We only have a couple of weeks left in this legislative session and rather than attempting to impress voters with a long record of accomplishment, the strategy of the Senate leadership seems to be to avoid doing much of anything. That said, it is an Albany tradition to always seem to save most of the legislative work – for better or for worse – for the last few days, so I haven't completely given up hope that we can still get some important legislation passed.

Before the session began, I outlined a number of key priorities – issues that I hoped the pressure of a hotly contested election season might prompt action on – one of which was the Healthy Teens Act (S1342). This year the bill passed the Assembly on March 17 by a vote of 130 to 14, and passed the Senate Health Committee May 20 by a vote of 13-4. This is the farthest the Healthy Teens Act has ever come in the legislative process.

The worst part of the whole "Spitzer Can't Keep it in His Pants" story is not that Spitzer slept with a prostitute, or that he paid huge sums of money for it, or that he got caught, or that his actions may for now derail reform in New York State. The worst part is the hypocritical, self-rightous chest thumping that Republican politicians and their media friends are engaging in.

Somehow, normal sex sets the right wing fanatics off in a fit of hysteria that would give Freud wet dreams. But if one of their own commits pedophilia, what do you hear from these people? Nothing! They cover it up if they can and circle the wagons if they can't. Let's keep this whole thing in perspective. Bill Clinton got a blow job, an act of consensual sex between adults, and the Republicans demanded impeachment. Eliot Spitzer hired an expensive sex worker and the Republicans are threatening impeachment. But a whole slew of Republicans on all levels of government engage in pedophilia and you hear nary a peep from the Republican noise machine. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

I always take with a grain of salt studies involving latinos in the United States. I always feel the frame of reference in a lot of polls is not based on the diverse cultural dynamics of US latinos. When I read polls focused on Latinos, they strike me as being based on assumptions of cultural and political assimilation made by both the pollsters and the media outlets reporting on the data finding.

The Associated Press is one of those media outlets making tons of assumptions about minority politics in the US. Check out their latest crapping on minority in this article reprinted by Newsday.

This is what they've republished :

The study, which was based on a 2005 survey of teens in grades 9 though 12, drew no conclusions as to why New York's teen girls were less likely to be on the pill than girls elsewhere, but the data suggested that cultural differences might play a role in some birth control choices.

Teen girls in the city's poor, predominantly Hispanic South Bronx neighborhood were nearly twice as likely to have had recent unprotected sex as girls nationwide. Black teenage girls in New York, on the other hand, were no more or less likely to have used birth control during their last sexual encounters than the average U.S. teenage girl.

I immediately went into a rage because there is no social, cultural or political context whatsoever to the data findings --and the AP doesn't care a bit to question those findings. On the contrary, they've taken the NYC Health Department's press release and highlighted all the negative aspects (percentages of teen pregnancy, unprotected sex) while downplaying the positives (69% teens used condoms).

Yet the biggest omission is the only direct statement by NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden that appears on the report.

It's as if at the last minute the abstinence-only police demanded to put in the obligatory piece of propaganda that "compassionate conservatism" has imposed on this country's health and education systems.

This is what appeared on the report :

I, Liza Michelle Sabater-Tirado, am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn.

It was a freak accident of telepathic autogenesis that made me the father of Anna's daugher. Seriously. Since the father of my children doesn't want more kids, I was using all my mental abilities to immaculately conceive the baby girl I want so much. Unfortunately my powers got transferred to Anna Nicole.

I all seemed so perfect! How could it possibly go wrong? You get Bernie Kerik's lover, Judith Regan, to edit a thinly veiled tell all book by OJ Simpson and get Rupert Murdoch and Fox to market it to sleaze crazed Americans. Perfect!

You had the tough Bernie Kerik...the sleazy Judith Regan...and of course you had Rupert Murdoch trying to create a new wave of OJ hysteria for his own profit. Clearly it is right-wing Republican family values at it's best, right?

But somehow, this went too far for most Americans...and even for anti-Semitic, lying, splotchy old Bill O'Reilly. There was a mini rebellion at Fox that led to Murdoch backing out, leaving Regan high and dry to once again look like the sleazy one. (And for those who don't know about it, Judith Regan is the woman Bernie Kerik had a year-long affair with, kicking Ground Zero workers out of an apartment overlooking Ground Zero so they would have a place to meet).

So what does Regan do? She takes the Mel Gibson/Saudi Arabia defense: Blame the Jews.

Now, at the risk of fueling her paranoia, since I am Jewish, I just want to say that blaming a "Jewish Cabal" for the collapse of the Kerik-Regan-Murdoch-Simpson Sleaze Scheme and for Regan's getting fired from Harper Collins is just plain insane. At least Mel Gibson had the decency to admit he was drunk and stupid when he blamed Jews for his getting arrested. Regan is just plain nuts and yet this is the woman Kerik and Murdoch loved so much.

A friend emails over, quoting Rochester Turning:

We’ve been getting word of annoying late night calls
from a Republican robocalling outfit posing as Massa
supporters.

The details we’ve gotten so far are vague, but the
seem to mirror a statewide and perhaps nationwide
pattern described by Josh Marshall at Talking Points
Memo:

"People on the ground seem to be putting the pieces
together. A wave of harassing calls paid for by the
NRCC targetting probable Democratic voters and
uncommitteds with the intent of getting them pissed
off at multiple repeat call-backs from what they think
is the Dem campaign."

As I understand it, these calls are illegal under New York law, and violate FCC regulations. Is this a case for the Attorney General?

Four days to go. Today's news cycle is critical.

The newest scorecard from ElectoralVote.com: Senate 49 Democrats, 49 republicans, 2 ties, House 241 Democrats, 193 republicans, 1 tie.

Rothenberg: Democrats win Congress and a state-level majority of seven to nine governorships.

The New York Times: eager to remind folks what a bad guy Saddam was, congressional republicans caused an archive of Iraqi documents to be placed online. Unfortunately, among the documents was a basic guide to building nukes. Republicans: so stupid they're dangerous.

Also in the Times: On the other hand, transparency shouldn't go too far. That's why republicans shut down the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction; this office had done the unthinkable and actually held people to account for fraud, waste and abuse of public funds in Iraq.

The Washington Post describes the travels of George, whom the White House is not letting go anywhere but deeply red parts of the country.

Also in WaPo, another prominent religious leader/homophobic bigot, evangelical Ted Haggart of Colorado, is in disgrace after it was revealed that he's been rubbing sinful flesh with a gay hooker for the last three years. No news on whether he's a top or a bottom. Here's some video of Haggart from the movie JesusLand:

Lastly, The Albany Times-Union profiles John Hall.

NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds, NY-26, was informed of the activities of predatory pedophile and then-Congressman Mark Foley in February or March of this year, reports ThinkProgress in its comprehensive timeline of the scandal.

Interestingly, Foley gave $100,000 to Tom Reynolds' NRCC on 7.27.2006. In total, Foley gave $525,000 to the NRCC since 1997.

But it gets better. Foley had cash on hand of $2,787,281 as of 8/23; Tom Reynolds' NRCC wants that money. From the New York Times:

Carl Forti, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Sunday that the committee would gladly accept Mr. Foley’s money or part of it to devote to House races. Mr. Foley already gave $100,000 to the committee in July, campaign records show, as part of the party’s Battleground Program, to which members are asked to contribute.

“The money is in the control of Mr. Foley,” Mr. Forti said. “Whatever he decides to do with it is up to him.”

Tom Reynolds really, really wants that money. It's from a pedophile, eh, whatever.

My State Senator, Velmanette Montgomery, has sent out her little newsletter updating us on what is up in Albany. One bill she is co-sponsoring catches my attention as something so basic we shouldn't even still be arguing about it. S.5121-C, the "Healthy Teens Act," currently co-sponsored by Velmanette Montgomery, Nick Spano, George Winner (good name for a politician!!) and Suzi Oppenheimer sets out to establish "age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education in schools," to quote Velmanette's newsletter. Apparently the Assembly has passed a good sex education bill that includes funding programs providing accurate information on contraception, but, as is so often the case, the NY State Senate is slow to do the right thing. S. 5121 insists that funding go not just to abstinence only, which is one more failed Bush policy, but also supports REAL sex education that is actually relevant to a teen's life. Abstinence only has proven ineffective and is linked to INCREASED teen pregnancy. Medically accurate sex ed has been linked to reduced teen pregnancy.

Please, write your State Legislators and urge them to support the Healthy Teens Act (S. 5121). Thank you Velmanette Montgomery for supporting this bill. As usual, I am proud she is my State Senator.

Where the hell did I read that writers at the New York Times were being given bonuses for the amount of traffic their articles were bringing to the site?

I swear I read something like that related to Patrick Healy's panty sniffing article on the Clintons but can't find the source.

I'm doing research for a post and am going crazy trying to find the damn post. Help me find the source!