One of the women accusing Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety reportedly worked as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, a new report claims.

Deborah Wesson Gibson, who told The Washington Post that she briefly dated Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, founded the language interpreting company, Signs of Excellence, and has worked for a number of democratic campaigns, according to Alabama Local News.

The company’s Facebook page shows Gibson working for and posing with several Democrats at political rallies including 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Sen. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.


(more at link)

If you're wondering why republicans are now being more vocal about wanting Moore to drop out I see polling showing Moore actually losing in a deep red state. The Elvis did it to defense isn't cutting it with real people.

As Ted Kennedy's malignant brain tumor became public knowledge, opponents, friends, and pundits rushed to laud his accomplishments. Serving in the Senate since 1962, Ted Kennedy has been one of our most accomplished legislators. He has a big heart, works hard, and is extremely knowledgeable about both legislative content and procedure. Sometimes Kennedy (as when he vehemently opposed entering the war in Iraq) seems like the only American politician who can speak his mind freely. His efforts on behalf of those without privilege or power - as in the case of health care - are especially important and admirable.

Little has been said about his prior legal, marital, and ethical lapses, on the other hand. These are typical omissions in polite society. (I wonder if supporters feel that if they don't remind God of his lapses, Kennedy is more likely to get into Heaven.) However, as scientists of the mind, we at PT blogs are obligated to consider the entire range of human behavior. And the various Kennedys' sexual misdeeds are so notable that they raise - once again - the question of the relationship between power, recklessness, and sex. (See Why Politicians Get Laid More - the Low Road to the High Life, Sex Addicts Anonymous Meeting, Politicians' Division, and Edwards' confession shows us just how nutty and narcissistic he is.)

Here, in reverse order of importance, are the top seven Kennedy sex scandals:

7. Joe Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy and former Congressman, secretly had his 12-year marriage to Sheila Rauch annulled by the Vatican. Rauch only found out about the annulment years later, after Kennedy remarried. She wrote a very angry book about the experience, Shattered Faith, since the Church's decreeing that the marriage never existed left her twin sons in everlasting limbo. Rauch pointed out that only powerful people like the Kennedy's could unilaterally cancel 12 years of marriage. (This raises the question of whether the Church can gain entry to Heaven for powerful people who have sinned.)

6. One of the storied political couplings of the twentieth century was between Andrew Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy. The younger Cuomo was forced to withdraw his own bid for the governorship (although he is now the governor of New York) in 2002 when it was revealed that his wife, to whom he had been married 13 years and with whom he had three daughters, had been having a long-term affair with a married man. Kerry Kennedy's philandering shows that Kennedy disregard for marital niceties extends to the distaff side of the family as well.

5. An extremely unappetizing Kennedy scandal involved Joe's brother and campaign manager, Michael. Like his brother and sister, Michael was stably married with children when it was revealed he had been having an affair with a family babysitter, beginning when the girl was 14! This, of course, is a crime that would get a non-Kennedy registered as a sexual predator. For some reason (perhaps bribery and threats to her and her family), the girl refused to press charges, and Kennedy entered treatment for sex and alcohol addiction. Michael Kennedy had been keeping an extremely low profile when he died in an accident on a family skiing trip.

4. All of these scandals concerned third-generation Kennedy's. But the stories of sexual assaults, infidelity, and religious hypocrisy began with the family's patriarch, Joe Kennedy. In Swanson on Swanson, silent screen star Gloria Swanson revealed having an affair with Kennedy when, she claimed, he forced himself on her during his business trips to Hollywood when he left his saintly wife, Rose, at home in Massachusetts. (Swanson was most pissed off that, despite his legendary financial acumen, Joe lost a ton of her dough.) Other Kennedy family historians report that the elder Kennedy made advances on his sons' girlfriends!

3. Back to the younger Kennedy's, in 1991 Kennedy nephew William Smith was charged with rape while staying with uncle Teddy in the family's seaside estate in Palm Beach, FL. The woman claimed she met Smith at a night club at which he was accompanied by Ted Kennedy and his son, Patrick. Later, while ostensibly showing her around the estate, Smith began pursuing and pawing her as she tried to escape. Other women were found who described having similar experiences with the Kennedy nephew, but Smith was acquitted.

2. Both President Jack Kennedy - whose sexual escapades were legendary - and younger brother Bobby had closely contiguous sexual liaisons with Marilyn Monroe. Numerous conspiracy theories have been developed around the Kennedys' involvement in Monroe's death, which occurred in the aftermath of these affairs. At a minimum, the relationships were extremely damaging to Monroe's fragile mental health.

1. What could most interfere with Ted Kennedy's passage to Heaven (as it frustrated his aspirations to be president) was his involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Following a party with six young female campaign workers on the island of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy was giving Kopechne a ride back to her hotel when he drove off a bridge. Kopechne drowned in the car, and Kennedy left the scene to consult with Kennedy family advisers. In fact, he never reported the incident, which was discovered independently the next morning! Kennedy was charged only with leaving the scene of an accident.

Of course, you and I can wonder how our lives would have been derailed if we were involved in a situation like this (Kennedy was married). But the Kennedy's are not deterred by such experiences, as the subsequent actions of his nephews and niece indicate. Are there separate rules - both legal and psychological - for people like the Kennedy's?

G & WB can't even say a 30 yr old going after a 14 yr old is wrong. You are part of the problem imho

It's no surprise that g & yourself would make this about the other side. I always thought adultery was wrong. Moore is alleged to have gone into pedo territory though and because he's a republican in a deep red state he has a good chance of winning. You guys attack the people making the allegations, the media that reports it and even the republicans who are speaking up. You are the enablers

You are the enablers

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.

Late Wednesday, the Washington Post published accounts by two more women who claimed Moore accosted them in the late-1970s, when Moore was an assistant district attorney in his early 30s.



One of the women, Gena Richardson, told the Post that when she refused to give Moore her phone number, he called her high school to ask her out on a date. She eventually agreed to go out with Moore and said he ended the date by giving her a "forceful" kiss.

The other woman, then-22-year-old Becky Gray, said that Moore repeatedly asked her out and lingered near her in a way that made her uncomfortable. When she complained to her manager, she was told it was "not the first time he had a complaint about [Moore] hanging out at the mall."

Yeah, the guy is a pedo and has a good chance of winning in Alabama. That's your party these days. If you don't like the news you call it fake. Victims are liars. And it's always somebody else's fault. I don't think those are very good values or principles to be honest. This does remind me a bit of 2006 but instead of W you have the big fat orange turd just rutting in all the awfulness. Hope we can fix things after it all crashes

If it's TRUE I'll condemn it. But what I see is last minute allegations conveniently unleashed right before an election, where Republicans don't even have the option to launch a replacement candidate.

I'm open to the possibility that the allegations could be true, and that Moore's answers on the subject have at times been a bit awkward. But assuming he is innocent, could anyone have perfect recollection and can speak with absolute precision and confidence and not hum and haw a bit as to what happened about events from 38 years ago?

I still don't see the reason of prematurely calling for Roy Moore to drop out from Republicans, before any investigation has been done. In the cases of Ted Kennedy, Gerry Studds, Bill Clinton and many other Democrats, even when the facts were clearly known that far exceeded the allegations against Roy Moore, there were no calls from Democrats for these men to resign.
Double standard.

And the people of Alabama are NOT making the decision to stand by Roy Moore "because they support a pedophile just so Republicans can have another seat." They stand by Moore because they see the allegations as false, as a last-minute DNC/liberal trick to leverage Moore out of the election.
AGAIN: Roy Moore has been in public life for 38 years, and been through multiple elections and appointments. It is highly suspect that all of a sudden 5 women who don't even know each other suddenly ALL came forward with allegations, at the point most advantageous to Democrats in the election, when no Republican could even be selected to replace Moore even if he dropped out. I see (as do Alabama voters) the puppet strings of the DNC, and the DNC-auxiliary PR-wing liberal media, orchestrating all these women to come forward, at this precise time.

Moore's lawyers just had a press conference, detailing the inconsistencies in the allegations of Moore's female accusers. Details they said were easily verified as false, but that the liberal media --of course!-- just didn't.

• Moore's then-14-year-old accuser had behavioral problems at that time, to the point that her mother (in verified court documents) transferred custody to the girl's recently remarried father, and away from her mother.
• A waitress who worked in the restaurant where Moore allegedly hit on underage girls and was well known for doing so, said she worked in the restaurant in question for 3 years and never saw or heard of Moore there.
• The restaurant in question hired no girls younger than 16, disproving the allegation that Moore hit on girls there who were 14 and 15.
• The 14 year old girl alleges that she took phone calls from Moore in her bedroom. But in statements of the mother, the girl never had a phone in her room.

Other inconsistencies, but you get the gist of it. The contradictions are easily seen, but the media has no appetite for any facts that would clear Moore and help his election chances.

Trish Regan earlier today said that Moore can be criticized on his record and not upholding the Constitution, bending the rules to suit his own agenda, and that is verifiable fact that Moore could be more validly criticized on, rather than the less verifiable salacious teen sex allegations.

So in your view Trump isn't responsible for bragging about how his status allows him to commit sexual assault and all the women that came forward were somehow lying and part of a conspiracy to make him look bad? Again not surprised a republican pedo has a chance of winning these days.

Yep if it's a republican you don't believe the accusations, got that loud and clear. Trump threatened to sue any women that came forward and they still came forward.

One of the first lessons I learned as a young GOP political flack was this: Nothing is good or bad, except by comparison. Democrats hoping to beat Judge Roy Moore and pick up that Alabama senate seat are likely to re-learn that lesson one week from today.

The hard way.

On paper, Judge Roy Moore's campaign is a fiasco. He's been credibly accused of sexual misconduct with minors. Multiple accusers have laid out a pattern of sexual pressure on women over whom the former District Attorney had power. And his campaign has taken the unusual step of aggressively calling the alleged victims liars, political plotters, or both.

"Don't attack women who are possible victims of sexual assault" is one of those other things I learned as a campaign consultant. Add the daily media savaging of Moore's candidacy and the current conversation about sexual harassment and Democrats should be on the verge of victory, right?

Only they're not.

The latest RealClearPolitics polling average has Moore leading Democrat Doug Jones by an average of 2.6 percent, almost doubling his margin for most of November, when the news of alleged sexual misbehavior broke. More significant for Moore is that the most recent polls tend to give him the larger leads.

The latest CBS News poll reflects the broader trend: While the race is neck-and-neck among Alabama registered voters in general, "Moore leads 49 percent to 43 percent among the likely voters who are most apt to vote on Dec. 12," CBS reports. The poll also finds more than 80 percent of Republicans plan to vote for their party's candidate and "a higher number of Moore's backers call themselves definite voters than do Jones' backers"

As one Republican politico told me not long ago: "Moore's voters have Election Day circled in red on the kitchen calendar."

So, the candidate with the most baggage is also the one with the most passionate support. Sound familiar? If you were watching the Trump campaign last year, it should.

The interesting question is how Moore went from a candidate who appeared on the verge of dropping out of the race to next week's likely winner. Some pragmatic analysts point to the mechanics of the election—there simply wasn't enough time after the allegations surfaced for the GOP to replace Moore on the ballot—and that's certainly part of the story.

But more significant is that first lesson: comparisons. And the Moore campaign has benefitted from some very helpful ones in the past two weeks.



THE DOUG JONES MATCH-UP

For tough-on-crime southern conservatives, there's a lot to like about former prosecutor and Democratic candidate Doug Jones' record. As a U.S. attorney, he convicted Ku Klux Klan bombers and Olympic Park terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph. But after that, it's hard to find natural overlap between the red-state Alabama voters and Jones.

Jones is pro-abortion in a very anti-abortion state. Nearly 60 percent of Alabamans told CBS News they think abortion should be illegal. Jones also opposes the Trump border wall, another idea that's popular in deep-red Alabama.

"Who was an Obama delegate?" Judge Moore's wife, Kayla, likes to ask on the campaign trail. "Who is for full-term abortion? Who is for more gun restrictions? Who is for transgender bathrooms?"

It's not a winning comparison for Jones in Alabama.

If Democrats had nominated a more centrist, or even a pro-life candidate, this race might look different. But they didn't.



THE MOORE VS. FRANKEN/CONYERS MATCH-UP

It's not just Moore's campaign that's helping voters get over the character questions. Democrats have lent a hand as well. In the weeks since the disturbing allegations that Moore may have used physical force against women in 1980, and may even have had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl, a slew of allegations have arisen against both Democratic office-holders and liberal media figures.

Worse for Doug Jones, Democratic leadership has not handled the issues well. Sen. Al Franken offered a few confusing apologies but is back at work with little pressure to resign. The longest-serving man in Congress, Rep. John Conyers, was called an "icon" by Nancy Pelosi soon after allegations of sexual harassment were made public (she has since changed her position and called on Conyers to resign, which he did on Tuesday).


Compared to the behavior voters would like to be able to expect from elected officials, Judge Moore's actions seem all-but-unforgiveable. But compared to the current crop of scandals from across the partisan aisle, Moore is just another bad actor among many.

In addition, the confusing messages from Democrats on the broader issue of sexual harassment create a climate in which its easier for voters to justify support for a candidate like Moore. Perhaps the most astonishing number from the CBS News poll: 71 percent of Republicans claim they believe the allegations against Roy Moore are false -- an invention of Democrats, the media, or both. Based on the number of allegations and the thorough reporting, this may seem like a mind-bendingly high level of self-deception.

But in 1999, just after the impeachment and acquittal of President Bill Clinton, when knowledge of his bad behavior was at its peak, his job approval among Democrats hit 92 percent. This is the power of partisanship: If you can get your voters to compare you to your opponents based on party, they can often find a way to believe what they must to give you their support.



THE TRUMP MATCH-UP


Over the weekend, Donald Trump hit the highest "disapproval" number for a president ever recorded by Gallup: 62 percent. But apparently nobody told Alabama, where he's got a 57 percent approval rating among all voters and a staggering 96 percent approval among Republicans. Judge Moore has always been the "Trump" candidate in Alabama, even when Trump endorsed his opponent Luther Strange in the primary. Moore has the anti-establishment, shoot-from-the-hip Trump style and Alabama Republicans knew it.

President Trump has now publicly thrown his support behind Moore, even calling him from the White House on Monday to offer a "Go get 'em, Roy!"

It's true that Moore's lead is very small for a Republican in Alabama. It's true that Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by nearly 30 percent. So compared to other Republicans, Moore is struggling.

The problem for Democrats is that he isn't running against a Republican.

You may have noticed there's a huge movement of those sexually harassed coming forward against powerful people. When it's a republican politician apparently it's all lies and orchestrated. Get the pedo elected. It's fitting with Trump in office.

I think the RNC is just showing that if Clinton had an R behind his name he would have been just fine.

Trump's accusers were certainly not just from decades ago btw.

The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct

Note the dates WB.

ABC News reports Beverly Young Nelson will have a news conference later today. In this interview, she indicates that she added the date/location to the yearbook but maintains the signature is Roy Moore's.

How is Gloria Allred still a lawyer, again? Even if every other accuser is 100% truthful this stunt probably just helped put Moore over the top.

This looks supportive of Moore.

So you think you didn't post a bit of information that Moore was hoping to use to discredit his accusers?

So you think you didn't post a bit of information that Moore was hoping to use to discredit his accusers?

How is Gloria Allred still a lawyer, again? Even if every other accuser is 100% truthful this stunt probably just helped put Moore over the top.

We already know how you always feel about Dems and bias g. As I pointed out you really just seem to be willing judge the one side. You come off more neutral when it's a pedophile republican. Again how do you feel about the RNC supporting such a candidate? That I would think wouldn't be a hard question.

...You seem oblivious to the fact that your side is turning the United States into a "Deep State" authoritarian banana republic, where the party in power weaponizes the branches of government to smash their political opposition...

When that is all you want to discuss I think that constitutes support.

Obviously you don't do that on every thread. The Franken one for example where there was no pedophilia involved.

Three weeks after volunteering as Democratic Party tribute Hunger-Games-Style, Al Franken has finally relinquished his Senate seat. Operation: Moral High Ground, the Democrats’ transparent plan to claim victory in America’s #metoo moment, was a simple one.

Step One: Run Al Franken out of town. No ethics investigation. No consideration of Minnesota voters. No censure or lesser discipline. Just an aggressive Franken-ectomoy.

Step Two: Sit back and wait for alleged pedophile Roy Moore to win a Senate seat in Alabama’s special election.

Step Three: Make sure Franken’s exit shares a news cycle with Roy Moore’s entrance. It would have been the Holy Grail of partisan juxtaposition—the split-screen video image to end all split screen video images.


Step Four: Scream into the echo chamber that Republicans are the Roy Moore party and Democrats are the party of women.

But Roy Moore lost, and Operation: Moral High Ground turned out to be an Acme rocket that blew up Al Franken and left Senate Republicans Meep-Meeping as they ran down the road to tax reform. In the end, the Democratic Party sacrificed one of their most high profile Senators without gaining one square inch of moral high ground.

There should have been an ethics investigation. Unfortunately for Franken, there wasn’t time for any sort of fact-finding or due process; there was only time for politically expedient, angry mob justice.

Franken’s fellow Senate Democrat Joe Manchin said on Politico’s Off- Message Podcast that Franken got “railroaded by fellow Democrats” and that what happened to Franken was “the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen done to a human being.”

Franken was railroaded because he got hit with a perfect storm of political opportunism. Franken didn’t resign because he admitted to being guilty. In fact, he maintained his innocence all along saying, “Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently.” He didn’t resign the people of Minnesota wanted him to. A recent PPP poll showed that Minnesotans, by an 8 point margin, wanted him to stay— that’s almost his exact margin of victory in the 2014 election. Even if Minnesotans had wanted him ousted, the constitution of Minnesota allows for a recall.

Here are of few of the real reasons that Democrats saw fit to undo an election decided by Minnesota voters:

1. Because Roy Moore was winning in the polls

Democrats can’t seem to stop getting burned by the polls. While a couple polls looked good for Jones, the majority of the showed Moore winning the Alabama special election by 4 to 9 points. Democrats were banking on all those Alabama Republicans getting it wrong. If a majority of the polls had shown Jones winning comfortably, Franken would still be a Senator. But Moore was up, and the inevitable “Republicans hate women” narrative proved too tantalizing to resist.

2. Because Minnesota has a Democrat governor

Anyone believe the Democrats would have demanded Al Franken resign if it meant they’d lose a Senate vote? Anyone believe if a Republican governor was waiting in the wings to replace Al Franken with a Republican Senator that he’d be going anywhere? Of course not! Democrat Governor Mark Dayton is appointing Democrat Lt. Governor and former vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota Tina Smith to a one year term that will end in 2019.

This played a huge role in the cost/benefit analysis of ousting Franken. Without the security of knowing the seat would stay with the party, there’s no way Franken would have been forced out. Certainly not at a time when the Senate is nearly equally divided and the Senate Democrats are facing a 2018 electoral map that has Waterloo written all over it.

3. Because Kristen Gillibrand wants to be president

It wouldn’t surprise me to see Kristen Gillibrand win the nomination in 2020 because she’s absolutely ruthless. Hours after Franken was first accused of sexual misconduct by Leanne Tweeden, Gillibrand told The New York Times that Bill Clinton should have resigned. Phillipe Reines, a former Clinton aide called her out on twitter saying, “Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.” It’s no coincidence that Senator Gillibrand was later the first to call for Al Franken’s resignation. According to Politico, Gillibrand’s call was “quickly followed by more than two dozen others. The first batch of resignation calls came from female senators, followed by a slew of male Democrats and eventually the majority of the 48-member caucus.”

Not only did Gillibrand seize the opportunity to be a national leader of the #metoo movement by calling for Franken’s resignation, she also took down someone who may have proven a major competitor for the Democratic nomination.

To the ultra-casual or ultra-partisan observer, it may look like the Democrats took a stand against sexual misconduct, but that’s not what happened. What really happened was they vetoed a fair election and destroyed the career of one of their own Senators in a desperate attempt to win a political narrative.

I won’t miss Al Franken and his self-righteous grandstanding, and frankly I don’t believe his denials. But he deserved the chance to prove me and everyone else wrong. His ouster was not justice. Instead, he and the Minnesotans he represented were pawns sacrificed in a Machiavellian political maneuver.

________________________________

Eddie Zipperer is a political science professor at Georgia Military College.

Hours after Franken was first accused of sexual misconduct by Leanne Tweeden, Gillibrand told The New York Times that Bill Clinton should have resigned. Phillipe Reines, a former Clinton aide called her out on twitter saying, “Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.” It’s no coincidence that Senator Gillibrand was later the first to call for Al Franken’s resignation.

In your mind is Hannity covering things in a nonpartisan unbiased manner?

If we accept the premise that most news organizations are biased in One Direction or another one might argue that people should watch news from the other perspective.

For example my Amazon echo flash briefing plays five minutes of FOXNews and then five minutes of NPR.

Democratic operatives, backed by a liberal billionaire and facilitated by a former Obama official, created thousands of fake Russian accounts to give an impression the Russian government was supporting Alabama Republican Roy Moore in last year’s election against now-Sen. Doug Jones.

The secret project, which had a budget of just $100,000 and was carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was revealed after the New York Times obtained an internal report detailing the efforts.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the internal report said. It also took credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” after experimenting “with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.”


Jones said Thursday he is "outraged" over the report and wants a federal investigation over the project.

"I'd like to see the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department look at this to see if there were any laws being violated and, if there were, prosecute those responsible," he said. "These authorities need to use this example right now to start setting the course for the future to let people know that this is not acceptable in the United States of America."

One participant in the project reportedly was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

He reportedly contacted Renée DiResta, who later joined his company and became the leading author of the report about the Russian interference efforts for the firm, asking for suggestions of online tactics that are worth testing.

In a statement on Twitter, he denied the project was aimed at influencing the election, which the Democrat won by 22,000 votes. "I did not participate in any campaign to influence the public," he wrote, saying the project goals weren't about supporting the Jones campaign.

By Lauren Egan, NBC News, April 16, 2019

WASHINGTON — Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is leading the Republican field vying for the party’s 2020 nomination to challenge Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat who beat Moore in 2017, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Moore leads among could-be GOP candidates with 27 percent in the poll from Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, just a year and a half after losing what was widely viewed as a safe seat for Alabama Republicans. He's trailed by three Alabama congressmen: Mo Brooks at 18 percent, Bradley Byrne at 13, and Gary Palmer at 11. The poll also suggests Moore holds a net approval rating in the state — 34 percent of voters view him favorably compared to 29 percent who view him unfavorably.

Out of the potential Republican candidates included in the poll, only Byrne has formally announced his candidacy. But Moore has suggested that he is interested in running again, and this poll could help him come to a decision. Fifty percent of registered Alabama voters say they want to replace Jones with a Republican.

Moore’s lead could be explained by his overwhelming name recognition among Republican voters compared to other potential candidates. Byrne and Palmer are unknown by roughly half of Republicans.