The state Assembly's Ethics and Guidance Committee yesterday met behind closed doors for four hours, weighing the fate of an upstate lawmaker who carried on a hot and heavy affair with an intern.
The panel has been mulling how to discipline Assemblyman Sam Hoyt (D-Buffalo) since last month, when a political blog posted explicit e-mails between him and a one-time legislative aide.
Neither committee members nor aides to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) would confirm reports that the meeting focused on Hoyt. But Chairman William Magnarelli (D-Syracuse) said it met "to discuss matters that could lead to the discipline of a particular person."
Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, damaged by an admission of marital infidelity, survived the challenge of his political career Tuesday to win the Democratic primary and most likely another term in Albany.
Hoyt, a 16-year veteran of the State Legislature, survived a well-financed opposition campaign funded by Rochester billionaire and Buffalo Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisnao — which focused on allegations of an affair with an legislative intern — to defeat former Common Council Member Barbra A. Kavanaugh.
A woman who had an affair with Assemblyman Sam Hoyt has told the Assembly’s Ethics and Guidance Committee that she was an intern in the spring of 2003 when they first had sex, according to a source close to the investigation.
The woman, who was 23 at the time and whose name is being withheld by The Buffalo News, was an intern in the office of Assemblywoman Teresa R. Sayward, R-Willsboro, when she first met Hoyt, a Buffalo Democrat, who was 41 at the time.
She told committee members late last month that Hoyt asked her on a date, the source said, and they later went to her apartment. She said the affair with the married assemblyman continued after she became a staff member for another legislator.
The disclosure that the woman, who has since graduated from the University at Buffalo Law School, was an intern when the affair began would not mean a violation of Assembly rules against fraternizing with interns, since they were adopted later.
Simply because I have nothing better to do and because it is becoming very apparent that the congressional races this election cycle are going to be more important then they have in probably 20 years, I have decided to start a series highlighting some conservative candidates for Congress who are ready to challenge the senile, AARP card carrying, stuck in the past residents of the federal frat house. These are fresh faces and folks who can offer new or different answers the problems that have plagued this country in some cases for over half a century. Every election cycle it is the same old tired rhetoric and after the election it is the same old results. Nothing changes, so that once again in the next election the cycle can be repeated. I believe this is called insanity. I am going to start out with the Iraqi veterans who are challenging the old guard, and the one thing we know for sure about the veterans of the GWOT is they can adapt to and overcome any challenge and get results, which is why they should receive the attention of the voters and hopefully wrest away some of these congressional seats from the incumbents and get this country moving forward, not merely continuing to debate, study, and discuss issues, but instead take action.
Mr Lalor served in the Marines and is the founder of a group called the Eternal Vigilance Society which is "dedicated to winning the War on Terror by supporting leaders willing to put protecting the nation ahead of politics and who espouse aggressive policies to achieve total victory in the War on Terror."
Here is Mr Lalor on Fox News addressing the "Don't Ask,Don't Tell" policy and the liberal bent in academia.
His position on the issues of healthcare insurance, energy independence, and taxes can be found here.
There is no doubt that this will be an expensive race, and we're not naïve about that. John Hall is my polar opposite in most respects, and fundraising is no different. Hall is funded by the MoveOn.org Left, and his list of campaign donors looks like a passenger list for a Woodstock-bound Volkswagen Splitty. Susan Sarandon, Bonnie Raitt, Pete Seeger. The list goes on and on. Hall likes to run away from tough issues, and he runs straight to Moveon.org and George Soros when he needs fast cash. In fact, Soros just hosted a Hall fundraiser at a 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan.
I encourage everybody this year to go check out any challenger to the entrenched incumbents in Congress that they have in their area. It is time to get the entitlement-minded Congress critters out so that maybe we can get rid of the unnecessary pork in our budgets and get some folks who will address 21st Century problems with 21st Century solutions. Check out your local candidates of all parties and see if instead of just talking about change you can actually make a change.
It may look like a geologic find, but a three-pound red and white fossil heading for auction Wednesday is actually a pile of dinosaur dung.
Bonhams New York is putting the prehistoric deposit up for sale along with a 30,000-year-old woolly mammoth tusk, expected to sell for up to $50,000. The auction house predicts the 50,000-year-old skull and jaws of a giant beaver will sell for about $20,000.
The dinosaur dung, identified by the auction house as Jurassic era coprolite, looks like a rock on the outside and a colorful mineral inside. It is 130 million years old and is expected to sell for between $350 and $450. It has lost any original odor.
