"Anti-Gay GOP Arizona Attoney General Caught After Hit and Run Accident While Having Affair

Just yesterday this blog looked at the hypocrisy of an anti-gay marriage supporter in Maine who was arrested as part of a prostitution ring sting.  Now, we have the rabidly anti-gay Attorney General of the State of Arizona who has been caught having an affair with a woman not his wife.  Worse yet, he left the scene of an accident while rendezvousing with his mistress.  Like Donald Fortin in Maine, Attorney General Tom Horne (pictured at right) doesn't really give a damn about "protecting marriage."  He's just a flaming anti-gay bigot and a total hypocrite.  The Arizona Daily Star has details on Horne's affair and hit and run offense.  Here are highlights:

PHOENIX - Tom Horne caused more than $1,000 worth of damage when he clipped another car in a parking garage and just drove off, in order, according to FBI agents, to conceal an affair he was having with his passenger.

Phoenix police records obtained Tuesday include detailed witness accounts by FBI agents who were following Horne, Arizona's attorney general, on March 27 as part of a campaign finance investigation. They said they watched him back his borrowed vehicle into a white Range Rover in the parking garage of a Phoenix residential complex.

FBI agents said that after the fender-bender, Horne and the woman, since identified as Carmen Chenal, who works for Horne, walked off and entered the residential area of the complex where Chenal lives.

The FBI report details how Chenal left the Attorney General's Office that day in a Volkswagen she'd borrowed from Linnea Heap, another employee at the office. Five minutes later, Horne left in his own gold Jaguar. 

According to the report, they met up at a parking garage and emerged several minutes later with Horne, now wearing a baseball cap, driving the Volkswagen.  From there, they went to the residential parking section of a garage at 202 W. Roosevelt St.

FBI agent Grehoski made it clear in several of the interview transcripts released that he believes Horne was hiding something.

"You know, we've heard that Tom is supposed to be honest to a fault," he told Heap during an interview about a month after the accident.  "But he isn't," Grehoski continued. "He's driving someone else's car, crashed, and left the scene of an accident. Having some rendezvous with Carmen in her apartment. I mean, that's not ethical. That's not honest. That's slimy."

And in an interview with Amy Rezzonico, the spokeswoman for Horne's office, Grehoski says outright, "You've got a guy having an affair."

From there, they went to the residential parking section of a garage at 202 W. Roosevelt St.

GOP "Family Values" Assembly Member Caught on Live Microphone Talking About Extra-marital Affairs

In another case of "you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried" category is this video from KCAL TV9, this video of Assemblyman Mike Duvall - a "family values" Republican unknowingly speaking about sex with two women into a live mic. He apparently did not realize the microphone was on during a legislative hearing. He talks about adulterous sex and spanking! Reportedly he has resigned from office. Here are some highlights from the San Francisco Chronicle:

An Orange County Republican resigned from the California Assembly Wednesday after a videotape surfaced of the lawmaker bragging about his sexual exploits with two women, one of whom reportedly is a lobbyist.

Assemblyman Mike Duvall, R-Yorba Linda, resigned soon after Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Hills (Los Angele County) stripped him of his committee assignments and ordered an Ethics Committee investigation of the two-term lawmaker. Duvall was recorded making lurid comments during an appropriations committee hearing in July when he apparently thought his microphone was turned off. The meetings are regularly recorded and archived by the Assembly.

In the recording, Duvall bragged about having several sexual encounters with the women. At one point he makes explicit comments about their sexual activity, adding: "So, I am getting into spanking her. Yeah, I like it. I like spanking her. She goes, 'I know you like spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah, because you're such a bad girl!'"

Yep, those family values Republicans like spanking women and lying to their constituents. Why is it 9 times out of 10 the cheaters who are into kinky sex are members of the GOP and not Democrats.

For GOP, Affairs Are OK if They Aren't Gay

This op-ed column from the Seattle Times (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/330502_robert06x.html)highlights the double standard applied to extra-marital affairs by the GOP. Apparently, "family values" is a pretty lose term as longs as gay sex is nowhere in the picture. Here are some excerpts:

If you are a politician who wants to engage in an extramarital sex romp, the GOP is the place to be. As long as you pick a lover of the opposite sex and keep the number of liaisons discreetly low, fellow Republicans won't rush to oust you. But know this: Should there be even a whiff of homosexual goings-on, you're toast. The Republican Taliban will come after you, wearing a "breastplate of righteousness" that blinds the public with its glare and hides something deeper.

For Republicans, carnal indiscretions, more likely than not, get a pass when they involve heterosexuals:

The late Republican Congresswoman from Idaho, Helen Chenoweth-Hage, admitted to having an affair with a married man in the 1980s. That revelation didn't prevent her from getting re-elected.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a devout Catholic, was convicted for DUI when he was a lieutenant governor and lost his marriage a year after meeting a Miss Idaho USA winner who was more than two decades his junior. They married last year. None of that has been a big problem for his fellow Republicans in a "red" state.

Former Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon might have survived allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward female employees while in office, but the number of accusers was too big to push under a rug: 17.

But the Republican Party, in seeking to appeal to its Christian conservative base, has claimed a mantle of moral superiority. It has framed homosexuality as the unforgivable sin -- worse than adultery between a man and a woman -- even though adultery isn't exactly in keeping with the party's "family values" mantra.

To be fair, Democrats aren't immune. Jim McGreevey was the boy-wonder governor of New Jersey until he stepped down after announcing he had an extramarital affair with a man on his staff. But here's the thing with Democrats: As a matter of platform or policy, they don't go around assailing homosexuality the way Republicans do -- so much that even gays in the GOP are forced to lead double lives on the down low.

The GOP: the Party of hypocrisy.