A Denton County constable drove to a Colorado restaurant on Thursday and called a woman he met through the Internet to let her know he had arrived, according to court papers.
Instead of Marsha showing up with her 8-year-old daughter for a sexual encounter, he met her colleagues – Cañon City, Colo., police officers.
Larry Dale Floyd, a 62-year-old constable from The Colony, was arrested on suspicion of soliciting to have sex with a child and was charged with seven related crimes, Cañon City police said.
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Mr. Floyd has been a Denton County constable since 1993. A Republican, Mr. Floyd was unopposed in his most recent re-election in November.
The media still reacts very weirdly to the whole Jeff Gannon story, and I think this latest ridiculous comparison offers a bit more understanding of why they do. In the latest, a Korean woman refused to clean up her dog's poop on the subway. Those who subsequenty transformed her into a notorious "internet celebrity" are compared to the "mob" who in the Gannon case "went further, reporting and speculating on aspects of Gannon's private life."
There'a a tremendous difference between Jeff Gannon and dog poop girl. Jeff Gannon appeared in daily White House televised press conferences and appeared at and even asked a question at a presidential press conference. Dog pop girl was... nobody. In other words, dog poop girl was truly a private person who suddenly found herself thrust rather unfortunately into the public sphere in a way which was disproportionate to her offense.
Jeff Gannon - public figure. Dog poop girl - private figure. Members of the media hate the idea that they themselves could be considered to be "public figures." They want the luxury and benefits of being on television every day without any loss of privacy. They don't want to be "fair game" for the press, and an informal agreement tends to make it so. They want to be immune to the kind of scrutiny they give to others.
It was and is a legitimate story about how a security-obsessed White House let a cock-headed manwhore who essentially came from nowhere got daily press passes for over a year. By attempting to hide his identity while putting himself into the public sphere Jeff Gannon raised legitimate questions about his background and that identity. The fact that the answers to those questions turned out to be that he lied about his past military service and had spend recent years being a $200/hr manwhore were not the fault of the questioners.
I try to respect the distinction between private and public figures as I think that distinction is important. I find it a shame when people suddenly find themselves being "internet celebrities" for whatever reason - sometimes the internet "mob" does inappropriately take someone out of the private sphere and put them in the public one. But Jeff Gannon, white house correspondent, was a public figure, not a private one.
Jean Schmidt, a former Republican state representative from the Cincinnati area, also appealed to the governor's office on behalf of a Web-based lottery. Ms. Schmidt is currently running for Congress against Paul Hackett, a Democrat who served in the Iraq War.
The race has attracted national attention.
In a November, 2001, e-mail, Jon Allison, a staff member for Governor Taft, complained that Ms. Schmidt "continues to bug me on Internet lottery."
One year later, her state representative re-election campaign garnered a $1,000 donation from Mr. Ach.
Ms. Schmidt said through a spokesman that she does not remember any conversations with the governor's office about an online lottery, although she does remember that this was a significant issue at the time.
"The documents indicate that she is lobbying the governor on behalf of Roger Ach," said her opponent, Mr. Hackett. "After doing their bidding, she takes a $1,000 donation. That is the culture of corruption - documented."
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds a decline in George W. Bush's job approval rating. After standing at 49% approval in the prior two CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls conducted this month, now just 44% of Americans say they approve of Bush, a new low mark for the president. The poll also shows a drop in Bush's favorable rating to 48%, which is the first time it has dropped below 50% since Gallup began tracking this opinion in 1999. Four in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, which is essentially unchanged from early July. The poll shows continued positive momentum for the Democratic Party in terms of national party identification and ratings of the two major political parties, both of which were evident before the drop in Bush approval occurred.
The July 25-28 Gallup Poll finds 44% of Americans approving and 51% disapproving of the job Bush is doing as president. Bush's prior low approval rating was 45%, which occurred once in March and once again in June of this year.
It looks like Republicans have learned a new trick in the media. If you give exclusive stories to journalists with the condition that no Democrats are to be allowed to comment on the story, journalists think that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Not only that, but they won't even bother to do any additional research for the story.
Paul Hackett may not win the race on Tuesday. Let's face it, this is an incredibly uphill battle. But, in the past week we've managed to alter the dynamics of the race, get national media attention for the candidate and if he wishes turned him into a rising political star, gotten the NRCC to spend a lot of money to "bury him," and perhaps altered the momentum in the Ohio political landscape.
There will be a lot of talk about all the money raised online, as there should be. But, let's put this in perspective. Only 6144 people have donated through Hackett's Act Blue site. An additional 486 have donated through the Eschaton community site. That's a relatively tiny percentage of what I imagine constitutes DFA's email list (which sent out the Hackett site) and what I guess is in the neighorhood of 1% of my daily unique pairs of eyeballs.
I don't write this to criticize people who haven't donated, or to lament the fact that it's "only" 486. I just write it to point out that in the scheme of things it really is a fairly small number of people who have made a difference. Just something to think about.
Maybe the Project for Excellence in Journalism or some other respectable outfit can answer the question: is this how a journalist is supposed to behave? Short excerpt here, but go read Arianna's good overview of the bizarre world of Judith Miller:
For starters, of course, we have her still unfolding involvement in the Plame leak. Earlier this month, Howard Kurtz reported that Miller and Libby spoke a few days before Novak outed Plame -- and I’m hearing that the Libby/Miller conversation occurred over breakfast in Washington. Did Valerie Plame come up -- and, if so, who brought her up? There is no question that Miller was angry at Joe Wilson… and continues to be. A social acquaintance of Miller told me that, once, when she spoke of Wilson, it was with “a passionate and heated disgust that went beyond the political and included an irrelevant bit of deeply personal innuendo about him, her mouth twisting in hatred.”
Turn on your answering machines. Record any attack robocalls you get about Hackett. These under the radar smear campaigns are almost impossible to document unless someone manages to record them.
What prompted the committee's entry into the Schmidt-Hackett race was a comment made by Hackett in a USA Today article published Thursday. Hackett, talking about his service as a marine in Iraq, is quoted as saying, "I've said I don't like the son-of-a-b--- that lives in the White House. But I'd put my life on the line for him."
Because Hackett said that, Forti said, "we decided to bury him."
If Schmidt is a farm girl I'm Lance Armstrong. I know exactly where the "farm" is, because my home was on the edge of it, and when I lived there 25 years ago it hadn't been farmed in a great many years. As I remember, Gus never farmed it (somebody should confirm that), but bought the land up cheap and, bit by bit, turned it into a subdivision. And from googling I found that Jean is still living in the same house (on Wards Corner Road, in Loveland), which then was a subdivision, not a farm, and I rather doubt it reverted back to farm status in the years since.
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I remember at one point the other twin, Jennifer, went on a crusade to stop a property tax increase that would have benefited the local public schools. The school buildings were shabby, and news stories claimed the kids were using 20-year-old textbooks. Both twins believed that public schools were inherently bad, and since anybody who was anybody sent their kids to Catholic schools they didn't see any point in funding them. Property taxes were remarkably low, and the increase would have been less than $200 a year average per household, but Jennifer was on a rampage that she would be ruined if she had to pay that tax.
GREENVILLE (AP) — A Baptist pastor has been accused of sexual exploitation and peeping after investigators found videotapes showing at least 10 women and girls at his church undressing and using the bathroom, a Pitt County sheriff's investigator said Wednesday.
Leon E. Harris, 54, is charged with six felony counts of secretly peeping and four felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. He was released Wednesday after posting bond of $30,000, said Lee Moore, Pitt County chief of investigations.
As a condition of his release, Harris cannot go on the premises of Rose Hill Free Will Baptist Church or have any contact with the people he allegedly videotaped, a court record stated.
The whiny babies at the RNC, who want people to believe that when Bush said "there's no higher calling than service" what he meant to add was "except when Democrats serve and then they're traitors unfit to serve in Congress."
Of monkeys flying out of my butt as I realize I actually agree with Tim Graham about something. Romenesko:
I'm more annoyed by Tom Rosenstiel's kvetching to Mark Jurkowitz about ideological media critics. "Frankly, [for] reporters who cover the news business, it makes our lives more complicated." What he's really trying to say is what Pat Mitchell of PBS has tried to say: liberal critics who say reporters are tools of the right are no better than conservative critics who say reporters are tools of the left. Both ruin attempts to view the news business as a lofty Mount Olympus of nonpartisanship and the public good. Both drain away the perceived authority of the news business in the public mind. But why should the media elite be the only powerful sector of society that goes uncriticized for their political actions? I can't imagine Rosenstiel complaining about how reporters make the lives of elected officials more "complicated."
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