The high-profile, last-minute vote to raise the nation's debt ceiling probably was the most scrutinized action in Congress this year.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) missed casting her vote by seconds.
Spokesman David Frey said Moore, of Milwaukee, intended to vote in favor of the compromise legislation worked out last weekend by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama.
The legislation took two votes to approve and voting was open for 15 minutes on each. After Moore cast her first vote, she returned to her office across the street from the Capitol, Frey said.
She left her office in what normally would be plenty of time to return to the Capitol and catch the end of the final vote, but hallways were clogged with extra media and security.
"Unfortunately, she arrived on the House floor just seconds too late," Frey said.
There is no excuse for this. None whatsoever.
Hundreds of members of the House had to deal with the same hallways clogged with extra media and security, but they all managed to cast their votes.
Moore was present to cast her first vote. She had to see that there was more congestion than usual, yet she went back to her office.
Frankly, that was not too bright at all. Moore completely misjudged the situation and, as a result, failed to vote on this hotly debated bill.
Count Vice President Biden among those excited to see Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at the U.S. Capitol yesterday.
Biden, who got advance notice from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that Giffords would show up, said the Arizona Democrat called him "Joe" when she saw him.
"I said, 'Now we're both members of the Cracked Head Club,'" Biden is quoted as saying in The Boston Globe.
Giffords was shot in the head Jan. 8 in a rampage during one of her constituent events in Tucson. Six people died.
The vice president has survived two craniotomies to remove brain aneurysms. His comment to Giffords yesterday was reported by The Washington Post, ABC News and others.
Pia Carusone, Giffords' chief of staff, has indicated that while the congresswoman is able to speak and walk, she remains a shadow of her former self.
...In an interview published Thursday in the Arizona Republic, Carusone said Giffords can express her basic wants and needs, but has difficulty stringing together sentences to verbalize more complex thoughts and feelings. Giffords, she said, relies on hand gestures and facial expressions.
"She is borrowing upon other ways of communicating. Her words are back more and more now, but she's still using facial expressions as a way to express. Pointing. Gesturing," Carusone said.
The description matches what experts expect from someone who has suffered a traumatic brain injury. Often, they can be easily disoriented, have trouble prioritizing, suffer from some memory loss and could have difficulty recognizing people. Some have difficulty doing several tasks at the same time.
Most cognitive recovery occurs in the first six months to a year after an injury, though it becomes less noticeable as time progresses. In the second year, progress sharply drops.
Carusone said if Giffords' recovery were to plateau now, "it would not be nearly the quality of life she had before."
That was on June 12, 2011, relatively recently.
"She remains a shadow of her former self."
"Giffords can express her basic wants and needs, but has difficulty stringing together sentences to verbalize more complex thoughts and feelings. Giffords, she said, relies on hand gestures and facial expressions."
Has Giffords improved dramatically since then?
I sincerely hope that's the case. I wish her a complete recovery. __________________
Tweets from Giffords, retweeted by the White House:
REP. KEVIN McCARTHY: The President, to me, has been somewhat... Look, you cannot be the leader of the Free World and sit on the sidelines and tweet and think you're going to get the job done.
On July 29, 2011, while speaking in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Paul Ryan exposes the ridiculousness of Harry Reid's plan to address the debt.
The House postponed a Thursday night vote on Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the federal borrowing limit after he failed to stem a revolt by conservative GOP members. The delay leaves the credit status of the U.S. government in jeopardy with five days remaining before it begins running out of money to pay all its bills.
The development came after a two-hour debate on the bill was abruptly ended earlier in the evening. Mr. Boehner, knowing that a rejection could undermine his speakership, then joined other House GOP leaders in trying to pressure party members to reconsider their opposition.
Those efforts fell short and it wasn't clear if the vote would be rescheduled. But the development appeared to hand the initiative for the moment to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who is pushing an alternative version of the debt bill.
House Republicans and Senate Democrats planned to meet Friday morning at 10 a.m. to plan strategy. Republicans will figure out whether, and how, they can move forward.
"I think what's going on now is a process of dialogue among legislators who are listening to one another and deciding how it's going to be possible for us to move forward within the democratic process," said Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.).
Mr. Pence acknowledged that "we're not there yet" in terms of votes for the Boehner plan, but "Our objectives remain the same."
Why is it acceptable for DEMOCRAT leader, House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer to use extremely violent imagery when referring to Republicans and their interaction with Obama?
Hoyer was on the despicable MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday. He used language that was not at all in line with the supposed "new tone" in Washington ushered in after the Tucson shootings.
STENY HOYER: Bob, I think you're right. I think it's unfortunate that politics is playing a role. I think we're playing Russian roulette, frankly, with the nation's credit worthiness. And unfortunately, all the chambers seem to be loaded in the House side. They want to shoot every bullet they can at the President. I think it's political in that sense, but it is much, much too dangerous to be playing politics with the credit worthiness of the United States, where for the first time in history we wouldn't be able to pay our bills.
I am hopeful, again, John Boehner has offered a number of proposals. Remember back when John Boehner offered a continuing resolution to keep the government open. He lost 59 of his members then on a deal that he made, not a Democratic - Republican agreement, on a deal that he made.
No one called Hoyer on his terrible choice of words.
It's incredibly irresponsible for Hoyer to speak of Republicans wanting to riddle Obama with bullets.
Saying Republicans "want to shoot every bullet they can at the president" is a startling way for Hoyer to make his point.
Where's the outrage now?
Crickets.
The Leftists apply a different standard to themselves.
Embattled U.S. Rep. David Wu will resign from the House of Representatives after being accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a fund-raiser's daughter, he announced Tuesday.
In a statement issued by his office, the seven-term Oregon Democrat said he would step down once the current standoff between Congress and the White House over raising the U.S. debt ceiling is resolved.
"I cannot care for my family the way I wish while serving in Congress and fighting these very serious allegations," Wu said. "The well-being of my children must come before anything else."
Wu is wobbly.
Yesterday, he didn't believe his resignation was necessary. The well-being of his children wasn't an issue when he insisted he would serve out the remainder of his term.
I suspect his colleagues forced Wu to leave, wanting to avoid a repeat of the DEMOCRAT Anthony Weiner sex scandal debacle.
In any event, Wu is out. He joins fellow disgraced DEMOCRAT Weiner in resigning from the House.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi Sunday called for an ethics panel investigation of Rep. David Wu following a published allegation that a young woman reported he'd engaged in "aggressive and unwanted sexual behavior."
The Oregon Democrat has been facing calls to resign, but he remained silent Sunday.
In a statement Sunday night, Pelosi asked the "Ethics Committee to initiate an investigation into the allegations against Congressman Wu."
...The Democratic leader says she will send a letter to leaders of the Republican-led House Monday formally asking for the probe.
...A Democrat who has challenged Wu in next year's primary, state Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, said Wu should see Pelosi's calls for an ethics investigation as a signal to step down immediately.
"An ethics investigation would result in a long drawn-out distraction and prolong the public pain" for the unidentified woman who has accused Wu, Avakian said through his spokesman, Jake Weigler. "For the sake of our community and this young woman and her family, as well as his own family, David Wu should do the right thing and step aside now."
Another Wu challenger in the Democratic primary, state Rep. Brat Witt, said an ethics investigation is needed so "we get to the bottom of the allegations and determine what the facts are."
Wu's only response so far has been a brief statement late Friday: "This is very serious, and I have absolutely no desire to bring unwanted publicity, attention or stress to a young woman and her family."
...Wu has won seven terms. In 2004, he won despite acknowledging a decades-old college incident in which he tried to force a former girlfriend to have sex. Voters said they disliked an opponent's attempt to use that against Wu.
In January this year, seven staffers resigned because of behavior that included sending a photo of himself in a tiger costume to a staff member and an angry public speech. Wu attributed those to a period of mental health challenges that began in 2008 as marital issues led to separation from his wife.
Pelosi really had no choice but to call for an ethics probe.
Her delay, claiming she didn't know what was going on with Wu, was somewhat of an embarrassment.
If Wu were a Republican, I think this story would be receiving dramatically more attention and he'd be forced to resign immediately.
Lawmakers and the White House had what nearly every party is describing as a "tough" and "testy" meeting on the debt ceiling Wednesday afternoon, culminating in a stormy exchange between President Barack Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
It was the fifth straight day of talks, but the first in which attendees, speaking on background, were willing to admit that steps were taken backwards. According to multiple sources, disagreements surfaced early, in the middle and at the end of the nearly two-hour talks. At issue was Cantor's repeated push to do a short-term resolution and Obama's insistence that he would not accept one.
"Eric, don't call my bluff. I'm going to the American people on this," the president said, according to both Cantor and another attendee. "This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems."
Obama needs to grow up.
He's not a dictator. He can't just dismiss a branch of the U.S. government and demand that he gets his way.
Obama is so pompous.
"This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems."
What's so arrogant is that Obama doesn't include himself in the bunch he accuses of being "more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems."
Clearly, Obama isn't interested in resolving real problems, and he doesn't know how to lead.
Moreover, he doesn't get that the American people think the worst about Washington is the uncontrolled spending and taxation that's destroying our future.
Someone needs to tell Obama that being president isn't easy. It requires dealing with issues in a mature, measured fashion.
It's more than golfing and romping around on Martha's Vineyard.
Maybe Obama should have tried holding his breath until he got his way.
Obama became "very agitated."
What an embarrassment!
He doesn't seem to understand that there are checks and balances on his power.
At a congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization in U.S. prisons, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said that investigators needed to analyze Christian militants in America because they too might try to “bring down the country.”
In an exchange with witness Patrick Dunleavy, the former deputy inspector of the criminal intelligence unit, New York Department of Correctional Services, Rep. Jackson Lee mentioned the case of a man who blew up an abortion clinic and proposed that this perhaps was an attempt to undermine U.S. law that allows a woman to procure an abortion.
Rep. Lee then said, “As we look to be informational, we should include an analysis of how Christian militants or others might bring down the country. We have to look broadly, do we not?”
Dunleavy answered: “I don’t know that Christian militants have foreign country backing or foreign country financing.”
Lee then said, “I don’t think that’s the issue. The issue is whether or not their intent is to undermine the laws of this nation. And I think it is clear that that is the case. So it’s not -- your distinction is not answering the question.”
Good grief.
Democrat Lee reveals herself to be clueless regarding radical Islam and the threat of terrorism.
Ginger Lee and her attorney, Gloria Allred, concluded a press conference a few minutes ago. The media were called to hear about Lee's relationship with DEMOCRAT Anthony Weiner.
It was a typical Allred event - not very newsworthy.
A former porn actress who said she exchanged emails and messages over Twitter with New York Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday that he asked her to lie about their online communications.
Ginger Lee said she and Weiner exchanged about 100 emails between March and June, beginning after Lee posted a supportive statement about the congressman on her blog. She said they mostly discussed politics, but he would often turn the conversation to sex.
"'I have wardrobe demands too. I need to highlight my package,'" Weiner wrote Lee, in an email read aloud at the news conference by Lee's attorney, Gloria Allred.
Weiner acknowledged last week that he had sent lewd photos and texts to women after a photo of his crotch was posted on Twitter. In an interview two weeks ago, he acknowledged that he had exchanged messages with Lee but didn't elaborate.
Lee said she did not send sexually suggestive messages to Weiner.
"Anytime that he would take our communications in a sexual direction, I did not reciprocate," she said.
Weiner sent Lee an email in early June after the photo of his crotch was sent out on his Twitter account, and "he asked me to lie" about their contact, she said.
Lee said she put out a three-sentence statement on the matter at his request. She did not elaborate but said she was coming forward now to tell the truth and to deny reports that she was in an online sexual relationship with him.
Lee and her attorney, Gloria Allred, repeated some of the information TMZ broke last week ... that Weiner sent her an email after the scandal broke, telling her how to lie about her relationship with him.
Allred read some of the emails Weiner sent Lee, including, "Alright, my package and I are not going to beg. We both see the harzard of going down the path of comparative sexiness."
Another read, "You aren't giving my package due credit." Allred says Lee was a supporter of Weiner's, particularly on the subjects of health care and planned parenthood.
Good grief.
DEMOCRAT Weiner needs to resign.
The longer this scandal lingers, the worse it is for the Democrats. ________________
While new Anthony Weiner "self-portraits" surfaced yesterday and got a lot of attention, they were eclipsed by the first photos of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords released by her aides since the Tuscon shooting.
This, most recent photo of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she was shot, was posted to her public Facebook page by her aides Sunday morning June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/PGiffords Campaign - P.K. Weis)
This, most recent photo of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she was shot, was posted to her public Facebook page by her aides. The woman in the background is her mother Gloria Giffords. The photo was taken May 17, 2011 at TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital, the day after the launch of Endeavour and the day before she had her cranioplasty. (AP/Giffords Campaign)
Giffords looks remarkably well.
It's amazing that she survived that horrific shooting.
It's encouraging to see her smiling, but as aides note, her recovery is far from complete.
Images of a smiling Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were posted Sunday on her Facebook page, two photos that show her with shorter, darker hair but few signs that she suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
The photos were taken May 17 outside the Houston rehabilitation facility where Giffords has been undergoing treatment since she was wounded five months ago at a meet-and-greet event with constituents. Six people died and a dozen others were hurt in the Jan. 8 attack in Tucson, Ariz.
Since then, access to the Arizona congresswoman has been tightly controlled. Until Sunday, no clear images had been released.
The only recent sign of Giffords came in late April, when grainy television footage showed her slowly ascending a flight of steps to a NASA plane that took her to Florida to watch her astronaut husband rocket into space. The image was so blurry that it was impossible to confirm it was Giffords until doctors did so at a news conference in mid-May.
Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin said staff members released the photos Sunday to help satisfy "intense interest in the congresswoman's appearance."
The timing coincides with plans to release Giffords from the hospital later this month or in early July. Her staff hopes the images will help curb unwanted photography when she begins visiting an outpatient clinic in a more public setting.
"What we wanted to avoid was a paparazzi-like frenzy," Karamargin said.
It was smart to release the photos. I'm sure there will still be a "paparazzi-like frenzy," but photographers won't be vying to get that first photo of her.
The professionally shot pictures were taken before Giffords underwent surgery to replace a piece of her skull that had been removed shortly after the shooting to allow her brain to swell. The images suggest the congresswoman is returning to her former appearance — though she still looks slightly different than before.
But the photos give little indication of Giffords' cognitive abilities — what, for example, her speech is like after being shot in the left side of the head, which controls communication. The images also provide no hints as to when, or if, she will be able to resume her job.
"There's nothing that unique about the outer presentation," said Jordan Grafman, director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Research Laboratory at the Kessler Foundation Research Center in West Orange, N.J., explaining that many brain injury patients look good within months of being hurt.
"But the image doesn't tell us the inner mental state or the brain itself, how it's functioning," said Grafman, who has not treated Giffords. "What's their social skills? Do they have a nuanced sense of humor? Can they participate in activities? All that is what's important."
Pia Carusone, Giffords' chief of staff, has indicated that while the congresswoman is able to speak and walk, she remains a shadow of her former self.
That's very disturbing - "she remains a shadow of her former self."
All along, the media kept choosing to report the "miraculous recovery" angle. If you're not familiar with traumatic brain injuries, you may have been misled by the irresponsible accounts.
Even now, with her release from the hospital coming soon, I don't think the media are placing enough emphasis on the fact that she still needs intensive therapy. She'll receive it on an outpatient basis. Leaving the hospital doesn't mean Giffords is all better.
...Of the two pictures, one is more clearly posed, that of a smiling Giffords looking directly at the camera. The left side of her head appears slightly distorted and swollen. A second photo shows Giffords in a more casual light — smiling while sitting alongside her mother, Gloria Giffords, with the hospital's greenery evident behind them.
The pictures were taken by Tucson photographer P.K. Weis.
Carusone told the Associated Press late Saturday that doctors and family were considering "many factors" while weighing when to release Giffords from the hospital. She did not elaborate.
"We're looking at before the end of the month. We're looking at early July," Carusone said. "We don't have a date."
In an interview published Thursday in the Arizona Republic, Carusone said Giffords can express her basic wants and needs, but has difficulty stringing together sentences to verbalize more complex thoughts and feelings. Giffords, she said, relies on hand gestures and facial expressions.
"She is borrowing upon other ways of communicating. Her words are back more and more now, but she's still using facial expressions as a way to express. Pointing. Gesturing," Carusone said.
...Most cognitive recovery occurs in the first six months to a year after an injury, though it becomes less noticeable as time progresses. In the second year, progress sharply drops.
Carusone said if Giffords' recovery were to plateau now, "it would not be nearly the quality of life she had before."
"All that we can hope for is that she won't plateau today and that she'll keep going and that when she does plateau, it will be at a place far away from here," she said.
Clearly, Giffords' aides aren't attempting to distort the reality of her condition. Nonetheless, I've seen media reports failing to tell the truth. They can be extremely deceptive.
That's a disservice to the public. Such reports do nothing to advance the general public's understanding of the consequences of brain injuries.
Although Giffords' chief of staff describes her current state as a "shadow of her former self," the value of her life hasn't changed at all. Whatever her present state and eventual level of recovery is, it doesn't change the fact that she deserves respect and should be treated with dignity.
Giffords' life most likely won't be the same as before, but her life is no less precious now than it was before the shooting.
I'm praying that Giffords continues to make progress and that she regains a quality of life as close as possible to what she once had.
TMZ has posted a new DEMOCRAT Anthony Weiner gallery.
Rep. Anthony Weiner took numerous photos of himself -- clothed and partially nude -- at the House Members Gym and sent them to at least one woman ... raising questions about whether he used Congressional resources in his online exploits.
TMZ obtained the pics Weiner took of himself using his Blackberry and a mirror. Congressional sources have confirmed with TMZ ... the backdrop is indeed the House Members Gym in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building.
The pics were taken on both the gym floor and in the locker room.
Using the House Gym as a backdrop for his perverted photo shoots is not OK.
Do you get the feeling that Weiner loves the way he looks?
It's time for DEMOCRAT Weiner to resign. Actually, his resignation is a week overdue.
I'm sure Dancing with the Stars would want him. I bet Weiner would like the costumes and strutting around.
Maybe Donald Trump will sign him up for the next season of Celebrity Apprentice.
Whatever the future holds for Weiner, it shouldn't include being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
See the latest Weiner photos, taken at the House Members' Gym here.
Before DEMOCRAT Anthony Weiner's painful press conference to make his admission that he was a liar and sent lewd photos of himself to women on the Internet, Andrew Breitbart was questioned by members of the press.
In a bizarre spectacle, Andrew Breitbart temporarily took over the press conference in New York that was supposed to feature Rep. Anthony Weiner Monday, declaring that everything he’s posted on his conservative Web site BigGovernment.com has proven to be true.
Weiner was supposed to come to the microphones at 4 p.m. but Breitbart commandeered the podium instead, criticizing the media’s coverage of the Weiner scandal and saying he had been “vindicated” even before the congressman spoke.
The strange collision of worlds at the Sheraton New York happened shortly before 4 p.m., after the blogger drifted into the third floor ballroom where Weiner had, just over an hour earlier, alerted reporters that he would address the mushrooming photo scandal.
Breitbart initially stood quietly, holding his iPad at the side of the over-airconditioned ballroom, at a hotel that political parties in the state typically use for events. He had just arrived from North Carolina, he said, to conduct a string of in-house network interviews about his latest postings - including a shirtless picture of a seated Weiner received by a woman in Texas.
He had heard about the press conference when his cell phone started buzzing, and strolled over from his hotel nearby. His phone rang, and he took the call. “Hey, I’m here right now, this is crazy,” he said to the caller.
Breitbart went unnoticed by the huge media throng until a POLITICO and New York Observer reporter approached him, and tweeted about it. Word spread that he was on the premises, and the cameramen quickly rushed over, surrounding him by a side door.
Weiner had yet to arrive.
“Andrew, would you go to the podium?” WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer, who just days earlier was threatened with arrest when she staked out Weiner’s congressional office in Washington, asked.
After a few requests, he agreed. Breitbart questioned whether Weiner was paying to rent the ballroom, and said it was perhaps not wrong to take the podium in that case. But he went up anyway.
Breitbart didn't take over DEMOCRAT Weiner's press conference.
Weiner wasn't at the podium. Members of the press requested that Breitbart answer some questions.
It's not as if he hijacked DEMOCRAT Weiner's moment in the spotlight.
The liberal media really seem to have problems with Breitbart. That's probably because he breaks stories they do their best to ignore. Of course, the Leftists can't stand him. They can't handle the truth being exposed by Breitbart.
I think the Leftist media are going to have to start doing their jobs rather than acting as propagandists or they'll continue to look like utter fools.
Thanks, Andrew Breitbart, for giving the American public the truth.
DEMOCRAT Weiner was NOT the victim of a hoax or a prank, as he claimed. His Facebook account and Twitter account and whatever were not hacked.
DEMOCRAT Weiner lied about it all.
Here's video of his news conference, via Breitbart:
DEMOCRAT WEINER has finally come clean. The married DEMOCRAT Weiner not only did send the infamous crotch shot to a 21-year-old woman. He says he's been involved with six women online.
DEMOCRAT Weiner had no choice but to admit the truth. One of the women, Meagan Broussard, 26, spilled the beans.
Andrew Breitbart, on Big Government, published the facts.
Breitbart revealed Broussard's identity to ABC News. She supplied that network "with photos, emails, Facebook message and phone call logs she says chronicle a sexually-charged electronic relationship."
Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York said today he has engaged in "several inappropriate" electronic relationships with six women over three years, and that he publicly lied about a photo of himself sent over Twitter to a college student in Seattle over a week ago.
"I take full responsibility for my actions," Weiner said. "The picture was of me, and I sent it."
The announcement came as ABC News prepared to release an interview with Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old single mother from Texas who provided dozens of photos, emails, Facebook messages and cell phone call logs that she says chronicle a sexually-charged electronic relationship with Weiner that rapidly-evolved for more than a month, starting on April 20, 2011.
ABC News reached out to Weiner earlier today for comment about his possible ties to Broussard, but he did not respond to requests for an interview. At a press conference later, Weiner confirmed Broussard was one of the women with whom he sexted.
Broussard's story had threatened to expose the secret online life of one of the House Democrats' most popular members, and a man many considered a leading candidate for mayor of New York City.
It also raised new questions about Weiner's explanation for how a photo of a man's groin area ended up on his public Twitter feed on May 27. Today the congressman said he accidentally sent the image to a woman, Gennette Cordova, who was following him on Twitter, as a joke.
"I just chuckled," Broussard, a nursing student, said of her reaction to Weiner's initial response to the Twitter incident. "It would be one thing if he came out and said, 'Hey, so what?' But now he's saying he got hacked?"
Broussard said she received the same photo of a man's crotch on May 18 in an email from a man who she then believed was Weiner.
...Broussard said she wanted to come forward now out of concerns for her own image as an aspiring nurse, and that of her 3-year-old daughter, should her identity be leaked online. More than a dozen photos sent by Broussard to anthonyweiner@aol.com and a second account she believed was Weiner's were obtained and licensed from her by ABC News.
"I have my own life, my own things where I'm from and I just wanted to go ahead with them. I thought I could just be private about it, but there's no reason for me to hide," she said. "I didn't do anything wrong. I don't know him. I'm just putting my story out there before anyone else tries to."
DEMOCRAT Weiner is a liar.
He addressed the media repeatedly about the photo and he lied repeatedly.
Because of the cover-up and the lies, I think DEMOCRAT Weiner should resign immediately.
Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York said today he has engaged in "several inappropriate" electronic relationships with six women over three years, and that he publicly lied about a photo of himself sent over Twitter to a college student in Seattle over a week ago.
"I take full responsibility for my actions," Weiner said. "The picture was of me, and I sent it."
DEMOCRAT Weiner is a liar.
He addressed the media repeatedly about the photo and he lied repeatedly.
Because of the cover-up and the lies, I think DEMOCRAT Weiner should resign immediately. ________________
Publicly silent, fellow Democrats privately seethed Thursday over the distraction and furor surrounding the lewd photo sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter account, even as he declared he was finished talking about it and wanted to move on.
Weiner's one-day, pun-laden media blitz a day earlier had only raised more questions about the embarrassing flap when he conceded he wasn't sure whether the waist-down photo of a man's bulging underpants was of him or not. His refusal to involve law enforcement because he said as a member of Congress he shouldn't get special treatment — instead turning the issue over to a private security company he hired — raised rather and answered questions.
...Though generally mum in public, Democrats privately fumed at the forced detour in their arguments about Medicare and spending, leaving the generally well-liked seven-term congressman from Brooklyn and Queens largely to fend for himself for a third day in a row. Most Republicans seemed content to let the controversy simmer.
A scene on the House floor Wednesday afternoon seemed to highlight the situation. As newly elected New York Rep. Kathy Hochul was sworn in — after an upset, special-election victory Democrats considered a sign of their ability to communicate their differences with Republicans on the future of Medicare — Weiner and the No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer were locked in a nearly 10 minute, animated conversation.
On Thursday, Weiner joined Democratic lawmakers at the White House where the caucus met with President Barack Obama. As they walked from buses on Pennsylvania Ave. Weiner's colleagues stonewalled when they were asked about their colleague.
"I will have nothing to say about that," said fellow New Yorker, Rep. Louise Slaughter. "I'm here to put people to work."
"We're not distracted by that," said Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J.
The House's top Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, earlier told ABC News that she was "a late-comer to the issue" — one that cable TV and the Capitol press corps have been fixated on for most of the week.
Still, Pelosi added, "I have confidence in Anthony Weiner that if an investigation is in order that will take place."
The scandal is not just going to go away.
Video:
A law enforcement investigation is in order. If a crime has been committed, as Weiner insists, it needs to be investigated.
The only reason there shouldn't be a law enforcement investigation would be if Weiner knows what would be discovered - that he's lying.
Whatever the truth may be, Weiner has shamed himself and the Democrat party by the way he has handled the matter.
On The Early Show Thursday, CBS news legal analyst Jack Ford, said the congressman may have a good reason for not involving authorities.
“It’s not against the law to lie to the media. It’s not against the law to lie to constituents. It is against the law to lie to law enforcement,” said Ford. “So if I’m a lawyer on a case like this, I’m going to be real careful before I let my client talk to law enforcement.”
The fact is Weiner has made a fool of himself. He's painted himself into a corner. He's imploding.
There's no graceful way for him to manage the scandal at this point. There's no way out.
