Pro-family Anti-Gay GOP Congressman sentenced for drunk driving; Shuns lesbian sister

[Tock]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081208/...ongressman_dui


Rep. Vito Fossella gets 5 days for drunken driving

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Rep. Vito Fossella was sentenced Monday to five days in jail for drunken driving, a humiliating coda to a political career ruined by revelations he'd fathered a child from an extramarital affair. Judge Becky Moore of Alexandria General District Court decided the New York Republican was so drunk he met the legal threshold for a five-day stint in jail.

"Congressman Fossella, I've been sworn to follow the law and so I must impose jail time," the judge told the ashen-faced lawmaker.

She ordered him to begin serving his sentence on Dec. 19, but Fossella's lawyers said they would immediately appeal, which would postpone indefinitely his reporting to jail.

The 43-year-old congressman left the courthouse without answering reporters' questions.

His May 1 arrest led to revelations he had fathered a child through an affair with a former Air Force officer. The congressman has a wife and three children in his home district of Staten Island.

Buffeted by questions about his personal secrets, Fossella chose not to seek re-election and will leave Congress next month. In last month's election, a Democrat won his seat, the only one in New York City that had been held by a Republican in the current Congress.

Fossella was arrested after running a red light on May 1 in a Virginia suburb of Washington, and convicted of drunken driving in October. Under Virginia law, a driver who registers a blood alcohol content of 0.15 or higher must serve five days behind bars. Police say Fossella's blood alcohol content was 0.17.

Fossella's lawyers tried to convince the judge that the breath-test machine used on Fossella was faulty, but the judge didn't buy it.

At the last minute, his lawyers also tried to delay the sentence while they waited for a toxicology expert to arrive at court, but the judge said they'd had more than enough time.

As part of the judge's sentence, Fossella was also fined $300 and had his driver's license suspended in Virginia for one year.

Those sanctions were almost immediately put on hold when lawyers filed papers to appeal, meaning the congressman who was convicted by a judge will now seek a trial by jury.

Defense lawyer Barry Pollack called the judge's five-day jail sentence "the beginning of the process we look forward to, which is trial by jury."

Fossella's defense team had argued that from the moment he was pulled over for running a red light, police and prosecutors treated him differently because he was an elected official.

Prosecutor David Lord denied that, saying Fossella's case was handled "in the same fashion as all DWI cases."
Fossella has been in Congress since 1997, and was once touted as a potential mayoral candidate. Instead, barring a successful appeal, the finale to his political career will be a stint in the slammer.

As a congressman, he was best known for advocating for those injured and killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Many of the victims lived in his district.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008...r__source.html

Fossella shuns his gay sister - source

BY MELISSA GRACE AND TINA MOORE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Monday, May 12th 2008, 4:00 AM

Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.

He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.

His double life is now exposed with the news he has a 3-year-old love child with a divorced Air Force colonel, and critics are calling him a hypocrite.

"Has the Catholic Church now sanctioned adultery?" asked John Adrian, a 64-year-old gay activist on Staten Island.

"That just makes him that more hypocritical."

As congressman, Fossella voted to prohibit any funding for joint adoptions by gay couples.

He has voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, a federal prohibition on gay marriage.
He also demanded housing funds be held back from San Francisco unless it repealed its domestic partnership law.

Victoria Fossella is openly gay and marched in Staten Island's gay pride parade with her partner, according to an article published in Gay City News.

She adopted twins who were delivered by her partner, according to the story.

"She is known in the gay community and she is known in the gay community as an out lesbian," Adrian said.
A man who answered the door yesterday at Victoria Fossella's house refused to talk to a reporter.

"Nobody in the gay community likes [Vito Fossella]," Adrian said. "That speaks to his opposition to gay rights legislation."
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Seems to me if he wants to protect marriage, he should have concentrated on banning divorce, and not gay marriage, since legalized divorce is a somewhat more significant problem than gay marriage . . .

[Tock]

http://www.house.gov/fossella/photoa..._offender2.htm
And here's a photo of the Pro-Family Congressman speaking in support of Federal Sex Offender Legislation.


This Brooklyn newspaper columnist expresses my own disinterest in the Congressman's personal life. It's his holier-than-thou hypocrisy that's offensive . . .

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...ly_values.html

Fossella has his own 'family values'

Like Eliot Spitzer, Vito Fossella's biggest crime is hypocrisy.
He defrauded the voters of Brooklyn and Staten Island when he ran as a "family values" moralist while juggling two families.
That and the drunken driving rap, and any possible misuse of public money are the hard news stories here.
Everything else is just titillating fallout from the ongoing bimbonic plague scourging American politics.
But just as I didn't give a hoot about Spitzer patronizing a prostitute, I don't care about Fossella's private life. The way politicians prostitute themselves to lobbyists every day in City Hall, Albany and Washington is far more worrisome than a romp with a working girl or a mistress.
Fossella taking campaign contributions from the National Beer Wholesalers Association and then driving drunk in a country where 17,000 people were killed by drunken drivers last year is news.
The only thing that elevated Spitzer's scandal to legitimate news was his holier-than-thou public posturing as an ethical avenging angel. Here was a john signing legislation calling for stiffer penalties for johns, and putting madams in the can for the same crimes that he was committing.
That's news.
The rest is just sexy copy.
I felt the same way about Bill Clinton. I didn't care one flick of ash off Bubba's infamous cigar about his fling with Monica Lewinsky. That was between him, his wife and a consenting adult intern. It became legit news when Clinton lied to his staff, which went forth to flack for him, and then to the American public.
Until he lied, people were more interested in their 401(k)s dropping than Clinton's pants. In this campaign, if voters were convinced legalizing prostitution would bring gas back to $2 a gallon they'd elect Client No. 10.
The same is true about Vito Fossella.
Driving drunk is a serious offense. Especially for Fossella who, in 2000, voted for the Federal .08 Blood Alcohol Content law - which he exceeded by .09 points when he blew a .17.
Still, the DWI charge on Fossella, a puppet of the odious Guy Molinari's Staten Island Republican machine, could be politically survivable. But, like Spitzer, it's his blatant moralistic hypocrisy that will probably undo him.
In my eyes, Fossella's second family should be between himself and the two mothers of his four kids. None of our business. Except that this is a guy who ran on "family values," catapulted in 1998 from the City Council to the 13th Congressional seat vacated by Molinari's daughter Susan, just in time for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, about which the 31-year-old freshman congressman took a self-righteous moralistic stance.
People are so turned off, so disgusted, so nervous about their children reading or learning about this salacious stuff that they may want it over and done with and fast," Fossella said, justifying his vote to impeach Bill Clinton.
Which makes him a total fraud.
And fair game.
You can't run on "family values," vote to impeach Clinton, snub your own sister for being gay, vote for the marriage protection bill, a .08 BAC law and the most merciless law-and-order bills in Congress, then drive drunk to your secret baby-mama's pad and ask for forgiveness from the voters and a plea deal from prosecutors.
Clearly, Fossella has a serious drinking problem.
You knew that the minute he said he didn't have one. Because here's a guy who obviously doesn't just drive drunk. He's also guilty of CWI - cheating while intoxicated. How else to explain knocking up a 40-something mistress in the 21st century? No sober "family values" congressman, married with three kids back home in conservative Staten Island, could possibly have intended to make a secret baby.
Unless he's nuts.
In which case, he really shouldn't be in Congress.
But so far, he hasn't resigned, leaving Fossella's future as cloudy as his eyes on the night when a cop asked him to recite the alphabet beginning with "F," for fraud.
This is a nation where nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce. Where countless others live in loveless marriages of convenience. Where prostitution will always flourish at every social stratum. And where voters usually forgive those pols with the human failings they recognize in the morning mirror.
They don't forgive hypocrites.
Little did Vito "Family Values" Fossella know that day in 1998 when he flayed Clinton with his impeachment vote that he might've been foretelling his own political eulogy. For a decade later, his constituents could prove to be "so nervous about their children reading or learning about this salacious stuff that they may want it over and done with and fast."

[alphaman]

LMAO! Some things never change!

[MuscleScience]

I guess when I am in San Fran next I will vote for the other guy...