).

Certainly, Edwards, like Portnoy, let his zipper become the center of his universe proving (again) that while truth is stranger than fiction our leading politicians have less depth than most fictional characters. But Edwards did more than torpedo his political career and image; he unwittingly unzipped a new era of how the press will cover scandal and where Americans obtain news.

The National Enquirer has been the brand name for scandal for decades, it has been inevitable that the delivery of information would become faster than you can say, "I did not have sex with that woman."

While daily newspapers have struggled to join the digital age and race to put content online, they are still approaching the revolution with antediluvian views that a story isn't news until they say its news. Nothing illustrates this more than the Edwards' scandal.

For months the blogosphere was filled with rumors about Edwards and Rielle Hunter. The low hum of innuendo and suspicion exploded into a roar when the Enquirer published its account of the affair in December, 2007, naming Hunter and printing photographs of her six months pregnant. The Enquirer's report was carried in print and supplemented online.

Slate's Mickey Kaus was relentless in his pursuit of answers, and The Huffington Post -- one of the first to raise questions about Edwards -- stayed with the story even after Edwards gave his now infamous "It's lies, tabloid trash" caught-on-video denial. Daily papers and the TV networks were silent.

So Edwards, the presidential candidate and quintessential family man, continued his campaign and indeed there were two Americas; one where the self-designated mainstream media ignored a scandal that already had been documented in the Enquirer's published account, and the other America where new media asked questions relentlessly about why Rielle Hunter's never-seen "webisodes" for the Edwards campaign and why she was being taken care of by his close friend and hidden in a gated community while six months pregnant.

It wasn't until seven months later when the Enquirer caught Edwards visiting Hunter at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and sneaking out at 2:40 a.m. that mainstream media started to awake. And even then, The Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and other top newspapers devoted little or no resources to the story. Mickey Kaus begged me to release the photographs of Edwards at the hotel, assuring me the mainstream media would then rush to cover the story. I disagreed and the Enquirer held back most of the photos, waiting for Edwards to deny he was there before showing the images.

Days passed with no TV broadcasts or daily newspaper articles about the scandal, but the blogosphere was blazing with hundreds of reports about Edwards' late-night visit with his mistress and baby and for the first time, the average person was aware of a story that had received no "mainstream media" attention but was thriving on the Web. That simple fact is the true watershed moment of the Edwards affair; it is the bright line demarcating the point when mainstream media's relevancy developed irreparable (and most likely fatal) cracks, when an army of bloggers overran the stodgy elitist guard with the same type of scandal that once turned newspapers and their immortalized Yellow Kids correspondents into daily habits.

When Edwards finally admitted the affair in a faux sincere TV interview, some members of the mainstream media publicly assessed their decisions to not cover the scandal. Forced to acknowledge being beaten by the Enquirer, they referenced the publication specifically, and the blogosphere obliquely, with great asperity.

A newspaper in Indiana wrote: "The story of (Edwards') tryst was reported only by the National Enquirer, a tabloid that gives supermarkets a bad name."

The Los Angeles Times justified its lack of coverage (and ban of bloggers writing about it!) with this quote from one of its editors: "The National Enquirer is a supermarket tabloid that is accurate some of the time and inaccurate some of the time."

Canada's Globe and Mail, raising the level of discourse, claimed it was "icky" that the Enquirer had broken the story. (How do we respond to that? We're rubber, you're glue...)

Meanwhile the New York Times was rebuked by its own ombudsman who strongly concluded the paper blew it by not putting enough effort into reporting the story. Yet, Bill Keller, the Paper of Record's editor, was defiant and still approached the situation with a great sense of ennui, defending his inaction by saying the "hold-your-nose quality about The Enquirer" contributed to the lack of interest by The Times. Others simply relied on standard Elvis-UFO-Aliens-Bigfoot jokes to dismiss the Enquirer's success in light of their failure.

The voice of reason in these matters usually belongs to the Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz. His comments encompassed both the Enquirer and the blogosphere as he wrote: "The fact that big newspapers, magazines and networks have standards -- that is, they refuse to print every stray rumor just because it's "out there" -- is one of their strengths. But in the latter stages of this case, it made them look clueless."

Sorry Howard, but those standards are now being determined in cyberspace and any attempt to disparage the populist medium increasingly sounds like a death rattle echoing throughout the pared-down newsrooms of corporate journalism. And while the watershed moment of the shifting balance of media power will prove to be one of the most important byproducts of the Edwards affair it is not my favorite moment.

That distinction is centered on an event from just a few days ago, an event with no connection to Edwards. When two Georgia men claimed to have found Bigfoot and held a press conference to display the remains, the event was ignored by the Enquirer. Bill Keller's New York Times ran a straight-faced account, complete with photograph, in the A section.

All the news that's fit to print? Clueless indeed.

David Perel is the Editor in Chief of the National Enquirer.

John Edwards

Politicians lie. The National Enquirer pays for information. The mainstream media is falling out of touch with America. We hold these truths to be self evident. And yet when all three of these varia...

hopefully the connection between Edwards and the Clinton's will shortly be revealed in better detail
Here Lanny Davis' name is used...

It is very odd, makes one wonder how close Edwards was to being VP...
only a Clintonlike type would have the ability to have done this so surgically smooth

http://www.bloggernews.net/117384

John Edwards Scandal: How the Enquirer Beat Edwards in His Biggest TrialPosted on August 23rd, 2008 by mondoreb in 2008 Election CoverageRead 1,400 times.Court of Public Opinion:
How the National Enquirer beat John Edwards in the biggest trial of his life



NE vs. JE

Clinton resurrectionist and spin doctor, Lanny Davis, wrote a book on resurrecting Bill Clinton, subtitled “Tell it early, Tell it all, Tell it yourself”.

That Davis subtitle is an effective blueprint for dealing with public scandal.

John Edwards could’ve referred to that book two weeks ago, as his fifteen-minute confession to ABC’s Bob Woodruff was debunked almost before it even aired, and may go down in history as the benchmark for insincere attempts at avoiding consequences of one’s actions.

“What a strange and insincere admission,” mused some.

“The timeline’s doesn’t match known events,” said others.

Still others claimed Edwards had injected Botox into his face to prevent him from telegraphing true emotion that could be analyzed by experts.

[Background information: access over 100 DBKP stories on the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair, scandal and cover-up: John Edwards Love Child Scandal Library.]

John Edwards had been beaten by an opponent that had read his playbook and had analyzed every game he ever played. Not only had the Enquirer set the trap to collect evidence on Edwards, they laid the groundwork for Edwards to paint himself into a corner from which his political career and public image could never escape intact.

Edwards constructed an elaborate cover up, based on classic Prisoner’s Dilemma game theoryif everyone kept their mouth shut and denied the facts until the end of time, nothing could be proven, and minimum penalties would accrue.

But there were too many players for Edwards to control, and in the end his website-scrubbing team of political cleanup hitters vastly underestimated both the sheer volume of evidence connecting Edwards to Rielle Hunter, and the sheer flakiness of his girlfriend and her network of yoga-loving, Hollywood wannabes.

But, there were two masterstrokes on the part of the National Enquirer: the first being the strategic underrepresentation of collected evidence; and the second being the blurred presentation of the “spy photo” of “former presidential contender holding his infant daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton hotel”.

The Enquirer resurrected its Edwards Lovechild story on July 21 with eight-month-old stock photography and vague references of confirming sources. Edwards probably knew he’d left some evidence behind. Had he wiped all his fingerprints clean from the inside of the basement restroom door of the Beverly Hills Hilton? He left the restroom under guard with his coat covering his head… was there a telltale watch, freckle or scar? Had Enquirer photographers managed to take his picture in the brief moment before he’d run to the restroom?

Edwards needed more information before he made his next move and he curtailed public appearances, and refused comment other than to decry the “lies told by tabloid trash”, a move cited widely by his supporters as a denial.

Then the other shoe fell.



The Enquirer ran the blurry “spy photo” of John Edwards holding the baby. Was it real? Was it fake?

Many Scandal followers cried “fake” in unison at a photo with the potential to be anyone from Bronson Pinchot to Janet Reno cradling, what was not necessarily, a human baby.

But John Edwards’ heart had stopped.

He knew the photo was one of him holding the baby at the same hotel–only it had been taken five months earlier. Most likely it had been snapped on March 20, 2008, when Edwards had filmed a late night television appearance for The Tonight Show in California.

Edwards was exposed–or was he?

Was this the best evidence the Enquirer had to offer? Apparently, their July 21 pictures had been useless and this photo… Well, this photo could be anything that John claimed it was.

Maybe this fight wasn’t over.

Continue reading: John Edwards Scandal: How the Enquirer Beat Edwards in His Biggest Trial

by Mondoreb/dossier
Source: John Edwards Scandal: How the Enquirer Beat Edwards in His Biggest Trial

Mondoreb blogs at Death By 1000 Papercuts. Interested readers can e-mail him at
mondoreb@gmail.com. All DBKP stories are filed under Mondoreb at BNN. This story is by dossier.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...ds.bd48747.html

Texas' Chet Edwards said John Edwards scandal hurt his veep chances

06:53 PM CDT on Sunday, August 24, 2008
Cox News Service

DENVER - Texas Rep. Chet Edwards, who was on the four-person short list of potential Barack Obama running mates, said Sunday the front-page scandal involving former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards hurt his chances of getting on the ticket.
I would have to think that a bumper sticker that said 'Obama/The Other Edwards' might have been a bit difficult,” Edwards said Sunday after visiting a Veterans Administration hospital upon arrival in Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

Chet Edwards (not related to the former North Carolina senator) said he was notified Aug. 10 that he was on Obama's short list “and there was a possible plan to have my name released to the public” in the days that followed.

That was the same time that details began to emerge about John Edwards' affair - which he later confirmed - with a former aide in his unsuccessful presidential campaign this past year.

“I'll let you juxtapose the date of the John Edwards expose with when they were about to release my name,” Chet Edwards said. “I gave you the Aug. 10 date when I was told I was on the final short list.”

Chet Edwards indicated no bitterness about the timing or toward John Edwards.

“It's really not productive for me to speculate” about how big a role the John Edwards situation played in the selection process. “I'll leave it to you to draw whatever judgment you want. It probably wouldn't be off base if you said something about that time period is exactly when another Edwards name jumped on the front page of every newspaper in America.”

When Obama told him “several days ago” that he would not be selected there was no mention of John Edwards or any reason for the decision, according to Chet Edwards, who believes the selection of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden was “the perfect choice.”

Edwards, from Waco, Texas, said the process began around June 1 when he was contacted by the Obama campaign. Several weeks later, Edwards heard Speaker Nancy Pelosi talk him up as a possible running mate in a House floor conversation with Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.

“I smiled but didn't take it too seriously,” Edwards recalled, “and then I heard a couple of days later the Speaker had talked to several other members of the House.”

After that, Edwards found himself on a long list - as many as 40 names, he surmised - that was being considered by Obama's running mate vetting committee.

“When I knew this was getting serious was June 30 when I was driving to Dallas from Waco - just outside the city limits of Abbott, the hometown of Willie Nelson,” he said. “My cell phone rang and he said, 'This is Barack Obama. How are you doing?' Frankly I though it was one of my prankster friends kidding me.”

Obama asked if it would be OK to start a formal vetting process.

“I said certainly, it would be a privilege,” Edwards replied, sparking what he called “a deadly serious process.”

“I laughed at one point and said I'm normally thrilled if anyone remembers what I said 25 minutes after I'd given a speech,” he said. “I never dreamed there would be lawyers being paid to read my speeches from 25 years ago.”

“They look at every thing. . .and even check whether our children have any kinds of things they should not have on Facebook,” Edwards said.

Though not selected, he said making it to the short list was a “deep privilege.”

“From day one we knew that my being a relatively unknown House member from a non-swing state would be a major challenge,” Edwards said.

There we go. And you have the nerve to accuse another member of bumping their own threads.

Actually, I knew the revelations were coming out the very next day, because I knew what the florida paper was going to print, it just was not up on line yet that I could find...and I for one will follow this story until the end of time
and it was printed August 20, 646PM post that I made showed the Clinton-Edwards connection.

Because this is the major story since Bill Clinton should have resigned in 1998

Without that resignation, the USA has died a little more each day

And without an Israeli style military hit, 19 bumblers did nothing on 9-11.
The National Enquirer was used as a tool by someone and the link must continue to be investigated until it is
found.
not for John Edwards sake, he is finished, and indeed was an empty vessel, but for MY sake and all the others who
care what the BushClintonMcCaincabal has done the last 28 years.

This story is the smoking gun. Throughit all could be, the wind that knocks down the house of cards of the last 28 years.

At least SOME people here care if everyone who has done something was brought to justice

And not just sweep it under the rug like Clinton did in 1993,January when he swept everything Bush41 ever did under the rug, and allowed them to come back stronger. Last thing we need is for the Clinton's to come back stronger in 2016, or Jeb to ever come in.
And it all would be because people wanna close a blind eye to stuff and give a freebee.

Ain't no way I could wake up in the morning and look at myself if I let them sweep it under the rug without trying
my damndest to make sure it don't happen. Some people still care.

53 % there, now let's get to the 100%.

Yes.. and yet again posting to bump to the top, G. And you have the audacity to chastise others!

how is that? I posted TWO new articles about the subject.

This subject should be pinned, as I expect this to be a major issue for another four years, or until the perps are put in jail
(which I hope someone connects the arrows leads right to the Clinton or Clintonistas...

The big news here is that there is no news right now, but continuing speculation based on nothing but hatred of Hillary and John Edwards by someone who just cannot move on.

we are still anxiously awaiting where exactly the money is coming from...
this article wants to know about the connection...
lots of links in this article to get to reference points

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/p...evalations.aspx

What Obama (and the Democrats) don't need: More John Edwards revelations
Posted: August 25, 2008, 12:49 PM by Shane Dingman
World, U.S. Politics
Former senator from North Carolina John Edwards admitted to an extramarital affair on Friday August 7, 2008, bringing to a grinding halt a public career that had seen him a one-time vice-presidential candidate and as recently early 2008 a front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.

You can read the story about his admission that he had an affair with campaign staffer Rielle Hunter, and you can read Kelly McParland's take on this whole affair on our sister blog Full Comment. On an earlier post we laid out the crucial elements of Edward's public disgrace.


We also noted that none of this would have come to light if not for the American tabloid, The National Enquirer, which broke the news about John Edward's affair with Rielle Hunter back in October 2007. At the time, Edwards dismissed the news as tabloid trash, as did Hunter. Then in December of last year, The Enquirer dropped another bomb shell when it reported that Rielle was six months pregnant with Edward's child. And finally, this July, the tabloid reported that Edwards met Rielle and her child at a Los Angeles hotel.
This final story forced the hand of the mainstream media, who had up to that point ignored the story.

But now the Enquirer has a new angle, that brings to light an entirely new level of mystifying behaviour by Edwards.

The day prior to Edwards bombshell admission to an affair on ABC’s Nightline, Rielle Hunter and her 6 month old daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, were flown out of the US onboard a chartered Learjet.

The private flight cost $50,000 and was paid for by Edwards’ pals. The Hunters were the solo passengers aboard the eight-hour flight.

The ENQUIRER’s continuing blockbuster investigation also reveals the disgraced ex-senator is still in constant communication with his mistress!

The New York Times has written extensively about the network of lawyers working with Edwards to keep this scandal private, what boggles the mind is why they would still be moving behind the scenes once the whole sorry affair was made public. As the Enquirer trumpets, the flights, the house in California where she is holed up, the lawyers:


None of this is paid for by Rielle. The money continues to come from Edwards’s network of loyal supporters.

Edwards is not only aware of the hush money payoffs but orchestrated it with his team of former campaign advisors and now The ENQUIRER has discovered that a team of six more lawyers have been involved in the coverup and are funneling payments to Hunter, who has no money and no means of support.
What is going on in Edwardsland?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9...;show_article=1

John Edwards to emerge from seclusion for speech

Aug 29 04:39 PM US/Eastern
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press Writer Write a Comment


RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - John Edwards will emerge from seclusion and speak next month at Hofstra University in New York, taking the stage exactly one month after admitting to an extramarital affair.
But his wife Elizabeth has canceled what was to be a joint appearance.

Hofstra spokesman Stuart Vincent said Friday that a representative for the former Democratic presidential candidate has confirmed that Edwards will speak alone at the school on Sept. 8.

Edwards and his wife were originally billed as the first speakers in a university series on the 2008 election. But that was before Edwards admitted to cheating on Elizabeth with a filmmaker hired by his political action committee.

A spokeswoman for John and Elizabeth Edwards did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

And his rates have gone UP! How's that for chutzpa?

I read a few post on this topic, I just have a general comment. I said years ago this guy was scum, a shallow, fake individual. I think this incident pretty much verifies what I have been saying.

for once you and I agree on something...

common ground.

Showing the National enquirerer is equal opportunity ...however, let's see if they actally do take legal action...lots of people threaten to, but
for some reason, they never quite do.

Source: CBS News

John McCain’s campaign threatened legal action against the National Enquirer today for running a story about McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, allegedly having an affair with her husband’s business partner.

“The smearing of the Palin family must end. The allegations contained on the cover of the National Enquirer insinuating that Gov. Palin had an extramarital affair are categorically false. It is a vicious lie,” said McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt.

“The efforts of the media and tabloids to destroy this fine and accomplished public servant are a disgrace. The American people will reject it.”

The Enquirer also alleges that Palin unjustly fired a public safety official while she was governor of Alaska, but the story is based entirely on unnamed sources. The Enquirer has also paid sources in the past to speak with them, something mainstream media outlets do not do.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/03/politics/fromth...

Wes Clark gets a new job


http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...0,3813968.story
Clark to replace Edwards in debate with RoveSeptember 5, 2008
BUFFALO, N.Y. - The tickets say "Rove-Edwards," but now a debate at the University of Buffalo will feature Karl Rove and General Wesley Clark after John Edwards cancelled all public engagements until after the November election.

The UB Distinguished Speakers Series election debate is scheduled for 8 p.m. Sept. 26 in Alumni Arena on the university's Amherst campus.

In 2004, Clark was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe for NATO from 1997 to 2000.

He will share the stage with Rove, former White House Deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to President George W. Bush.



Edwards cancelled an appearance at Hofstra University on Thursday as well as future bookings, extending an exile that began last month after he admitted to an extramarital affair.

Cribbing From John Edwards
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postparti...id=opinionsbox1
Remember when John Edwards was campaigning for president by proclaiming that America was two nations, one of and for the rich, the other of and for everybody else? Republicans hated it. Accused him of class warfare. Yowled that he was fomenting resentments that sundered national unity.

Well, guess who’s the two-nation party now?

As the Republican convention goes into its final evening, the GOP has resurrected every culture war-whoop, every booboisie resentment, every Nixonian snarl against the educated elites, the city dwellers, the liberal media and the Hollywood dilettantes that has been the party’s meat ever since the Vietnam War (or, even before then, since Joe McCarthy). This year’s Democrats, by contrast, are trying to draw economic distinctions between the parties, but no one can plausibly argue that they are demonizing the rich as Republicans are demonizing the liberals. (For one thing, there are too many rich Democrats, and virtually no liberal Republicans.)

Republicans like to think they are still the heirs of Ronald Reagan, but the tone of their convention has been more Nixonian than Reaganesque. Nixon’s genius was always his ability to excite working- and middle-class rage against liberal cultural elites, and this remains the default Republican uber-theme to this day. We hadn’t heard that much of it before the convention, but Sarah Palin proved herself a master of maternalized Nixonism in her speech last night. Presumably, McCain himself will steer clear of the more extreme forms of lib-bashing tonight, but we should understand that his strategists have concluded the only way he can win is by a Nixonian division of the country. America, as they see it, is two nations – or else, good Lord, Barack Obama will become president.

By Harold Meyerson | September 4, 2008; 5:25 PM

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertain...fe?OpenDocument

John Edwards' mistress felt instant connection, friend says
By Carla Hall
LOS ANGELES TIMES
09/07/2008

LOS ANGELES -- Rielle Hunter was in a business meeting in the lounge of the Regency Hotel in New York when she saw Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., across the room. They eyed each other.

She left the hotel, but later saw Edwards outside.

Face to face, their connection was instant. They spoke briefly, and could have left it at that. But they didn't.

Instead, they began an affair, according to Pigeon O'Brien, a friend of Hunter who said Hunter told her about that first meeting. And Hunter fell in love.

"Head over heels," said O'Brien.

The rest is tabloid history.

When Edwards admitted on national television in August to his affair with Hunter, 44, she was already notorious.

Edwards' public denial that he is the father of her 6-month-old baby girl was greeted with skepticism. Edwards said on "Nightline" that their affair began after she was hired in summer 2006 to produce Web videos of him before the announcement of his candidacy in December 2006.

O'Brien contends that the two met no later than February 2006 and started their relationship almost immediately.

In the 1980s, O'Brien became friendly with Hunter in New York. The two women fell out of touch in the 1990s and reconnected at a Manhattan party for author Jay McInerney in 2004.

O'Brien, 42, runs her own publicity company. She helped Hunter construct and maintain a Web site, beingisfree.org, which no longer exists.

But let's rewind the tape of the life that brought Hunter, nee Lisa Jo Druck, to that fateful meeting with Edwards.

Her name is pronounced "Ree -- elle" and she has been a party girl, an actress, a writer, a yoga enthusiast and a spiritual seeker.

During the 1980s and '90s, she bounced between coasts and made forays abroad, following one guru or another

McInerney -- a former boyfriend -- immortalized Hunter by using her as the model for Alison Poole, the hard-partying, promiscuous narrator of his 1988 novel "Story of My Life."

"She was thrilled," O'Brien said of Hunter's reaction to the book.

McInerney declined to talk for this story, although he did a Q and A interview with Hunter for a 2005 issue of a now-defunct magazine called "Breathe." His narrator was "inspired by Lisa," he wrote.

Hunter told McInerney that she found enlightenment in 2004 and wanted to help others find it. But she was also intrigued by fame, according to O'Brien, and titled one section of her now dismantled Web site "fame i am lives forever." She started beingisfree.org as an amalgam of spiritual musings and inspirations, but the site has vanished from the galaxies of cyberspace.

Before she got the job with Edwards for a six-figure sum, she was a hostess at Real Food Daily, a vegan restaurant in West Hollywood.

She has gone from renting rooms in people's houses just a few years ago to spending the last few months in the Santa Barbara area. As her affair with Edwards was about to explode on national television, she reportedly was whisked away from Southern California by private jet to the Virgin Islands.

In the McInerney interview, she had a "the universe will provide" mind-set.

"I have a strong desire to help people wake up -- how about for free? How I will survive, I do not know. Enlightenment is living in the not knowing."

She was born Lisa Jo Druck in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., one of four girls, and spent part of her childhood riding and showing horses.

Her father, James Druck, was implicated in a horse-killing insurance scam. He died of cancer in 1990 and was never charged. But a 1992 Sports Illustrated article chronicled the tale of confessed horse killer Tommy Burns, who said the elder Druck, a lawyer who defended insurance companies, showed him how to electrocute horses so the deaths appeared natural. Burns said he electrocuted an acclaimed show horse, Henry the Hawk, in 1982. It was Lisa Druck's horse. From 1982 to 1984, Druck attended the University of Tampa but did not graduate, according to a university representative.

When she got to New York in the mid-1980s, she partied. O'Brien was on her way to a party at a Manhattan apartment when she first saw Druck -- laughing and tumbling out the front doors with McInerney in tow.

"She was very unfettered," O'Brien said. "She reminded me of a colt just getting her legs -- exuberant, slightly unsophisticated, very post-adolescent."

O'Brien said all three ended up friends.

Hunter migrated to Los Angeles in the late 1980s. Hunter told McInerney in the magazine interview that "someone referred me to a healer who did a clearing on my energy field. I was in a state of ecstasy for about a week and realized what I was looking for, in terms of medication, was inside of me; it was a higher bliss. With that clearing, all desire for drugs or alcohol vanished. I became sober overnight. And then I became a spiritual seeker -- addicted to higher consciousness, addicted to enlightenment."

She also became "Riell." She legally changed her name in 1994, and later added the extra "e."

In Los Angeles, Hunter's pattern of dating "creative types," as O'Brien put it, changed.

In 1991, she married lawyer Alexander "Kip" Munro Hunter III, whose father was the district attorney in Boulder, Colo., during the investigation of the JonBenet Ramsey killing. They lived in Beverly Hills, and divorced in 2000, according to records. Hunter's divorce left her with $117,000 from the sale of the house. As an actress, she had small roles in a few movies. In the 1991 film "Ricochet," she's a TV reporter. In 2000, she wrote, acted in and produced a comedy film short called "Billy Bob and Them."

By 2004, Hunter was back in New York and reconnecting with O'Brien.

"She was very elegant," O'Brien said.

With her blonde hair and angular chin, she resembled a socialite.

In 2006, Hunter did not reveal much about her new love to O'Brien.

It was "John," Hunter said.

He was from North Carolina and he was married and had little children.

They gave him the pet name "Love Lips."

That spring, O'Brien said, Hunter told her she might come to St. Louis to see "Love Lips" on "April 18 and 19."

"I was watching TV and I saw something -- 'John Edwards comes to Missouri,"' O'Brien said. "I thought, 'Ohh, that's him."'

Edwards spoke at Missouri State University in Springfield on April 19, according to the school's Web ite.

O'Brien -- who never saw them together -- was surprised by her choice.

"He just really did not seem her type," she said.

Nor did having a baby seem to be on her radar.

"The Buddhist Rielle was into honesty and integrity and having an affair with a married man might have been a lark at one point," O'Brien mused, "but to move around the country and to keep a wife in the dark doesn't seem to reflect the person I knew."

Hunter has been silent, issuing a statement through her lawyer saying that Edwards is not her baby's father.

That silence was broken briefly when she called 911 to say that paparazzi were following her as she drove with her child in California.

"What is your name?" the operator asks on the 911 tape that was released.

"Rielle Hunter," she says.

"Why are they trying to take pictures of you?" asks the operator.

"Because they are trying to prove someone is the father of my baby who's not."

It was the first time Hunter had been heard in public denying that Edwards is the father of her child.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...1840392,00.html

While on the campaign trail with John Kerry in September 2004, then-vice presidential nominee John Edwards derided the Republicans' attempt to make lackluster job-creation numbers into a shining moment for the Bush administration. "They're going to try every way they know to put lipstick on this pig," he said. "But you know when you put lipstick on a pig, at the end of the day, it's still a pig."

OPINION
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1221089538...=googlenews_wsj

Everything About Politicians
Is Fair Game
By DAVID PEREL
September 11, 2008; Page A15

The private lives of the presidential candidates are off limits. Writing about people who do not hold elected office constitutes shameful scandal mongering. The families of the candidates should not be exploited for publicity.

I know all of this to be true because Barack Obama said it. And so did John McCain. And so did some liberal bloggers, who didn't like the National Enquirer's revelations about John Edwards's infidelity -- and proclaimed, in far-left argot, that what a candidate does behind closed doors should stay behind closed doors, and not be used to judge fitness for office.



Then Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter turned up pregnant. The liberal blogosphere flung open the bedroom door with gleeful apostasy while fleeing from their previous Sanctity of Privacy dogma.

Welcome to the greatest tabloid presidential election in modern times.

Blame it on John Edwards. He started it all by having an extramarital affair and then lying about it while running for president. He denied the Enquirer's stories for nearly a year, until he was caught (by the Enquirer) in a hotel rendezvous with his mistress in July.

Until Mr. Edwards's televised confession, the lack of mainstream press coverage was fodder for the new media, which kept the issue alive with questions about his political action committee payments to Rielle Hunter for Webisodes that never aired, and charges of liberal bias for not following up on the affair allegations. The confession itself was more than just must-see TV; some believed it signaled a changing of the guard in the battle between new media and old media for public pre-eminence.

Old media, which chooses to call itself mainstream media, pondered its lack of action on the Edwards affair ad nauseam, spending more time looking in the mirror than Mr. Edwards during a $400 haircut. (And, like Mr. Edwards, it usually adores what it sees.) In its self-appointed role as Prince Myshkin (that Dostoevsky character whose purity of motive is an ill fit for society) the mainstream media (by its own telling) desperately tried to prevent the public from being despoiled by tabloid allegations of a deeply personal nature.

Now, just weeks later, the rules appear to have changed. An anonymous blogger on the Daily Kos published a rumor that Sarah Palin did not give birth to her most recent child, Trig. Instead, Mrs. Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was said to be the mother. Liberal bloggers massed like ants at a picnic marching toward the coleslaw.

Unlike during the Edwards affair, the mainstream media instantly joined the fray, questioning Mr. McCain's people about the report and triggering Mrs. Palin to announce that her teenage daughter was pregnant. After a collective right-wing gasp, the only sound that could be heard clearly was erasers furiously dragged over the "family values" section of the Republican Party platform.

Why was the mainstream media so eager this time around? Perhaps it was the irony (and relevancy) of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by the daughter of the woman who was chosen to attract and energize the conservative base for Sen. McCain. Perhaps it was the ease with which the story was available to them. Perhaps it was liberal bias, as so many right- wing bloggers, commentators and politicians charge.

In this fractious environment, politics has made for more than strange bedfellows. Witness Mr. McCain greeting Levi Johnston and quickly becoming buddies with the 18-year-old hockey player who impregnated the daughter of his running mate.

Mr. McCain presumably did not have a copy in his pocket of the recently adopted platform of the Republican Party, which contained within its instructive gospel of morality and values: "We renew our call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with increased funding for abstinence education, which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and expected standard of behavior. . . . We oppose school-based clinics that provide referrals, counseling, and related services for abortion and contraception."

Meanwhile Mr. McCain's senior adviser Steve Schmidt attempted to draw attention away from the growing debacle by falling back on a device favored by both political parties: Blame it on the media. Mr. Schmidt launched a philippic against the New York Times, and then had Mr. McCain threaten to sue the National Enquirer on behalf of Mrs. Palin. (Who says chivalry is dead?)

All his bluster, however, could not conceal emerging details of Mrs. Palin's last-minute selection that made it clear the McCain camp was guilty of the worst vetting job since the last bank to give Ed McMahon a jumbo loan.

Sarah Palin, however, can defend herself. Her rousing and articulate convention speech proved that. I've heard that she shoots wolves from helicopters. I've seen a video of her firing a rifle, and she looks like she handles it well. All of this leads me to the conclusion that Levi Johnston is either the bravest or stupidest teenager in Alaska.

So should the personal foibles of candidates and their immediate family be off limits in the campaign? The id of the tabloid media drives it to cover scandal in any form. The mainstream media would like to believe it has evolved from the era of William Randolph Hearst -- he of the infamous proclamation, "you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Yet, when a Republican VP nominee showed up with a pregnant teenage daughter, the mainstream media's superego disappeared faster than Dan Quayle at a spelling bee.

The people who eventually hold the highest office in this country face unfathomable challenges. In electing them we grasp for any clues to their judgment and character, signals as to how they will react, and the verisimilitude of what they will tell the American people. An affair, regardless of political affiliation, is a breach of private trust; lying about it to the American public signals a dangerous willingness to deceive when caught in tough situations.

While John Edwards and Sarah Palin have served as lightning rods for the debatable issue of how personal controversy affects public worthiness for leadership, the mainstream media vacillates between ignoring and rushing into these types of stories. New media, with its raucous pursuit of every salacious rumor, feels no such restraint. Inchoate ideas and suppositions find purchase on blogs from both sides of the political spectrum.

Inevitably the mainstream media, suffering from the corporate pressures of diminishing profits, will yield to new media and its populism. The two-newspaper city, once a staple of every metropolis, is already as rare as a grammatically correct sentence from George Bush.

So with apologies to John Edwards, Sarah Palin and untold other Democrats and Republicans, the tabloid media gladly accepts its role of covering the scandals, relying on the American public to decide if that information is relevant to job performance.

Mr. Perel is the editor in chief of the National Enquirer and senior vice president of American Media, Inc.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

this guy is one of those a-hole rightwing idiots (you always can tell when they so emphasize the middle name of Obama,
kool aid style told to them by their kool aid providers)

But while he doesn't make the connection between who put people onto the Edwards story(ala the Clintons)
(too stupid probably to realize he did wthout knowing it), he brings it up
Too bad most people didn't want to see the connection followed through...being that it all ties into everything else.


http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-...mmer_91108.html
Elizabeth Edwards is understandably mad at her husband, John Edwards, who admitted to having an affair but has not yet admitted to being the father of his mistress's child or having anything to do with the payments made to his mistress and the man who claims to be the father of her child.

Edwards has in fact been staying, not at his estate near Chapel Hill in Orange County, but at his home on Figure Eight Island, which is a great place to hide. The island is owned by the homeowners, and only the homeowners and their guests are allowed to cross the bridge to the island, making it difficult for reporters to bother anyone on the island.

So Elizabeth Edwards is making John sleep, not on the couch, but in a different house. But she isn't the only one who should be mad at John Edwards – the Democratic Party should be furious.

What if John Edwards had won Iowa? He came in second, narrowly defeating Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sen. Barack Hussein Obama came out of the blue and beat both of them. But what if things had turned out differently and John Edwards had won Iowa, had the momentum to win New Hampshire and then had gone on to win the Democratic nomination? Imagine if the story of his affair had broken with John Edwards as the presumptive nominee instead of just someone who ran. It would have been a disaster for the Democrats.

Of course, if John Edwards had been beating Hillary Clinton, you can bet the Clintons would have hired private detectives who would have discovered the affair. At that point, Edwards would have been told to decide that he had to spend more time with his family. It still would have leaked out and the Democrats would have had to spend valuable campaigning time dealing with the scandal.
The Democrats should be thanking their lucky stars that the people in Iowa and New Hampshire didn't take to John Edwards, and it certainly wasn't because they didn't get to know him. The man campaigned in Iowa from the moment he and Sen. John Kerry lost in 2004, until he lost in 2008.

We may yet see some interesting connections...


http://www.postchronicle.com/news/breaking...212172059.shtml


Former Edwards Aide Draws Scrutiny
Questions are being raised about the source of income for a former aide to one-time Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, McClatchy Newspapers reported.

Edwards has publicly acknowledged a sexual affair with Rielle Hunter, who became pregnant and had a baby. Edwards' former aide, Andrew Aldridge Young, said he was the father of Hunter's baby.


Young, who finished law school at Wake Forest but apparently has never practiced law, has lived a Santa Barbara, Calif., home worth nearly $2 million, McClatchy reported Sunday, Records show Young is wrapping up work on a 5,300-square-foot home on a 10-acre lot outside Chapel Hill, N.C., the report said.

It Was No Known Whether Young Is Working.

The National Enquirer, which first revealed Edwards' affair, reports that Young received $20,000 a month as part of a scheme to cover up the affair. © UPI

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/52491.html

What's become of Edwards aide who said he fathered baby?

By Lorenzo Peres and Ames Alexander | Raleigh News & Observer

During John Edwards' two campaigns for president, Andrew Aldridge Young was a trusted, loyal aide, often near the candidate's side when he was in North Carolina.

When Edwards and his family were out of town, Young looked after their houses. When they flew into town, Young picked them up at the airport. If Edwards' parents needed help at a campaign event, Young was there. When hordes of reporters and photographers trampled the grass of Edwards' Raleigh neighbors during his 2003 presidential announcement, Young arranged to have the damage repaired.

And when Rielle Hunter -- the campaign videographer with whom Edwards has acknowledged he had an affair -- became pregnant, Young said the baby was his.

That statement, posted in December by a Washington lawyer representing Young, transformed and complicated the life of a 42-year-old man who finished law school at Wake Forest but apparently has never practiced law. He has lived in the Governors Club near Chapel Hill with his wife and three children, and more recently in a Santa Barbara, Calif., home worth nearly $2 million. Both homes are in gated communities that offer some shielding from public view.

It is not clear whether he is working. But records show that work is wrapping up on Young's new home: a 5,300-square-foot structure on a wooded, 10-acre lot outside Chapel Hill.

This thread should really be pinned

being that there is new news just about every day, and we are still looking for who
got this news into the public eye in the first place

It's one of those Karl Rove Lee Atwater James Carville Roger Stone type of dirty tricks

Take it up with Snuffy and Michael, IMO this is one of the more inconsequential threads on the forum, especially nowadays.