Sex

Over the weekend, New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who was just reelected, sat for a Sunday interview with CNN's Candy Crowley. They discussed the Petraeus affair, the looming fiscal cliff, and the clean-up after Hurricane Sandy.

But Menendez was not asked about the allegations he faces regarding his own sex scandal.

Virginia-based trade publication Politico investigates whether Vice President Joe Biden is a sex symbol:

The Pioneer Press reports: 

The calls for state Rep. Kerry Gauthier to quit politics grew louder Monday, as party leaders urged the first-term DFLer from Duluth to withdraw his bid for reelection following reports he had oral sex with a 17-year-old boy at a Duluth-area rest stop in July.

Steve Hayward: "Mulling a Daniels Run"

Oh, the ridicule if this had been Bush.

No, Florida did not ban sex.

Obama seems to care a lot more about unions than immigration.

RECALL MAKES for strange bedfellows. Arnold Schwarzenegger has coupled onscreen with Sharon Stone. Arianna Huffington and Al Franken hit the sheets, John-and-Yoko-style, to report on the 1996 national conventions. Cruz Bustamante is in bed with the Indian gaming tribes that underwrite his campaign.

And then there's Mary Carey: adult entertainment performer and independent candidate for governor.

EACH YEAR, hundreds of thousands of women and children are trafficked into prostitution around the world, and join the millions of women and children already entrapped in prostitution by pimps and organized crime groups. Thankfully, this humanitarian catastrophe is finally attracting high-level attention in Washington.

At the end of 2002, former congressman John Miller--who is determined to defeat the traffickers--was appointed as director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

I'VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME on elite college campuses recently--at Yale, where I taught a course, as well as at Princeton, Dartmouth, Kenyon, and a few less rarefied schools--and while I've temporarily given up on the game of trying to diagnose the ills of America's youth, I have found that things really are different than they were when I graduated about 20 years ago.

For one thing, the students in the competitive colleges are products of an almost crystalline meritocracy.

IF A GOVERNMENT set out slowly to strangle the family life of its people, what would be the best tactic? One diabolical approach would be to saddle young adults in their early 20s with massive debt. Surely, this would delay marriages, as potential spouses shied away from this perverse form of anti-dowry. Even more surely, this tactic would push back childbearing for a decade or more, as potential mothers and fathers put off having children until their debt collectors were satisfied.

Skipping Towards Gomorrah
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America
by Dan Savage
Dutton, $23.95, 302 pages

THE AMERICAN SODOMITES have found their defender and his name is, appropriately, Dan Savage. In his day job, Savage writes a wonderfully lewd sex column in which he reports on a great variety of bizarre sexual practices with chilling and not-at-all self-conscious candor.

BEFORE I EVEN BEGIN my review, let me preface it by saying there's no way I can avoid the occasional use of explicit sexual language that may make some readers uncomfortable or upset. "Auto Focus" is, after all, about Bob Crane, and it doesn't exactly focus on the man's acting career, but rather on some of his more bizarre sexual habits. At this point, if you're still wondering who Bob Crane is and why you should care, there's probably no need for you to read on.

THE LAW OF AVERAGES dictates that if you spend enough time writing for a living, you will eventually make embarrassing disclosures about yourself. Here is mine: Of all the crank left-wing groups I am paid to periodically encounter, I've always harbored a secret soft spot for my friends at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This is not an easy admission. For the only thing I like better than eating meat once a day, is eating meat two or three times a day. If they made meat desserts, I'd push for four. Meat and I--we've had some great times together.

BY NOW, you're surely aware of the controversy that erupted at UC Berkeley last week over the school's student-taught courses on "Male Sexuality" and "Female Sexuality," sponsored by (of course) the Women's Studies department. Last semester's "Male Sexuality" course featured an orgy; a party game involving matching anonymous Polaroid shots of students' genitalia with the correct student; and a field trip to a gay strip club to watch course instructors strip and have sex.