WHO WILL BE THE NEXT REPUBLICAN SENATOR EXPOSED IN A LURID SEX SCANDAL?

Vitter & Wendy (Wendy the wife, not Wendy the hooker)

Larry Craig (R-ID), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) must be crapping their pants. Maybe they should go borrow some diapers from Lieberman or from David Vitter, who liked wearing them while hookers in stiletto heels walked on his ass. Today the FBI released a lurid account of GOP slimeballs in paradise, with Republican briber Brent Wilkes and Republican bribee, former Congressman Randy "The Wrong Stuff" Cunningham (R-CA) bartering tax dollars for prostitutes in Hawaii.

But last night CNN's Larry King-- whose pablum-like show is not exactly where one goes for breaking news-- interviewed Hustler's Larry Flynt. Flynt says he's got the goods on 30 more members of Congress and the Bush Regime. He was particularly worked up over one particular Republican senator. Rumors are rampant that the private whose privates McConnell got kicked out of the Army for diddling has come forward. But there is also speculation that one of the fellas Larry Craig encountered-- closely-- in the Union Station men's room has decided to tell his story. I thought you might enjoy the CNN transcript:

SEN. DAVID VITTER (R), LOUISIANA: I want to again offer my deep, sincere apologies to all those I have let down and disappointed with these actions from my past. I am completely responsible and I'm so very, very sorry. No matter how long ago it was, I know this has hurt the relationship of trust I've enjoyed with so many of you and that I have a lot of work to do to rebuild that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Hypocrisy running rampant on Capitol Hill. Senator Vitter was an outspoken of all things wrong, including prostitution and the like.

His wife also spoke at that press conference.

WENDY VITTER, WIFE OF SEN. DAVID VITTER (R-LA): To forgive is not always the easy choice. But it was and is the right choice for me. David is my best friend.

Last week, some people very sympathetically said to me I wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now. I stand before you to tell you very proudly I am proud to be Wendy Vitter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining us now in San Francisco is Jeane Palfrey, the alleged madam of Washington, D.C. In Miami is her attorney, Montgomery Sibley; and her in Los Angeles, Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who -- you broke this whole thing, right?

LARRY FLYNT, PUBLISHER, HUSTLER MAGAZINE: Yes. A lot of people are confused on that. The madam deserves the credit. My chief investigator was working on the ad he took out in the Post. And he had already had a relationship with her and...

KING: That ad is where you say you'll looking for who will give rewards?

FLYNT: Yes. And he got a phone number from her and he just dialed it up at random.

KING: And up came Vitter.

FLYNT: And up came Vitter.

KING: Jeane, first of all, what do you make of everything that's happened since this broke?

JEANE PALFREY, ALLEGED D.C. MADAM: Since the Vitter revelation broke?

KING: Yes.

PALFREY: Well, it's been quite crazy for me personally. I think it has played out somewhat the way I would have imagined. Senator Vitter was rather quiet for the last week or so. I was rather surprised that he did not resign but-- and came back to D.C. but then again that's his decision to do so.

KING: Mr. Sibley, where is the current legal status of your client?

MONTGOMERY SIBLEY, ATTORNEY FOR ALLEGED D.C. MADAM JEANE PALFREY: Well, greetings again from Miami, Larry. And...

KING: Hi.

SIBLEY: ...basically we're working on the legal issues before the judge which has to be resolved before the matter can go forward to trial. And we're hoping to have it dismissed before it ever gets there.

KING: Mr. Flynt, you recently told CNN that you function at a higher standard than the mainstream media when it comes to exposing scandal. What do you mean?

FLYNT: Well, absolutely. They-- the mainstream media holds me at a higher standard.

KING: They hold you higher?

FLYNT: Yes. If I release information like this on there, I've got to be right. Larry, if I'm wrong, they you step on me like a bug, you know.

KING: How many, Jeane-- true.

Jeane, how many people-- how many well-known people are in your book? PALFREY: Well, Larry, I absolutely have no idea. We estimate statistically there are approximately 20 to 30 to 100 possibilities. And this is based upon a rough estimate of 10,000 clients who used the service over the past 13 or so years from 1993 to 2006.

KING: You were providing the women, right? You weren't one yourself, or am I wrong?

PALFREY: No, that's correct. I ran the business long distance from San Francisco, the Bay Area.

KING: And were most of the clients in Washington?

PALFREY: They were all in Washington and some in Baltimore, the Washington, D.C./Baltimore Corridor and surrounding areas.

KING: Larry, without naming them, because we stand under legal protection here, are others coming?

FLYNT: Oh, yes. We've gotten 10 times more leads from the recent ad in the Post than we got during the Clinton impeachment. Unbelievable. We've got...

KING: Ten times more leads?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Does that mean you have phone numbers that you're following up?

FLYNT: Not just phone numbers.

KING: Names?

FLYNT: We've got good leads. We've got over 300 initially. And they're down to about 30 now which is solid.

KING: When are you going to print?

FLYNT: Well, the last thing now is we don't know if we want to let it to drip, drip, drip or we want to go with everything at once.

KING: You mean you might release 30 names at once?

FLYNT: A good possibility.

KING: Will we be-- I don't want to get into names yet. Will we be shocked?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Were you shocked?

FLYNT: I was shocked, especially at one senator but...

KING: One senator especially? FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Montgomery, are you shocked?

SIBLEY: Well, I'm shocked about two things, if I might, Larry. Please understand that this is one escort service out of approximately 60 in the Metro D.C. area. And indeed there are more escort services than there are McDonald's in D.C.

Now what's happened here is one service by the coincidence of Jeane being in California had all the calls recorded in the telephone records, and therefore were able to track the customers back through the record numbers. As the other escort services may or may not coming forward, we're going to get a real full picture of what have goes on in the District of Columbia environments.

KING: Do you know the names that Larry Flynt appears to know, Montgomery?

SIBLEY: Larry, I'm the custodian of the telephone records. And I've given probably three-quarters of them to Larry's agents. There's another set of records that are still being scanned and are going to be released in the next couple of days as well. I don't know the names and that's one of the reasons we released the list. Jeane needs the names for her defense because we have to bring these people in to testify as to the legal sexual behavior that was contracted and provided for.

KING: Are you going to give her the names, Larry?

FLYNT: We'll cooperate with Jeane in any way we possibly can. But I want to point something out very important. (inaudible) lied on TV when he apologized to the nation. He...

KING: Lied how?

FLYNT: ... well, he's using his wife and kids as a shield and said what happened. Those rumors out of Louisiana where he had a small brothel of hookers. That was not true. Well, it is true. I'm working with the major Louisiana media down there.

KING: You say he had a brothel of hookers in Louisiana?

FLYNT: There's been about five we've been able to track down so far. So you see what happens when you're a guy like him and you're not completely honest, see, he didn't even have to bring that up. And now that he's brought it up, everybody is all over it, including us.

KING: What bothers you the most is the hypocrisy, right?

(CROSSTALK)

FLYNT: It's the biggest threat to democracy.

KING: Speaking out on morals?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Jeane, does that bother you, when people speak out on morality and then act immorally?

PALFREY: It bothers me considerably. And the reason that I ultimately released the phone records, as I did, was this very point, the hypocrisy.

There's another point that needs to be mentioned as well, perhaps even more important, and that is the susceptibility of blackmail of certain clients having used the service over the years. Most people at the moment for obvious reasons are focusing upon the hypocrisy angle. However, intellectualize a bit, think about it a bit, and you'll come to the conclusion that we've come to, that there are possible people who have used the service who have become subjects and targets of blackmail. And many of these people being in D.C. most likely have security clearances.

KING: Thank you all very much. We'll be doing a lot more on this -- Jeane Palfrey, Montgomery Sibley, and Larry Flynt.

H/T: Taegan Goddard


UPDATE: SLAYING THE "PRIVATE MATTER" SHIBBOLETH-- RUDY, VITTER AND REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

As hard it is for me to imagine agreeing with Ruth Marcus over E.J. Dionne, she's completely right in calling for the political beheading of David Diapers Vitter and Dionne's defense is sexist cant. Marcus describes the Vitter affair accurately: "the sanctimonious family-values politician caught with his hypocrisy showing. Vitter-- the man who called for President Bill Clinton to resign because he was "morally unfit to govern"-- was back at work yesterday, a week after he was linked to a D.C. escort service."

What Marcus gets and her male colleagues overlook is that Vitter isn't just an adulterer-- something between him and the two Wendys (and all his other gals)-- but a criminal.

But Vitter didn't just cop to a "very serious sin." It's a fair inference that he committed a crime. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "D.C. Madam" in whose phone records Vitter's number turned up, is facing federal charges of running a prostitution ring.

Do my colleagues bemoaning the loss of privacy think those charges should be dropped? Dionne says we should "grant Vitter our collective absolution and move on." Does he want to do the same for Palfrey? What makes Palfrey "fair game" for prosecutors, in Ignatius's words, but puts her client list off-limits?

At the end of her column, Marcus brings up Rudy Giuliani, who made such a big loud noise, when he was mayor, about busting not just hookers but also their johns. And now that the admitted law breaking john is Giuliani's Southern capo? "It's a personal issue." Rudy Giuliani: another 4 years of George Bush.