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Oh, C&Lers, you've picked a good one, and timely too. In 38th place, we have a March 4th rant about Republican family values as compared to everyone else's. Yes indeed, it's a timely reminder, given Newt's newly discovered piety and grace through the blessings of Catholic bishops and the lovely Callista.

But you see, It's OK If You're A Republican (IOKIYAR).

It's always helpful to review how hypocritical Newt Gingrich is when it comes to "family values."

Herman Cain tried to get out in front of a story he knew was going to break today. Evidently he has a new woman coming forward, but this one wasn't harassed. This one alleges a 13-year affair that ended just before he declared his candidacy for office.

Cain's version, via CNN:

The candidate upstaged his accuser's announcement, telling CNN a few minutes beforehand that her assertion was coming and was false. "This individual is going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time," Cain said on CNN's "Situation Room."

"It is someone that I know who is an acquaintance that I thought was a friend."

Cain said he learned about the accusation after his lawyer talked to a reporter about it.

Cain said his wife's immediate reaction upon hearing of the accusation was, "Here we go again."

He said he had no plans to drop out of the race. "Not as long as my wife is behind me and as long as my wife believes I should stay in this race, I'm staying in this race," Cain said.

The woman, identified as Ginger White, had this to say:

An Atlanta businesswoman accused GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain of having had an affair with her that lasted 13 years, an Atlanta television station reported Monday.

"I was aware that he was married, and I was also aware that I was involved in a very inappropriate situation relationship," the woman -- identified by the station as Ginger White -- told WAGA.

Cain's lawyer has a statement, too:

“Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace - this is not an accusation of an assault - which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate.

Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public’s right to know and the media’s right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one’s bedroom door.

Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.”

Personally, I don't really care whether he has a harem or not, except for the fact that lies are lies, and they're not pretty when it's a candidate for the office of President who is lying. John Edwards' candidacy ended because of it, and Herman Cain's will end the same way.

Here in a nutshell is the state of play in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes: alleged serial sexual harasser Herman Cain is being surpassed by confirmed serial adulterer Newt Gingrich. With Mitt Romney stalled and Cain hemorrhaging support from women voters, polls last week from CBS and Marist showed the former House Speaker had surged into a virtual three-way tie at the top. By Monday, new surveys from CNN and PPP showed Newt vaulting past the fading pizza maker. Nevertheless, that development should be a discomforting prospect for a Republican Party which lost the women's vote by 13 points in 2008. As his public statements and personal life show, the thrice-married Gingrich is hardly a champion for American women.

That starts with Newt Gingrich's belief that marriage is an institution between one man and three women in rapid succession.

In 1980, Newt was separated from his first wife and former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley. As she lay incoherent in her hospital bed following surgery for a reoccurrence of uterine cancer, Gingrich paid her a visit to announce he wanted a divorce. As Lee Howell, a Gingrich friend and associate at whose wedding Newt was best man, described it:

"Newt came up there with his yellow legal pad, and he had a list of things on how the divorce was going to be handled. He wanted her to sign it. She was still recovering from surgery, still sort of out of it, and he comes in with a yellow sheet of paper, handwritten, and wants her to sign it.

Newt can handle political problems, but when it comes to personal problems, he's a disaster. He handled the divorce like he did any other political decision: You've got to be tough in this business, you've got to be hard. Once you make the decision you've got to act on it. Cut your losses and move on."

He moved on to wife number two, Marianne Ginther. But Marianne fared little better, getting dumped for Congressional staffer Callista Bisek after a six year affair even as Newt was leading the inquisition of Bill Clinton. As Vanity Fair summed it up last year:

According to Salon, Gingrich and the former Hill staffer (23 years his junior, mind you) would frequently dine in the Supreme Court cafeteria--an unsuspectingly sordid detail. (In 1995, Vanity Fair referred to Bisek as Gingrich's "frequent breakfast companion.") Gingrich stepped down from Congress in 1998 following an ethics scandal, among other things. The two were married two years later.

Gingrich, who swapped his Baptist faith for Catholicism just in time to attack President Obama's 2009 address at Notre Dame University, later explained that his rapid fire infidelities were the actually product of his own patriotism:

"There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them."

Of course, the things Newt Gingrich was saying to American women weren't any better.

As the New York Times recounted 16 years ago, Newt suggested menstruation should keep women out of essential roles in the American military:

"If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections, and they don't have upper-body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets -- you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know."

And for Gingrich, the biggest "infection" of them all - liberalism - caused a young mother to murder her children.

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I’m you, dear readers. Well, actually, I’m not. But I’m also not a witch, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

The above is of course a reference to Delaware’s favourite Wiccan of Wilmington, Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, who began her most recent television advertisement by assuring viewers that she, indeed, is “not a witch.” In past political years this might have been considered a bit low-brow, to actually have to assure the voting public you didn’t spend most days at dusk swooping over the heads of the Lollipop Guild.

The bar has been raised among this year’s crop of weirdos and wackadoos seeking higher office in America. If you don’t have the Second Amendment tattooed on your buttocks or actually think you’re The Walrus, don’t even try and claim to be among the craziest third of aspiring politicos on the current American landscape.

For Jay Leno may have once called politics “show business for ugly people.” But the larger truth these days is that a run for political office is a surefire way for those seeking a moment in the spotlight, but lacking any discernible talent or a handle on the truth, to have their hour in the headlines. It’s show business for crazy people.

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That settles it: Newt's made up his mind to run for president, or he wouldn't be spreading this little story of his soul's redemption around the national media, would he? (Kind of traditional for Republican candidates to take a quick run through the All-Purpose Drive-Thru Jesus-Lovin' Sin Washer!)

Setting the stage for his entry into the presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., gave a radio interview to be broadcast today with Focus on the Family's James Dobson, in which Gingrich for the first time publicly acknowledged cheating on his first and second wives.

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," Gingrich said during the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm not only not proud of, but I would deeply urge my children and grandchildren not to follow in my footsteps."

What, you mean asking for a divorce while your wife's recovering from cancer surgery, Newt? You mean there was something wrong with that?

Gingrich argued that the Clinton case was different from his personal transgressions.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," he said, arguing that Clinton had "deliberately committed perjury."

Because he had been through a divorce, Gingrich said, he knew the importance of telling the truth during a deposition.

"The standard is: In a court of law should somebody who's popular get away with perjury?" Gingrich said. "And I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept felonies and you cannot accept perjury in your highest officials."

Even though Bill Clinton did not commit perjury, and Gingrich knows it.

It's worth noting that Gingrich did not limit his comments about Clinton and the Democrats to legalistic allegations of perjury.

Constantly espousing family values even while he carried on an affair, Gingrich linked his party to wholesome family values and Democrats to, well, something else.

During the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Gingrich said, "Woody Allen having nonincest with a nondaughter to whom he was a nonfather because they were a nonfamily fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

In 1994, Gingrich linked Democrats to Susan Smith, a woman who had murdered her two children in 1991.

Even though it turned out she'd been molested by her stepfather, a South Carolina state GOP executive, of course.

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," he said. "The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

I really hope Gingrich does run. Because there's a question I've wanted to ask him for years (Hill staffers are such gossips!): "Can you confirm or deny the allegations that, during the same period you were attacking Bill Clinton for adultery, you were serviced by your employee/mistress (soon to be Wife No. 3) in the front seat of your car while waiting in the parking lot of your kids's school?"

Because I've heard that story for years and inquiring minds want to know. I mean, that's some real family values, right there. Maybe we should call Ken Starr to look into it.

Few Americans Familiar with More than Four of Ten Commandments

Swift Reports

While the Ten Commandments are increasingly popular in both text and tablet form, a new poll has found that few Americans are familiar with more than four of them. The Biblical bans on murder, theft, and adultery ranked highest among adults surveyed, while only a handful were familiar with Commandments prohibiting graven images and false witness.

Activist judges found to be least familiar with Commandments...read on

A Tiny Revolution: Did Rumsfeld tour a KGB torture museum to pick up useful tips?

Welcome Back to Pottersville: Oh! That Kaiser Permanente...

Raw Story: Skeptics claim stolen emails prove global warming is a hoax

The Progressive Puppy: Fundies plan attacks on lesbian Mayoral candidate during runoff

I Am TRex: How the bastards do it

NotionsCapital: Expense Account Adultry

Wow, this should thin the GOP presidential herd, shouldn't it?

PFAW:

Televangelist and Ohio "Patriot Pastor" leader Rod Parsley's Center for Moral Clarity is urging the revival of long-dormant laws against adultery in states such as Michigan, where adultery is technically a felony, although no one has been prosecuted for 36 years.

In an e-mail update to its supporters, the Center noted with approval the remark of an appeals court judge that a Michigan statute criminalizing sex involving commission of a felony, when combined with the law making adultery a felony, could lead to life in prison. "Lawmakers and judges in Michigan are holding married couples accountable for their vows of fidelity," touted CMC, adding that "The rest of the nation should take a look at the Michigan statute. Criminal laws are designed to force people to conform to certain acceptable standards of personal behavior. Most of society's code of conduct has its roots in the 10 Commandments."

"Adultery is a violation of biblical instruction as well as an offense against the other partner in what should be a sacred relationship," said Parsley. But given his history of involvement in Republican politics, where will that leave him in 2008, with frontrunning presidential candidates McCain and Giuliani, along with potential dark horse Gingrich, each allegedly carrying an adulterous past that, in Parsley's world, would put them behind bars?

As a progressive, I tend towards a more libertarian view of things. I don't believe the government has any right getting into our personal lives. That's why stories like this just fill me with so much anger.

BizmarckTribune: (h/t OK)

North Dakota's Legislature is encouraging disrespect for the law by making it illegal for a man and woman to live together without being married, a legislator says.

If North Dakota prosecutors began enforcing the anti-cohabitation law, which provides a 30-day jail term and a $1,000 fine, the state would need a "$10 billion prison," Sen. Tracy Potter, D-Bismarck, said Wednesday.

[..]North Dakota is one of the few states that outlaws cohabitation, which is defined as a man and woman living together "openly and notoriously" as if they were married.

It is listed as a sex crime in state law, alongside adultery and incest. There are few records of a cohabitation case being prosecuted, aside from a North Dakota Supreme Court appeal in the 1930s.

San Jose Mercury News:

The state Legislature is about to weigh in on a question that stirs impassioned debate among moms and dads: Should parents spank their children?
Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, wants to outlaw spanking children up to 3 years old. If she succeeds, California would become the first state in the nation to explicitly ban parents from smacking their kids.

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In an unusual switch, Kenneth Starr is trying to overturn a case, instead of falsely making one!

From WaPo: Former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr yesterday took on a case unlike any he's had: the appeal of Arlington's only death row inmate.

As Salon has reported about Starr V.S. President Clinton:

What these carefully documented investigative stories underline is essentially this: In his zealous pursuit of the president, Kenneth Starr defiled "the temple of justice," to use his own righteous rhetoric. Lacking a fundamental sense of fairness and judicial proportion, Starr sought first to build his Whitewater real estate case against Clinton using irredeemably corrupt testimony, and then, when this failed, he latched onto Paula Jones' ill-fated civil suit, and then when that failed, he wired Linda Tripp and finally snared Clinton on adultery -- a crime that if aggressively pursued in Washington would depopulate our capital as thoroughly as the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh.

The new case involves Robin Lovitt:

Starr, a former federal judge and U.S. solicitor general, argued the case of Robin Lovitt before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond. He urged the judges to overturn Lovitt's conviction in the 1998 killing of an Arlington pool hall employee, who was stabbed six times with a pair of scissors.

If Lovitt is indeed innocent, let's hope for his sake that Starr has the same zeal for the (truth) hunt.