If You Snort A Couple Of Adderalls Does It Show Up In A Drug Test?

Much has been made of Trump's snorting and sniffling at the debates. So Saturday, Mr. Projection Man suggested that Hillary was hopped up on drugs and that they should both agree to a drug test. Great idea-- and I suggested it an hour into the first debate when he was so obviously out of his mind on something he tooted before he went out on stage. Many have said cocaine, though I subsequently found out through his former doctor's office that it was Adderall.

Since Trump was in New Hampshire Saturday morning, ostensibly to address the state's serious opioid problem, what better time to accuse his opponent who is leading him in every poll in the state by increasing numbers, of being a drug abuser? (The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Hillary beating him in the Granite State by 3.6 points. The most recent poll, from U. Mass shows her up by 6 points-- 45-39% among likely voters). But he was in Portsmouth and none of the Republican candidates in state where anywhere in sight (just Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani), so he decided to channel his rage into claiming Hillary had been "getting pumped up" before the last two debates. He then described his own state of drug abuse and attributed it to her, claiming, for example, that "at the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, huff, take me down." Tens of millions of Americans had seen that had been Trump, not Hillary. Anyway, as you can hear on the video above, Trump wants drug tests. Hillary should call him on it. And, while we're at it, how about an evaluation by a panel of impartial psychologists and psychiatrists?

I'm not taking the Wikileaks revelations all that seriously. There's no way of knowing how much of it is doctored Russian propaganda and how much is real. So I'm basically ignoring it all. Although, when investigating the numerous claims about Trump's cocaine use back in his Studio 54 days, I did stumble across a report from Kenneth Vogel in Saturday's Politico about how Clinton operatives tested out a line of attack against candidate Obama in 2008 that involved his own admitted youthful cocaine use. They never used it. But he wasn't sniffling like a mad dog on the debate stage.

Did Mr. Sniffles Just Pick His Nose Too Aggressively?

Look, I don't want to get anyone in trouble-- and I know from personal experience that Trump is a litigious asshole-- but, without having ever been in the room to see it myself, the Palm Beach doctors who give Trump his fat and "beauty" treatments taught him how to chop up Adderall and snort it. I was sure it was cocaine the night of the first debate too, but then I got the inside scoop about the Adderall. Nonetheless, it's worth mentioning-- in light of the sniffle-fest Sunday's debate turned into-- that actress Carrie Fisher tweeted to her million-plus followers that Trump's a coke freak.

Bruce Y. Lee is a Forbes contributor who covers the intersection of business and public health and is an Associate Professor of International Health at Johns Hopkins. He also would like to get to the bottom of Trump's endless sniffling and wrote about it at Forbes Monday right after debate #2. He's not so sure about the cocaine diagnosis that may people, like Fisher and Howard Dean, are so sure of. "[T]here are," he wrote, "plenty of other possible causes for what has now become chronic (i.e., continuing) sniffling such as:"

• Trump may have allergies: Allergies are the most common cause of chronic sniffling. This time of the year (August to November) ragweed is the most common culprit. Mold and fungi are other common possibilities in September and October.

• Trump may have chronic sinusitis: Sinusitis is inflammation of the sinuses, which blocks mucus drainage, which, in turn, may impair breathing. Allergies can lead to chronic sinusitis. So can growths in the nose like nasal polyps as well nasal defects such as a deviated nasal septum. Viral, bacterial and fungal infections are also common causes. Heartburn, otherwise known as gastroesophageal reflux (if you haven’t watched all the pharmaceutical commercials about heartburn that may give you heartburn), can also cause chronic sinusitis. Add cystic fibrosis and immune system problems to the list too.

• Trump may be irritated by something: This could explain the slightly constipated look. Common irritants include perfume or cologne, cigarette smoke and air pollution. Cold weather and bright lights can also cause irritation.

• Trump may be taking medications that cause sniffling: Medications that have sniffling as a possible side effect include blood pressure, birth control, antidepressant, antipsychotic and erectile dysfunction medications. Delivering medications to the nose can also cause irritation of the nasal passages such as steroid nose sprays for allergies and shoving Viagra up your nose.

• Trump may be pregnant: Less likely but if this is the cause, he is probably in his third trimester, and the sniffles should resolve within a few weeks of delivery.

• Trump may have a tic: Note this is not the bug, which is spelled tick. Trump does not have ticks as far as I can tell. A tic is an involuntary muscle movement, meaning that it is not deliberate. This would probably not be a simple childhood tic because Trump is not a child, age-wise. Tics can occur when a person has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), myoclonus, obsessive-compulsive disorder, epilepsy or Tourette’s syndrome. Anxiety and stress can also lead to tics.

• Trump may be crying: Debates can be tough. People who are very sensitive or strongly empathetic and sympathetic can also be prone to crying.

• Trump may have repeated head trauma: Blows to the head via sports such as football, boxing, soccer and ice hockey, or hitting your head with a brick over beauty pageant winners gaining weight, can cause irritation and even leakage of brain fluid into the nasal passages.

• Trump may have picked his nose too much or too aggressively: Nose picking can irritate the nasal passages and even lead to nosebleeds.

• Trump may have bleeding problems: Anything which decreases the ability of blood to clot properly, such as use of aspirin or blood thinners, and bleeding disorders such as hemophilia, can lead to nosebleeds.

•Trump may have something up his nose: Children often jam objects such as beans, peas and peanuts up their nose, which in turn can irritate the inside of their noses. Some adults do this as well.

Thus, sniffling, a runny nose or even nosebleeds should not automatically translate to cocaine use. (Remember, inhaling glue, “whippets” or “poppers” can also result in chronic sniffles.) Again, no one has presented any other evidence that Trump uses cocaine. Trump’s sniffling is now officially not a one-time thing. If it had just occurred during the first debate, he could have had a cold or other momentary infection…or maybe a defective or smelly microphone. Now, something in the list above probably is the reason for his chronic sniffling, with allergies, irritations or stress being the most common possibilities. Or maybe Trump is just a really, really sensitive guy.

Would Trump's Cocaine Addiction Affect His Ability To Be President?

And you wonder why he only sleeps 3 hours a night?

By the time I started working at Warner Bros Records I had long given up drugs, something I left behind with the 1960s, a dear old friend that was no longer part of my life. "Drugs," for the most part meant marijuana. Smoking weed had been an integral part of my college life and it ended there. I was in a sweltering parking lot in my van at the Pakistan-India border on December 1, 1969 when I had a life-changing experience. Instead of having to exercise will power top avoid drugs-- something I sometimes succeeded at and sometimes failed at-- the desire itself was ripped from my body. Thank God! And that was the end of that. A life of drug use was o-v-e-r. The pull wasn't something I had to resist; it no longer existed. And in those years I was smoking pot, I was, less regularly, using other drugs as well. I tried almost everything and I loved some, like acid, and hated others, like DMT. Cocaine was something in between-- something that gave me a lot of pleasure but that I could tell was very bad for me. It wasn't hard for me to stop using it-- considerably before by experience in my VW van on the Pakistan-India border. I never felt the slightest interest in using it since and soon it'll be 50 years!

But I still remember very much what it's like to be high on coke or to be strung out on coke. What time did the debate start last night? 4-5 minutes after 6 (PT)? 10 minutes in-- check the time stamp-- I sensed something crazy about Trump-- I mean crazy in a different than normal Trump crazy way. I had heard rumors in the past that he had a prescription drug problem and certainly what could have happened last night was that he chopped up some adderall of something and snorted it before hitting the stage. Hey, don't be judgmental; different people prepare in different ways. When I was in the midst of chemotherapy, somewhere along the line my doctor prescribed adderall. I hated it. But many people love it and its supposed to be especially helpful for people who, like Trump, have short attention spans. It contains a combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, which stimulate the central nervous system and affect chemicals in the brain and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control. Just sayin'. But adderall isn't what I was sensing even in the first few minutes of the debate. Nor were the diet pills (meth) he used to peddle on his pyramid scheme infomercials.



This is what I tweeted 10 minutes in:

Ten minutes later I wasn't laughing. He really was coked up! The next tweet:

Right around that time Hillary was saying, "Donald, I know you live in your own reality." Yeah, he does, but what I was feeling was that at the moment he was living in a cocaine reality. 11 minutes passed and I was positive.

Utterly positive... it was totally affecting his thought and speech patterns, even more than usual:

So was my old friend Susan positive-- and she's very smart:

I was glad I wasn't the only one who noticed. Another old friend, a Warner Bros co-worker, Steve, sent me a photo:

I ran a little poll when I noticed the incoherent babbling was getting worse and worse.

That's when the DWT art director sent me the photo up top. GOP strategist--and hipster-- Rick Wilson seemed to recognize the same same thing:

I wondered why no one in the mainstream media was saying anything about it. Then he started blaming all the sniffing on a "defective mic," something he doubled down on the next morning when he was making a fool of himself on Fox and Friends.

By the end of the night, I was suggesting that Kellyanne check him into one of those fancy Republican Party detox centers where they put their officials when everything explodes on their faces. I learned today that about an hour after I started tweeting about Trump's sniffling and crazy behavior could signify coke use, that Howard Dean had suggested it as well, significant not because of his place in politics but because he's also a medical doctor. On MSNBC Tuesday he explained his tweet to a hostile and especially moronic anchor-- establishment media hates this kind of speculation.

[H]e sniffs during the presentation, which is something that users do. He also has grandiosity, which is something that accompanies that problem. He has delusions. He has trouble with pressured speech. He interrupted Hillary Clinton 29 times. He couldn't keep himself together. So, look, do I think at 70 years old he has a cocaine habit? Probably not. But, you know, it's something that-- I think it would be interesting to ask him and see if he ever had a problem with that.

Dean's right; dummy MSNBC anchor is wrong. But the mainstream media won't go near this with a 10 foot pole. John Podhoretz, once a proud #NeverTrump dude, has been slinking back to the GOP OK Corral the same way Ted Cruz did. He sounded jilted the morning after but nothing to do with the cocaine elephant in the room. Although he found the unhinged Trump "exciting," he also admitted he was "embarrassingly undisciplined." When the coke was sparking all Trump's brain cells in the first 20 minutes, Podhoretz claims he was making sense (at least to inhabitants of RepublicanWorld) but then, as the high started wearing off... Well Podhoretz explained that "due to the vanity and laziness that led him to think he could wing the most important 95 minutes of his life, he lost the thread of his argument, he lost control of his temper and he lost the perspective necessary to correct these mistakes as he went... Trump was reduced to a sputtering mess blathering about Rosie O’Donnell and about how he hasn’t yet said the mean things about Hillary that he is thinking... [H]e went into a bizarre digression in which he alternately wondered whether his son Barron might grow up to become a hacker and defended Vladimir Putin from the accusation Russia had tapped into the Democratic National Committee’s emails (which the FBI says almost certainly happened). That has to count as the biggest choke of his political life... [Everything] was buried inside a weird word salad that reduced its effectiveness to almost nil." If you know anything about coke freaks, that should sound very familiar. And here's the part about Podhoetz feeling jilted:

His supporters should be furious with him, and so should the public in general. By performing this incompetently, by refusing to prepare properly for this exchange, by not learning enough to put meat on the bones of his populist case against Clinton, he displayed nothing but contempt for the people who have brought him this far-- and for the American people who are going to make this momentous decision on Nov. 8.

Canadian journalist John Ibbitson, writing for the Toronto Globe And Mail Tuesday morning felt the decision had been made, namely that no reasonable voter could want Trump as president after the debate. "Trump," he wrote, "was loud, angry, rude, boastful. He bashed China and Mexico, he constantly interrupted, he swaggered and strutted and jutted his chin. Most of all, he described a dying dystopian republic brought to its knees by Hillary Clinton and her friends that he alone could redeem." Sounds like a crazy cokehead to me-- "rambling, bloviating, incoherent, shouting, interrupting, boasting, ridiculing, low-blowing-- while rarely landing a single palpable hit."

And late in the debate, when asked by the moderator why he said he opposed the war in Iraq when in fact he had supported it in 2002, Mr. Trump went off on a rant of such length and violence of tone that millions could only have watched in horror, ending with the audience laughing when he pronounced: “I have a much better temperament than she does.”

He disproved that, however, by then insinuating he knew some terrible secret about Ms. Clinton that he would not repeat, because he was above such things. Simply disgraceful.

...To want Donald Trump as president, you would have to be as angry and bitter as Donald Trump was Monday night.

Or on crack.

Mitch McConnell-- The Cocaine Connecton

Florida Republican Trey Radel, a former Hate Talk Radio host and former U.S. congressman, got kicked out of his House seat for dealing cocaine in Washington. The FBI is covering up their own drug abuse investigation of another GOP coke freak, Ohio's David Joyce. Staffers tell me that there are "over a dozen" prominent Republican congressmen who use cocaine regularly. "Peter Russo didn't have anything on these GOP hypocrites," one told me, referencing a Pennsylvania Democratic congressman who came to an untimely first season end in House of Cards.

No one has ever told me that Mitch McConnell, whose private life I have looked into a lot-- he's a closet case who was kicked out of the Army after a few days for fondling a private's privates-- is a cocaine user. That doesn't mean he isn't; it just means no one has told me that he is. In fact, McConnell plays the role of an anti-drug law-and-order Republicano; he sponsored a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for marijuana use. But the immense wealth he's accumulated since getting into the Senate-- he's the 11th richest senator with a net worth estimated at $11.97 million-- may have had more to do with drug smuggling than was previously understood.

This week one of America's top investigative journalists, Lee Fang, published the results of his work on McConnell's cocaine connection in The Nation. Turns out there was more of a reason why McConnell is so "pro-coal" than anyone ever suspected. His crooked in-laws, who have made him a multimillionaire, were using coal shipping as a front.

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about 90 pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell's in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell's life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That's because, like many international shipping companies, Chao's firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

McConnell's ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James's daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and then-former Reagan administration official who would later serve as Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately 16 dry bulk cargo ships in operation today.

Foremost acts as a shipping agent, purchasing vessels made primarily in China and coordinating shipment of commodities. Records reviewed by The Nation reveal that Foremost transports corn, chemicals, and other goods to cities throughout the world. The company has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.

The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost's website FMCNY.com is blank. 

Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company's vessels-- with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May, and Grain May-- is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost's vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost's ships work under Liberia's maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian "flag of convenience" allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the U.S. flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of “no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details-- even to the United States government,” according to a report in the World Policy Journal.

The recent seizure of cocaine on a Foremost coal ship came as authorities in Colombia have stepped up anti-drug trafficking enforcement in the region. The Nation spoke to Luis Gonzales, an official with the Colombian Coast Guard in Santa Marta, who told us that the Ping May's crew were questioned as part of an ongoing investigation, but that no charges have yet been filed. His team found the cocaine in forty separate packages.

Contacted by telephone, a representative of Foremost said he is “obviously going to have no comment on this one.”

McConnell has benefitted in many ways from his relationship with his in-laws.

The Republican Senate minority leader’s personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.

The generous gift made McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth averaging around $22.8 million, according to the Washington Post’s review of his financial disclosures.

Following the gift, McConnell sent a letter of congratulations to an auditorium of Chinese officials in Shanghai who were gathered for an event honoring James Chao’s wife (McConnell’s mother-in-law, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, who passed away in 2007). The Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation, created in her honor, regularly hosts students from the University of Louisville, where McConnell has a leadership academy bearing his name that sends students on trips to China.

The ties between McConnell and his in-laws have come under scrutiny before. In 2001, they were probed in depth by the New Republic in an article that charged that McConnell led an effort to soften his party’s criticism of China. Through James Chao, who was a classmate of Jiang Zemin, the president of China in the ’90s, McConnell and his wife met with Jiang several times, both in Beijing and in Washington. McConnell subsequently tempered his criticism of Chinese human rights abuses, and broke with hawks like Senator Jesse Helms to support Most Favored Nation trading status with China. As Foremost established closer ties with mainland China, McConnell endorsed the position that the United States should remain “ambiguous” about coming to the defense of Taiwan. In 1999, McConnell and his wife appeared at the University of Louisville with Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. Li used the opportunity to bash congressional leaders for rebuking China over its repression of the Falun Gong religious sect. “Any responsible government will not foster evil propensities of cults by being over-lenient,” Li reportedly said at the event with McConnell and Chao. Rather than distance himself from the remarks, McConnell reportedly spoke about his “good working relationship” with Li.

Last Friday, McConnell dipped into his personal fortune to lend his own campaign $1.8 million for the final week before the election. Members of the Chao family and employees of Foremost have also given over $90,000 in contributions to McConnell over the years.

Requests for comment to the McConnell team about the Ping May cocaine incident have gone unanswered.

McConnell has positioned himself over the years as a tough on drugs politician. In 1996, McConnell was the sole sponsor of the Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act, a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for those caught with certain amounts of marijuana. A press release noted that his bill would make “penalties for selling marijuana comparable to those for selling heroin and cocaine.”

In recent weeks, McConnell has touted his role in calling for more federal money to be used for drug enforcement.

And then there's the stuff like this, which, hopefully, isn't over the heads of voters Tuesday:

House Republicans Have Another Problem-- Rampant Cocaine Abuse

Northeast Ohio's very own 2 Live Crew

Yesterday, according to Fox DC Bureau Chief Chad Pergram, Boehner was whining about how the House Republican conference is filled with "knuckleheads." He didn't name any and everyone-- including everyone here at DWT just assumed he was talking about the Members that don't get bought off by corruption, guys like Justin Amash and Walter Jones, who Boehner hates for their refusal to allow him to bioss them around. No one suspected he might be talking about the House Republicans' massive drug problem. The GOP conference is riddled with coke addicts, meth freaks and pill poppers. Now, I don't know if David Joyce is a still an alcoholic and a coke hound and it's unclear if he was one of Trey Radel's customers before Radel (R-FL) was busted as a coke distributor and forced to resign from Congress. But the FBI does know-- and won't spill the beans. They just sit on it-- in case they ever need any special leverage over Congressman Joyce (R-OH).

OK, here's the background. Most people think Joyce got turned down for a cush job as Northern Ohio's Federal Prosecutor because he's a sexist pig who was always being "inappropriate" with female employees, especially when he was drunk, which was frequently. But the sexism and his own little war against women isn't what caused Bush to kill the nomination. In 2001 two heavy-weight Ohio senators, Mike DeWine ® and George Voinovich ® recommended Joyce for the job and Bush nominated him. By mid-May Joyce was ready to move into his new gig-- “As a career prosecutor, I see it as a challenge that I look forward to. My job now is to make sure that people are treated fairly and that justice is done, and that’s what I hope to bring to the federal system.” But by the end of the year Bush withdrew the nomination. In fact, Bush tried saying that technically he had never even made the nomination. That was after 6 months of FBI vetting and scrutiny and a eye-popping report they gave Attorney General John Ashcroft who was appalled at what he saw. By December the Plain Dealer was reporting that "the Bush administration decided not to nominate Joyce as the U.S. attorney for Northern Ohio due to questions that came up about his past during an FBI background check." But the Plain Dealer didn't seem especially curious to find out what exactly was in that FBI background check, assuming, like everyone else, it had something to do with Joyce's inability to act like a gentleman when he was around women, especially women he could lord it over on some level. But they were wrong.

Joyce said he would "fight for" the job but by May, 2002, he suddenly ended the fight, telling the Plain Dealer "You just get sick of it. It’s been a year, and enough’s enough. I’m honored that I was considered for this job, but it’s time for me to let somebody else have this opportunity." A few years later, when rumors about his cocaine abuse started circulating in Ohio, he was still bitter but started presenting the story in a new light. He said he didn't get the job because he was "out-politicked." He said that Gregory White, who eventually got the job, had the backing of then Governor Bob Taft. "I can’t change what happened. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Joyce told the media. "I got beat at a game I didn’t understand all that well." He got "out-politicked?" WIth Mike DeWine and George Voinovich on his team? No one really believed that.

In 2005, Cleveland Scene Magazine reported that Joyce’s nomination for U.S. Attorney failed because defense attorneys accused him of withholding evidence during a murder case.

Joyce was cleared of accusations but the article reported that the White House did not want to risk nominating Joyce. More nonsense about something the Bush Administration didn't care a whit about. The cocaine rumors never went away entirely and "everybody" knows he gets high-- everybody, that is, except the voters in OH-14.

When Joyce was Geauga County Prosecutor, Steve LaTourette was Prosecutor in neighboring Lake County and the two of them became fast friends and political allies. The 2 of them worked on banning the multiplatinum 2 Live Crew album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be from local record stores. (They failed.) LaTourette went on to serve 9 terms in Congress from the area and when he decided to make a fortune as a lobbyist, he managed to secure his old seat for Joyce and voters weren't allowed to see the FBI report on Joyce's outrageous behavior. They still haven't been.

Funny that Joyce had such antipathy towards 2 Live Crew for their lifestyle instead of inviting them to his legendary Friday night poker games where white people did their version of exactly what he tried persecuting the 2 Live Crew guys for:

Is Trey Radel Really America's Own Rob Ford?

By 39, most normal people stop using recreational drugs

Both are wealthy, opportunistic right-wing extremists who gravitated to politics for a myriad of reasons that did not include public service. And although the demeanor and boorish, loud-mouthed bullying that Rob Ford (and brother Doug) demonstrate on TV daily, reminds people more of Chris Christie, it looks like Trey Radel is what we're stuck with. Born wealthy and privileged, 37 year old Henry Jude Radel III (AKA, Trey) started his own business, Trey Enterprises, to buy and sell domain names.

Starting in 2005, his now-defunct company, Trey Enterprises, registered a number of sexually charged web addresses, many of them in Spanish, according to historical domain name ownership records. Among them is www.cojible.com, a slang term defined by Urban Dictionary as "a woman who doesn't look good, but is good enough to sleep with." There was also www.casadelasputas.com (whorehouse), www.mamadita.com (little blow job *), www.chicasderio.com (girls of Rio). And in English: www.sexguideonline.com.

If you're looking for a bright side of this-- like maybe a conservative who supports comprehensive immigration reform-- don't look towards Radel. A former Hate Talk Radio host, who calls himself a hip hop conservative, Radel is an anti-immigrant bigot when push comes to shove. He's a party-line GOP zombie with an astoundingly dismal ProgressivePunch crucial vote score that includes ZEROES in every major category from Aid to Less Advantaged People, Education, the Enviroment and Health Care to Human and Civil Rights and War and Peace. And, more to the point, in September, just weeks before being arrested in a coke bust, he voted to force food stamp recipients to pee into cups to prove they're not on drugs.

I used to work in radio. I did it for decades. I know how hard it is to talk into a microphone for hour after hour and hour, day after day after day. From Limbaugh and Beck all the way down the food chain, all these right-wing hate talk radio hosts are hopped up on drugs, usually speed or coke. They're all addicts and the drugs feed their ability to spout the kind of sociopathic nonsense that drives up the ratings. The station managers know they have a bunch of mentally unstable drug addicts working for them but… hey, the ratings, the ratings, the ratings.

Radel's politics and Radel's drug addiction-- like Ford, he calls it alcoholism-- go hand in hand. Strung out on coke like deranged Republican extremists Paul Broun (GA) and Steve Stockman (TX) admit they have also been, one's mind almost inevitably wanders into dark, ugly places. Rememeber, Jesus Christ had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Revelations, the book of the Bible Satan (through drug use) inserted and that extreme right "Christian" churches would rather dwell on than anything Jesus ever brought to mankind.

Back to Radel, for a moment. An actor and a comedian before he found Hate Talk Radio, at one time he performed improv at Second City in Chicago. This morning USA Today explained to the mostly elderly residents of FL-19, basically Lee County plus a chunk of Collier in southwest Florida, why their new congressman is all over the TV.

Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla., was caught buying drugs as part of a federal investigation into a Washington, D.C., drug ring last month and is being charged with cocaine possession, according to a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said several federal agencies working as part of a task force arrested a dealer who told them one of his cocaine customers was a congressman. The dealer, working with federal agents, set up a buy on Oct. 29, and Radel, a freshman congressman first elected last year, purchased the cocaine, the official said.

FBI agents later went to Radel's apartment, where they detained him, the official said. Radel hired a defense attorney who negotiated charges with a prosecutor, the official said. Law enforcement agents never handcuffed Radel or took him to jail, the official said.

Radel will appear Wednesday in District of Columbia Superior Court to face the misdemeanor cocaine possession charge. Charging documents from the U.S. attorney's office say Radel "unlawfully, knowingly and intentionally" possessed "a quantity of cocaine."

The charge is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum of 180 days in prison and/or a fine of $1,000, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

"I'm profoundly sorry to let down my family, particularly my wife and son, and the people of Southwest Florida," Radel said in a statement released Tuesday. "I struggle with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice. As the father of a young son and a husband to a loving wife, I need to get help so I can be a better man for both of them."

Radel continued: "Believe me, I am disappointed in myself, and I stand ready to face the consequences of my actions. However, this unfortunate event does have a positive side. It offers me an opportunity to seek treatment and counseling. I know I have a problem and will do whatever is necessary to overcome it, hopefully setting an example for others struggling with this disease."

...A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the incident is "between Rep. Radel, his family and his constituents."

"Members of Congress should be held to the highest standards and the alleged crime will be handled by the courts," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

I bet mainstream Republican Chauncey Goss, yes Porter's son who the tea partying Radel beat last year, is thinking about a do-over in a primary. All is another bizarre son of wealth and privilege, Cornelius McGillicuddy IV, defeated in a clownish Senate run last year, already thinking about getting his old job back? For the rest of us, though, we need to think how the justice system treats wealthy, privileged white folks caught with cocaine compared to how the lives of black kids caught with the same drug are utterly destroyed forever. He admitted he's a coke addict, agreed to go to "treatment: and got one year probation. That's it-- just probation, no jail time, no resigning from Congress, not even a fine. Joke's on justice!

UPDATE: Many People Not On Coke Are In Bed At 10:30 On A Week Night

Trey Radel called a dramatic press conference in Cape Coral and said he's taking a leave of absence from Congress so he could go into rehab. That works for some people. For others it doesn't.

“I’m sorry. I have no excuse for what I’ve done. ... I’ve let down our constituents, I’ve let down my family,” Radel said in an emotional 10:30 p.m. press conference from one of his offices in Florida. “I’ve let down my wife, and although he doesn’t know it, I’ve let down our two year-old son.”

If John Ensign Or David Vitter Had Been Caught With A Few Grams Of Crack, What Would The Senate Have Done?

There isn't much unanimity in the Senate these days. Even if the GOP isn't in full obstructionist mode just for the heck of it-- the default position for about 90% of the hours the joint is open-- you'll always find a Bunning or a Coburn in his own private Idaho of reflexive obstruence. But on Wednesday they unanimously passed S. 1789, Dick Durbin's misnamed Fair Sentencing Act. It will reduce sentencing disparities for powdered cocaine (which white middle class people tend to use) and crack cocaine (which poor minorities tend to use.) The sentencing disparity drops from 100:1 to a "mere" 18:1.

Currently, a person convicted of crack cocaine possession gets the same mandatory jail time as someone with 100 times the same quantity of powder cocaine. That 100-1 ratio has been particularly hard on the black community, where convictions on federal crack laws are more prevalent.
Under the measure, approved by a voice vote, the ratio would be reduced to 18-1.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who worked out the legislation with Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, said he had initially wanted a straight 1-to-1 ratio, but that the final product was a good bipartisan compromise... Under current law, possession of five grams of crack cocaine triggers a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence. The same mandatory sentence is handed down to a person convicted of trafficking 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Meanwhile, back in July, the House Judiciary Committee approved HR 3245, by a vote of 16-9, which would completely eliminate sentencing disparities between crack and powder. As you can see from the list of 62 cosponsors, this was being pushed by progressive Democrats plus Ron Paul. No other Republicans, other than odd duck Mike Castle of Delaware, signed on and no Blue Dogs at all. The ACLU, the NAACP and the Justice Department all favor the House's approach.

Republicans, Blue Dogs and other right-wing Democrats are standing in the way of the House position and working to fast-track the mediocre Senate bill through the House. Clueless as usual, the mainstream media is presenting this as a great step forward instead of another missed opportunity to right a wrong. Color of Change has a petition on line, to Obama and Pelosi, urging them to stick with the House version over the Senate's racist compromise with knuckledragging Republican bigots. You may think Ron Paul is off his rocker on most thing, but he's right about this one.

As Jeralyn at Talk Left wrote Wednesday night, "This sucks."

It takes 500 grams of powder to trigger a 5 year mandatory minimum penalty. Under current law, it takes 5 grams of crack. Now, 28 grams of crack will do the trick. So an ounce of crack will carry the same penalty as almost a pound of powder (500 grams is 1/2 kilo, a kilo is 2.2 pounds.) And 280 grams of crack (10 ounces) will trigger the 10 year mandatory minimum penalty while 5 kilos of powder are required.

Worst of all, the bill is not retroactive and the reduction won't help anyone who has already been sentenced... The unfair law has been in effect for 24 years. 75,000 people have been sentenced under it. Today, once again, the politics of compromise triumphed over principle, fairness and justice.