It's a lot more than that in his case. He shamelessly exploited his first wife's cancer on the campaign trail and then served her with divorce papers while she was hospitalized. After flying the coop, he provided her and their daughters with such a meager level of support they required assistance from their church. Then he cheated on his second wife with number three. He's a thoroughly sleazy individual.

Sidestep.

I stopped reading at "remains a center-right nation." Shame on you, Salon.

It doesn't help. And denial is a river in Egypt. This is NOT a "center right country", and the right has no exclusionary claim to love of country and hard work, blah, blah, blah! Exactly how many in your family are currently serving in Afghanistan or Iraq or in any of the other Godforsaken wars that Bush/Cheny whipped up for our entertainment? Hmm? I have three. Little old Democrat me.

Keep on deluding yourself. Please. Make it easier for those who post here and see if you can feel the contempt washing up around you.

is worthless. Every cent that you have paid this person (if it is aactual person) has been a waste.

The bland, well-worn talking points that he mindlessly regurgitates in lieu of actual, thoughtful answers have NEVER enlightened or informed in any way, shape or form. Why this wimp feels the need to hide his identity is beyond me.

Why is it that people who want to tell us how to live our sex lives are people we wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?

With the statement "center-right values, like family, hard work and honesty", this author is officially ridiculous. This column promised to be a thoughtful dialogue, but when he claims that conservatives alone think family, hard work, and honesty are important, then we just can't have a conversation. That's just insulting.

Who says family, honesty and hard work are "conservative," values. They aren't "conservative," values?

Conservative values are mean spiritedness, perpetual outrage, pomposity, cruelty and authoritarianism. And their holier than thou notions that they're somehow more respectable than the rest of us is bullshit.

Take a look at this post Wingnut. The first 50% was just boilerplate. The rest of your defense was simply saying "the other side does it so we all do it".

Let's look at the other side of this equation that you "forgot". Remeber Clinton? He was impeached for lieing to a grand jury about sex. Yes impeached. Hillory, one of you guys' favorite punching bags, was publicly humilliated. Then for fun my hero from Hustler, Larry Flint, put up a reward for prositutes and the like who were willing to talk.

Watch the politicians scurry, even the bastards from the religious right. Bam, they were caught and they knew thay were had. Good ol' Larry caught a couple of scalps that day. It was fun to watch the rank hypocrisy in action. At the tome Newtie boy was speaking during the day and "banging" a mistress at night.

And people wonder why politics isn't for everybody. Few would have the stones to do that. I sure couldn't.

But Bushie boy. Let's look at his crimes against humanity and against our Constitution he SWORE to uphold.

1) He waretapped us ...

2) He "forgot" habious corpus

3) He worked on destrying our scientific community because they disagreed with him on global warming

4) He destroyed the Department of Justice so they would further his political agenda.

5) He tortured people using techniques outlined in Book one of Gulag Archapelligo by the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzehizsyn as some of the best techniques used on him.

For this he and his ilk will ... walk.

Wow, you live in a proud country. And all you can talk about is the high school sh*t of who in boinking who. I repeat, take a look at your essay again. And this is something you WANT to talk about because it is one of your "stonger" topics.

Where do you go from here?

A better question would be "why is the Dick Cheney's party so hypocrtical about sex?

... but it will do no good, since this column seems to be designed only to reenforce what bad notions we already have of conservatives. [Though that's an optimistic thought, admittedly.]

"Ensign and Vitter, in particular, are thought of as much more traditional Republicans than social conservatives."

Ensign was one of the ones calling for Clintons head back in 1998. So were Craig and Newt. These people were willing to overthrow the country over a blowjob but we're supposed to look the other way when they do the exact same thing (or in the case of Newt and Vitter, worse)? Am I sensing a but of nepotism here? I am glad to hear that many in your camp wouldn't vote for some of these guys for this but I doubt Newt is one of them. This guy was the face of conservatism all through the nineties and it wasn't like this stuff wasn't known then. It seems to me the conservative movement relies on double standards. If a democrat cheats on his wife, he has to go and can never appologize enough. If a republican does it, Rush and co. will most likley make excuses for him and attack the accuser and the party faithful who called for Clinton's impeachment look the other way. This, more then anything else, is why our side doesn't take the culture war seriously. Not that there aren't plenty of other reasons not to.

Conservatives are notorious for their short term memories. They said Saddam was dangerous and had WMDs. But who was his ally in the eightes? Who supplied him with all that gas he killed the Kurds with? This is the same thing. We will never hear the end of Clinton's infidility but the so-called "liberal" media won't even bring up Newt's history.

You ask why Ensign, Vitter, and Gingrich still have political careers after their sexual escapades...

.. but ignore Ted Kennedy, who cowardly left a girl to die?

The hypocrisy is all on the liberal side, methinks.