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By CHET BROKAW
The Associated Press
May 19. 2007 9:06AM
A former South Dakota House member was arrested yesterday on charges of rape and other sexual offenses against two teen girls.
Republican Ted A. Klaudt surrendered at the Corson County Sheriff's office in Pierre. He did not enter a plea during two court appearances, and bond was set at $100,000. He was taken to jail and declined to comment as he left the courtroom.
The accusers were aged 15 to 19 over the years the crimes are to have occurred. One girl was molested when she was a legislative page, authorities allege. The girls told law officers that Klaudt touched their genitals during what he called exams for a purported scheme to have them donate their eggs to make money, Attorney General Larry Long said.
Klaudt, 49, served in the House for eight years but lost a 2006 run for the state Senate.
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The GOP has run their entire campaign on that very platform for the past 13 years. When they decided to make themeselves the moral supremacists of the political arena, they also opened themeselves up for scrutiny on those grounds. That is not trolling....
The GOP has run their entire campaign on that very platform for the past 13 years. When they decided to make themeselves the moral supremacists of the political arena, they also opened themeselves up for scrutiny on those grounds. That is not trolling....
I think your thread title is fine and a good topic if presented right.
The family values platform has been a vague party philosophy that has certainly degenerated into campaign tactics. However, the repercussions are fairly severe: You break your own philosophy - you not only become scandalous but a hypocrite as well. Pretty much your political future is over.
From that point - I think we can agree on that summary.
If Republican "Family Values" had any pulse left in 2007 - Ann Coulter effectively pulled the plug when she called Edwards a "faggot". IMO that marked a sad state of GOP affairs to see these types of "conservatives" break down to that level.
There is no doubt that the "Party of family values" is currently fielding candidates with less than perfect pasts. Rudy G. and his tabloid divorce, McCain (in his much younger days) flirting with a Brazilian model, Thompson messing around with Lorrie Morgan, Romney's Mormon faith that used to permit polygamy, and Gingrich admitting to committing adultery.
However you have to be careful when you generalize republicans as child molesters - that can diminish any discussion yer trying to have as trolling.
However you have to be careful when you generalize republicans as child molesters - that can diminish any discussion yer trying to have as trolling.
I see it as the same problem that Catholic priests have. It's due to suppression. You suppress something (in this case, sexuality) and it manifests itself in different ways (in this case, child molestation/rape). It seems to happen disproportionately with Republicans and Catholic priests. Why? Maybe because they are some of the biggest moral supremacists. Maybe it's ultimately because they aren't as good at evading detection as Democrats are. Who knows. They ran on that moral supremacist platform and now they are open to scrutiny under their own guidelines....
I see it as the same problem that Catholic priests have. It's due to suppression. You suppress something (in this case, sexuality) and it manifests itself in different ways (in this case, child molestation/rape). It seems to happen disproportionately with Republicans and Catholic priests. Why? Maybe because they are some of the biggest moral supremacists. Maybe it's ultimately because they aren't as good at evading detection as Democrats are. Who knows. They ran on that moral supremacist platform and now they are open to scrutiny under their own guidelines....
Comparing Republicans to the sex scandals of Catholic priests? That's a heck of a stretch even for you. Republicans may agree in general on "family values" as a philosophy - but as politicians they all differ on the ways and means to promote it. Catholic Priests don't have that luxury to decide on the ways and means and certainly are not subject to the peoples vote.
Even when you applied the word "seems" - it still doesn't temper the fact that yer still guessing without any real data to back up your perception.
Like I said before - politicians that uses the term "family values" as campaign tactics without accepting it as part of their philosophy will get burned.
The landscape is littered with carcasses of politicians from both sides of the political spectrum - however Republicans hit the news stands harder because its they violated the purity of their own principles.
Last years page sex scandal involving the Florida republican pretty much muddied up one of the GOPs few remaining patches of that moral standard (family values and personal accountability) - that knee jerked the Washington republicans into blaming some vast left-wing conspiracy.
For me personally - that showed the GOP was in a tailspin if their best response (instead of disciplining a congressmen) - was to cry "Foul" on the Democrats' side.
However, again we're back to the full circle of this thread - when you generalize comments of republicans as child molesters it deviates and even diminishes your claim to be "scrutinizing" these ex-politicians.
Giordano Trial On State Sex-Assault Charges To Start In July
May 18, 2007
Associated Press
WATERBURY, Conn. -- Former Waterbury Mayor Philip Giordano's trial on state child-sex charges could start as soon as July 2 if a plea deal is not reached before then.
Giordano, 44, was arrested in 2001 and convicted in 2003 on federal charges of using his position to violate the civil rights of two young girls by sexually abusing them. He paid a crack-addicted prostitute to bring her preteen daughter and niece to him for oral sex, according to testimony in the case.
Giordano, a former state representative and one-time rising star in Republican politics, is serving a 37-year sentence in the federal case.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided earlier this year not to hear his appeal. State prosecutors had agreed to delay prosecution of Giordano on dozens of separate state charges until those federal appeals were exhausted.
Prosecutors have said that while they are confident of their case, a plea deal would spare the two girls - who are now teenagers - from being forced to testify about their experiences.
Giordano's final pre-trial court appearance is May 31 and, barring a plea agreement, his trial is scheduled to begin July 2 in Waterbury Superior Court, the Republican-American of Waterbury reported in Friday's editions.
Giordano appeared briefly Thursday in court to fight a move by the Statewide Grievance Committee, which disciplines attorneys, to revoke his law license.
"I know the last six years my ethics and morals have come into question, severely," he said. "You're putting me behind the eight ball. I worked very hard to become a member of the bar."
He argued that he does not believe all of his federal appeals are exhausted and plans to dispute the conviction based on specific matters, such as arguing that his attorney at trial was ineffective or that his sentence is unfair.
In the end, Superior Court Judge Salvatore Agati ruled that Giordano's law license can remain suspended, pending the outcome of all of his appeals.
We already know the Democrats' oft-rehearsed concern for female victims of sexual harassment is mere lip service. Throughout the Clinton administration, the nation was treated to a consistent river of examples that belie their claimed concern.
Whether it was Paula, Monica, Kathleen, or one of the other multiple Jane Does; whether it was Hillary Clinton's attempt to get the U.N. Conference on Women to allow child prostitution and sex rights for girls as young as age 10; for the last eight years, all women were VOBs: Victims of Bill.
And in the tradition of Clinton's presidency, he ended with one last bang against women and children, his pardoning of ex-Congressman Mel Reynolds.
While outrage abounds regarding Jesse Jackson's illicit affair and lovechild and Bill Clinton's unconscionable pardons like that of billionaire fugitive and renounced U.S. citizen Marc Rich, Reynolds' pardon may be even more appalling.
Given the way the Democrats have treated Reynolds over the years, however, it's certainly not surprising. And it's the pardon that ties Jackson and Clinton together in scandal, yet again.
While he represented inner-city Chicago, Reynolds was a good friend of the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan. They were such close friends that Reynolds had no problem spouting some of Farrakhan's various anti-Semitic incantations against Jews while in office.
But all of this vicious hate couldn't help Reynolds when he helped himself to regular illegal sexual relations with a 16-year-old "campaign worker," Beverly T. Heard. A tape of an explicit June 6, 1994, phone conversation between Heard and Reynolds was exhibit number TR-1 in People v. Melvin Reynolds, a trial that ended in Reynolds' conviction. Reynolds was sentenced to several years in federal prison for this and fraud and corruption convictions; his wife and three children went on welfare in Boston.
A sampling of Reynolds' phone conversation rivals the lurid detail of Clinton's lewd behavior in the Starr Report. Various underwear choices and sex acts are graphically described by Reynolds to his youthful female target. This includes a planned threesome with a 15-year-old Catholic schoolgirl named Theresa. Awestruck with the prospect, Reynolds rhetorically asks, "Did I win the Lotto?" It's enough to make Reynolds' pardoner, Monica's boyfriend, blush.
And not only was Reynolds pardoned by Clinton, but he was hired by Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH to decrease the number of young blacks going to prison. Given its new employee -- teen "romance" king Reynolds -- it's ironic that Jackson founded PUSH to persuade minority students to avoid, among other things, teen-age pregnancy. Until Clinton's pardon, Reynolds, like any other convicted child molester, was required to register as a sex offender in each place he lived.
Contrast Jackson's and Clinton's nonchalant and -- worse -- forgiving attitude toward this convicted child rapist and sex offender to the behavior on the other side of the aisle toward his Republican counterpart. In 1989, conservative Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens of Ohio was caught on tape discussing his sexual relationship with an underage teen-ager. The sting, set-up by FOX's now defunct "A Current Affair," at a Columbus, Ohio, McDonald's, ended with Lukens' 1990 conviction for under-age sex, jail time, a mandatory AIDS test and sex-offender counseling.
But, even before charges were filed against Lukens by authorities, then-House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich, called for Lukens to resign and filed ethics charges against Lukens with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Even Republicans, like Rep. John Kasich -- who cut his political teeth as an aide to Lukens when he was an Ohio state senator -- called for Lukens' removal. House Republicans even funded and campaigned for a successful Republican primary opponent against Lukens, Rep. John Boehner. In Reynolds' case, just like Clinton's, House Democrats did nothing, insisting that this was a matter for the courts to decide.
Lukens resigned from the House in disgrace, served his jail time, got prostate cancer and is now broke. But, at the end of his presidency in 1992, President George Bush didn't even think of pardoning Lukens, nor did any conservative organization hire him in any capacity, unlike Jackson and PUSH have done for Reynolds.
But that's the difference between Democrats and Republicans, between conservatives and liberals. Sex offenders are persona non grata in the party of Lincoln. For Democrats, it's just imitation -- the sincerest form of flattery -- for the just-retired commander in chief. And just like Clinton, Reynolds never showed any form of remorse for what he did, whether it was to the girl he molested, or to Laurance Capriotti, whom Reynolds cheated, among others, out of $25,000 to earn his 1997 fraud and corruption convictions.
(Capriotti, himself, is now under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, the IRS and other agencies for the disappearance of $68 million from Independent Trust Corp., which acts as a custodian for investors' retirement, real estate and other cash accounts. The $25,000 Reynolds stole from Capriotti, likely stolen from his investors, was "loaned" by Capriotti to Reynolds in an effort to block legislation that would tighten regulation of title companies.)
When he learned of his pardon, the newly "religious" Reynolds told parishioners of Chicago's South Side Salem Baptist Church, where he is now community development director (in addition to his PUSH job), that it was G-d who arranged his last-minute pardon and jail-sentence commutation. No, contrary to Democratic Party belief, Bill Clinton isn't G-d. He just thinks he is.
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