Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Clearly their system of government is superior to ours


The transformation is complete. The pigs have really turned into humans. However, I am biased towards the white mares...


/Am I being too obscure with the references?
//Do you even care after seeing the picture?

Monday, March 10, 2008

WTF was the NY Governor Thinking??

Really. Why would Gollum New York Governor Elliot Spitzer cheat on his wife when (1) he has crafted an image of a "Mr. Clean," (2) in fact has prosecuted high profile prostitution rings as attorney general, (3) has put his career in jeopardy, and (4) when his wife is that hot?!?!


The Smoking Gun has the FBI affidavit and in it, it states that Spitzer ordered a high class escort for five grand, that she was white, "petite, very pretty brunette, 5 foot 5 inches, and 105 pounds." Seems like that is describing Spitzer's wife (minus the probable age difference of course). And to top it all off, Spitzer's wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, is a HLS alum. Jeez, he is married to a hot law school girl (rare) from HLS (rare) and what does he do? Get a 5k escort (not so rare). At least he has good tastes in women

Hmm, let me do a little more research.........OH SHIT. 

Silda Spitzer is the same age as my mom. Aww crap. What the hell is wrong with me? Um, beauty is timeless, yea. That's the ticket! 

Ok, on a more serious note, this is really stupid. I really feel bad for Silda to stand next to the man who cheated on her and hear him apologize for his infidelity. To be cheated on is bad enough, but to have the entire global media know and scrutinize your personal life must be terribly embarrassing. I wish her and her entire family the best. 

Friday, February 15, 2008

Condolences All Around


Wow, for some odd reason, while sitting and reading the daily rss feed from yahoo news, I suddenly realized I know a professor from Northern Illinois University. At that moment, my heart dropped like a bag of rocks. If he were on campus at the time, he couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards away from where the shooting took place - Cole Hall. I hope he emails me back soon. 


Praying for all those involved...

Update (3:00 PM): He did email me back and everything is ok on his end. He had just pulled out of the driveway from his home when the shooting took place. 

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Sympathy for her sorry state of affairs

Several news outlets have been reporting that Britney Spears penned a suicidal letter days before her standoff with police where she locked herself in her bathroom with her 1-year-old son. Spears' friend found the letter and said it "was very [sad]. It was filled with reasons why she shouldn't live, included lines from poems about death. She said in it she was sorry for never making her life what everyone else wanted. She mentioned how lonely and unfair life could be, how peaceful death seems and how your mind would finally be at ease...She went on about just wanting to just rest in peace." 


Frankly, I don't feel as if Britney should be an object of ridicule or disgust anymore. She needs help but it seems as if everyone around her is there only to cash in on her wealth. With everyone around her acting as parasites, I can see why she sees her life as being "lonely and unfair" and I can sympathize with her for feeling the way she does. 

It really does make one wonder about how callous people can be towards one another. Aside from the paparazzi, I really see no winners in this case. Britney is a mess, her children may very well end up growing up without their mother, even K-Fed would not win. He would most likely battle it out in court with Britney's estate or Britney's family for whatever is left if Britney is to commit suicide. Its a sad, pathetic situation all around. 

Saturday, January 6, 2007

When Private Lives Become Public Fodder

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Robert Steinbuch discovered his girlfriend had discussed intimate details about their sex life in her online diary, the Capitol Hill staffer didn’t just get mad. He got a lawyer.


Soon, though, the racy tidbits about the sex lives of the two Senate aides faded from the front pages and the gossip pages. Steinbuch accepted a teaching job in Arkansas, leaving Washington and Jessica Cutler’s “Washingtonienne” Web log behind.


While sex scandals turn over quickly in this city, lawsuits do not. Steinbuch’s case over the embarrassing, sexually charged blog appears headed for an embarrassing, sexually charged trial.


Lurid testimony about spanking, handcuffs and prostitution aside, the Washingtonienne case could help establish whether people who keep online diaries are obligated to protect the privacy of the people they interact with offline.


Cutler, a former aide to Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, says she created the blog in 2004 to keep a few friends up to date on her social life. Like a digital version of the sex-themed banter from a “Sex and the City” episode, Cutler described the thrill and tribulations of juggling sexual relationships with six men.


One of those men was Steinbuch, a counsel to DeWine on the Judiciary Committee. Cutler called him the “current favorite” and said he resembled George Clooney, liked spanking and disliked condoms.


“He’s very upfront about sex,” she wrote. “He likes talking dirty and stuff, and he told me that he likes submissive women.”


When Ana Marie Cox, then the editor of the popular gossip Web site Wonkette.com, discovered and linked to Cutler’s blog, the story spun out of control. Cutler was fired and Steinbuch says he was publicly humiliated. He went to court seeking more than $20 million in damages.


The case is embroiled in thorny pretrial issues, with each side demanding personal information from the other. Steinbuch wants to know how much money Cutler received from the man she called her “sugar daddy.” Cutler demanded Steinbuch’s student evaluations from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law School, where he teaches.


Steinbuch also recently added Cox as a defendant in the case, though he has not served her with court papers. A trial date has not been set, but Matthew Billips, Cutler’s attorney, said there are no settlement talks that might head off a trial.


“I have no idea what he wants,” Billips said. “He’s never said, ‘This is what I think should be done.”‘


Neither Steinbuch nor his attorney returned phone calls seeking comment. In court, attorney Jonathan Rosen said Steinbuch wants to restore his good name. Students in his legal ethics class all search the Internet and learn about the blog, Rosen said.


“It’s not funny and it’s damaging,” Rosen told a judge. “It’s horrible, absolutely horrible.”


To win, Steinbuch will have to prove that the details of their sexual relationship were private and publishing them was highly offensive. Billips argues that Cutler never intended to make the blog public but, in the information age, data is easily copied and distributed beyond its intended audience.


If the case goes to trial, its outcome will be important both to bloggers and to people who chronicle their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he may teach the Washingtonienne case this spring during his class at Georgetown Law School.


“Anybody who wants to reveal their own private life has a right to do that. It’s a different question when you reveal someone else’s private life,” he said, adding that simply calling something a diary doesn’t make it one. “It’s not sitting in a nice, leather-bound book under a pillow. It’s online where a million people can find it.”


Rotenberg asked, what if Cutler had secretly videotaped the encounters and sold the videos without Steinbuch’s consent? There has to be a line somewhere, he said.


Since being fired, Cutler moved back to New York, wrote a novel based on the scandal, posed nude for Playboy and started a new Web site, where she solicits donations “for slutty clothes and drugs.”


She wouldn’t discuss the case but said she’s amazed by what has happened.


“The fact that anyone was interested in the first place was a surprise,” she said. “The fact that there was a lawsuit in the first place was a surprise. That it’s still going on is a surprise.”


U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman was surprised, too.


“I don’t know why we’re here in federal court to begin with,” Friedman told attorneys for both sides in April. “I don’t know why this guy thought it was smart to file a lawsuit and lay out all of his private, intimate details.”


In that sense, the Washingtonienne lawsuit has become a study into when to make a federal case out of something and when to just let it go away. It’s a question lawyers wrestle with all the time.


Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Clinton who now advises companies during times of crisis, tells clients to decide whether they want justice or simply to set the record straight and get a message across.


“If you’re looking for justice, the court system is the only thing you have,” Davis said. “If you’re looking to get the full story, good and bad, into one coherent narrative, the court system is perhaps the worst possible forum.”


Courtesy of CNN


It would be interesting to see how this shakes up, especially considering her subsequent behavior. For some reason, this reminds me of that Dontdatehimgirl website and the subsequent lawsuit. What happened to that anyway? Did they settle?