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Title: Pagegate goes far beyond the House and the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee.
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Published: Oct 14, 2006
Author: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Post Date: 2006-10-14 21:46:05 by robin
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October 13/14/15, 2006 -- LATE EDITION -- WMR's intrepid sources in Florida report on some details about GOP gubernatorial candidate and current Attorney General Charlie Crist, or should we say Charlie Christodoulos. Crist's father, Charlie, Sr., legally shortened the family's name in 1949, according to court records in Pinellas County, Florida. The elder Crist's father emigrated from Cyprus to the United States in 1912. We have also discovered a bit more about Crist's personal details, much of which have been obscured because of Crist's status as a "law enforcement officer." Under post-Patriot Act laws, personal details on law enforcement officers are blocked by special statutes. WMR received the following article today from George Maurer, a Key West Florida radio talk show host. This article contains information that every Florida voter should know before casting their ballot before or on November 7. "At the outset of this message, let me first get something off my chest. I’m a gay man who, never since I realized same more than 30 years ago, has ever denied same, and who served 30 years in the Army/Army Reserve. About Florida congressperson Mark Foley, I’ve found these past few days particularly troubling, especially so as I’m a progressive Democrat and very troubled about the HYPOCRISY of many of our Republican opposition. One should note that, while Education Commissioner in 2001, Crist was reported as condemning a play with a gay theme that 'offended Christians' (see May, 2001 newsletter, www.transfamily.org). The Florida GOP cover-up arising from "Pagegate" continues. Florida independent gubernatorial candidate Max Linn has been vocal about Crist's closeted gay lifestyle. We received this release from the Linn campaign this afternoon: "Max Linn rented a plane today, and had to land it on the highway with NO ENGINE...,John says to say he crash landed the plane...it is hitting the news now....to think we had to push it as traffice is backed up in the busiest corridor of Fla! Max is ok...here are the "talking points" we have created to call the newsrooms. I wanted to write you first,,,John says it will be put out all over the Internet by you. Hope to meet you someday,,,,always intrigued by intel officers. Especially after listening to Kay Griggs! WMR has also learned that Crist's fraternity brother at Florida State was Brent Sembler, son of major Bush and Crist financial backer Mel Sembler. Sembler, who served as George W. Bush's ambassador to Italy and Daddy Bush's ambassador to Australia, was the brains behind the founding of SEED, Straight, Inc. and the Drug Free American Foundation (DFAF). Straight and SEED have been accused of abusing teens undergoing drug rehabilitation, including subjecting teens to brainwashing techniques. And what doctor served on the advisory board of SEED and approved of such techniques that subjected underage teens to brainwashing? None other than Dr. Charlie Crist, Sr., the father of the man who seeks to replace Jeb Bush and Governor of Florida. And why has Bernie McCabe, the State Attorney for Pinellas County, never brought charges against SEED, Straight, and DFAF for child abuse? It might have something to do with the fact that McCabe is a campaign contributor to Charlie Crist. It is clear that Crist's candidacy is an attempt to continue the Bush "banana republic" regime in Florida. And that spells big trouble for Democrats in the 2008 presidential election. After all, we should all remember what Jeb Bush and his hand-picked Secretary of State Katherine Harris pulled off in 2000. October 13/14/15, 2006 -- Pagegate. The sex scandal involving underage male congressional pages and ex-Rep. Mark Foley is reverberating in Florida's hotly-contested gubernatorial election between GOP Attorney General Charlie Crist and Democratic Rep. Jim Davis. WMR has received information from our Florida sources that Crist and Florida Governor Jeb Bush were well aware of Foley's "problems" in 2001 and possibly much earlier. In another sign that these concerns were passed by Tallahassee to the White House, the Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday that Foley complained in a Sept. 19, 2004 e-mail to Jeb Bush that the president was ignoring Foley during presidential post-hurricane visits to Florida. Mark Foley and Charlie Crist: Florida's GOP duo's "secrets" known to Jeb and Dubya. Foley wrote to Jeb Bush, ""I can't quite figure what I have done, but this is a continuing pattern of slights . . . Sorry to trouble you ... and I wouldn't if this wasn't so frequent . . . Have I done something to offend the White House? I am always getting the shaft." It was also revealed yesterday by The New Republic that Foley got the "shaft" more than once from the White House. After expressing a desire to retire from Congress and set up a lobbying firm on K Street, George W. Bush's chief adviser Karl Rove told Foley that if he did not run again for Congress, Rove would ensure that Foley's lobbying business failed. Rove's pressure on Foley occurred after the White House was aware of Foley's "problems." The revelation about Rove and Foley means that the Bush White House was part of the cover-up of Foley's possibly illegal conduct with the House pages -- and that is beyond the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee. Pagegate, like CIA Leakgate, points to the need for the restoration of the Independent Special Counsel statute. That should be a priority for the Democratic Congress. October 13/14/15 -- There is renewed attention on a controversial congressional junket Dennis Hastert led to Myanmar (Burma) in 1996. Hastert, then-Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, then-New York Rep. Bill Paxon, and Rep. Deborah Pryce visited a UNOCAL pipeline in Myanmar as guests of the Myanmar government. Myanmar was then governed and continues to be governed by a ruthless military dictatorship. The trip by Hastert and his GOP colleagues was funded by the Asia-Pacific Exchange Foundation, an entity partly funded by UNOCAL. The oil company also contributed to Hastert's political campaign. Hastert met with Burma's most hard-line generals but not with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Hastert and his delegation was afforded all the trappings of a state visit by the Burmese junta, a regime whose intelligence service is known to use child prostitutes to entrap foreign diplomats and leaders. Hastert also visited Bangkok in January 2002. Paxon, Hastert's Myanmar traveling mate, resigned suddenly from his House seat on Feb. 25, 1998. He was succeeded by Tom Reynolds, who is now embroiled in the Pagegate scandal. After WMR was the first to report on the strange story of John Mark Karr, who was arrested on pedophilia charges by Thai authorities, falsely claimed to have killed Jon Benet Ramsey, and was whisked out of Thailand after the intervention of the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, State Department sources revealed to us that the U.S. embassies in Southeast Asia not only tolerate U.S. diplomats having sex with underage nationals of the host nations but act as "pimp services" for visiting and newly-transferred U.S. officials. One of the embassies involved is the U.S. Embassy in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar. WMR received information that Karr was pulled out of Thailand because he had information on the involvement of top U.S. government officials in the child prostitution trade in Thailand and any testimony by Karr in a Thai court could have proved "embarrassing" for the Bush administration. Pagegate goes far beyond the House and the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee. The situation at the US Embassy in Bangkok was so bad, a newly-arrived Deputy Chief of Mission wondered why barely legal-aged male staffers at one of the official State Department residences would line up at the foot of stairs before he went to bed. He later realized that they were waiting to see which one he would take to bed. One U.S. diplomat regularly traveled with two young boys he procured in Vientiane, Laos and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When he took the boys on an assignment to Bandar Seri Begawan, he was declared persona non grata by the Brunei government because homosexuality is illegal in the Muslim monarchy. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia is another posting that tolerates its diplomats having sex with underage male prostitutes. It is clear that Pagegate is just the tip of the iceberg. The scandal has tentacles that reach into the Senate, the Oval Office of the White House, the State Department, and U.S. embassies throughout Southeast Asia. Only a clean sweep of the GOP leadership in Congress will shed light on what could be a pedophilia scandal on the level of that experienced by the Catholic Church.
Starting at the top, we have AWOL George W. Bush who constantly gives TV speeches in front of and with a picture background of military audiences. AWOL George’s only military background was a 6-year obligation with the Texas Air National Guard which he used to get a deferment from going to Vietnam, and from which obligation he was Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for the last couple of years of his tour. This same hypocrite has taken us to mammoth, unjustified, unpaid, prolonged war, killing hundreds of thousands of people. In the last couple of days, he and his hypocritical colleagues have enacted a military detainee bill which broadly defines “enemy combatants” and makes any US citizen or resident subject to same, without right of habeas corpus review, review only by an “enemy combatant review tribunal”. They have voted to pay for and construct a 300-mile fence between the US-Mexico 3,000 mile border.
Now we have Mark Foley. As an adult, I’ve never fooled around with underage males, let alone those over whom I’ve had some degree of power.
Now, even the most staunch of Republicans must know about Florida congressperson Mark Foley. But what about Charlie Crist (Jr?), Florida’s Republican candidate for Governor?
The following appears in the online material of the Insurance Journal (www.insurancejournal.com/comments), as a 9/16/06 posting of Beverly S. Hill of Tallahassee, Florida:
'CHARLES CRIST is an ’IN THE CLOSET HOMOSEXUAL.’
The fact that he is GAY means nothing.
The fact that he is IN THE CLOSET and represents a party that hates GAYS means everything. This kind of hypocrisy is grotesque and cannot be tolerated. I hope we can all help Charlie ‘COME OUT’ before the election.'
Let’s take a look at Crist’s biography. This perpetually tan (at least from the neck up), handsome, 50-year old bachelor was born on June 24, 1956 in Altoona, PA.. Half of Greek origin, half Scots-Irish, his Greek dad, Charles Crist, Sr., M.D., changed the family name in 1949, from Christodoulos, dropping the 'h' and the 'doulos.'
The second oldest of 4 children and the only son, the family moved to Atlanta when young Charlie was 6 weeks old, and where his dad went to medical school. In 1960, then Dr. Crist got a job at Bayfront Medical Center and the family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. In 1966, Dr. Crist won election to the Pinellas County School Board.
From 1970-74, presumably, Charlie attended St. Petersburg High School where his dad was football team doctor, and where Crist was said to have played quarterback until 'his playing career was cut short by a knee injury his senior year.'
At the Crist home on Snell Isle, Charlie was said to play catch with the boy next door, Felix Fudge, who 'was four years younger.'
Apparently, in the fall of 1974, Charlie decided to go to Wake Forest University in North Carolina, because, despite his high school knee injury, he, according to an 8/27/06 St. Petersburg Times’ news article, 'hoped to extend his football career at a small university …. *** (B)ut he was a walk-on, a bench warmer who played in junior varsity games but never took a snap in a varsity contest.' Of course, Crist’s official state bio merely says he “attended Wake Forest University, where he played quarterback ….”
Now unlike AWOL George W. Bush, there’s not a word anywhere that I’ve seen about Charlie’s draft status in 1975 as the war was ending in Vietnam, and the draft as well, and no indication that he served a single day in the military. 'After his sophomore year at Wake Forest, a homesick Crist gave up on football and *** decided to transfer to Florida State University,' presumably in the fall of 1976. After graduating from FSU in June, 1978 (?), Crist apparently, in the fall of 1978, entered Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama.
In the summer of 1979, Crist, while attending law school in Alabama, entered his one and only brief marriage to a woman, Amanda Morrow. During the 1979 holiday season, Crist’s sister Catherine Kennedy said his 'head was down and his shoulders were slumped.' Crist was the one who filed for divorce only some 6 months after the marriage and it was dissolved on 2/15/80. 'Like Crist, Morrow did not marry again.' In the Miami Herald 8/24/06 commentary 'Naked Politics” (www.miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics), 'Bruce' posted 'What’s this about Charlie’s ex-wife, Amanda Morrow, being a lesbian? Does the press know that she has lived with her partner for years? Is this why Charlie’s marriage failed? Is this why Mr. Crist is for Civil Union for gays? Does this mean that their marriage was a sham?' Presumably, Crist graduated from the Alabama law school in June, 1981.
Crist’s reported chronology from 1981 until his 1992 election to the state senate is inexact at best. As far as I can glean it, he twice failed the bar exam before passing it on the third try.
While struggling with the bar exam, he apparently 'interned' with the State Attorney’s Office (in Pinellas?). (It helps to have a Republican medical doctor daddy.) Presumably in 1982, he got a 5-year job as ‘general counsel' for the St. Petersburg-based National Association of Professional Baseball Players, the 'controlling body' for minor-league baseball in the US, Canada, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Given time off for various months at end during the 5 years, he unsuccessfully ran for the state senate in 1986. Then, supposedly in 1987, he joined his brother-in-law’s, J. Emery Wood’s, one-man law firm.
In 1988, Connie Mack won US Senate election, and Crist worked for a year as Mack’s state director. He returned, for a couple of years apparently, to his brother-in-law’s law practice, and Charlie was then elected himself to the state senate in 1992 where he served for 4 years until 1996. In 1997, who knows what he did? In 1998, Crist ran unsuccessfully for US Senate against Bob Graham. In 1999, Jeb Bush appointed him Deputy Director for the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation and he then won election as Florida Education Commissioner where he served from January 2001 to January 2003. From January 2003 to date, Crist won election and has served as Florida’s Attorney General.
One might sarcastically suggest that a person with an undistinguished academic career, an almost non-existent private sector career, who’s tan, handsome and articulate and has a fairly rich Republican daddy, certainly deserves to be on the public dole as Florida’s Education Commissioner and Attorney General. Now, of course, Crist is the Republican nominee to be Florida Governor.
For the past year, as Crist’s quest to be governor developed, Charlie has supposedly been 'dating' Kathryn 'Katie' Pemble, executive vice-president of the Bank of St. Petersburg. Pemble is 41 years of age, divorced, and has a 7-year old daughter. As to possible marriage with Pemble, Crist says 'I haven’t thought about it.' In mid-September, 2006, 'millionaire Reform Party gubernatorial candidate Max Linn '… 'insist(ed) that Charlie Crist is gay” … 'on Orlando radio station WFLA-AM 540' … to talk show 'host Bud Hedlinger ….' Linn said 'he would ‘put my hand on a stack of Bibles’ to say Crist is gay.' His sexual preference is not to women ….’(See www.blogd.tampabay.com/buzz.)
As to Crist’s being gay, 'Linn claimed to know this because he and Crist were in the same 1985 class of Leadership St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce program. ‘We discussed it,’ Linn said. Linn … said if Crist were to win, he would be subject to extortion and blackmail. In the next breath, Linn said he would avoid mudslinging but that Crist’s personal life is a special case because it’s about integrity.” (See www.sptimes.com/2006/09/23).'
Max Linn of Treasure Island, FL , candidate for governor had to land his plane on I-4 Eastbound lanes after having engine trouble at approx. 1:45pm this afternoon. He took off from Lakeland Linder Regional Airport and was headed to Orlando Executive Airport, and then on to St. Augustine for a TV show.
Linn was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center, injuries are not life threatening.
Max was not flying his own plane, he was flying a rented plane that was leased to Bay Air out of St. Petersburg, FL. We believe the planes owner is from Deleware.
Max Linn holds a degree in Aviation for Louisiana Tech and has been a flight instructor. He was alone on the plane."
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#2. To: robin (#0)
Yep. I'm speechless after reading this.
#3. To: Fred Mertz (#2)
God's gonna get the Bush boys for making fun of him Capitol Hill Blue No one should be surprised that President George W. Bush and his senior aides privately ridiculed right-wing Christians and evangelicals that helped put them into office. Bush has shown repeatedly that he lacks respect for anything, be it the Constitution, freedoms that once were considered sacrosanct in the nation, the law or the truth. Now a White House insider who once ran the administration's "faith-based initiative" reveals that the whole "God is my copilot" shtick is just another callous, cynical political ploy to get votes and political support. Reports Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times News Service: The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social-service organizations, was told to host preelection events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates. The assertions by David Kuo, the former No. 2 official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republicans. Some conservatives lamented Thursday that the book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, also comes in the midst of the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley's computer messages to male Congressional pages, another threat to conservative turnout. The book is scheduled to hit stores Monday, but the White House responded to its assertions Thursday as excerpts began leaking out. In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services. White House strategists 'knew `the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness,'' Kuo writes, according to MSNBC, which obtained an advance copy. ``Sadly, the political affairs folks complained most often and most loudly about how boorish many politically involved Christians were . . . National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs.'' This doesn't surprise me. Republicans have long been hypocrites when it came to the religious right. Even Ronald Reagan, the darling of the right-wing, ridiculed the Christian conservatives. But Bush embraced the Bible thumpers with carefully-orchestrated public enthusiasm while he cursed like a sailor and ridiculed them behind closed doors. He called the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper," refers to political enemies as "f**king idiots" and lies without remorse to Congress, the American people. Kuo's book uncovers another sham by the Bush White House, another callous use of supporters for political gain and another lie from an administration whose record is built on deception. God's gonna get 'em for that. © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestIt is clear that Pagegate is just the tip of the iceberg.
Replies to Comment # 2. 
By DOUG THOMPSON
October 13, 2006 A new book by a former White House official says President Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as ''nuts'' and ''goofy'' while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 2.