It's not rare to see Playboy reality star Holly Madison wear next to nothing out in public, and men like Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks argue that there's nothing sexier than a woman in lingerie. But can't certain bedroom apparel come off cheesy rather than seductive? Watch the debate:

While Sarah Palin was a Mayor in Alaska, she voted in favor of charging rape victims who had medical exams conducted in order to identify their attacker. While some argue Palin as VP would be a huge step for women in America, it turns out her stances on issues such as rape and abortion really take woman back to decades ago.



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John Edwards's New Age-y mistress Rielle Hunter gave an interview to Extra (watch it here), in which she giddily describes him as "real." It is a profoundly dopey interview.

That was apparently in February 2007, and she found out she was pregnant in May 2007. You can see her delirious enthusiasm for Edwards in the Extra video, in which she was discussing the four "webisodes" she made about him, for which she was paid more than $100,000.

We were making the news rounds when this article on MSNBC.com caught our eye: Best hotels for an affair: Get bewitched, savor the food of love and more in these cheat suites. Ha-ha, we thought. This must be about catered Halloween poker parties.

But nope, it's full-on trying to help you get away with cheating on your spouse. And it's an exercise in dropping as many double entendres per sentence as humanly possible ("Just don't be alarmed at the things that go bump in the night").

There have been plenty of embarrassing sex emails and IMs in the news from politicians to underlings, but this one by married New York Assemblyman Hoyt to a nineteen-year-old intern has to be the ickiest ever. The New York Post printed it today (it was originally posted in full on the blog PoliticsNY.net). Here's an excerpt:

Subject: Re: what i wish...
that our relationship was not as complicated as it is...
that i could be with you at will...
that I could be painting your toenails right now...

Seems like we have a bit of a pattern here. First, it was Bob Packwood, sexually harassing a slew of women but then trying to escape condemnation on the grounds that he was a consistent champion of women's rights.

Then Bill Clinton took advantage of his office, both as governor or Arkansas and then president of the United States, to have a series of sleazy affairs. He too tried to cover these up and then excuse them on the grounds that they were minor private offenses, small distractions from his noble dedication to the causes of equality and global uplift.

Eliot Spitzer took time out from his crusade against Wall Street malefactors to indulge himself in high-priced prostitutes. He too saw himself as excused from the normal canons of morality because of his commitment to the cause of common man.

And now Edwards. By all accounts here is your typical legal sleazebag, who got rich through ambulance chasing tactics and had a sordid affair while his wife was battling cancer, possibly producing a little bambino in the process. Even the term "love affair" is inappropriate here: Edwards himself says he didn't care about the woman, so he was apparently just using her for the same reason that Clinton said he used Monica Lewinsky: because he could!

Secret meetings, financial payoffs: is there any limit to how low this gets? Yet John Edwards has, at least until now, been considered a wonderful, upright, admirable guy. How is this possible? To put the question in its broadest form: How does the liberal sleazebag come to be viewed so favorably?

The short answer is that the liberal tries to cover up his despicable character by appealing to his virtuous political stances. Shameless and reprehensible behavior is dubbed "private," as if it were nobody else's business, and contrasted with public social stances. "Yes, I cheated on my wife and abandoned my kids, but this is of little significance compared to my environmental work and my donations to the United Way!"

There are many problems with this, but perhaps the most obvious is that there are certain jobs, like governor and president, where being an example and representing a dignified office are part of the job description. Unlike a carpenter or a broker, a president doesn't just do things but he also stands for things. Pastors and presidents cannot afford to be moral reprobates because then they dishonor their position and the people they lead and represent.

Still, the liberal morality-evasion scheme does on, and it has been going on for a while. In fact, the inventor of this liberal scheme was Rousseau, whose autobiography presents himself as a wonderful and sincere guy even though the man fathered five children out of wedlock and abandoned them all to an orphanage. Lacking personal moral decency, what Rousseau appealed to was moral opinions and moral posturing.

The good news is that the American people, who fell for it during the Clinton era, aren't falling for it any more. We shouldn't feel sorry for people like Spitzer and Edwards, nor should we fear that their causes will suffer. Poor people in America could use a more decent champion than the lecher with the $500 haircut.

Strollerderby links to this funny Current video by Sarah Haskins about how absurd birth control ads are. She's right: those ads never mention the fact that the pill prevents pregnancy. Instead, they advertise the pill's amazing "period control" and mood-enhancing properties.

Why is birth control's ability to limit unwanted pregnancies for women and families (and so to decrease the abortion rate), still so controversial? Clearly it is, as you can see in this video featuring a leading abstinence activist explaining that she opposes the pill. She wants "more babies." And not just for herself. More babies for everyone!

Babble's Sex & Gender Special Issue has been getting record traffic, and a lot of that is thanks to Brett Berk's eye-opening essay, The Gender Spectrum.

Berk argues that gender is on a continuum, with most kids (even kids who do not live on the coasts!) falling somewhere in between Boy-ish and Girl-ish. (Take Berk's quiz to find out where your kid falls on the boyish-girlish spectrum.)

He writes:

The New York Sun has an article today about a New York writer, Stephanie Lerner (Kids Who Think Outside the Box), who is suing her estranged husband for $25 million because he gave her an STD that forced her to cancel her book tour. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Lerner had unprotected sex with prostitutes in Asia and then knowingly passed along HPV to his wife.

On the one hand, good for her. The only truly satisfying revenge in such a situation is to bankrupt the callous spouse. On the other, it sounds like Mr. Lerner had a history of skeevy behavior, and so Mrs. Lerner should maybe have known enough to use protection when sleeping with her husband after his extended business trips to the Far East.

If you were the judge, would you award her the money?

Here's a nice way to start your weekend: Tempest Storm, the 80-year-old burlesque queen, is still stripping, and MSNBC has a nice little story about her, with video.

The best detail: when Elvis came backstage to meet her he spent their first moments talking fiddling with her skirt.

Here's her MySpace page. And a Taschen piece about her with a truly great name: "Tempest in a D-Cup."

Not one but four teachers at the Helix High charter school in California have allegedly had inappropriate sexual relationships with teenage students in the last couple of years, reports KFMB News 8 in San Diego:

• Former music teacher Frank Palumbo was accused of having sex with a 17-year-old female student and was sentenced to five years probation.
• Ex-band director Jessica Kahal got three years probation after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a 17-year-old male student.

The much-hyped Carla Bruni love songs album is supposed to be great. It also reinforces pretty much every stereotype of over-sexed Europeans.

Charles Bremner writes, "This must be the first time that the presidency of a leading nation has promoted a pop album." But even if you were the leader of a European nation, wouldn't you promote an album if it talked about you like this?

There's a funny item up now on Talking Points Memo about Nevada's governor Jim Gibbons. Confronted with this Nevada Appeal photo of him embracing the Playboy-model ex-wife of a former Reno mayor, he insisted he was just comforting a friend.

Gibbons told the Las Vegas Sun: "You know what, I've know Leslie for 20 plus years. In fact, Leslie is a wonderful dear friend and if they are implying there is anything romantic there, they are wrong."

He could have stopped there, but instead he offered what may be the most unique defense ever against sexual impropriety:

We haven't given you an absurd new story in awhile, so let's have some fun. Though arm-pit sniffing is no joke, especially in Singapore apparently. Look at the punishment this sniffer got:





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