Bruce Barclay

Really baffles my mind how many sex scandals the GOP is capable of getting caught up in. Don't they learn? And nobody would even care about the added frisson of male prostitutes if the Republicans hadn't turned sexuality into an evil, and placed gay sex at the top of the crucify-able offenses.

Bruce Barclay's political career hung in the balance. The Republican commissioner of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, had been accused of rape -- by a man, no less -- and the police were bearing down. Barclay's lawyer issued a strong denial ("This accusation of rape is ludicrous It will be defended forever and is wrong."). But it was clear things were looking pretty dicey. Until... vindication! Well, sort of.

On March 31st, police, investigating the allegation of rape by the 20-year old Marshall McCurdy, obtained a warrant to search Barclay's home. They didn't find evidence of rape. But they did find videotapes of hundreds of sexual encounters with men that Barclay had filmed on high-tech surveillance cameras. The cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, among other places. There was also one at his business office.

[From TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | All Muck is Local: Sex and Lots and Lots of Videotape]

From now one, I'm assuming that all Republican Family Value types are closeted homosexuals. Though to be fair to this Barclay figure, I don't know if he was an active gay basher, or just went along for the ride so as to weild political power. In any case, Mr. Barclay had an enormous sex drive - the cameras were less than two years old.

Police say the sexual encounters were videotaped without the knowledge of the participants, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed Tuesday with Magisterial District Judge Susan Day. Court documents say cameras were installed in January of 2007. [snip] During an interview with Barclay, Henneman said he “admitted to using the cameras to record sexual encounters.” Police say Barclay saved between 100 and 500 encounters on his computer system.

and apparently, the reason Karl Rove has never been prosecuted for illicitly taping George Bush, there is no sound (or sound removed)

Laws involving videotaping individuals without their knowledge can differ based on a number of circumstances that may be involved in a particular instance. According to Cumberland District Attorney David Freed, a major distinction between what is considered a felony and what is considered a misdemeanor is whether or not the footage contains sound. “The distinction is made with the interception of oral communication and video,” Freed said. “If it does contain sound, it is a wire tap violation, and that is considered a felony of the third degree. If it is just video, it is considered a third-degree misdemeanor if there is only one violation or a second-degree misdemeanor if there is more than one, and there’s usually more than one.”

Oh wait, nobody is talking about Jeff Gannon here.