Early this morning I posted Evidence That Weiner Was Talking Dirty to Underage Girls? Part 2. In that post, I provided evidence that Weiner had discussions with an underage girl (“Ethel”) regarding fighting for his country in a cape and tights. I also noted that he had also discussed fighting for his country in a cape and tights with a grown woman, with whom he had discussions of a explicit nature that read like something out of a Penthouse Forum letter (“needless to say, I was at the ready in my cape and tights!”).

This is the followup to that post. I will now explore further the question of whether Weiner might have talked dirty to young Ethel as well.

Ethel (who rendered her Twitter account private after I published part 2) has been on Twitter since 2009. She looks like a high school girl, and her profile says she loves LeBron James, marching band, and sleeping. She frequently talks about her high school on her feed.

She also has quite a mouth at times. Here is one tweet she sent on May 26, before the scandal came out:

The rest of the post is a timeline of tweets from Ethel. Here is what I believe the tweets show:

Ethel publicly expresses her love for Rep. Weiner, who then follows her. She is ecstatic. PatriotUSA76 and his crew note that she is talking to Weiner, and Weiner unfollows her.

Then, on May 13, she reminds Weiner that he used to follow her, and exhorts him not to forget her. Then, he apparently re-follows her. A screenshot taken 10 days later shows that he was indeed following her again:

Now Ethel declares her happiness, and says: “SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE……….” She has learned that openly declaring her love for Weiner by name got her unfollowed before, but she won’t make that mistake again. She’ll just come really, really close.

When another admirer (whom we have called Betty) asks Weiner to her prom, Ethel mocks Betty for openly declaring her love for a married politician. Weiner ends up unfollowing Betty, which upsets Betty greatly.

Ironically, Ethel continues to write things like “I love married men” . . . but does not name Weiner by name as she did before. Instead, she proceeds in what she evidently thought was a more subtle manner, writing “my one true love” while linking a video of Weiner. Ethel continues to talk about how she loves married men, in tweets interspersed with others praising Weiner.

On May 23, she tweets the obscene tweet about about 69ing and using honey mustard as a lube . . . adding: “Ohh yeahh baby I love bdh weiner.” (bdh likely means big damn hero.)

Three days later, Ethel is quoting Weiner talking about “cape and tights shit” — a quote that does not appear to be anything he ever said publicly, according to Google. The conclusion is irresistable that she is quoting a private message he had sent to her.

As I explained this morning, “tights and cape shit” is the same kind of talk Congressman Weiner used with Lisa Weiss:

[WEISS:] hi honey! computer’s back up…what’s up with you? busy saving my country rom this f***in tea baggers?

[WEINER:] Yep. Cape. Tights. Looking for my sidekick.

With Lisa Weiss, the talk eventually turned very explicit. With Ethel? We don’t know. At this point, we just have to make an educated guess about how they would talk in private, based upon things they said (or repeated!) in public.

Judge for yourself. Here is the timeline of Ethel tweets that are relevant to the story, in my judgment.

Ethel: HE IS MINE ALL MINE HE LOVES ME AND NO ONE ELSE ILY ILY ILY!!!
11 Apr

Ethel: @RepWeiner I’m in love with you
13 Apr

Ethel: Watchin @RepWeiner on cnn <3 13 Apr Ethel: Seriously talking to Representative Weiner from New York right now! Like is my life real? 13 Apr patriotusa76: "@repweiner talking to high-school girls now. Freak." Ethel: @sclancy cause representative weiner followed me back today and some sickos are trying to make a thing of it. 04/13/2011 Ethel: Seriously depressed that @RepWeiner doesn't follow me anymore. Yesterday was a great day! 15 Apr Ethel: #turnon: married men. 05/02/2011 RT @RepWeiner: No politics on Mothers Day #JustDontMentionWomenEarn1/3LessThanMenForSameWork 05/08/2011 Ethel: @RepWeiner you used to follow me 🙁 don't forget me!!! #weineryes 13 May Ethel: SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE………. 15 May Betty: Tweeps my progressive idol @RepWeiner is following me! Today is the best day ever! May 16 from Twitter Betty: Today also marks day one of my campaign to get @RepWeiner to be my prom date. Will you be my prom date @RepWeiner? May 16 from Twitter Betty: Everyone please please follow @RepWeiner and tell him to be my prom date! May 16 from Twitter Betty: Tweeps please tweet and follow @RepWeiner and tell him to be my prom date and use#RepWeinerBe[Betty]sDate May 16 from Twitter Betty: Follow the best progressive Congressman @RepWeiner he is a democrat who fights for us & against Republican trolls! #RepWeinerBe[Betty]sDate May 16 from Twitter patriotusa76: RT [Betty] Please tweet and follow @RepWeiner & tell him to be my prom date>>Poor girl. We should warn her. @goatsred @tamale102280

Betty: It really sucks when one of your idols doesn’t live up to expectations.
May 17 from Twitter

Ethel: I love today. I really do.
17 May

Ethel: I’m in love with married men, #thatswhyimsingle
17 May

Betty: Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me. That was a short time. I defended him from people. Some thanks he gives to his loyal followers.
May 18 from Twitter

Betty: RT @[Ethel]: Funny that you said you had a crush on a married politician. Are you forreal?
May 18 from Twitter

Ethel: I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING PSYCHO GIRL. stop tweeting about me.

Ethel: I’m in love with you.
19 May

RepWeiner Anthony Weiner
On CNN at 5 talking peace. #UsingFacts
19 May

RepWeiner Anthony Weiner
Oops, not 5. #UnlessYouAreInCali. 8 in east.
19 May

Ethel: Links YouTube video
Anthony Weiner Rips Apart Republicans on 9/11 Health Bill
19 May

Ethel: [Redacted] High School is a disgrace today
20 May

Ethel: Sitting in the chair where I first talked to my favorite Congressman :))))))
21 May

Ethel: I’m in love with you. I hope you know this.
May 22

Ethel on Tumblr: My true love.

May 22

Ethel: I love 69ing big hunt + like to use honey mustard as lube. Ohh yeahh baby I love bdh weiner
May 22

Ethel on Tumblr, quoting Weiner: “I came back strong. Large. In charge. Tights and cape shit…” My favorite congressman<3 May 26

You can choose to believe that Ethel, who publicly declared her love for Weiner repeatedly, and who had no compunction about dirty talk in public, turned prim and proper when Weiner talked to her in private . . . about his cape and tights. You can choose to believe that he didn’t know Ethel was underage, despite her youthful appearance, mentions of high school, and profile talking about marching band.

Sure, you can believe that if you want.

It would still be inappropriate for him to be talking to her under the circumstances I have described.

But in any event, I’m content to let the evidence speak for itself.

UPDATE: Evidence that the “honey mustard” tweet may have referred to Ethel’s boyfriend, together with more damning details about Weiner’s behavior, discussed here.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Buckle in for a long ride, because I am about to get philosophical for a moment as we wait for part three of Patrick’s series on Congrssman Weiner’s questionable communications with a teenage girl to drop. And, bluntly, while Patrick hasn’t shared any certain time frame with me, this comment suggests to me that it won’t drop for a while—like as in for a day. But I wanted to talk about hypocrisy for a moment, because it is one of the major defenses to being offered for Anthony Weiner: at least he wasn’t a hypocrite.

Somehow in our culture, we have come to think that the worst sin one could commit is to be a hypocrite.  But that’s a fallacy whose origins are kind of similar to another fallacy: its not the conspiracy, it’s the cover up.  The origin of the latter phrase was obviously the Watergate scandal, and it reflected the reality that we had trouble establishing what the truth behind the conspiracy was: what did Nixon know and when did he know it.  But we could absolutely prove there was a cover up—with gaps in the tape and other untoward acts.  Very often in criminal cases the defendants are suspected of even worse crimes, but the prosecution can only prove the cover up, particularly in conspiracy situations.  So very often you can’t get them for the underlying crime, just the crime of covering it up the crime.  But some people seem to have lost sight of the origin of the phrase and think that somehow covering things up is worse than the underlying offense.  It isn’t.  Hiding a theft isn’t worse than the theft and hiding a murder isn’t worse than the murder.

Likewise, the emphasis on hypocrisy glosses over a difficulty in dealing the underlying offense, but this time the difficulty is moral.  Very often the charge of hypocrisy is used because we all agree that it is a bad thing to be a hypocrite, but we very often deal with people who can’t agree on other moral principles so the only way to win the argument is to prove someone is a hypocrite.  So we concentrate on that, naturally, and after a while people have gotten morally confused and now think that the worst thing you can be is a hypocrite.

And it is a particularly useful intellectual move for those who think of themselves as moral relativists, because it allows them simultaneously to engage in the tsk-tsking that moral non-relativists engage in, but at the same time it acts as a shield for their intellectual allies.  And this can get very lazy, too, as frankly too many democrats just assume that every republican runs on family values, or something.

But I am not a moral relativist, and frankly most of most revolutionary Americans rejected moral relativism.  For instance, Abraham Lincoln once said this about the definition of liberty:

(more…)

[Guest Post by Lee Stranahan]

I’ve always been interested in Urban Legends since I first saw author Jan Harold Brunvand on the old NBC David Letterman show. It’s interesting how untruths spread and it’s even more interesting now that we can track them online.

I’ve already shown conclusively that Little Green Footballs author Charles Johnson was totally wrong in a really humiliating way by claiming that Andrew Breitbart’s laptop is actually a menu board out in the front of the restaurant.

This lie is part of a story that liberals are trying to spin, desperate to find SOME way to prove Andrew Breitbart is wrong on the #Weinergate story. The idea is to prove that Breitbart was totally careless with the Weiner XXX picture – so lax that he left it out on a laptop screen in public!

Johnson drives this point home with TWO mentions in his short, embarrassingly wrong article. And with over 2,000 retweets and 400+ comments, not one liberal reader of Little Green Footballs even NOTICED that the ‘laptop’ is a frickin’ MENU BOARD. Not one.

They can’t all be stupid – but they are all that biased.

So full of hate for Breitbart that their eyes don’t work. So misguided by someone like Charles Johnson pandering to their worst instincts that they don’t even question someone leaving an open laptop out on the streets of New York City with a photo of the Most Famous Woody in America sitting on the screen.

Nobody grabbed a photo of that? No New Yorkers stopped and grab a snapshot? The story doesn’t even make sense, even if you missed the laptop / menu board thing.

Why no correction or retraction? Charles Johnson WANTS the lie to spread. That’s clear. He knows it isn’t try and goes with it not in spite of the fact it’s a wrong. He spreads it BECAUSE it’s wrong.

Thousands of liberals saw that photo and suspending their rational judgment and eyesight in favor of pure hate. That’s the EXACT same mistake they made that caused them to get Weinergate so totally wrong. They haven’t learned a ding-dong thing.

And worse – some of them blog about this discredited, obviously false, totally far-fetched “Breitbart Laptop” idea that Johnson still refuse to correct. This is how stupid spreads on the left.

Balloon Juice

It’s a mystery how it got out, what with Breitbart going to bars and leaving his laptop open with pictures of Weiner’s component parts on full display for everyone.

Taylor Marsh

Now, giving Andrew Breitbart control over your life because you were stupid is Rep. Weiner’s own fault. But any notion that Breitbart was going to uphold his words on the “Today” show, where he said he’d hold the photo as insurance in case Weiner went after him, should be at the very least questioned, while I admit to believing he leaked it on purpose, no matter what he says.

Hinterland Gazette

All I can say to Andrew Breitbart is make sure your backyard is clean because they are gunning for your fall from grace too. One more thing, how many heterosexual men walk around with a picture of another man’s penis on their laptop or cellphones? Could he be a closeted homosexual? This is a disgrace. The photograph has since been removed.

One final point – given the cover-up and smear campaign against Andrew Breitbart that Rep. Anthony Weiner actively engaged in, I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for Weiner that Breitbart has shown the photo to a few people. Breitbart could have published it and didn’t. Breitbart isn’t running for Saint – he’s got a photo that millions of people who want to see and he’s shown it to a few people. Big deal. Karma, dude. Rep. Weiner got himself into a position where his genitals are in the news media.

What do you think Charles Johnson or Gawker would do if they had a nude photo of Andrew Breitbart or Ann Coulter? It wouldn’t just be on a cell phone, that’s for damn sure. The Hinterland comment makes that clear.

– Lee Stranahan

Here at patterico.com we have been covering the Weiner scandal from Day 1. In covering that story, we soon realized that one of the most disturbing aspects of the story was the possibility that Congressman Weiner had engaged in communications with underaged girls. For whatever reason, this is the part of the story that the media has ignored.

Although Andrew Breitbart had some evidence of Congressman Weiner’s interactions with underaged girls, the involvement of young girls in this story was first revealed by the web site Mediaite, which published a piece about two underaged girls who idolized Congressman Weiner — one of whom claimed to have incriminating private Twitter messages from the Congressman.

Yet when Mediate’s liberal reporter Tommy Christopher confronted the girls, that girl instantly took back her accusations against the Congressman. I lied! she said — and both girls pointed the finger of blame at a supposedly nefarious team of Republicans . . . a new spin on the story that must have seemed like a godsend to Weiner’s PR team.

My B.S. detector went into overdrive. The statements issued by the girls and their parents sounded like classic political spin — Weiner was praised as a hero who had done nothing wrong, while the girls were portrayed as helpless victims of nasty Republican operatives.

I published a post that revealed contradictions in Christopher’s story. That post of mine also revealed the specifics of what the girls said they had. For example, one of the underage girls had told a man named Mike Stack:

the DMs with that girl gennette are between gennette and [an underaged girl] with gennette telling her how she & weiner flirt

how they flirt on DM

The story changed completely when Weiner confessed on Monday. It became clear that not only had Congressman Weiner sent pictures of himself to women, he had also allegedly coached a young woman to lie. And a transcript appeared of sexually explicit conversations between Weiner and Las Vegas blackjack dealer Lisa Weiss.

But Rep. Weiner insisted that he believed all the girls were of legal age.

Now, there is new evidence to suggest that Congressman Weiner had intimate conversations with an underaged girl. For privacy reasons, I called this girl “Ethel” in a previous post. She is someone who argued with another underaged girl about having a crush on Weiner — shortly after posting messages such as “SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE…” followed by “I’m in love with married men, #thatswhyimsingle.”

There is plenty of evidence (as we will detail in future installments) that Congressman Weiner was Ethel’s favorite Congressman. In this post, this blog will not link the Web address that shows Ethel, together with her Tumblr posts showing her talking about Congressman Weiner. But here is a screenshot from the cache of that now deleted Tumblr account:

If you were to enter the YouTube address at the bottom of that screenshot into your browser, you would see this girl’s favorite Congressman — Anthony Weiner — passionately making an argument about a 9/11 bill:

But what about the top of the screenshot? There, we see the following:

“I came back strong. Large. In charge. Tights and cape shit…” My favorite congressman<3

(My emphasis.)

Look at the quotation marks. The underage girl appears to be quoting her “favorite Congressman” Anthony Weiner. “Tights and cape shit” is not a phrase you would expect to hear uttered publicly by Congressman Anthony Weiner.

But it does sound like something that he might have said privately. That the underaged girl quoted.

The link for this statement — which will hopefully not need to be published — is from a Google cache that predates the scandal. The Google cache snapshot was taken May 29 . . . and as you can see from the screenshots above, the relevant parts came three days to a week earlier. Meaning that these statements appeared on May 26 and earlier — before the scandal broke on May 27. This evidence was not manufactured after the fact.

But is there evidence that Congressman Weiner ever talked dirty to someone about fighting for the country in his cape and tights?

As it turns out, there is.

Namely, that sexually explicit conversation he had with Lisa Weiss:

[WEINER:] computer back up?

[WEINER:] no sense in you being clever if nobody can read it. good morning.

[WEISS:] hi honey! computer’s back up…what’s up with you? busy saving my country rom this f***in tea baggers?

[WEINER:] Yep. Cape. Tights. Looking for my sidekick.

It gets very explicit after that.

So we know that Congressman Weiner talked dirty to Lisa Weiss about fighting for the country in his cape and tights.

And we know that an underaged girl, who loved Congressman Weiner, apparently quoted him talking about fighting for the country in his cape and tights.

In an ideal world, I would prefer not to publish Part 3 of this series.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Oh this is sweet:

In a final act of revenge, Elizabeth Edwards secretly recorded a testimony in her dying days that helped prosecutors indict husband John last week, it was claimed today.

John Edwards is due to stand trial on charges that could lead to a 30-year jail sentence after he pleaded not guilty on Friday to using $925,000 in campaign funds to cover up an affair and love child.

The estranged wife of the former presidential candidate is alleged to have filmed a damning testimony that was central to the prosecution’s case for charges.

Friends said the cancer victim, who died in December, wanted to ‘haunt’ her estranged husband and his mistress Rielle Hunter, with whom he fathered a child and made a sex tape.

Do read the whole thing.

Now in fact the Daily Mail appears to be using the term “testimony” in the informal sense, but still even as an out-of-court statement it might very well be admissible if other conditions are met.

But honestly my suspicion is that this kind of “testimony” is of little value if it is merely disputable eyewitness accounts, i.e. he said, she said.  That could be dismissed as the anger of a woman scorned.  On the other hand, if she gave specific information about names, transfers, correspondence, whatever…  it might lead to other independently verifiable evidence.  And that might be her (successful revenge).

It all makes me think of this classic movie moment:

That scene is hammy as hell, and almost 30 years later, it still rocks.

Update: In the comments, “J” reminds me that Mrs. Edwards was herself a lawyer. So we can be reasonably certain that she made sure it was admissible, and as damaging as she could make it. Nice.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

Well, calling it “Part 1” might be kind of an overstatement. This post is more of a . . . teaser.

But those who have been reading here long enough know that I don’t say things like this idly.

So . . . stay tuned for Part 2. In the meantime, chew on this publicly available transcript. Read it. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

It will become relevant when Part 2 comes along.

This, I promise you. Because we superheroes . . . that’s just how we roll.