Free Republic

Rielle Hunter compared John Edwards with Gandhi and went around trashing his cancer-stricken wife, it was reported Sunday. A Newsweek writer who courted her as a source during Hunter's affair with the presidential candidate portrays Edwards' mistress as a charming but hugely indiscreet muddlehead who called reporters with New Age babble about Edwards' "old soul." Asked about Elizabeth Edwards, who is unusually well-liked by political operatives and reporters, Hunter told reporter Jonathan Darman, "She does not give off good energy. ... I've only met her once.... She didn't make eye contact with me." Darman wrote of meeting Hunter, a former...

Just hours after ABC's Nightline broadcast an interview in which former North Carolina Senator John Edwards confessed an extramarital affair, CNN Saturday Morning co-anchor Melissa Long spoke of the ex-Democratic candidate in glowing terms, calling Edwards someone who was "much loved, worked for the poor, a man who was self-made, and all about integrity and honesty." After elevating Edwards to such heights, she asked CNN deputy political editor Paul Steinhauser to consider "all of that and this stunning admission" and speculate as to "what type of political career could this man have going forward."

John Edwards’ ludicrous denials of an extramarital affair crumbled on Friday when ABC News applied enough pressure to get Edwards to agree to an interview – and an admission – finally giving the story first reported in the National Enquirer legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream media. The flood gates opened early Friday afternoon when Brian Ross and producer Rhonda Schwartz posted a story on ABCNews.com stating that Edwards had admitted to an affair with Rielle Hunter, a videographer who was paid in excess of $100,000 by the Edwards campaign to make a few short web videos. The Enquirer...

The confession of John Edwards was, to me, worthy of attention for a few reasons, but not worthy of endless analysis. The guy's chances at being Obama's running mate or attorney general are shot to hell. Having said that... there are at least two glaring questions that suggest Edwards' explanation consists of additional lies. (Besides his claim that the affair started after she was hired by his PAC, and not before, which appears to be contradicted by the PAC billing records.) If the affair ended in 2006, why were Edwards and Hunter meeting in the Beverly Hills Hilton from 10...

Saturday, Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, issued a statement saying, “Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future." JohnedwardssonSo I guess Edwards is pretty much off the hook on that offer to take a paternity test. Is that why he so freely offered to take one? But Edwards better not make her angry... oh, maybe by not giving her what she wants, forgetting her birthday, not paying enough attention to her, or by not marrying her in a few years... She could so change her mind. Talk...

When I next saw Rielle weeks later, she told me that she'd been fired by the Edwards campaign. She seemed perfectly cheerful about it, but she proceeded to tell me a tale of woe—how the campaign hadn't understood her, how they'd ruined the Webisodes, how they'd impeded her vision and how Edwards himself had failed to defend her. The chief villain in this saga was Elizabeth Edwards. "Someday," Rielle said, "the truth about her is going to come out." [snip] But I didn't. I stayed in touch with Rielle for months. At lunch at the Soho House in late spring...

Now will you moonbats finally peel the Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers off your rusting Volvos and Saabs? I’ve been telling you people for almost four years now how foolish you look, refusing to scrape off the reminders of yet another doomed Democrat ticket. This ongoing refusal to face reality has lasted longer than the Gore-Lieberman tantrum of 2000, which by 2002 had led GOP wags to festoon their SUVs with almost identical Sore-Loserman bumper stickers. But after Friday, how can even a Prozac-swallowing moonbat’s moonbat continue to endure the snickers that a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker cw0produces everywhere, including on Mass. Ave....

Saturday morning, I went right out to the supermarket to buy the National Enquirer to see what else might be true. And there it was, right by the cash register, with a headline across the top of the cover promising the latest details of a story the Enquirer broke months ago. John Edwards had initially dismissed the Enquirer's allegations of an extramarital affair as "tabloid trash." A saw mill worker's son who was himself once dismissed as "poor white trash," he should have been more cautious about underestimating those who are dismissed out of hand as inferiors. Whatever you might...

Edwards Furious ABC Broke Affair Story Before 'Nightline' Aired By Noel Sheppard Created 2008-08-10 10:32 John Edwards is apparently furious with ABC News for releasing information concerning his affair with former campaign staffer Rielle Hunter before "Nightline" aired Friday evening. In fact, it appears the reason Edwards agreed to the interview was in the hopes that Americans would be so involved in watching the Olympics his confession would go largely unnoticed. Such was reported [1] Saturday by Broadcasting & Cable (photo courtesy AP): Edwards had hoped to control the news cycle by making his admission late on a Friday night...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrats moved Saturday to staunch the damage after one-time party star and presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted having an affair during his White House run as his wife battled cancer. With the party's national convention to officially crown Senator Barack Obama as its White House candidate just over two weeks away, Democrats sought to minimize the scandal as a personal matter for the Edwards family. "We have unrealistic expectations for people. John Edwards like the rest of us is only human," said Howard Wolfson, a former senior official for the rival presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. "The...

Yes, it's great to have one more example of hypocrisy and lack of virtue in the Democratic Party made public, but we shouldn't let this story devolve into just "another politician screws up, fathers illegitimate baby" meme. Yes, it's rather "con-veeeee-nient" that Edwards says, with a smug, self-assured smile, that he will gladly submit to a paternity test and Rielle Hunter says, "No way, no how," but is being named the father or not really what this latest cover-up is about?

The woman behind the John Edwards scandal has a wild past of sex and drugs so legendary her escapades were chronicled by novelist Jay McInerney. Before moving to Los Angeles and beginning a career as a film producer, Rielle Hunter, 42, was known as Lisa Druck, a New York City party girl. Hunter confessed to her sordid past on her Web site Being is Free, which was deleted from the Internet last April, soon after she ended her professional relationship with former presidential candidate John Edwards.Screen image of John Edwards' paramour Rielle Hunter from her Web site which is no...

Anthropology teaches us that all societies have their various subgroups, each with it's own beliefs, rituals and idiosyncracies. Now here in America we have the Democrat Party, broad in ethnic and cultural scope; and enjoying a sizeable enough segment of the population that they can sway the course of government without worrying about such petty triflings as election laws, accounting procedures, or the parliamentary rules of order. And within the upper eschelons of the Party-of-the-People there exists a new stratum of the elite: The Baby-Daddy. To make it into this good-ole-boys-club, one must first be a member in good standing...

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she will not be party to such a test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further. "She wishes to maintain her privacy and her daughter's...

A seeker and a New Age spiritualist, John Edwards's other woman believed she could help him make history. The first time I laid eyes on Rielle Hunter, I could tell she was a story. She had frizzy blond hair with DARK roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room. She was on a cramped commuter flight and she was flirting with a candidate for president of the United States. It was July 7, 2006. I'd been sent to Iowa to write a piece on John Edwards. We were on our way to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The ex-mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards says she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter. Rielle Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a private individual who wishes to maintain the privacy of herself and her daughter. In a statement, Gordon says that Hunter is ruling out any kind of testing that could establish who the daughter's father is.

Rielle Hunter, the former presidential campaign aide who had an affair with John Edwards, said yesterday that she will not pursue DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, despite the former senator's offer to participate in such a test. In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Hunter said through her attorney that she would not take a genetic test "now or in the future." The attorney, Robert Gordon, called Hunter a "private" person who is "not running for public office" and would not comment further on the media frenzy engulfing her.

The family of John Edwards' former mistress, Rielle Hunter, is challenging the former senator to take a DNA paternity test after his claim that he did not father Hunter's six-month old child. In the first reaction from Hunter's family, her younger sister Melissa told ABC News that Edwards should immediately follow through on his pledge to take a paternity test. "I would challenge him to do so," the sister said. "Somebody must stand up and defend my sister," she said. "I wish that those involved would refrain from bad-mouthing my sister." In his interview with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff...

GOOD-TIME GIRL: Rielle Hunter, the woman John Edwards fooled around with, was into drugs and nightclubs. The flaky filmmaker for whom John Edwards risked his political future and his family is a former "party girl" who went from narcotics to nirvana. Rielle Hunter's résumé also includes actress, producer, New Age blogger - and now, home wrecker. A Florida native, the 44-year-old divorcée grew up in a well-to-do household but is now deep in debt, a source told The Post. Hunter, born Lisa Druck, first turned up in New York in the 1980s, where she hooked up with novelist Jay...

Democrats sure must be thanking their lucky stars it is not John Edwards they picked to bear their standard. And, if Edwards ever was on the short list for Barack Obama's veep job, he is there no longer. Confirming the prescience of those who saw Edwards as a man of transparently phony piety - good son of the sawmill, devoted family man, clasping his sick wife's hand as the violins played and the white doves flew - here now is a man forced to admit to a reckless marital infidelity, one he has been denying for weeks. Here now is...