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- There's nothing so satisfying as a good dose of political schadenfreude, which is being served up on a platter this week by Louisiana Representative Vance McAllister. Grainy images of McAllister locked in a passionate embrace with Melissa Hixon Peacock, a married aide, last December are making the rounds online.
- Peacock's husband, Heath, is fueling the tabloid-esque furor by making the rounds on cable TV. "I'm just freaking devastated by the whole deal, man. I loved my wife so much. I cannot believe this. I cannot freaking believe it. I feel like I'm going to wake up here in a minute and this is all going to be a bad nightmare," he told CNN Tuesday. He says that he and his wife, who have a six-year-old son, are getting a divorce.
- It certainly doesn't help that McAllister, a married father of five who joined Congress last November in a special election, campaigned as a staunch Christian conservative who promised to bring his values to Washington.
- He made his mark early, by inviting Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson to the State of the Union address.
- The hunt is on for the dastardly person who leaked the video of McAllister and Peacock. McAllister is demanding an FBI probe to determine who could have done such a thing. A local pastor says he knows what happened: McAllister's district office manager slipped the video to his former opponents. "I just feel like there is a conspiracy to bring Vance down and destroy him," Christian Life pastor Danny Chance explained.
- Luckily for McAllister, another political career is publicly unraveling. Even Joy Behar agrees that Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor accused of clogging the George Washington Bridge last September as a bizarre form of political revenge, is "toast."
- Christie, widely considered to be a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, hired a team of lawyers to investigate the scandal. They concluded, as one's own lawyers are wont to do, that Christie had done nothing wrong.
- New Jersey voters smell a rat. Christie's approval ratings dropped in an Quinnipiac poll released today; respondents were divided on whether Christie is more of a leader or a bully. A majority, meanwhile, agreed that the Christie-sponsored Bridgegate investigation was a "whitewash."
- One thing is for sure in all of this sorry mess: Chris Christie doesn't respond well to being roasted. Whether Vance McAllister will wilt under the harsh glare of the Washington spotlight remains to be seen. He hasn't shown up for work for the past two days. That can't be a good sign.
