This Just In — Anthony Weiner Will Resign from Congress
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 16, 2011
One of the tamer provocative photos Congressman Weiner sent out to women via emails and Twitter
The story broke at the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend that a lewd photo of New York Democrat congressman Anthony Weiner had been accidentally sent via Twitter to thousands of his followers. It was intended for a college student in Seattle.
In the days that followed, more compromising, controversial photos surfaced, more women stepped forward about their sexting relationship with him, and multiple lies were told by the elected House of Representatives leader that his social network account had been hacked. Rep. Weiner even supplied a script to Ginger Lee, a stripper/porn actress, for her to use so that she could effectively lie to the media about her tawdry online relationship with the congressman.
Mainstream media was slow, even reluctant for days to report on the growing “Weinergate” scandal, choosing instead to defend the lawmaker and to blame/accuse conservative webmaster and writer Andrew Breitbart and other conservative bloggers of falsifying the information and photos. Weiner became the butt of late-night jokes and a doll manufacturing company released a sexually excited Anthony Weiner doll. Yesterday, supermarket tabloids and the NY Daily News splashed a photo of the congressman dressed in a bra and pantyhose from his college days.
It went from bad to worse, to even MORE worse, one horrifying day after another. Today, House leaders were going to meet and discuss what to do with the disgraced congressman.
Only because of the tenacious efforts of those people who were being maligned or mocked by liberals for daring to dig and expose the truth (which “real” journalists refused to do for more than a week) have we gotten to this announcement.
After nearly three weeks of the nightmarish Weinergate, Rep. Weiner has decided he will resign from the House of Representatives.
There will be a news conference later today.
*********************
UPDATE, June 17: Weiner’s resignation press conference didn’t go very well: DLTDHYOTWO… Hecklers During Weiner’s Resignation & Apology: Limbaugh, Malkin Weigh in on Disgraced Dem Congressman & Weinergate (video)
*********************
From ABC News, Rep. Anthony Weiner to Resign From Congress:
Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York plans to leave office, calling House leaders Wednesday night at a White House picnic to inform them he would resign today, sources tell ABC News.
Weiner’s decision comes after days of mounting pressure from congressional Democrats following his embarrassing admission of risque online chats and photo swaps with multiple women after first denying it.
Weiner, 46, has begun sharing his decision with close friends, the sources said, but has yet to send a formal letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, indicating his intentions.
From Politico, Anthony Weiner to resign:
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will resign from his seat in Congress, heeding calls from President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and dozens of other congressional Democrats, sources confirm to POLITICO. The resignation ends nearly three weeks of tumultuous political controversy since the New York congressman sent a lewd picture of himself over Twitter which he claimed at first was a result of a hack, and later admitted he had sent himself.
According to two sources, Weiner made up his mind to resign Wednesday night, and shortly after began making calls to inform them of his decision. Weiner called DCCC chair Steve Israel — who had also called for his resignation — on Wednesday night at the White House picnic to inform him and Pelosi that he had decided to resign on Thursday.
House Democrats were set to strip Weiner of his committee assignments on Thursday morning, though they were not officially informed before a meeting in the Capitol Thursday morning with a White House liaison. But the news spread quickly following media reports.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who chairs the Democratic National Committee, said she had no comment about the resignation and only knew what she read on her BlackBerry.
Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House in the wake of revelations of his lewd online exchanges with women, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.
The news comes as Democratic leaders prepared to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to strip the 46-year-old Congressman of his committee assignments, a blow which would severely damage his effectiveness.
Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife, Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
From Hot Air, Breaking: NYT says Weiner will resign; Update: “Staff leaving with their belongings”:
Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.
Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife, Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
[...]
Democrats can breathe a sigh of relief. They were going to meet today to discuss stripping Weiner of his committee assignments as a last-ditch effort to get him to quit. After that, they had no more cards to play except for an ethics investigation, which would have taken at least weeks to conclude.
Unfortunately, this means we won’t get to see the spectacle of porn stars scolding a Congressman over his lack of ethics. On the upside, this does mean that Gloria Allred has to look for another vehicle to sate her media fix.
Journalist Luke Russert tweeted this: NBC Prod Alex Moe tells me #Weiner ‘s office is locked. Lights are off. Phone goes to voicemail. She saw staff leaving with their belongings.
From NewsBusters, Weiner to Resign: Will Media Lament His Departure?:
Exit questions: How much media moaning about alleged “puritanism” with respect to Weiner’s obscene online activities will we hear from the left-of-center media? And how many weeks will CNN wait to pair him up with his fellow disgraced New Yorker Eliot Spitzer? After all, he seems to be in need of a co-host.
MRC TV: Liberal Writer Joan Walsh Says She Looks ‘Stupid’ for Defending Weiner – Then Continues to Defend Him Despite All the Evidence
From GayPatriot, BREAKING: WEINER TO PULL OUT:
Our long national nightmare is over.
From The Powers That Be, They Won’t Have Weiner to Kick Around Anymore:
It’s with great sadness that I report that our long national Weiner joke is almost over… almost.
[...]
The New York Post staff will soon be convening an emergency meeting to decide between “Weiner Pulls Out,” “Cooked Weiner” and “Weiner’s Last Stand” for their morning headline.
This is the Twitter underwear pic that started the toppling of Rep. Weiner’s house of cards:
Crotch shot of himself that Rep. Anthony Weiner sent out to women who are not his wife
UPDATE — excellent (and eye-opening) post over at Michelle Malkin’s blog on other government corruption stories and scandals, Capitol Hill’s Other Dirty Laundry:
The same congressional panel that launched a preliminary inquiry into Weiner-gate this week has been diddling around with several other Democratic ethics scandals for years. These aren’t foxes guarding the henhouse. They’re sloths guarding the foxhole.
The House Ethics Committee is now reportedly probing into Twitter-holic Democratic New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s possible abuse of government resources while sending pervy messages and photos to young women across the country. The latest batch of Weiner’s leaked social-media self-portraits — more cheesecake than beefcake — showed him in various states of undress at the congressional gym. From what other public buildings has Ick-arus tweeted his junk? And how much time on the public’s dime did his government staff spend coaching Weiner girls to assist with damage control?
Don’t expect an answer from the House ethics watchdogs until after Weiner’s first child enters kindergarten. The wheels of justice grind more slowly there than a dial-up modem.
Weiner’s dirty laundry is just the latest addition to a teeming heap of scandal. To wit: The committee still hasn’t issued a final report into last year’s reckless Capitol Hill predator du jour, former Democratic New York Rep. Eric Massa. He’s the notorious creep who serially groped male staffers and subjected interns to “tickle fights” for months while then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looked the other way.
Then there’s Beltway swamp queen Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters. Last summer, after a yearlong investigation, the House Ethics Committee charged her with three violations related to her crony intervention on behalf of minority-owned OneUnited Bank in Los Angeles. The panel accused Waters of bringing discredit to the House for using her influence to seek and secure taxpayer-subsidized special favors for the failing financial institution. Her Democratic guardians have successfully delayed a trial for 10 months.
Another California Democrat, Rep. Laura Richardson, has been under the House Ethics microscope since the fall of 2009. She defaulted six times on home loans, left a trail of unpaid bills in her wake and allegedly failed to report required information on her financial disclosure forms while receiving special treatment from a lender. While the panel cleared her of “knowingly” accepting favors, she is reportedly the subject of a second probe into using employees on government time to work on her political campaign.
There’s more, much more. Read her entire post.
We need to clean up our government pronto.
About the author
Good grief, he got his 15 minutes of fame already. What took this guy so long? Did they have to pry his fingers off the door?