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06 Jun 2011 17:31

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Politics: So, when does a scandal force a political resignation?

  • then New York Rep. Chris Lee was caught in a very embarrassing position when it was revealed that he’d sent a shirtless photo of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist. Lee immediately resigned, giving way to the recent special election in NY-26.
  • now Anthony Weiner admitted he was lying, and carried out a number of sexy online relationships, sending not just a shirtless photo of himself (jeez, he looks good for 46), but a photo of him in his boxers. He will not be resigning. Chris Lee never knew it was this easy! source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 May 2011 23:31

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U.S.: “Weinergate”: Scouring Anthony Weiner’s rogue tweet saga

  • Look, we don’t want the Weiner story to be true. But we’ve done enough tweeting in our day to know all the tricks for reading someone’s social media tracks. We spent a couple of hours digging through tweets to find out more info. And, to us, there seems to be some evidence pointing in both directions on this story. The key thing for us is the existence of the rogue tweet, which was captured by TweetCongress.org even after it was deleted. But there’s also stuff that makes us wonder. The patient zero — the first person to retweet Anthony Weiner’s NSFW tweet — was this guy, who we’ve found in our research to be overly fixated on the congressman even BEFORE the tweet in question. In fact, he posted about a cheating scandal just like this one over TWO WEEKS AGO. Really? How was he so quick to hit the trigger on this? Some other things we noticed from the scandal:
  • for On Twitter, Weiner noted the Seattle time of his Friday TV appearance. The recipient of the NSFW tweet, from Seattle, retweeted.
  • for The person at the center of the drama deleted her Twitter account — which was active as of yesterday — after the tweet.
  • for The girl in question said Weiner was her “boyfriend” in an April tweet. Yeah, so? Her and every other liberal teen female has!
  • against To disprove that the photo was of Weiner, Daily Kos has a test of the NSFW photo that suggested it was ‘shopped. Hm.
  • » The important things to take from this: We don’t think Weiner did anything wrong as of yet, but we do think that there is a lot to suggest one of two things: One, this was possibly a scandal planted by someone who had closely followed the congressman’s Twitter account (because, based on our research, people have), and there were somewhat bizarre things that may have connected Weiner to the girl. Given the track record of Big Journalism, where the story originated from, we’d like to see a better source tackle this thing, because we don’t trust Breitbart as far as we can throw him. We rate this an “inconclusive.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 May 2011 17:09

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U.S.: Report: John Ensign made life harder for John Ensign

  • John Ensign fouls up his legal situation: A report by Reuters today suggests that a decision by John Ensign himself may have paved the way for the charges he could be facing. Throughout the probe, investigators had wanted to get a look at a trove of Ensign’s e-mails, which he and his team claimed were protected by attorney-client confidentiality. The probe could very well have gone nowhere without them. That is, until Ensign himself handed them over as he was preparing to leave the Senate, after having refused for 18 months. Why on earth he did this is unknown, but it seems he may have scored an “own goal” here. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Sep 2010 10:15

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World: Pope Benedict’s response the talk of Twitter this morning


Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Sep 2010 10:44

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World: Joran Van der Sloot to newspaper: Yeah, I extorted that girl’s family

  • I wanted to get back at Natalee’s family. Her parents have been making my life tough for five years.
  • Joran Van der Sloot • Admitting, via a Dutch newspaper, that he tried to extort Natalee Holloway’s parent’s in an attempt to get back at them. He has been charged with wire fraud in a case involving the Holloway family, $250,000 and a lot of BS. Also, a Peruvian court ruled that he is not being held unlawfully for his charges – he’s the prime suspect in a murder case in that country. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Sep 2010 23:47

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Politics: Julian Assange: A yo-yo in the Swedish legal system

  • The rape investigation against Assange? Back on. Wikileaks has had a bit of trouble in the past two weeks with this whole Julian Assange thing. As more details have leaked to the press, it’s become clear that there may be something there, though many supporters will debate that fact. But why push rape charges, unpush them and then push them again? It just leads to inconsistency and damages the case in the public eye. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Aug 2010 21:20

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World: Wikileaks sex case: Did Julian Assange simply start getting creepy?

  • It is quite wrong that we were afraid of him. He is not violent and I do not feel threatened by him. The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man who had attitude problems with women.
  • One of Julian Assange’s anonymous accusers • Regarding the situation that led to the quickly-rescinded rape charges against the Wikileaks founder. The Guardian cites sources close to one of the women that claim the issue cropped up because Assange disagreed about condom use with the women, not because he was acting in a non-consensual manner. Gawker has named one of the women, but we won’t do the same here. That said, if that’s what happened (instead of a conspiracy, as Wikileaks has claimed), that’s pretty creepy. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 7 Comments • Permalink
 

20 Aug 2010 17:34

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Politics: The Rev. Franklin Graham learned absolutely nothing from his dad

  • I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name.
  • Rev. Franklin Graham • Blowing smoke over the controversy around Obama’s faith. Because, you know what, this really helps our country and gives us another fake controversy to worry about. May we remind everyone that Franklin Graham was the same guy who wasn’t allowed to pray at the Pentagon during the National Day of Prayer because of his comments on the Islamic faith. (We gave him a slight show of support back then, but now we’re not so sure.) How does giving this jerk a megaphone help anything? See, the difference between him and his father, the Rev. Billy Graham, is that Billy built his legacy on bringing people together. Franklin is building it on dividing people. Shameful. This is the problem with our country. We’re building useless divisions. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Aug 2010 09:09

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U.S.: Blago trial: Blame the absurdly complex charges for the decision

  • It was kind of a bittersweet thing … relief that the trial is over, but frustration that we didn’t accomplish what we set out to do.
  • Jury foreman James Matsumoto • Regarding the end of the Blago trial, which only found him guilty on one of 24 counts. Some of the issue was the overarching complexity of the charges – the instructions were over 100 pages and the charges were highly technical and interconnected. “It was like, ‘Here’s a manual, go fly the space shuttle,” said fellow juror Steve Wlodek. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Aug 2010 17:39

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Biz: HP CEO Mark Hurd’s fall from grace: Why we blame WebOS

  • harbinger Two months ago, HP CEO Mark Hurd said something idiotic – he suggested that Palm’s WebOS would be useless on phones and they’d use it for printers instead.
  • failure Today, Hurd resigned – the result of a sexual harassment probe regarding a contractor he had an improper relationship with. Coincidence? We think not. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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