SECRET SERVICE HIDES BEHIND CHILDREN AT STATE DEPARTMENT

This is too good. Via C.S. Monitor:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland opened the daily news briefing with a salute to the handful of underage observers who joined journalists for the mid-day run-down of global events.

But any hopes that the briefing would steer clear of the salacious dissipated as questions focused on charges that Secret Service agents and other U.S. government employees caroused with strippers and prostitutes on overseas assignments.

"What a topic to be talking about on Bring Your Kids To Work day," Nuland said. "Parents, you can explain all of this later."

Meanwhile, The Hill interviewed Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who said that she's been briefed about some new rules coming down the pike that will forbid Secret Service agents from going to "any place of bad acts."

That rules out Congress, I suppose. Bad acts are bad. Kids, don't do them, don't go near them, and plug up your ears while we talk about what daddy was doing in that hotel room.

As I predicted, the cover-up is swinging now, baby. It's a party!

Secret Service WHORING IT UP in Colombia

These agents were hard at work, and it appears, off-work. The juicy details are just coming out:

Washington Post:

Kessler said he was told that a dozen agents had been removed from the trip. He added that soliciting prostitution is considered inappropriate by the Secret Service, even though it is legal in Colombia when conducted in designated “tolerance zones.” However, Kessler added, several of the agents involved are married.

CNN:

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the matter and told CNN that the government personnel brought prostitutes back to their rooms Wednesday night and "one of the women did not leave the room in the morning."

A hotel manager tried to get in the room, and eventually the woman emerged and said "they owed her money," according to King. Similarly, U.S. government sources said there was a dispute between at least one Secret Service member and a woman brought back to his hotel over a request to be paid.

So, a dozen are dragged home, and another five are on lock-down in the hotel, still! Apparently they'd be drinking a huge amount, then went scrounging for hookers, and after they all or most got them, one of them had a dispute over the fees for now not-so-secret service.

Update: Secret Service Update

SEC Shreds, Burns, and Zaps Evidence of Past "Non-Investigations"

Matt Taibbi reveals a whistleblower's case of dark doings at the SEC, where cover-ups are job one, and no evil deed goes unrewarded.

Flynn discovered a directive on the enforcement division's internal website ordering staff to destroy "any records obtained in connection" with closed MUIs. The directive appeared to violate federal law, which gives responsibility for maintaining and destroying all records to the National Archives and Records Administration. Over a decade earlier, in fact, the SEC had struck a deal with NARA stipulating that investigative records were to be maintained for 25 years – and that if any files were to be destroyed after that, the shredding was to be done by NARA, not the SEC.

But Flynn soon learned that the records for thousands of preliminary investigations no longer existed. In his letter to Congress, Flynn estimates that the practice of destroying MUIs had begun as early as 1993, and has resulted in at least 9,000 case files being destroyed. For all the thousands of tips that had come in to the SEC, and the thousands of interviews that had been conducted by the agency's staff, all that remained were a few perfunctory lines for each case. The mountains of evidence gathered were no longer in existence.

There's a good list of some buried cases, but it looks like there was a whole lotta greasing of wheels and other objects involved.

Shocking, but not surprising. I predict a full inquiry, and try not to laugh too loud.

Another Hypocrite Anti-Gay Closet-Case Lawmaker Flushed Out in Indiana

He voted for an anti-gay-marriage bill, but then offered, allegedly, money to an 18-year-old male for his companionship.

Is this getting to be a dog-bites-man story?

Via indystar.com:

Emails shared with The Indianapolis Star suggest that state Rep. Phillip Hinkle -- responding to a local posting on Craigslist -- offered a young man $80 plus tip to spend time with him Saturday night at the JW Marriott hotel.

The emails, sent from Hinkle's publicly listed personal address, ask the young man for "a couple hours of your time tonight" and offer him cash up front, with a tip of up to $50 or $60 "for a really good time."

 The guy, who said he was 20 in his ad, gets offered hush money via his sister, who somehow "intervenes." Those details look VERY dodgy, since the sister goes to meet the guy's daughter in a hotel, apparently to prove she has the e-mail evidence.

Washington Post Understatement of the Year: Possible Conflict of Interest at the Fed

Read it and steam.

Phone Hacking: What Did Piers Morgan Know/Do?

Nice little morsel commenting on a paragraph from Piers Morgan's book, based on his diaries:

Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.

Then on Monday, July 18, 2001, he goes on his own show on CNN and defends our dear Rupert:

I just cannot accept — although there is this huge witch hunt going on to bring him down personally — I don’t accept that he himself would be party to illegal activity."

Well, well, well.

He was editor of the Daily Mirror, and may have picked up the scoop of the year in 2002, based on phone hacking.

That last is not confirmed officially, but with Rebekah Brooks' computer somehow lost in the trash and other developments, it's sounding like the botched cover-up is failing badly.

I'm betting there will be another round of auditions for the new Larry King, as if that story didn't bore everyone enough the first time around.

Bachmann Clinic Overdrive

The Bachmanns' clinic promises to turn over your drives!

Story plus undercover videotape via Nightline.

Looks like the denial that they "pray the gay away" is nonsense.

Half a Billion Dollars "Tainted" in CityTime Scandal

I'm surprised the press hasn't linked the CityTime scandal to the massive cutbacks. Or maybe not so surprised:

 Reddy Allen and Dr Padma Allen have been indicted on federal fraud and kickback charges in relation to the scandals surrounding Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration's CityTime project to modernise the municipal payroll system.

A grand jury said on Monday that more than $600 million of the project's bloated budget is "tainted" by fraud. The couple secured a lucrative, no-bid subcontract for the CityTime that made it look like their firm, TechnoDyne, was "a successful and fast-growing company," the New York Post
reported.

Gee, another "no-bid" contract. How did that happen? Anyone know?

Is Newt His Own Favorite Charity Case?

Looks like he may have funneled money from his "charity" to his for profit businesses.

ABC relates:

The charity, Renewing American Leadership, not only featured Gingrich on its website and in fundraising letters, it also paid $220,000 over two years to one of Gingrich's for-profit companies, Gingrich Communications. It purchased cases of Gingrich's books and bought up copies of DVDs produced by another of the former House speaker's entities, Gingrich Productions.

Renew that leadership with bales of cash, Newt. There's more heinous behavior of the kind in the article, including fundraising letters on his own stationery chopping up a quote from Pres. O. to state that ours is not a Christian nation. (Famous quote, very stirring, adding and including others, just like the founders expressly stated that they wanted.)

I ask you, Who would Jesus bilk?

Newt can also be found in many gardenscapes.

John Edwards indicted.

Red hot details here.

Apparently, a plea deal fell through. There was alleged money shipped in chocolate boxes, and other sketchy behavior, according to the story.  What I don't get was why it cost hundreds of thousands to play hide the mistress. Couldn't they have just bought her a wig, oversized sunglasses, a big floppy hat, sweatpants, and stashed her in a series of moderately priced, but decent, traveler's hotel?

With all the sameness of American strips, anonymity seems much more easily done. I guess a candidate's mistress gets her hideouts gold-plated.

No end of the world in sight.

We all had a good laugh or twelve over the latest doomsday preacher last week. A fine May day failed to conjure much disaster beyond the usual volcano blast in Iceland.

And yet Hollywood recently birthed a movie about the other end of the world prediction, 2012, and all that. Why is that nonsense prognostication any different? Because it's based on the fact that the Maya counted. They counted obsessively. Therefore, based on the fact that they had a complicated calendar system, the world will therefore end when a cycle based on numbers ends?

Let's get this right. The Mayans were advanced, but no experts in plate tectonics. I suppose it's strangely comforting to have some final chapter for the messiness of human affairs. Of course, the earth will face fate in some billions of years, when the sun fails spectacularly, but don't expect me to stay up all night some winter eve in 2012. Fool me twice...