Conservative Babylon

See the main page for Bernard Kerik

See all entries for Bernard Kerik

From the New York Times:

Claims to fame: Conservative activist; child molester; groper; john

Moral apex: A local Ohio TV station broke the story that Lukens had been paying a woman for the sexual services of the woman’s teenage daughter. Lukens got off with one month in jail (he was found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor). Despite GOP pressure, refused to resign office.

Reprise, and finale: Finally resigned after he was caught fondling a Capitol elevator operator.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Lukens:

What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

— 1 Corinthians 6:16

Suggested Bible reading for the girl’s mother:

Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

— Leviticus 19:29

Claims to fame: Philadelphia City Councilman; prominent local Republican; adulterer

Moral apex: In 2001, dumped wheelchair-bound wife for another woman… after 60 years of marriage.

Addendum: Longstreth was 80 at the time he announced his intention to marry his 51-year-old bit of fluff.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Longstreth:

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

— Proverbs 5:18-19

Claim to fame: Ex-U.S. House rep; adulterer

Moral apex: Multiple extramarital affairs. Alleged BDSM dirty talk captured on audio tape now in possession of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

Punch line: Was scheduled replacement for fellow serial diddler Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House. Resigned, suddenly — one day after sexual peccadilloes came to light.

Believe it or not:

As the result of a runoff election, Livingston was succeeded by “D.C. Madam” john David Vitter!

Memorable quote:

“I have on occasion strayed from my marriage, and doing so nearly cost me my marriage and my family.”

— Quoted in The Flynt Report, 1999

Fun fact: According to those who’ve heard the tape, Livingston is sexually submissive.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Livingston:

And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labour, and shall leave thee naked and bare: and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms.

— Ezekiel 23:29

Claims to fame: Former Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney & assistant for National Security Affairs; big-mouth; lightweight pornographer

Why he’s here: Certainly not for his indictment on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. As fascinated as we are by the whole Valerie Plame story, it has nothing to do with sex.

So, why is he here? Because he’s a sick freak, that’s why.

Moral apex: He wrote a novel in 1996, The Apprentice, that details scenes of incest, bestiality (hunters consider humping a dead deer), pedophilia, and — hold onto your stomach — a girl kept in a cage and raped by a bear in order to train her to become a prostitute.

Are you making this up? We wish we were.

Memorable quotes:

He said that boys from the village took the merchant’s daughter places, and word spread that she had many lovers. There were odd tales of her sexual prowess, and they said she had coupled with dogs and men and several of the boys at once. Then to their village came a young samurai, who spotted the girl as all did, and she folded him into her. She took other lovers in the village, which enraged him, but he would not be done with her…

The young samurai’s mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white. …

They gave her wooden penises and taught her how to handle them. They taught her how to sing out in the night and move to finish off her customers more quickly. …

— The Apprentice by Scooter Libby

Memorable observations:

The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). …

Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an “assistant headman” who comes to restore order after a crime at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical? And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant headman or the assistant headman’s assistant?)

— Lauren Collins
Scooter’s Sex Shocker
The New Yorker
November 7, 2005

[I]t’s not because every member of the current Administration— yes, every single person — is a wretched, pernicious, and vilely disgusting biped-shaped toilet offering better stranded on some godforsaken Lord-of-the-Flies island that I say former Chief-of-Staff and National Security Advisor to the Vice President Lewis Libby’s novel is bad.

It’s because the book is bad, because the writing is bad, because the plotting is bad. Because after spending twenty years writing this dud, Libby has produced a vague, poorly worded novel tarted up with sex and then some murders — and those just so we know his motivation is pure. …

Holy bleeding Jesus what a pile of dreck and dross, the kind of fourth-rate mimicry of third-rate imitators of second-rate passages from the lesser short stories of a college sophomore Faulkner fan. And the whole book has that kind of empty phrasings that just drone on and on and make you feel sleepy time always. The book is only some thirty pages over 200 and I found myself struggling and slogging through it for more than a solid week, making fists and forcing myself onward, ever onward. I made coffee thinking it was me, but even with half a pot stewing in my veins, I just kept drifting. It’s not that Libby never gets off a decent turn of phrase or a poetic image or a fine insight, it’s just that there are only five of these altogether, so you get one every forty-six pages.

— The Novel and the Political Review
Late Reviews and Latest Obsessions
December 1, 2005

That’s a bit depraved, isn’t it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? …

God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans.

— Nancy Sladek
Editor, Literary Review

Fun fact: It took Scooter 20 years to write this thing.

Suggested Kesuvim reading for Mr. Libby:

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

— Psalms 1:1,4

Claims to fame: Former Kansas Water Office chief; well-known Republican activist; rapist

Moral apex: Convicted in 2003 of aggravated criminal sodomy, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated burglary.

What’s worse: A plea bargain dismissed the charge of rape.

What’s worse: Holding a knife to her throat, he blindfolded, duct-taped, and raped his victim in her own bed.

What’s worse: The victim was a member of LeDoux’s wife’s family, whom LeDoux described as “a woman who had treated me with nothing but grace.”

What’s worse: The victim said she “thought of LeDoux as a brother and a father-figure to her son and daughter.”

The good news: LeDoux is now serving 10 to 26.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. LeDoux:

The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister.

— Genesis 34:27

Claims to fame: Adulterer; hypocrite

Moral apex: Extramarital affair with Washington lobbyist led to divorce after 21 years of marriage (and four kids).

Kind consideration: When wife pleaded for reconciliation & marriage counseling, he said no thanks, and asked for divorce. Over the phone. (more…)

Moral apex: Career ended in 1987 after two former aides detailed sexual harassment to the media.

Good news: Repeat: Career ended. He’s run for office since, and been pretty much laughed out of the race.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Konnyu:

The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools.

— Proverbs 3:35

Moral apex: Closet homo outed by respected journalist Kurt Wolfe…

Height of hypocrisy: …after he voted in favor of anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.

Good news: Said he was “relieved” to be out.

Bad news: He’s still a Republican.

Republican logic: Used convoluted “states’ rights” argument to defend DoMA vote.

Eating their own: After Kolbe admitted he was gay, ultra-right-wing American Family Association petitioned for Kolbe’s arrest under (now-defunct) Arizona state sodomy law.

Ultimate hypocrisy: Still refuses to support the fight for same-sex immigration rights, when he himself is in a binational relationship with a Panamanian man — who, ever-so-conveniently, is able to remain in the U.S. with Kolbe on a job visa.

What you never heard about Jim Kolbe: He was under investigation for sexual misconduct with House pages (sound familiar?) at the same time the Mark Foley story broke (which is why you didn’t hear about the Kolbe investigation). Kolbe was cleared of any wrongdoing in June, 2007.

However: We’re not letting Kolbe off the hook for his involvement in the Foley scandal; in short, he didn’t do any more with his knowledge of the matter than any of the other right-wingers who knew Foley was preying on teenage boys.

Where he is now: Kolbe retired at the end of his 2006 term, became a fellow of the German Marshall Fund, and a consultant for Kissinger McLarty Associates (yes, that Kissinger).

See also: Mark Foley, Jim McCrery.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Kolbe:

Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.

— Proverbs 3:31

Claims to fame: U.S. Secretary of State under Nixon & Ford (1973-77); divorcé; skirt-chaser; scary guy

Nickname: Butcher of Cambodia

Moral apex: Impossible to know, but we vote for his role in the slaughter of untold millions of Southeast Asians. Oops, sorry, no sex there. So, for our immediate purposes, let’s leave it at a 1964 divorce and a 1974 re-marriage, peppered with lots of screwing around.

Three little words: Jill St. John.

Suggested Torah reading for Mr. Kissinger:

The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.

— Proverbs 10:11

Claim to fame: Former manager, Franklin Credit Union, Omaha, Nebraska; embezzler; ex-con; alleged child-prostitution ringleader

See:
Franklin Credit Union Child-Sex Ring Scandal

Claims to fame: Former NYPD Commissioner under Rudy Giuliani; failed Bush nominee for head of DHS; serial divorcé; multiple-affair cheater

Nickname: “Baghdad Terminator,” for his stint in Iraq to “organize” the local police. (Legend holds that he leapt at the assignment for an all-expenses-paid vacation while his house was being remodeled.)

Moral apex: Anybody can get married three times (and divorced twice), but it takes somebody special to cheat on his wife with two different mistresses — simultaneously: While married to his third wife, he was shacking up with a New York City corrections officer named Jeanette Pinero (who was also married), and with fellow Republican hypocrite, publishing magnate Judith Regan.

The affair with Pinero lasted about ten years, and the affair with Regan lasted about a year — and both might have gone indefinitely if Pinero hadn’t found a love note Regan left in the secret apartment Kerik kept for shagging both women.

End result: Kerik withdrew as George W. Bush’s nominee to replace Tom Ridge as head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Well, OK, so supposedly he withdrew for other reasons — like graft, and tax evasion, and mob ties, and employing an illegal immigrant as his children’s nanny (yeah, he has kids, too) — but Republicans usually get away with murder when it comes to such mundane stuff. We think the sex scandal was the straw that really broke the camel’s back.

Noted the New York Daily News in late 2004:

Kerik’s affair with Pinero is at the center of two lawsuits against the city, both brought by correction employees who claimed Kerik retaliated after they crossed her.

The city settled one last year for $250,000, The News reported at the time.

The second suit, in which Pinero and Kerik were deposed last week, was filed by former Deputy Warden Eric DeRavin 3rd, who claims Kerik quashed his promotion after he reprimanded Pinero. The city demanded a gag order on both depositions.

Pinero declined to comment.

What’s even worse than cheating on your third wife with two other women: Fathering a daughter while stationed by the Army in Korea, and then deserting both mother and baby. Which Kerik did, in the mid-1970s.

Memorable observations:

I tried to save the president from all this embarrassment. Believe me, I tried. …

Here’s what I wrote about the former New York police commissioner in the Newsday for Dec. 3:

“He’s a personal and professional time bomb the Bushies will learn to regret. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, guys!”

Could I have been any plainer than that?

So now, I’m trying to think of a nice way to put this. How ’bout:

Tick, tick, tick … KA-BOOM!

— Ellis Henican
I hate to say I told you so … but I told you so
Newsday
December 12, 2004

Everybody connected to the debacle seems to be trying to do the most convincing impression of Claude Raines in Casablanca, proclaiming he’s shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here.

— Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
December 14, 2004

[W]hat happens is, sometimes the administrations and presidents — and remember it‘s George W. Bush who picked this guy after all, not Rudy Giuliani — George W. Bush is the guy who had to make the phone call and offer him the job — they get entranced by the appeal of a particular nominee, and Bernie Kerik is somebody whose fame and notoriety comes out of 9/11. That‘s also where George W. Bush really drew on the wellspring of his own support nationally. Rudy Giuliani did as well that day. And he looked back to that powerful, symbolic relationship in picking this guy, who was a little part Sipowicz, and part Dirty Harry. There‘s an appeal, a macho appeal to that, and they ended up with egg all over their face.

— Wall Street Journal editor John Harwood
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
December 14, 2004

Rest assured, we did significant due diligence.

— White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett,
regarding Alberto Gonzales’ vetting of nominee Bernard Kerik,
December 16, 2004

Fun fact #1: Kerik’s mother was a prostitute. (Not-so-fun-fact: She was murdered.)

Fun fact #2: Regan published Kerik’s whitewashed autobiography, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice. It was during their “professional” association that their un-professional association developed.

Fun fact #3: Hear tell that when Regan lost her cell phone and some jewelry in the Fox News studios, Kerik sent several NYPD homicide officers to the homes of five Fox employees in the middle of the night to yank them out of bed and interrogate them. (Turns out Regan had just misplaced the phone.)

Fun fact #4: About a month after Pinero and Regan compared notes and both broke up with the hairless Lothario, Kerik’s wife was pregnant again.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Kerik:

But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.

— Malachi 2:8-9

Claims to fame: 18-year congressman from New York; Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bush I; running mate to failed presidential candidate Bob Dole; founder, ultra-right org Empower America (now FreedomWorks); divorcé

Why he’s here: You’ll hear a lot about Kemp’s marriage, four children, and 14 grandchildren — but you seldom hear anything about his first wife.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Kemp:

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

— Genesis 2:24

Claims to fame: Former Governor of South Dakota, 1979-1986 and 1995-2002; Indian-hater; would-be rapist; reckless driver; killer

Boys will be boys moment: In 1955, at age 16, appeared in juvenile court (Moody County, South Dakota) for allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old girl. Janklow denied charge was rape, but inadvertently tipped off public with smug statement, “It didn’t go that far, but it was preliminary to that sort of thing.” Charge dropped, records sealed.

Not-so-youthful indiscretion: In 1967, attorney Janklow was accused of rape by Jancita Eagle Deer, 15-year-old babysitter for Janklow family. Janklow, then working for the Office of Economic Opportunities on the Rosebud Sioux reservation, denied charge, said enemies were trying to smear him.

Consequence: Disbarred from legal practice on Rosebud reservation in 1974 for “assault with intent to commit rape, and carnal knowledge of a female under 16.”

Unsolved mystery: A few months after testifying in Tribal Court that she was raped at gunpoint by Janklow, Jancita Eagle was found dead, struck down by a car near Aurora, Nebraska — inexplicably, hundreds of miles from home.

What happened next: Janklow lost libel suit and attempt to block publication of book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Matthiessen, exposing alleged crimes.

Perverse injustice: Janklow’s animosity toward AIM (American Indian Movement) worked to plan; he garnered more support from bigoted white voters, won two gubernatorial races, and then the state’s only congressional seat.

Now appearing: In a kangaroo court destined to let him off the hook for running a stop sign at 75mph and killing a motorcyclist. (Janklow’s long and well-documented history of speeding and recklessness behind the wheel will not be allowed as evidence; plus, his lawyer is blaming the incident on Janklow’s diabetic condition.) Stop the presses! Janklow has just been convicted of second-degree manslaughter, reckless driving, running a stop sign and speeding, and has announced his resignation, effective January 20, 2004. Good God, there is justice!

Memorable quote:

“‘The only way to deal with the Indian problem in America is to put a gun in the AIM leaders’ heads and pull the trigger.”

— 1974

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Janklow:

For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

— James 2:10

Claims to fame: Cult-like IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) preacher; longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond (Indiana); founder, Hyles-Anderson College (Schererville, Indiana); patriarch of cultish network of churches and schools with long track record of sexual abuse; very, very scary guy once called “the next David Koresh”

Moral apex #1: His alleged extramarital affair with his (equally-married) assistant. (more…)

Claims to fame: Son of Jack Hyles; former Youth Minister, First Baptist Church of Hammond; ex-pastor, Miller Road Baptist Church (Garland, Texas); accused serial adulterer; divorcé; cohabitator; alleged child abuser; suspected child killer

Moral apex: As the story goes (we don’t know; we weren’t there), somebody at Hyles’s church discovered porn magazines containing ads for group sex which, they reportedly claimed, featured photos of Hyles having sex with church member Brenda Stevens (by some accounts, the daughter of a deacon). A story soon surfaced that Hyles had had extramarital sex with some 19 female members of the church.

Every one of these women was apparently stupid enough to think she was Brother Dave’s “one-and-only,” according to a voice on a taped phone conversation attributed to Dave’s wife Paula. And, as you can guess, it appears more than a few marriages where destroyed when the truth came out.

What happened next: It appears to outsiders that Miller Road Baptist threw him out, and his wife divorced him and took off with their two kids, and he started living with Stevens (out of — gasp! — wedlock) in Illinois.

Where it gets really tragic: Stevens had a small son, Brent. Dave Hyles was suspected of abusing the boy — who had suffered some eight or nine broken bones in his short life, which had never been treated. Brent was taken out of Hyles and Steven’s Illinois home and given to his biological father in Texas. Within a few months, for reasons beyond comprehension, Brent was returned to Stevens.

And then, in late 1985, 15-month-old Brent was found dead in his crib. Hyles, who had been alone with the child, claimed he found him not breathing, and called police. It has been suggested in a few online articles that Dave’s father Jack arrived before the cops did.

A coroner’s inquest into Brent’s death (at which Hyles took exercised his Fifth Amendment rights — and which the baby’s mother doesn’t appear to have attended) was apparently thwarted because the little boy had been embalmed and buried (reportedly the very next day after his death), before a proper autopsy could be performed. (An empty bottle of Actifed — for which a prescription had been filled only the day before Brent’s death — was found at the scene.)

Without any physical evidence of wrongoing, Hyles was not indicted. The case remains open.

If those who follow the Hyles story are correct (waving at the Fighting Fundamentalists!), n the mid-1990s Hyles went to work teaching Sunday school at a Pinellas Park Baptist Church in Florida — which reportedly expelled him on charges of adultery. It’s also been reported that he was thrown out of the next church he attended (Berean Baptist Church in Orange Park, Florida), for “sexual misconduct” with three different women.

(One of those women is assumed to be church secretary Joyce Phaneuf, who appears to have been arrested for prostitution in 2003. Assuming this is the same Joyce Phaneuf, her mug shot and arrest report — which notes the tattoo on her right-upper thigh, reading “David’s Girl” — are available at everybody’s favorite finger-wagging site, The Smoking Gun.)

Just when you think it can’t get any more tragic: Hyles, it’s said, finally married Stevens and they had their own child together, a boy named Jack David. In March, 1999, when the child was five years old, Stevens was reported to have run over him with her car, killing him. According to news reports, she claimed he must have fallen out of the vehicle, and she didn’t know it.

Where Hyles is now: We’re not really sure, but, ironically, in 2003, Dave Hyles was reportedly spotted attending worship services at Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville — whose former pastor Bob Gray was, in early 2006, arrested on multiple counts of sexual battery against children (and whose current pastor appears to have tried to cover up the abuse).

Last we heard, Dave was a member of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, whose pastor is Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the über-fundy who gained a few minutes’ fame outside the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) world in 2002, for calling Muhammad a “demon-possessed pedophile.”

Memorable quote:

I began to dream of a day when maybe I would have a little baby of my own. Would there be a church where I would feel safe to leave my child? Here the nurseries were clean and the babysitters dedicated Christians.

Someday I would have my own child, and he would grow. As he grew I would want him to be taught to obey. I walked past the beginner and primary departments. So many little children came there to be told about Jesus and right and wrong. Would my child have the same?

— Dave Hyles, essay written when he was 16

Ironic, road-to-hell, good-intentions quote:

How can one train a child to exercise … self-control? This is done by developing something on the inside that becomes more attractive than that which is on the outside. Then more pleasure is gotten inwardly by resistance than outwardly by yielding. For example, my son, David, is an athlete. During basketball season he does not drink carbonated drinks nor eat pastry. This is not to say that chocolate pie is not attractive. Quite to the contrary, it is most attractive, but there is something on the inside that is more attractive — the satisfaction of making the team, of being in good condition, and of pleasing the coach! Hence, the inward pleasure has overcome the competitive attractiveness of external pleasure. He has developed self-control. His will decides whether or not he eats chocolate pie. Hence, in this matter he is in control of himself. He is not a beast; he is a man. He derives more pleasure inwardly by not eating the chocolate pie than he would derive outwardly by eating it.

…

I have spent thousands of hours trying to make a man out of my son.

…

What the American male needs is honor, just plain, old, downright honor.

— Dave’s father, Jack Hyles
How to Rear Children (1972)

Make sure to read: Our entry on Jack Hyles.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Hyles:

The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief. The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.

— Job 24:14-16

Note to our fellow infidels: We really, really, really want a picture of Dave Hyles for this page! And we really, really, really can’t find one. We can find pictures of Dave’s mom, she of the typically gigantic-fundy-hair, but nothing of Dave-O. If you have a photo of Dave you’d like to contribute, or can definitely identify a picture of him on the Web, please hit the Contact link below, and let us know! We want to see what this… person looks like, too!

Claims to fame: Chair, House Judiciary Committee; adulterer; homewrecker; liar; stunning hypocrite

Moral apex: In late 1960s, had five-year affair with one Cherie Snodgrass. Who was married. And had three children.

Justification: Blew off affair as a “youthful indiscretion.”

Punch line: Hyde was 41 at the time of his “youthful indiscretion.”

And: He was married, too.

And: Snodgrass was 12 years his junior.

How he did it: At first, told Snodgrass he was single; gave her an apartment, lavished her with gifts.

End result: When caught out, destroyed Snodgrass’ marriage. Still, affair continued another two and a half years or so under Mrs. Hyde’s nose.

Addendum: Snodgrass said she knew she wasn’t Hyde’s only mistress.

Great moments in hypocrisy #1: Hyde was chief prosecutor in President Clinton’s impeachment trial.

Great moments in hypocrisy #2: Hyde the Homewrecker co-sponsored the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

Memorable observation:

“These politicians were going on about how he should have been on the Supreme Court, what a great man he is, how we’re lucky to have him in Congress in charge of the impeachment case. And all I can think of is here is this man, this hypocrite who broke up my family.”

— Fred Snodgrass, ex-husband of Hyde’s mistress, to Salon.com

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Hyde:

They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband: for he is holy unto his God.

— Leviticus 21:7

Claims to fame: U.S. Senator; Southern Baptist minister; adulterer

Moral apex: Dumped wife of 29 years (and mother of his three sons) for a younger woman — one of his own office staffers.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Hutchinson:

The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness.

— Jeremiah 22:22

Claims to fame: Rich Beverly Hills jet-setter; ex-husband of columnist Arianna Huffington; adulterer; closet homo

Moral apex: Columnist-wife Arianna dumped him when she found out he was cheating on her.

Punch line: With other men.

Where he is now: Political limbo. Served one term in California state legislature. Lost Senate race to Democrat-In-Name-Only Dianne Feinstein. Got caught cheating. Came out. Toyed with the idea of becoming a Democrat. Threw hat into California gubernatorial circus. Pulled out. Doesn’t seem to know what to do with his life.

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Huffington:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

— Matthew 7:25

Claims to fame: Christian Reconstructionist; anti-abortion extremist; murder enabler; animal lover

Moral apex: Too many to count, or weigh against one another. In fact, Horlsey is such an all-around whack-job, we don’t even know where to begin. So we’ll just give you a few…

Memorable observations and quotes:

At first glance, Neal Horsley appears to be the merry old uncle of his neighborhood on a cul-de-sac in a middle-class Atlanta suburb.

Irreverent, amusing and animated, Horsley seems for all the world a warm and faithful husband, a friend to children, an iconoclastic conversationalist and wry commentator on the state of the world.

A second look reveals an entirely different Horsley — the implacable enemy of homosexuals who promises regularly to “arrest faggots,” a man who proposes to use nuclear weapons in a bid for Southern secession, the Scripture-quoting theocrat who wants to force his version of Bible law on American society.

This is the Horsley that rails on about “desecration,” “pagans,” “lust” and “perverted tolerance.”

And then there is the Neal Horsley who boasts to a young acolyte about having sex with men and with mules, the aging Vietnam War protester who says that “smoking dope, fucking and boozing, that’s who I am naturally.”

The Horsley who served 2 1/2 years in federal prison for dealing hashish oil. The Horsley who put up photographs on his Web site of naked men engaging in homosexual acts and a nude woman engaging in bestiality amid shots of grotesquely maimed fetuses.

Who is the real Otis O’Neal Horsley?

As strange as it may seem, Horsley is all of these things. And he is a great deal more. …

Southern Poverty Law Center

His most notorious operation — and the one that brought him national attention — was the Nuremberg Files website. The site has been subject to several court cases since he first set it up several years ago. The Nuremberg Files originally included a collection of names, addresses and, whenever possible, telephone numbers, license-plate numbers and Social Security numbers — sometimes photos — of abortion providers, clinic workers, and abortion-rights supporters. The site also solicited videos and photographs, and provided the names and birth dates of the providers’ spouses and children. Health care workers still providing services were listed in black, those that had been murdered had a line struck through their names, and the wounded were grayed-out. Critics called the files a de facto hit-list from which clinic stalkers have drawn names of future targets.

Bill Berkowitz
Anti-abortion extremist dot com
WorkingForChange
August 16, 2002

The site says that the information garnered will be used to prosecute abortion providers when abortion becomes illegal, just as Nazi leaders were prosecuted after the Second World War. Many observers, however, worry that this information has been and will be used for a more violent, threatening purpose.

The list of abortion providers at The Nuremberg Files site reads like a list of targets for assassination.

Anti-Abortion Extremism in Cyberspace: The Creator’s Rights Party
Anti-Defamation League

On the evening of Oct. 23, 1998, a sniper shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian as he stood with his wife and son in the kitchen of his home in East Amherst, N.Y. The death of Dr. Slepian would soon make a celebrity of Neal Horsley.

Southern Poverty Law Center

In the hours following the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian… Horsley “struck through” the doctor’s name. An international media firestorm followed, and Horsley’s site became widely regarded as a “hit list.”

Frederick Clarkson
A radical antiabortionist backs down
Salon.com
June 21, 2002

“I got to Barnett Slepian’s name,” he told Atlanta. “And all of a sudden I … realized: When I draw a line through his name, under these circumstances, they are going to freak fucking out. … And I said, let’s do it. Let ‘er rip!”

The next day, Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt held a press conference to denounce the Nuremberg Files, which she characterized as a “list of abortion doctors marked for death.” Two days later, Horsley claims, the site received 400,000 hits — almost twice as many as the monthly total up to that point.

Southern Poverty Law Center

…Horsley and his Web site were dealt a major blow in federal court. In a 6-5 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that members of the American Coalition of Life Activists had illegally threatened abortion doctors by publishing Old West “Wanted”-style posters identifying a dozen doctors and including detailed information about them, including their home addresses, on Horsley’s “Nuremberg Files” Web site. Two previous murders of abortion doctors had been preceded by similar posters. Four of the doctors sued. Horsley later began crossing through the names of doctors murdered by antiabortionists and graying out those who were wounded.

Frederick Clarkson
A radical antiabortionist backs down
Salon.com
June 21, 2002

Since these denunciations, and his legal setbacks, Horsley has beaten a hasty, apparently tactical retreat. The photographs and videos of people coming and going from clinics are still up. But the struck-through names of the dead, and the grayed-out names of the wounded, are gone. So are the listings for President George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton, and the names of the six-judge majority of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the original trial judge. Strangely, the names of the six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court whose voting record on abortion Horsley disapproves of are still listed on the Nuremberg Files.

— ibid.

Tired of getting dumped by a number of web servers [Horsley] … decided to create his own Internet Service Provider and web-hosting company… Horsley told Wired News that he realized he “could appeal to abortion abolitionist people to convert from companies like AOL that aggressively support abortion.”

Bill Berkowitz
Anti-abortion extremist dot com
WorkingForChange
August 16, 2002

Horsley’s more recent anti-abortion adventure in harassment is his AbortionCam.com. Through posting photographs of clients and workers entering and leaving abortion clinics, Horsley hopes to stigmatize them out of having and/or participating in an abortion.

— ibid.

Today, Neal Horsley is a key player in the world of anti-abortion extremism. Although his vulgarity

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