[twgiles]

Money doesn't have to be involved here. This series of events would make sense to me if my daughter had been hit on by, say, Bill Frist.

* Daughter comes home from a reporting assignment and tells me Frist hit on her relentlessly and "wants me to work for him".

* I get good and steamed.

* My daughter tells friends she got hit on relentlessly by Frist.

* A friend of hers who is a Democrat is outraged and wants to sabotage Frist and releases the info about Frist's sleaziness to whatever press will listen, most likely a tabloid.

* Another tabloid calls me, and in a lapse of better judgment, I tell them that yes, I am aware that Frist is a sleazeball, but I don't go further with it because that's all I've been told.

* Frist contacts me about the tabloid article and tells me he's truly sorry for his lapse in judgment but that he never actually violated my daughter, only hit on her and admits that was inappropriate. Asks me if I really want to cause a s--tstorm over this relatively minor infraction. My daughter asks me to join her in signing a clarification.

* I release a minor statement to the press.

The only part that strikes me as weird is that I would state I was voting for Frist after all of the above had happened. WTF is up with that?

[Verginius Rufus]

I'm assuming the "we intend to vote for Kerry" bit was added by Kerry's lawyer (with their consent)...it's meant to be the clincher, to make the statement really believable. If their daughter is a liberal, how do we know they weren't Democrats all along anyway? Where did the notion that the parents are Republicans come from?