who voted for this guy?

Honestly, what on earth were you thinking?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has abandoned a pledge to investigate claims that he groped women, arguing any probe would be used as political fodder, his spokesman said.

"Upon consulting with legal counsel and advisers, the governor has concluded that, given the political nature of the allegations, an investigation would only be ridiculed by his political opponents and provide little opportunity to put this issue to rest," spokesman Rob Stutzman said.

Stutzman announced on Nov. 6 -- after the October recall election but before Schwarzenegger took office -- that the governor-elect "had already decided to engage a well-respected investigative firm to look into the allegations."

But Stutzman said Monday that "the time has come once and for all to put this issue behind us."

He noted that no criminal investigation is underway into the harassment allegations.

"(Schwarzenegger) remains sincerely sorry to anyone he may have offended, but there comes a time to move on and focus on the critical issues facing the state," Stutzman said.

Five days before the election, the Los Angeles Times detailed allegations from six women who said Schwarzenegger groped or sexually harassed them between 1975 and 2000. By the Oct. 7 election, the number had grown to 16.

Schwarzenegger apologized for having "behaved badly" toward women in the past but refused to discuss the allegations in detail until after he was elected. He told "Dateline NBC" on Oct. 5 that after the campaign, "I can get into all of the specifics and find out what is really going on."

Attorney General Bill Lockyer called for a full investigation last month. But spokesman Nathan Barankin said Monday that no criminal investigation is possible because the statute of limitations for prosecuting the alleged crimes had expired.

"We don't have anything to add," Barankin said. "He made his decision and that's it."

The announcement that Schwarzenegger would not pursue his own investigation came hours after a woman who claimed she was groped a decade ago sued the governor and his campaign spokesman for libel.

Rhonda Miller's Superior Court suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges that Sean Walsh tried to ruin her reputation by falsely suggesting in an e-mail that she was a convicted felon.

Miller made the groping allegations in a news conference on Oct. 7 -- the day before the California gubernatorial recall election -- with well-known attorney Gloria Allred by her side.

She said Schwarzenegger lifted her shirt to photograph her breasts and groped her twice when she worked as a stunt double on the film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" in 1991 and in 1994 on the set of "True Lies."

The actor denied the allegations.

Within hours of Miller's news conference, Walsh sent an e-mail to several reporters directing them to the Los Angeles Superior Court Web site and instructing them to type in the name "Rhonda Miller."

The search turned up a Rhonda Miller with a long criminal history that included prostitution, forgery and drug selling. But that woman had a different birth date.

Miller said she has never been arrested and that false information about her was broadcast on national television reports...

shorter David Brooks

Their guy is just like our guy, and look how he turned out.

the early news

( voting, paying taxes and other stuff you may or may not want or get or have to do )

someone's gotta do it

Charles Kuffner (who's a guru of Texas local politics in all its strange splendor) has found someone who looks like a credible opponent for that nice Mr. DeLay. Go take a look.

sigh

In the wake of the Gore-Dean endorsement: as digby points out, no actual votes have been cast yet; as Newsday points out, General Clark is still gaining significant support; as billmon points out, just go away, Senator Lieberman.

While Sen. Lieberman gets the most cumulative airtime he's gotten since the race began doing the rounds of the shows and trashing Gore, let's do keep in mind that it's not the first time. Lieberman was AWOL in Florida. He made good and sure the thugs weren't coming to riot outside his house.

Good lord, this is the first man who shook the hand of the guy who got the impeachment started.

Never liked him, never will. He's a sanctimonious trimmer, and far too interested in being safe to consider doing anything to piss the Republicans off. He was a symbol of Gore's being convinced that he had to run against eight years of peace and prosperity, and while Gore and Lieberman were running against Clinton, Bush (with the help of a great deal of money and a lot of dishonest friends) came close enough to steal the election.

I'm glad Gore knows better now, and I dearly hope that Lieberman has sense enough to drop out soon.

Scene from last night's Lieberman rally:

Still angry and frustrated, Florida Democrats flashed back on Sunday to the tumultuous presidential election of 2000 and the disputed Republican victory over Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman. "I won't ever forget how hard you worked for Al Gore and me in 2000," Lieberman told party activists at the state Democratic Convention. "You helped us win this state until others took it away. And we got mad, didn't we. But now, let's get even.

Yeah, that's a stemwinder, Joe. We got mad, didn't we.

Well, I got mad. You washed your hands of the whole business.

Get stuffed, Joe. I don't vote for Republicans, and you're a classic Rockefeller Republican.

I don't like you. Go away.

half of what I say is meaningless

Jeanne has a beautiful memorial to John Lennon up, with a link to another by Jeralyn.

Unless you're a Person of a Certain Age, all this probably seems a bit excessive, like the episode of the Brady Bunch where Jan swoons over Davy Jones.

I'm not sure how to explain it - there really isn't anyone now who has the same impact. There was this brilliant man, and he wrote songs that grabbed at your heart, and he was All Fucked Up, but he wasn't proud of it, it just was.

Then at some point he decided not to be All Fucked Up, and then he was that too.

For those of us with less-than-optimal antecedent situations, that was an astonishing thing.

Because this guy wasn't a model for anyone's life - went out of his way to tell people he wasn't. Wrote songs about it - and when what he was doing didn't work, he went and found something else, and when that didn't work he tried something else, and when that worked, he just did it.

It was a little gap in the conformity-rebellion-conformity sequence that rolls through popular culture like a gilded hamster wheel every few years. Don't know what to be? Make something up. Doesn't work? Make something else up. Pick and choose, put pieces together, find your foothold on the shifting sands and stand there.

If you have someone to stand with, even better, but they can't make the sand stay still for you.

If you've spent your life wrapped around with things you don't belong to and people you don't belong with, it's a very liberating thing to hear that you don't have to live in or outside the borders of someone else's idea of the world.

You are, we would have said in those long-ago days before earnestness became irony and we came to pride ourselves on our shiny carapaces, your own thing, and as long as you are, the people around you take their places at the periphery of your world, not to define it, but to share it if they can and if you can.

Timothy Leary rewrote the Tibetan Book of the Dead. John Lennon set it to music. I don't think it's any great shakes to figure out whose soul got larger.

I hope - no, I believe - he's somewhere in the middle of just a small part of what he passed on to the rest of us.

Which, as you remember, he once said is all you need.