Josh Tyrangiel: “Almost 14 years after he accidentally posted the first lewd photo to his Twitter account, and six years after he walked out of a minimum-security prison, having served 18 months for transferring obscene material to a minor, Weiner is running for city council in New York. Is his candidacy a test of America’s capacity to forgive? A provocation for Democrats to stop clutching their pearls while Trump gropes his way to authoritarianism?”

“One consequence of living in an age when nothing seems to matter is a tendency, at least in some people, to overcorrect and insist that everything matters. The return of Anthony Weiner raises Big Societal Questions, and if that’s your thing, have at it.”

In an interview with Gay Sydney News, Aidan Maese-Czeropski spoke out for the first time since a video of him engaging in sexual intercourse in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room went viral in 2023.

Maese-Czeropski worked as an aide in Sen. Ben Cardin’s office but was promptly fired after the video surfaced.

Jonathan Bernstein: “The other thing worth emphasizing when these stories come up is that there is now almost certainly a partisan difference, with Republican politicians more likely to commit criminal or otherwise heinous or scandalous acts (some empirical support can be found looking through here, here and here).”

“This didn’t used to be the case, and I do not believe that Republicans or conservatives are any more prone to such thing than Democrats. What has changed, however, is the incentive structure. Once upon a time both parties were equally likely to rid themselves of bad actors; now Republicans are far more likely to tolerate, and in some cases even celebrate, behavior they once would have shunned.”

“Of course, the most famous of these is Donald Trump — both for his own misdeeds, and those he tolerates in others. It is absolutely inconceivable, for example, that a Democratic president-elect would nominate and stick with someone who had generated the accusations that have been lodged against Pete Hegseth. It’s not just that Democratic Senators would revolt; we would see multiple resignations from any transition team stocked with Democrats who were faced with that situation.”

A defiant Mark Robinson (R) said today he is suing CNN over a story that linked the North Carolina gubernatorial candidate to racist and lewd posts on a porn site message board.

Said Robinson: “We’re going after them for what they’ve done!”

“Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious ‘pedophile island’ in the years prior to his death left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their own homes and offices,” Wired reports.

“Maps of these visitations generated by a troubled international data broker with defense industry ties, discovered last week by Wired, document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender.”

Former Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler and his wife, Bridget—known for promoting “family values” and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric—first had a sexual encounter with his rape accuser in 2021 as they “hunted” for a threesome partner, the Daily Beast reports.

The names of up to 150 people tied to Jeffrey Epstein were released as part of a massive document dump involving the late sex trafficker.

The documents are now being reviewed by the news media.

“Here’s a direct quote: ‘If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016.”

— Mark Epstein, quoted by the New York Post, recalling a conversation he had with his brother about the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The first of 150-plus names connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case are expected be unsealed on Wednesday, The Messenger reports. 

Police are expanding their investigation into Florida Republican Chair Christian Ziegler to probe whether he broke any laws when he allegedly recorded a sexual encounter with a woman accusing him of rape, Politico reports.

According to an affidavit, the alleged victim told police she didn’t consent to being recorded.

“A sex video involving Sarasota School Board member Bridget Ziegler and an unidentified woman has been recovered by police as part of the ongoing criminal investigation of a rape allegation made against Bridget’s husband, Christian Ziegler,” the Florida Trident reports.

“The video, according to sources, was obtained by police after a search warrant was executed on Christian Ziegler’s cell phone and Google account in November to recover evidence in connection with the alleged rape.”

A federal judge ruled the names of nearly 200 people connected to pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are to be unsealed as early as January 2, The Messenger reports.

Semafor: “The Senate sodomy scandal brings to mind the saga of former Rep. Jon Hinson, Republican of Mississippi. Running for reelection in 1980, Hinson made a stunning confession: Four years earlier, working as an aide to Rep. Thad Cochran, he had been arrested for solicitation at the Iwo Jima Memorial, then a popular gay cruising spot. And if that wasn’t shocking enough, Hinson also admitted to having narrowly survived a fire at a gay pornographic cinema in southeast D.C. in which nine men were killed. Hinson denied that he was gay or bisexual and managed to win reelection. In the words of one supporter, ‘some folks would rather have a queer conservative than a macho liberal.'”

“Alas, the tolerance of Hinson’s constituents for a ‘queer conservative’ would be exhausted just a few months later, when Hinson was arrested for administering oral sex to a Library of Congress employee in a Longworth House Office building bathroom. That the other man was Black did not help Hinson in his conservative southern constituency, and following a huge public outcry, he resigned.”