The New Orleans Times Picayune is reporting today that a prostitute has come forward who claims she had a four-month sexual relationship with Republican Senator David Vitter back in 1999. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, paid for the woman to take a lie-detector test, which, Flynt says, the woman passed with flying colors.

Previously, Vitter denied having anything to do with hookers in the Big Easy, and he'll no doubt maintain that claim today after Flynt holds a Beverly Hills news conference with the prostitute, Wendy Yow Ellis:

During a phone interview Monday, Ellis said she met regularly with Vitter in the French Quarter aprartment and that he paid her through her pimp, Jonathan, whose last name she did not know. She said Vitter met her through the New Orleans Escort Service, not through the madam whose notorious Canal Street brothel was raided by federal agents in 2001. Although that madam, Jeanette Maier, claimed in interviews that Vitter patronized her brothel and favored a prostitute named Wendy...

Of course, it could just be a political hit. Vitter, who has already confessed to committing a "very serious sin" in using the services of D.C. madam Deborah Jeane Palfry, may have only ever visited escorts in the nation's capital, not in New Orleans. After all, Ms. Ellis stands to make a bit of money from this revelation. Yet, for enterprising reporters, if the allegations of a four-month entanglement are true, then there will be a leads to follow.

This is the last thing the Republican party needs at the moment (and if I had a dollar for every time I've said that over the past two years!). Let's say Larry Craig gets a judge to overturn his guilty plea, and a formal trial begins. Meanwhile, every gumshoe in New Orleans will set to work on Vitter.

Vitter and Craig, two men who chastised Bill Clinton for his indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky, bound together again. Good luck with that, boys.

Larry Flynt, the founder and publisher of Hustler Magazine, has tried to uncover hypocrites who publicly support a sinless society while they enjoy the benefits of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to a recent article in The Politico, Flynt "is once again offering a million-dollar payoff to anyone who can provide documented evidence of illicit intimate relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder."

The Republican Party has teamed with the religious right and created the catchy label "the moral majority." If you joined this club, you better practice what you preach. Flynt is sick of the hypocrites who accuse others while doing the same thing themselves. The funny part is how all these guys receive forgiveness from their wives and God as soon as they are caught.

While the Republicans were trying to impeach Bill Clinton for his immoral conduct (and lies), Flynt went to town and discovered some of the impeachers had not been good boys themselves. According to the article, "Flynt managed to expose the sexual promiscuity of former House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois, former impeachment prosecutor Bob Barr and -- his biggest catch of all -- the almost-Speaker Bob Livingston, another Louisianan."

Larry Flynt writes an unlikely article in the LA Times that describes the friendship between him and the late Jerry Falwell:

The truth is, the reverend and I had a lot in common. He was from Virginia, and I was from Kentucky. His father had been a bootlegger, and I had been one too in my 20s before I went into the Navy. We steered our conversations away from politics, but religion was within bounds. He wanted to save me and was determined to get me out of "the business."
...
I'll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I'm not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

He includes the story about berating Falwell for the Ellen "Degenerate" comment and about a certain Teletubby character being gay. These are definite low points for Falwell, and deservedly so. But when you think about it for a second it doesn't seem that strange at all that they should become friends. As a good Christian, it would have been immoral for Jerry Falwell to harbor any sort of bitterness and animosity in his heart for anyone, and that includes Flynt. At some point, he must have realized that and also that he had an opportunity to make amends and connect.

The lesson here for all of us is to remember that we are people despite being on the opposite ends of issues. Disagreement doesn't have to mean hate, animosity, and incivility. We can treat each other with respect while contending for our views. Falwell and Flynt showed us that politics doesn't mean you can't be friends.