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Rep. Katie Hill announces resignation amid allegations of improper relationships with staffers
Democratic Rep. Katie Hill of California on Sunday announced her resignation from Congress days after she admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a campaign staffer before coming into office.
"It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress," Hill said in a statement Sunday. "This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country."
News of Hill's resignation comes after the House Committee on Ethics announced Wednesday it was opening an investigation into allegations Hill engaged in an improper relationship with a congressional staffer in possible violation of House rules.
[...] Earlier this month a conservative blog released intimate photos of Hill, alleging she and her husband had a separate relationship with an unnamed female campaign staffer. That report included three photos of the congresswoman, including an explicit photo. CNN has reached out to Hill's husband for comment but has not heard back. Hill offered no evidence linking her husband to the distribution of the photos.
Revenge porn is being used to smear and discredit a sitting congresswoman
Katie Hill, of California’s 25th district, found the naked picture of herself published online while she is in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. In an email to supporters, Hill, who was elected as a freshman Democrat in the 2018 midterms, acknowledged a consensual relationship with an aide during her congressional campaign. But she denied another alleged relationship with a different aide, on Capitol Hill, that her ex-husband claims she had.
[...] What Hill admits to – an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer during what she calls “the final tumultuous years” of an “abusive marriage” – isn’t great.
It’s worth pointing out the distinct ethical position of a woman’s abuse of power in this way from a man’s: when Hill engaged in an affair with a campaign aide, she did not do so in the context of millennia of men’s sexual violence against women, and she did not do so with the reasonable ability to threaten force. But acknowledging this does not mean that we must understand such affairs as acceptable.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @03:11PM (28 children)
Spare us the "woman" card.
Yes, it's explicitly prohibited as ethics violation and differentiating based on the biological sex of the offender would be illegal.
Remember when Democrats insisted that an unfounded allegation was enough to ruin someone's career?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @03:24PM (27 children)
Column: Democratic Rep. Katie Hill messed up, but she should not have resigned [latimes.com]
Devine: Katie Hill scandal exposed the left’s #MeToo hypocrisy [nypost.com]
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @03:38PM (21 children)
Laaaawl
Did the aid complain? If not then this is not the same thing. You fragile little white boys eally should focus on lower back bone regeneration.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @03:44PM (13 children)
laaawlwlalalalwlalal
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @03:53PM (12 children)
If you don't want to engage reality as it exists that is your problem. I've always suspected you didn't actually understand what MeToo was about and just think it is some unfair attack on your gender. Cry harder bruh.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @03:54PM (11 children)
All I did was post two opposing opinion pieces. Apparently this is not allowed.
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(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:03PM (10 children)
Heh, and your reply oozes my point for me. Carry on little incel, if you have something actually needing attention hopefully we wont dismiss it as another in a long line of alpha wolf howls :{
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @04:10PM (9 children)
Oh, I doubt I'll have any trouble attracting anonymous scumbags like you. All it takes is a couple of links and quotes to make you lose your mind. I can provide plenty of those every single day. 😉
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @10:18PM (4 children)
Again you just confirm what you are. We have clinical terms for people that enjoy bringing suffering to others, too bad Reagan closed all tbe adylums. Probably just another part of the Southern Strategy.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @11:08PM (3 children)
Your entire output on this and other journals has been ad hominem attacks and flights of fancy. You have nothing constructive to offer and hide behind your Anonymous status. But you believe that you are fighting "the good fight". The diagnosis? A classic case of TDS. He's living rent free in your head and causing you to experience what I can only hope is temporary insanity. Maybe the 2020 election will cure that.
What suffering did I cause? Well, I linked some news articles, about 2:1:1 left/neutral/right on this interesting political event. I'll admit that I may have caused you some brain pain by linking to an alternative viewpoint on the subject and offering no comment. You'll get over it... until the next journal. See you then.
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(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:08AM (2 children)
There is nothing constructive to offer libertarian morons who shit post because they get their feefees hurt. Perhaps if your worldviews had any redeeming qualities instead of being at odds with humanity you'd get some more constructive discussions. All you do is flaunt your edgy anti-pc bullshit.
Poor oppressed white male :(:(:(
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:24AM (1 child)
This journal is about as edgy as a butter knife, you poor lamb. You managed to sharpen it only through shear force of dull wit.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:49AM
Ah yes, unless you say the forboten words like nigger kike spic and ethanol fueled it isn't edgy! You're right, this journal post is not the height of your lardy edge, just another lame post highlighting your personal insecurities about approaching women.
I really wish you would get over these things, but only time and experience can bring you the needed wisdom. Oh, and some small opening in your hardened shell of cynicism and anger. But of course you reject any idea that you're holding resentment, you're just having "intelligent conversations" like a good boy being an objective manly man.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 29 2019, @09:39PM (3 children)
Read my sig, and weep, Takyon!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 29 2019, @09:46PM (2 children)
Ya, I'll weep at that movie quote.
The tears will stream down my face the next time I'm deleting an aristarchus submission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 29 2019, @09:55PM (1 child)
As they will on mine, Takyon! Censorship is such a cruel thing! So sad! Now, about your incel tendencies. . .
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday October 29 2019, @10:10PM
Post your credit card number so I can order up some hookers and blow.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 28 2019, @03:55PM (6 children)
The important bit from the 2nd article he linked to in his reply. Oh, by the way the article/opinion piece was written by a woman.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/27/devine-katie-hill-scandal-exposed-the-lefts-metoo-hypocrisy/ [nypost.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:53PM (4 children)
To spell it out, if your boss is having sex with you, something is wrong. The power imbalance undermines the notion of consent, regardless of the gender or sexuality of the more powerful person.
That really is bogus bullshit. Submissives are are naturally attracted to the alpha. Proximity to power is perfectly normal desire. It's also a very good indicator of corruption.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @08:33PM (3 children)
Submissives are attracted to narcissists and psychopaths. Drink, drugs, promiscuous sex and controlling behaviour are not signs of an "alpha" personality type.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @12:28AM (2 children)
Drink, drugs, promiscuous sex and controlling behaviour are not signs of an "alpha" personality type.
The submissives are easily fooled into thinking they are. It is the alpha factor that keeps an abusive relationship intact. The attraction subverts everything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @01:18AM (1 child)
This ain't "alpha factor". [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:17AM
Those are human pathologies. And even there it is the attraction to/dependence on what is perceived by the submissive as strength. And let's not forget good old male aggression is at play, something else we're supposed to suppress, I guess.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:00PM
Most likely, the way you're holding it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 28 2019, @03:57PM (4 children)
Apparently, that first one is pay walled, if you've met your monthly quota of free articles.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @07:40PM
By ROBIN ABCARIANCOLUMNIST
OCT. 28, 2019 12:16 PM
I really wish U.S. Rep. Katie Hill had not resigned.
The Santa Clarita freshman Democrat has been charged with no crime, is going through what appears to be a miserable divorce, has always been frank about her bisexuality, had a relationship with a member of her campaign staff, but has denied an accusation that she had an affair with a male congressional staffer when she got to Washington, D.C., earlier this year. She is now the subject of a House ethics probe.
Should we have expected more from her? Yes, and I will get to that in a moment.
But she has done nothing — that we know of at least — that should have led her to step down.
If, as has been alleged, she had a consensual sexual relationship with a staffer in her congressional office, the 32-year old Democrat should have earned a slap on the wrist. To show how seriously Congress has taken that sort of thing (not), it wasn’t even until last year that the House changed its rules to prohibit sexual relationships between members and their employees.
And wouldn’t you know it — the first lawmaker to fall afoul of the new House rule is a woman, and an unabashedly bisexual woman at that.
This is not to say that no male lawmaker has ever lost his job over sexual misconduct. In fact, since October 2017, when the MeToo movement exploded, at least four members of Congress outright resigned, and four said they would not run for re-election.
But let’s look at what they did.
On the Democratic side: U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota resigned and Rep. Ruben Kihuen of Nevada did not seek re-election after being accused by multiple women of unwanted touching. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan was accused by six former employees of sexual harassment.
In the Republican column: Using government funds, U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas settled a sexual harassment complaint with a staffer; Rep. Joe Barton, also of Texas, threatened to report a lover to the U.S. Capitol police fearing she might expose his other affairs; Rep. Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania settled a sexual harassment complaint with a female staffer. And, because I like to save the best for last, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona offered a staff member $5 million to bear his child, and Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, who once served on the House Pro-Life Caucus, asked his pregnant lover to have an abortion.
There is, I daresay, a difference between those and the consensual conduct of which Hill is accused.
Which is why I think that Hill, to her credit, is taking one for her party. In a statement, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) indicated as much: “She has acknowledged errors in judgment that made her continued service as a Member untenable. We must ensure a climate of integrity and dignity in the Congress, and in all workplaces.”
In a video posted Monday morning, a tearful but resolute Hill says she has resigned because “I will not allow myself to be a distraction from the Constitutional crisis we are faced with, and the critical work of my colleagues.”
President Trump, on the other hand, has paid off a porn star who says she had sex with him, proudly boasted of sexual assault and still maintains his good graces with his evangelical base. Heck, another Republican has even been accused of stealing money to pursue affairs, and was rewarded by his constituents with re-election in 2018.
That would be U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who has been charged with misusing campaign funds, some of which he allegedly used on trips with his family, others of which he allegedly used on trips with his lovers. He not only didn’t resign, he dug in.
His wife, who pleaded guilty, faces up to five years in prison, and he still hasn’t had the decency to resign. The only thing he has going in his favor is that, as far as I know, there are no naked selfies of him circulating around the Internet.
Which brings me to Hill’s biggest sin.
Quite apart from the harsh double standards faced by female politicians — they can’t be too shrill, they have to be likable, on and on — Hill is also being punished, or punishing herself, for one colossally fantastically unbelievably stupid move: Posing for nude photographs, alone and with a woman who appears to be a lover, while running for Congress.
Someone released intimate photos of her that were published by the Daily Mail and the conservative website Red State, which has pursued this story with Kenneth Starr-like glee.
In one of the photos, she’s naked, holding a bong and appears to be stoned. There is, at the top of her thigh, an iron-cross tattoo that Red State has alleged is a Nazi symbol. The cross has been adopted by bikers and Goths, too. Does anyone really believe Hill has Nazi sympathies? For heaven’s sake, she ran the largest homeless services organization in California. There is nothing in her record that would indicate such a proclivity.
Also, when the photo was taken in 2017, she was within her legal rights to use cannabis recreationally, but let’s face it, it’s not a good look for a neophyte congresswoman to be photographed naked about to take a bong hit. Even one from cannabis-friendly California.
Whoever disseminated the photos has committed a horrendous invasion of her privacy, and is trying to destroy her. Rightfully, she has contacted U.S. Capitol Police.
A series of text messages were also published by Red State, in which Hill appears to admit being drunk at last spring’s Democratic Party Convention in San Francisco, and intimating she has a drinking problem.
Does she? Maybe. And if she does, she should have said so, and announced a trip to rehab. Plenty of American politicians admit they have a substance abuse problem, get the help, do the work and resume their responsibilities as elected officials.
Hill became a star of the 2018 campaign. “Vice” followed her around for a documentary series, and called her “the most millennial candidate ever.”
After she won the Democratic primary, she faced longtime Republican incumbent Steve Knight. Next to the wooden former cop, she was a breath of fresh air. She beat him by 9 percentage points.
But maybe it was exactly her millennialism that did her in. I can think of nothing more millennial than being destroyed for posing naked for photos that can be disseminated with the push of a button.
There’s one more thing: Her husband, Kenneth Heslep, who says in divorce papers that he’s a stay-at-home spouse, has asked for alimony. Good luck getting it, buddy, now that her career has imploded.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Tuesday October 29 2019, @03:06AM (2 children)
A lot of times the quota is enforce by a cookie. Bust out a private tab for a new quota counter. In some cases, like a few local newspapers, the articles actually load but are blocked by javascript. µmatrix or noscript will help you out.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:57PM (1 child)
You might get access by deleting the cookies, if you can figure out which ones track you.
I mostly browse in a javascript-free environment, but many of those tracking websites won't load anything without javascript. You can selectively block tracking websites, but again, the page might not load.
A worst-case is they get your MAC address, if that's possible (I don't know), and keep a log. But if you have a dynamic IP address, reset your gateway and use a different computer or change MAC address.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:29PM
Yeah, I'm not going to jump through that many hoops, when I can just go to a competing source.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @03:45PM
If having "reasonable ability to threaten force" (regardless whether any threat is actually made) makes sex unethical, I guess it's a good thing I only date chicks with concealed carry permits.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 28 2019, @06:30PM (2 children)
What's good for the gander, is good for the goose, right? I'm somewhat pleased by the number of female teachers who are being seng to prison, for having sex with their students. ANY ADULT having sex with students needs to pay the price. There is a woman who lives near me, who needs to learn that lesson. She likes the boys young and sweet, but she'll do a horny sheriff's deputy, and apparently that's enough to keep her out of trouble.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:55AM
The difference between the goose and the gander is that one gets pregnant and the other doesn't. And if a girl gets pregnant, she has to make some major choices. It's not all about purity.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:03PM
You want to teach everyone a lesson that'll stick? Option the story rights from her, write up a rough sample screenplay, and sell the package as a multi-part series to one of the big porn studios.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 28 2019, @10:59PM (6 children)
This was an ethics violation, full stop, gender and sex and sexual orientation don't even come into it. You. Do. Not. Schtup. Your. Subordinates.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday October 28 2019, @11:53PM (4 children)
People want to bonk, and they are going to no matter what. It's a situation that will occur over and over again. The workplace offers an amount of interpersonal interaction that some people are not going to find elsewhere in their lives, and that can lead to mutual temptation. We can't know with the facts on the table that the subordinate was coerced into a relationship, only that it is possible and that it violates the rule regardless.
Is anyone outraged by the ethics violation? Most are probably faux-outraged by the implication of cheating (it may not have been much of cheating depending on the timeline of the divorce) or just want to dunk on a Democratic Congresswoman for getting her nude photos leaked. Katie Hill's biggest mistake was getting caught. She failed to hide the relationship from her "abusive husband" [twitter.com]. She created the weapon for the husband and "hateful political operatives" to use against her. Finally, the Daily Mail claimed that she had a "Nazi-inspired tattoo" [theguardian.com] (probably real photos since her lawyers sent them a C&D), which may have further alienated her allies in Congress.
It's possible that she could run again in 2022, as a referendum on her unethical behavior. But she would have to face an incumbent, and possibly a Democrat. So you can expect Katie Hill to become an anti-revenge porn campaigner instead.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-28/la-na-pol-2020-katie-hill-resigns [latimes.com]
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:12AM (3 children)
And I scroll down just to see further idiocy. Yes, humans are animals, with instincts and urges. However we have these amazing brains that let us transcend our biological imperatives, otherwise there'd be a lot more dead people and little civilization to speak of.
You social darwinists don't even realize you're spitting on the graves of every ancestor that has tried to leave the world a better place than they found it. Truly deplorable. I don't much care for HRC but she sure pegged you assholes.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:20AM (1 child)
True love, or lust, will prevail, anon cretin.
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(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:52AM
May you find better meaning in your life. Same for me, arguing with an alt-right dipshit is pretty lame :/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @01:40PM
There's an image I didn't need.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:04PM
With. Video. Evidence.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday October 30 2019, @11:09PM
It must be absolutely terrible to be the victim of revenge porn, but just remember, decent human beings do not think any less of you for being a victim. The guilt and shame is all on the perpetrators.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].