So, This is Black History?: Tyra's Bikini & Oprah's School
By Debbie Schlussel

It's supposed to be Black History Month.

So why are the most prominent, influential Black Americans focusing on themselves instead of real Black contributions to America?

Take Tyra Banks. The Victoria's Secret lingerie model is now, unfortunately, a popular daytime talk show host and fancies herself an important Black leader. Her ratings seem to confirm that.

On her show, she marked what she considers the most important moment in American Black history: her 1997 star turn, donning a bikini as the first Black model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

Banks claimed that this served as an important inspiration for America's Black women and opened up important opportunities for them they never had before.

Yes, forget about Harriet Tubman. And Sojourner Truth, too. Who needs them, when the newly-minted greatest woman in American Black history is the hostess of America's Next Top Model, now casting for Season Nine? Freeing slaves? That's nothing compared to the woman who tells America to "Kiss my fat Black a**."

Then, there's Oprah Winfrey. She, too, has Tyra Banks disease. Or more likely, Tyra got Oprah disease.

How does Oprah celebrate Black History Month? She's celebrating it by showing America all about "me, me, me." With tonight's primetime TV special on ABC, Oprah celebrates her new school in South Africa bearing her name.

But the school has nothing to do with Black history and everything to do with Oprah's ever-growing ego and new brand of acceptable racism.

The school of 152 girls has only one White student, the token who's been bandied about for all the world to see. Since Oprah personally handpicked the students out of more than 3,500 applicants, that should tell you something about Oprah. And Oprah told us more: "I don't have to please the White people of America," she told E! Entertainment upon the opening of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

Click here to read the rest.

The perpetually p.o.'ed Al Sharpton is p.o.'ed once again.  Having recently traced his genealogy, the civil rights charlatan recently discovered, to his utter "shock," that one of his ancestors was a slave owned by an ancestor of the late South Carolina Republican Senator Strom Thurmond.

"It was probably the most shocking thing in my life," Sharpton said at a news conference Sunday, the same day the tabloid revealed the story... They found that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

(Notice how Sharpton had to immediately hold a news conference to let the whole world know about this "shocking" revelation.)

My message to Rev. Sharpton: Now that you have discovered that you share a historical link to the late Sen. Thurmond vis-à-vis slavery, are you now prepared to put cast down the perpetual black victimhood and perennial white racism that you have shoved down our throats for far too long, and start focusing on dealing with the meat-and-potatoes issues plaguing black Americans today - a century and a half after slavery was abolished? 

Modern-day issues that deserve immediate attention (and have nothing to do with slavery, mind you) include: the 70% black illegitimacy rate and concomitant pandemic of fatherlessness in the black community; the 50% black high school dropout rate; the fact that the average black high school graduate basically has an eighth-grade education; the anti-intellectual attitude that equates being academically conscientious with "acting white"; the thugged out gangsta culture that equates academic failure, criminality and "bling" with "keepin' it real."

Are you now prepared, Rev. Sharpton, to tackle the cancerous black American cultural mentality in which 50 Cent, Ludacris and your garden variety black ex-con are considered better role models than Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas?  Will you now decide to admonish troubled black youth to put down the gangsta rap CD and pick a math, history, and/or English book every now than then?  Are you now ready to chide irresponsible unwed baby mommas that their bad choices and sexually reckless behavior are destroying them and the children that they have brought into the world?

Or are you just going to continue holding news conferences, show up on The O'Reilly Factor and other news outlets, and shout from every roof top that "One of Strom Thurmond's ancestors owned one of my ancestors as a slave!  Weeeeeaaaaaaaaaa!!!"?

In his book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," Thomas Sowell uses (what else?) the facts of history to show that the institution of slavery was neither uniquely American nor Western.  Slavery, history shows and Sowell highlights, existed in every inhabited part of the world for centuries - long before the Brittish Empire or the first American colony was founded.  Slavery had nothing to do with race or skin color, but everything to do with people with power simply taking advantage of people without power.  As horrible as slavery was (and continues to be in a few isolated areas of the world), what is unique about its history, however, is that it was in the West, starting in Great Britain and spreading to the United States, where the seeds of abolition were initially planted.

At least Coleman Sharpton was eventually freed from slavery.  Free us from your public displays of perpetual grievance, Rev. Sharpton.  We've got bigger fish to fry.

High Court and Low Politics
by Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. However, many on the political left act as if they are entitled to their own facts -- and especially the "fact" that those who oppose their ideas are either intellectually or morally inferior.

In other words, you cannot oppose "diversity," gun control, global warming, or gay marriage unless there is something wrong with you. No hard evidence is necessary to support this conclusion. Indeed, no hard evidence can change this conviction.

No one has been denigrated and demonized by this mindset more than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The charge has been endlessly repeated that he is "not qualified" -- with no evidence being offered or asked for.

His outstanding academic record in college, his graduation from one of the top law schools in the country, his experience as an attorney both in government and in the corporate world, his years of heading a federal agency, and his service as a judge on the most influential federal circuit court in the country count for nothing, as far as the left is concerned.

Many, if not most, Supreme Court justices have not had as good a record of qualifications. But Clarence Thomas is considered "unqualified" because the left cannot accept his qualifications without a major shock to their whole vision of the world -- and of themselves.

A recent book on the Supreme Court in general has a chapter on Justice Thomas that devastates what has been said about him in the media. That book is "Supreme Conflict" by Jan Crawford Greenburg.

What will come as a shock to many who read this fact-filled book is that the picture of Justice Thomas as a blind follower of Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom he often votes, is completely different from the reality.

Notes made by Justice Harry Blackmun during discussions of issues among the justices make it clear that from day one Clarence Thomas staked out his own position on issues, even when all eight of his senior colleagues took the opposite position.

Often it was Justice Thomas whose arguments won over Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist -- and sometimes enough others for a majority.

That much of this information came from notes made during judicial conferences by the late Harry Blackmun, whose views were antithetical to those of Clarence Thomas, adds more weight to the conclusion that media depictions of Justice Thomas reflect what many in the media felt a need to believe, rather than any facts.

While many will find this the most devastating chapter in the book, "Supreme Conflict" is a major contribution to a general understanding of the way the Supreme Court works -- and the way politics works in selecting people to nominate to become justices.

Author Jan Crawford Greenburg understands both liberal and conservative arguments within and about the High Court, and tries to get the reader to understand those arguments, rather than leading the reader to favor one argument or the other.

Although she is a journalist, the scholarship that went into this book is of a higher caliber than many academic scholars achieve in writing about the law or about the Supreme Court.

"Supreme Conflict" also has a human dimension that offers valuable, even if depressing, insights into the internal politics of the Supreme Court and the politics of the process by which nominees to that court are selected and confirmed.

The mystery of how Justice Sandra Day O'Connor reached some of her incoherent opinions becomes easier to understand when her own words reveal what a petty and shallow person she was on the Supreme Court, with her eye firmly fixed on the little picture and oblivious to the momentous implications of her dubious decisions.

This book also throws light on the decisions of a succession of Republican presidents, who repeatedly nominated people to the Supreme Court whose votes as justices turned out to be the opposite of what these presidents expected.

These conservative Republican presidents, often with their eyes on the little picture as well, loaded the court with liberal justices. But Democratic presidents put only one conservative there in nearly half a century, Justice Byron White.

Might "Strengthening Black Families Month" Be Better Than Celebrating Black History?
By LaShawn Barber

A New Visions Commentary paper published February 2007 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Court NE #200, Washington, D.C. 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202/543-5975, E-Mail Project21@nationalcenter.org, Web http://www.project21.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited.

It's Black History Month again.
 
Time to break out the tributes to Martin Luther King, go downtown to listen to bad poetry and look at bad art about the struggles of black folk, belt out a chorus of "We Shall Overcome" and sit through endless "celebrations" and TV shows about the "African American experience."
 
If I never see another "special" about Ku Klux Klan cross burnings or black and white film footage of firehoses mowing down black people in the streets, it'll be too soon.
 
The man who laid the foundation for Black History Month was an educator and historian named Carter G. Woodson.  Noticing the absence of a history of black Americans in textbooks, Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926.  He believed the omission was intentional and set out to highlight the achievements of blacks in America.
 
Woodson chose the second week in February to acknowledge the birthdays of former slave Frederick Douglass and emancipator Abraham Lincoln.  Negro History Week gained mass appeal in the 1960s and was expanded into Black History Month in 1976.
 
Woodson accomplished great things despite living in an era of government-mandated racial discrimination and oppression.  What would he think of black America today, given the eradication of Jim Crow and the ever-widening landscape of opportunities available to blacks with the courage to seize them?
 
Let's speculate.
 
First, I believe Woodson would be appalled by the rate of black-on-black crime.  Black men kill other black men at disproportionate rates.  At 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks commit more than half the reported murders. White lynch mobs from back in the day have got nothing on modern day black thugs, who make sport out of preying on their own people.
 
Second, Woodson would shake his head in disbelief at the devastating collapse of the black family, caused by immorality, not white racism.  In 1963, more than 70 percent of black families were headed by married couples.  In 2005, 35 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared to 84 percent of Asian children, 76 percent of white children and 65 percent of Hispanic children.
 
Seventy percent of black boys in the criminal justice system come from single-parent homes. Fatherlessness is correlated with criminality, poverty and low academic achievement.  Fatherless children are more likely to beget fatherless children - and the cycle continues.
 
Third, the institutionalized and deeply ingrained system of government-mandated lowered standards for blacks would infuriate Woodson.  Born in 1875 during Reconstruction to a poor family with nine children, Woodson couldn't attend school regularly because he had to work to help support the family.
 
After years of working and going to school when he could, the son of former slaves received a B.A. in literature and became a teacher.  He studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris, received an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1908 and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1912 - all accomplished without race preferences.
 
Woodson would be ashamed, I'd imagine, to see blacks advocating race preferences and fighting to maintain the position that blacks cannot be expected to compete with people of other races.
 
He would be deeply disappointed to hear them tell the world that blacks living in the greatest country in the world are the weakest people in the world, unable to achieve anything without the help of a patronizingly paternal central government.
 
If black Americans insist on having their own race-based, month-long observance, I propose we change Black History Month to Strengthening Black Families Month.  We can reflect on the importance and necessity of strong families to the well-being of black children, the black community and the entire nation.
 
And please, no more renditions of "We Shall Overcome."

Mark Katherine Ham brings up a very good point in a recent blog entry.

In a column today meant to confirm that Barack Obama is indeed black, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson turns up this detail about an Obama stop in South Carolina. Talking to a largely black audience:

One of his biggest applause lines -- perhaps predictably, in a college town -- was a call for black Americans to "get over this anti-intellectualism we see in our community sometimes." And when he ended with a rousing "Yes, we can!" set piece, he exited the way every candidate wants to leave any room: with people on their feet, cheering for more.

Isn't that the same message Bill Cosby got reamed by other black leaders for delivering at an NAACP dinner in 2004?

"Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question," said hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records and the Phat Farm clothing line...

Now, no one will go after Obama for saying such things. In fact, the audience applauded him enthusiastically. A couple thoughts on why. First, Obama likely delivered a one-liner that folks could safely applaud without having to evaluate their communities, as Cosby made them do with his full-length rant. Cosby was punished because he meant what he said, and he wanted people to feel uncomfortable with it, because that's the way toward fixing the problems he listed. Obama likely just wanted an applause line. Cosby's remarks had teeth, and they were meant to.

Cosby was also punished for delivering his remarks in a very public fashion. It wasn't a conversation confined to the black community, but broadcast to the rest of the country. Obama's remarks, however, were given at a small, mostly black event, and just barely made the last line of one column.

And, finally-- and, I think there are elements of all three involved--could it be that black American leadership like Jesse Jackson and Russell Simmons, and all the others who claim to speak for black America, are out of synch with the constituency for which they claim to speak? Could it be that black Americans who really do want to rid the community of anti-intellectualism don't mind calling out their fellow African-Americans every once in a while?

Right on, MKH!  Let's face it: Obama is a politician, who, like all politicians, will say anything to get elected - and re-elected.  Cosby ins't trying to win public office (although, if I had my druthers, he would be running the NAACP instead of far-left bomb-thrower Julian Bond).  Cosby sees that an entire generation of black youth is on the verge of ruin because of bad parenting and all its negative after effects, and is doing something about it.  He didn't try to sugar-coat a message that is sorely needed, and one that the modern-day civil rights establishment is loathe to give.

Therefore, I can understand the different responses both men received for basically giving the same message.  As for me, Cosby will ALWAYS get my vote!

Are Dads Disposable?
by Jennifer Roack Morse, Ph.D
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

I hate to disagree with my friend Glenn Sacks, but I think he has missed the boat in his recent comparison of lesbian “social” mothers with divorced fathers. Mr. Sacks, a prominent fathers’ rights advocate, is correct that in both cases, family law courts diminish the claims of people who want to maintain a relationship with a child. But he is very much mistaken in equating the validity of the two types of claims. And fatherhood is at risk, no matter how the court resolves particular disputes between estranged lesbian partners.

In the Miller v. Jenkins custody dispute between members of a lesbian couple, the biological mother of the child is attempting to prevent her former partner from seeing her child. Mr. Sacks argues that the former lesbian partner corresponds to the dispossessed father in garden-variety custody cases. He correctly notes that many mothers attempt to sever ties between their children and their biological father. Since the estranged husband is a “former partner” just as the lesbian social mother is the “former partner,” Sacks seems to suggest that their claims are equally deserving of court protection.

But the lesbian “former partner” has no biological connection to the child whatsoever, while the divorced mother’s “former partner” is the father of the children. Biological fathers are strangely absent from lesbian custody cases. The only reason the lesbian partners could have a child together in the first place is that the rights of the father are deliberately obliterated. The law creates a fiction that anonymous sperm donors are “legal strangers” to their children.

The biological father makes a cameo appearance in the 2005 Washington case, In re the Parentage of L.B. The lesbian couple used the semen of a friend, rather than an anonymous sperm donor. When the couple broke up, the biological mother cut off contact between her child and her former partner. The mother formed a relationship with the biological father, and they ultimately married. The father’s name was added to the birth certificate.

The former partner successfully petitioned to obtain the status of “de facto parent.” This status gives her the same parental rights as the child’s biological parents. The court established a four-part test for determining whether a person warrants the status of "de facto parent."

The dissenting judge, James Johnson, objected to this arbitrary determination of parental status. A perfectly fit biological and legal mother has the right to determine whom her child associates with. The only legal question is who is the child’s mother? The state legislature had clearly established methods for determining maternity of a child, including adoption. According to Judge Johnson, the social mother could have become the adoptive second mother of the child, with the biological mother’s consent, during the time that their relationship was intact and functioning. The couple chose not to take the step of second party adoption. Therefore, the estranged partner meets none of the legal requirements of parenthood.

In the meantime, the biological father, currently married to the child’s mother, is nowhere considered in this dispute. Perhaps he started off being just a nice guy, trying to help out his friends. The woman who used to be his wife’s sex partner now has equal parenting rights with her. His paternal rights are subordinate to the rights of his wife and her former partner. The fact that these two women used to have sex with each other is a more relevant fact than his paternity. He has no rights that the family court need respect.

Any random person who once had a relationship with a biological parent can potentially present themselves as a “de facto parent.” Suppose a husband and wife divorce. The wife gets the kids. She has a live-in boyfriend for a few years. If he meets the four-part test established by this court, he could obtain de facto parent status. That former boyfriend could have equal parenting rights with the two biological parents. This is far too much discretion to allow the family courts.

This is why the comparison between former lesbian partners and former married parents is not the relevant comparison. The proper comparison is between biological parents and other people. Let us call them “non-parents.” Trying to shoe-horn the lesbian partner into the legal slot formerly occupied by the father can only work if the father is safely out of the way. The Washington case strips away that fiction because the father was known to all parties. The law treats him as a non-person because that is what the law surrounding anonymous sperm donors requires.

This is why I am surprised that fathers’ rights advocate Glenn Sacks has taken this bait. What the state does or doesn’t do for lesbian social mothers does not concern me nearly as much as what the state has done and continues to do to fathers. The special legal status which treats a father as a “legal stranger” to his child does not further the interests of men, even desperate college kids who sell their sperm for two hundred bucks.

Family courts have been treating dads as disposable for far too long. Let’s not give them another occasion to do so by making this inopportune comparison of the estranged lesbian partner with divorced fathers.

Anna Nicole Smithing
by Doug Giles
Saturday, February 17, 2007

Not every girl wants an education, a righteous vocation, respect from decent people, excellent health, a happy family and the enjoyment of a long and fulfilling life. With the advent of Anna Nicole Smith and her ilk, Girls Gone Wild and Internet Porn, it seems as if today’s ladies would rather be known for no panties, making out with their girlfriends at Coyote Ugly, snot slinging drunkenness and having their college orgies broadcast on YouTube. You go, girl. Show you’re right.

Get it right, you holier-than-thous: not all lassies want a well-thought-of life. So back off. Some girls are chomping at the bit to step into Anna Nicole’s bra and replace her as the next human freak show. And who are we to stop them?

Conservatives, and especially us Christians, should not judge people but rather help people fulfill their dreams—even if they are not our dreams. We must remember the 11th commandment of postmodernism, namely, “thou shalt not judge.” Yes, within the secular would-be world, it is forbidden to forbid. Put that on you’re refrigerator, you buckle-shoed killjoy.

So, instead of offering some legalistic and graceless judgmental blast towards those babes who are following (or wallowing) in Anna Nicole’s path, here instead are eight helpful tips to assist you ladies in Anna Nicole Smithing (ANS) your way through life. Are you ready? You are? Then let’s get busy!

1. You’ve gotta have a “To hell with education” mindset. For all you ANSers out there, let me help you. All you need, as a maximum, is an 8th grade edumication. That’s all. Barely finishing the 8th grade furnishes one with enough 411 to make retarded, irrevocable, life-demolishing decisions. So, just stop, drop and roll right there, girl. Anyway, everyone knows that 9th grade can be real yucky. With all that English blah, blah, blah . . . and the Algebra, crazy letter, math fraction whatever junk . . . and that PE stuff and the World Historizzle crap?!? Puh-leez. You don’t need all that, girlfriend. Hel-lo . . .

2. Wannabe ANSers, you must also blow off common sense and get married when you’re 17 to the first 16-year old fry cook you meet. This little brain fart will get you the heck away from the house and all those people who rain on your dream of being the center of the universe.

3. Next, to be an effective ANSer you’ve got to get an idol. I recommend choosing a deceased, drug abusing, divorced multiple times, lost soul known only for her looks, her promiscuity and her booze and dope dependency who died at a really young age as your god. Put her posters on your wall. Act like her. Have a plastic surgeon carve up your body to look like her. Then, go bonkers doing what you imagine she would do if she wouldn’t have OD’d on Nembutal. In addition, sell your soul down the river and fully employ your faculties to become recognized as an equal (or a better) ditz to the dead chick you worship. You must have a vision.

4. When earning minimum wage starts slapping you around, instead of getting an education, retooling and rethinking your multiple idiotic decisions, just start showing guys your boobies. You can begin wherever you are. You can make good money doing this. And we know life is all about money, don’t we? For instance, you can do this for cash in the break room at WalMart or next to the deep fryer at Krispy Fried Chicken (watch out for that hot grease, though!). Once you plow through decency and your conscience has decayed enough, I would then go public with your act. Look, your body is what God (if there is a God) gave you, so why shouldn’t you trade off of it? I can’t think of any reason why not to. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? Y’dam right.

5. When you, the ANSer, begin a life of stripping or some other form of pornography, the probability of becoming self-conscience about not having 36EEE puppies might start to wear on you. If you happen to be mammary challenged, you need to follow Anna Nicole Smith’s lead and jam huge silicone sacks into your chest. On second thought, forget the silicone and stuff your chest with 15lb Everlast medicine balls. Kawabunga! That’ll get you some Benjamins.

6. To move up the ANSing ladder you must give a lap dance to some billionaire Methuselah who looks like Gollum. I’m talkin’ about a very, very wealthy and nutty octogenarian. Not only that, but you’ve got to bump & grind him so well that he coughs up not only his dentures and the Similac snack he had that afternoon, but a wedding ring and half a billion dollars. C’mon girl. Snap that thong, snap that thong, get a diamond ring and bang that gong!

7. Another thing that’ll help you scoot on down the ANSing road is to turn your vagina and all other orifices into a revolving door. Yes, when you want something like a Louis Vuitton purse, a Toyota Camry, a Tiffany charm bracelet, a breast upgrade, lip injections, Methadone, the principle part in a D-grade lesbian sci-fi flick or a house in the Bahamas . . . well, the best way to get your way is to have sex with whomever has the denari (remember point 6!). Look, that’s easier than all that working/waiting nonsense, isn’t it?

8. If you, the ANSer, choose to procreate, just make sure you do not cease your selfish and hellish lifestyle and that your kids get swamped in your wake. First of all, if you want to have a child, instead of having your kid with one man that you love, I suggest having intercourse with several men in ages ranging from 20 to 70, from photographers to princes. Secondly, to make sure your mayhem has a multigenerational effect, drinking and doing drugs while pregnant is a good way to accomplish this end. Thirdly, as your child grows, let him see that you never abandoned your destructive habits. Fourthly, if your weirdness doesn’t seem to be adversely pummeling your child, then surround yourself with creepy, opportunistic lawyers, folks with better drugs, TV producers who’ll give you big money for staying wasted and “yes men” who’ll never tell you that you are a stupid, stupid woman.

Remember ladies, when you’re attempting to court catastrophe and you don’t know what to do, simply pause and ask yourself the question, “What would Anna Nicole Smith do?” Then follow suit (keeping the above list handy is helpful, too).

Look, Anna Nicole didn’t live long, but she looked like she was having fun—didn’t she? She was on TV a lot, which was pretty cool. Since we have evolved from the fairy tale stage of religious beliefs in all that personal accountability, salvation and damnation stuff, we can rest assured that Anna Nicole has simply passed (as you will also) from one party to the next. Therefore, proceed on, girlfriend, and keep on Anna Nicole Smithing.

When I first saw the headline, I couldn't believe it.  You just can't make this stuff up, folks.  Now, if a custodial father was caught and charged with such nonsense, feminists would be screaming bloody murder.  Let's see if this horrifically irresponsible mother and her knucklehead boyfriend will ultimately serve any jail time.

From the Boston Herald (February 15, 2007):

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A Woonsocket mother and her boyfriend are headed to trial on charges they had intercourse in front of the woman’s 9-year-old daughter as a way to teach the girl about sex.
    Rebecca Arnold, of Woonsocket, and her boyfriend, David Prata, have pleaded not guilty to felony child-neglect charges. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for next month.
    When questioned by an investigator from the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, Prata, 33, said he and Arnold, 36, had sex ”all the time” in front of the child and that ”we don’t believe in hiding anything.”
    He said the girl would often be on the bed watching as the couple had sex. Though they did not ask her to leave, they also did not force her to remain on the bed, Prata said.
    Asked why he thought a child that age should know about sexual acts, Prata replied, ”We wanted to prepare her so she would know how,” according to a report from the investigator, Vanessa E. Cisela.
    The girl, who is now 11, went to live with her biological father in North Adams, Mass., after spending the summer with her mother in Woonsocket.
    Her teacher called the Child Abuse Hotline in December 2004 to report that the girl said her mother and her boyfriend had sex in front of her.
    The child told a Massachusetts social services investigator that her mother and Prata never touched her or tried to include her in the sex.
    Woonsocket police arrested Prata and Arnold in February 2005. The couple is accused of ”providing an environment that is lewd and depraved in a manner that makes their home unfit for the child to live in,” according to court records.
    Prata and Arnold are free on bail pending a March 19 pretrial conference in Family Court. They each face one to three years in prison or a maximum $1,000 fine, or both.
    Their lawyers did not return phone calls from The Providence Journal.

Gee, what a guy that Gavin Newsom.  In a press conference yesterday, the mayor of the most liberal city in America, San Francisco, CA, admitted to having an affair with the wife if his re-election campaign manager.

"I want to make it clear that everything you've heard and read is true, and I am deeply sorry about that,'' Newsom said before a crowd of reporters. "I am deeply sorry, and I am accountable for what has occurred.''

Newsom's administration was rocked Wednesday by the resignation of Alex Tourk, 39, who served as Newsom's deputy chief of staff before becoming his campaign manager in September.

The Chronicle reported that Tourk had confronted Newsom after his wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, previously Newsom's appointments secretary, told him of the affair as part of a rehabilitation program she had been undergoing for substance abuse.

"I have hurt someone I care deeply about, Alex Tourk, and his friends and family, and that is something that I have to live with and something that I am deeply sorry for,'' Newsom said.

"I am also sorry that I have let the people of San Francisco down. They expect a lot of their mayor, and my personal lapse of judgment aside, I am committed to restoring their trust and confidence and will work very hard in the upcoming months to make sure that the business of running this city is framed appropriately.''

Newsom said he had met with and apologized to his staff, and he intended to turn his attention to "reconciling" what had occurred and "working aggressively to advance our agenda in this city.''

As SF Chronicle writer Charlie Goodyear writes, no one was more loyal to Newsom than Alex Tourk, who was well-like and respected by political allies and opponents alike, which undoubtedly makes Newsom's admission all the more painful.  "That's why many City Hall insiders viewed Newsom's affair with Tourk's wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, as the ultimate breach of trust."  No kidding.

SF Chronicle political writer Carla Marinucci writes that Mayor Newsom's indecent indiscretion could (don't laugh!) pose a serious obstacle to any aspirations he may have for higher public office.

With the startling admission -- and public apology -- regarding an affair with his campaign manager's wife, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set off on Thursday what one Democratic strategist described as a mushroom cloud over his promising political career.

Already, politicians and consultants are assessing the fallout: Has the talented Democratic rising star irrevocably damaged his chances for re-election -- and prospects for state or national office? And has he also wounded his party by handing Republicans juicy evidence of "San Francisco values" that are outside the mainstream?

Answer to both questions: You bet your backside it does!

Wow.  Here's a guy (Alex Tourk) who's one of Gavin Newom's most loyal political confidantes, who bends over backwards to make him look good, and even quits his job so that he could devote himself to helping Newsom get re-elected.  And how does the Mayor repay his most trusted right-hand man? By sleeping with the man's wife!

Classy.

It goes without saying that, alcohol and drug problems or not, Ruby Rippey-Tourk should be ashamed of herself.

Goodyear writes that Tourk resigned on Wednesday after a "stormy" conversation with Mayor Newsom, and that he and his wife, Ruby, who have a two-year-old son, are in seclusion. 

"Stormy" is probably putting it mildly.  If I were in Tourk's shoes, I wouldn't care if it were the President of the United States.  The only conversation would be between me and the police who would be bringing up attempted murder charges, while my former boss was being treated at the local hospital while in a choma for blunt force trauma over every square inch of his body.  As for the wife, I got two words for her:  Divorce court.

My heart goes out to Alex Tourk.