The Weiner Case: Enter Allred

You know you're in trouble when:

1. A porn star talks about your communications with her;

2. She says that you told her to lie;

3. She calls on you to resign;

4. She said that if you lied "about this," she can't believe you about anything else; and

5. Gloria Allred is her lawyer.

Palin Emails

Yes, Anthony Weiner's name does show up in the Palin emails, but only as part of a long list of recipients in an email that she forwarded.

As Andy Barr says at Politico, the Palin emails show that she was aware of vice presidential speculation well in advance of McCain's decision to choose her. (Of course, certain pundits had mentioned her as a possibility months before, indeed as early as October 2007).

Molly Ball writes at Politico:

Once, there was a different Sarah Palin.

She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media. She was a little starstruck by her interactions with national politicians but unafraid to do battle with the chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies.

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The emails from her governorship, released Friday, brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people.

This was the vice presidential candidate John McCain’s team thought they were getting, before her darker tendencies — defensiveness, thin skin, grudge-keeping — hardened into tics. Together with the newly released, pro-Palin documentary “The Undefeated,” which focuses on her rise to the spotlight, the emails are reminders of a sympathetic figure who was not yet the brittle, divisive caricature Palin has become.

The Palin that emerges from the first cut at nearly 25,000 emails released by the state of Alaska Friday is touchingly authentic, responding to the news she’s been tapped for the national ticket with the words, “Can you flippinbelieveit?!”

Weiner at the Congressional Correspondents Dinner

On March 30, Anthony Weiner did a stand-up routine at the Congressional Correspondents's Dinner. He made what are now jaw-dropping remarks about his relationship with the press, about his name, and ... yes, about Twitter:

Sometimes Sarcasm Comes Back to Haunt...

Anthony Weiner on the House floor, March 17, 2011:

Weiner Has a Great Future Behind Him

Anthony Weiner admitted that he did it. At Salon, Steve Kornacki suggests that his political future is bleak:

Consider that Weiner has really only been using his congressional seat for two reasons: 1) to position himself to run for mayor of New York City; and 2) to play the role of wisecracking, Republican-bashing cable news all-star. (Reason No. 2 is related to Reason No. 1 -- Weiner's decision to exploit cable news was part of his effort to expand his outer-borough base in New York to include liberals in Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn.) And now, he can't do either of those things.

The 2013 mayor's race is almost certainly out now. Before this scandal, Weiner was running at or near the top of the Democratic pack, and his prospects of succeeding Michael Bloomberg seemed to be improving by the week. By he was hardly an overwhelming front-runner, and New York Democrats have plenty of other options. This situation is not analogous to Vitter's in Louisiana last year, when the senator was running for reelection. The New York media -- and the two daily tabloids in particular -- will not let this scandal, and these pictures, go if Weiner were to run for mayor. It's hard to imagine he'd bring this abuse on himself -- especially since his chances of actually winning would not be good.

Nor can he go back, for the foreseeable future, to his outspoken cable news antics. On MSNBC and other outlets, Weiner played a somewhat holier-than-thou liberal, a representative of the "fighting wing" of his party who spoke with what many activists felt was unusual clarity. He won't be able to pull this off anymore.

In other words, if he were to stay in Congress, Weiner would have to keep quiet and not run for mayor. Which would make him an incredibly bored man, since he's never actually put much effort into his congressional work. This is why so many of his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill and in New York have long viewed him with disdain: He's an ultra-ambitious showman with a knack for generating publicity but little interest in the nuts-and-bolts work that comes with serving in Congress.