Poor guy:

Thirty years after he fled the U.S. to avoid sentencing on child molestation charges, Academy Award-winning director Roman Polanski has filed a formal request to have the case dismissed.

He pled guilty. Let’s remember what the girl said he did:

The teenager’s troubling–and contemporaneous–account of her abuse at Polanski’s hands begins with her posing twice for topless photos that the director said were for French Vogue. The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, “Take off your underwear” and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn’t wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey’s testimony, wrapped his hands around the child’s waist.

The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson’s home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he “keep away.” According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later “started to have intercourse with me.” At one point, according to Gailey’s testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was “on the pill,” and “When did you last have your period?” Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, “Would you want me to go in through your back?” before he “put his penis in my butt.” Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, “Because I was afraid of him.”

Yes, he pled only to unlawful intercourse with a minor. But according to the documentary referred to in the blog post linked above, the plea deal was given to avoid putting the girl through the awful publicity that would have accompanied a trial — meaning Polanski almost assuredly got a better deal because he was famous.

And he never served his time.

As far as I’m concerned, he can stay in France.

UPDATE: The L.A. Times‘s front-page story on Polanski’s request does not mention the sodomy allegation. That allegation further chips away at the already ridiculous notion that sex with a 13-year-old girl under the influence of alcohol and Quaaludes can be “consensual.”

This is stunning:

L.A. Times October 2008 Page Views (Via L.A. Observed)

Hot Air October 2008 Page Views (Source: SiteMeter)

As you can see, Hot Air had 23,713,333 page views in October, as measured by SiteMeter. By contrast, latimes.com had 75,088,000 page views.

This means Hot Air had 31.58% of the traffic that all of latimes.com had in October 2008. That’s almost 1/3 the traffic of the entire web site of a major American newspaper.

And that’s two guys blogging away — meaning either one of the Hot Air bloggers is almost certainly getting more Internet eyeballs than any one writer on latimes.com.

A few caveats to keep the nitpickers quiet: these measurements were made by two different metrics — SiteMeter and Nielsen. They’re measuring the same thing, but they may not be measuring it in exactly the same way. Also, everybody’s traffic fell off after October. Finally, these numbers ignore the newspaper’s very significant (though declining) print circulation.

Still, as L.A. Observed notes, these numbers are “[e]ven after all the photo galleries, reader pets, Oscar speculation blogs, editing to emphasize sex and celebrities and assorted other tricks to puff up page views” at latimes.com. If HotAir.com did all that crap, Lord knows what the differential would be!

These numbers can’t be reassuring to the L.A. Times. They’re facing real competition from the blogosphere.

Calls for regulation of blogs can’t be too far off.

Good news. Allah says:

Now that a filibuster-proof majority’s unlikely, the stakes of getting Franken elected are much lower. Maybe that means the Dems will eschew the nuclear option of challenging the Senate not to seat Coleman.

Good going, Georgia.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Barack Obama met with America’s Governors today in Philadelphia, including Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reports indicate Obama was given a warm reception and engaged in small talk with Jindal and Palin, both of whom are potential candidates for a Presidential run in the 2012 election.

Maybe Arnold invited Obama to a hearty lunch.

— DJR DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Pirates off the coast of Somalia attempted to hijack another vessel in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. This time it was a cruise ship with tourists, Oceania Cruise’s M/S Nautica, on a “32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand …”

The Nautica was able to outrun the pirate skiffs within minutes, and a spokesman later said the cruise line was not concerned about traveling in the Gulf of Aden. However, other cruise lines indicated they are considering itinerary changes to avoid the area.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Obama team revealed it will shelve efforts to pass windfall profits taxes on the energy companies now that the price of oil has fallen below $80/barrel. Obama originally planned to use the tax proceeds to pay energy rebates to consumers.

Some Obama supporters will undoubtedly be disappointed by this cave-in to Big Oil. As Tom Maguire says (channeling Democrats’ advice to Republicans after Obama’s victory): “Obama is your President – suck it up.”

— DRJ

David Gregory will be replacing Tim Russert on “Meet the Press.”

The loss of Russert feels even more stinging than before.

A reminder of Gregory’s style of questioning here.

EDIT: Pablo notes the reports of Gregory’s promotion may be premature.