While "justice" -- and the feelings of a lot of posters here, apparently -- might be best served by, as one post put it, Frey's books being pulped and James Frey winding up destitute (and, one hopes, penitent), the more likely outcome will be...

he sells twice as many books, writes a third one on the horrors of being unmasked as a literary liar and cheat, and goes on to (as another poster suggested) a highly successful career in politics.

Step 1 seems to be happening already; an earlier poster noted his book jumped to #1 on Amazon AFTER the Smoking Gun charges were aired.

There's an excellent scene in a mostly-forgotten movie (which imho has never had the success it deserved, because of terrible marketing decisions) called "Leap of Faith" which is closely analogous: a fraudulent traveling revival-show "evangelist" and "faith-healer" (Steve Martin, doing an excellent job in a non-comedy) is revealed before his audience as a charlatan and fake by the local sheriff (Liam Neeson)... and goes on to huger audiences and greater grosses by reveling in the revelation (with the help of a "miracle" or two). Brilliant -- and I'd bet predictive.

So what would "justice" consist of here?

Tough for me to say. Based on what I've read so far, it seems it was the publishers that took what Frey presented to them as fiction (and c'mon now, the characters and experiences of of "Lilly" and "Leonard," among others, REALLY stretch the credulity, even more than Frey's own "experiences" do), and made it into memoir -- sorry, "memoir." Frey seems to have been caught up in complicity, but not to have created the fraud.

Who's been hurt? Well, I very much hear the plaints of that early critic (sorry, forgot the name -- referred to in an earlier post) who castigated Frey for exploiting as his own the very real tragedies of huge numbers of people who don't have the family resources to walk away as seemingly unscathed from devastation that, while not as cinematic perhaps, is clearly far more real than anything Frey is likely to have experienced. But that's a moral damage, not a material one.

If, on the other hand, there are any recovering addicts or alcoholics out there whose recoveries have been imperiled or set back because they thought they could do it on will and commitment alone -- "like Big Jim Frey did!" -- then Frey would have a great deal to answer for.

If anyone actually does care about the backstory on this JT LeRoy character, it's pretty entertaining, if you have nothing more pressing.

This is from a recent enough NYT not to be behind their paid firewall (registration is required -- or you could use bugmenot.com to get passcodes... not that I am in any way suggesting or endorsing any form of deceitful behavior on-line):

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/books/09book.html

The Times story in turn references a more detailed, more complete first-person account that appeared in New York Magazine; that's here:

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/

...that only international conversations are being intercepted? Because Bush said so? Since we know Bush and his minions have lied bout everything else, why would they stop with this?

Wouldn't a more likely presumption be that they are, in fact, surveilling intra-national as well as international communications? And, for that matter, that they have also targeted journalists and/or domestic opposition?

Especially given that it is already a published fact that the Defense Dept's intelligence arms have spied upon domestic political and even environmental groups even after it has been demonstrated that they are not in violation of the law, nor a threat to the nation. Not to mention that it is also a published fact that the HSA has already been misused for domestic political ends (that would be tracking the errant Texas Democratic state legislators when they went missing to try to deny a quorum for DeLay's gerrymandering of the state). And these are only the abuses that we KNOW of so far; a reasonable inference would be that there is far more of which we do not yet know, out there waiting to be found, or to be whistleblown.

And if some NSA or other spook is reading this... bite me. It's my country too, twerp. In fact, given that I understand and support the Constitution as it's written, and the current administration clearly does not, it's arguably MORE my country than theirs.

Ms. Hester and Ms. Andree don't get some male friend to marry Ms. Hester, and then either give the dollar value of the pension fund to Ms. Andree, or, if the tax consequences of that are too onerous, just have him let Ms. Andree live in the house as a permanent guest, rent-free, while he lives wherever he lived before?

That not only gets Ms. Hester and Ms. Andree the financial justice they seek, it has the added benefit of showing the county board's "respect" for "sanctity of marriage" as the utter hypocritical sham that it is...

Just imagine them trying to claim in the inevitable court case that the marriage wasn't "real"... because, of course, of the obviously real relationship between Hester and Andree. For Hester and Andree, even if they lose, they win.

O, and "Tyler:" why in the world would you choose as a handle the name of a character with whom your apparent politics suggest you have nothing in common except being a jerk? And while we're troll-baiting here, isn't star65's $.02 overdue (no misogyny is complete w/o his take)?