Republican Family Values: The Old Sodomy Defense Edition

By now, news of a law and order Republican family man who commits adultery with a subordinate is just another "Dog Licks Balls" story. Here's the latest:

The issue took on immediate political dimensions on Thursday when Mr. Rosenthal, a 61-year-old Republican who has announced he will run for a third term [as Harris County, Texas District Attorney] next year, attacked the disclosure of the messages as "bare-knuckle politics."

The messages, which had been turned over to lawyers in the course of a federal civil rights lawsuit that alleges misconduct involving Harris County sheriff's deputies, contained Mr. Rosenthal's professions of love and longing for the woman, Kerry Stevens, with whom he has acknowledged having an affair during his first marriage.

In one message dated Aug. 10, Mr. Rosenthal wrote, "The very next time I see you I want to kiss you behind your right ear."

A day earlier, he had sent Ms. Stevens an e-mail message saying, "You own my heart whether you want or not."

What a dumbass. But the interesting part of the story involves the skanky old goat's attempts to squelch public disclosure of a public office's e-mails:

In that brief filed on Dec. 19, the Ibarra brothers’ lawyer, Lloyd E. Kelley, claimed that Mr. Rosenthal had deleted at least 2,500 e-mail messages after they should have been turned over to the court in the process of legal discovery after Nov. 16.

In his court papers, Mr. Rosenthal has claimed that his e-mail messages came under "zones of privacy" involving personal conduct recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case in which the court overturned the state's anti-sodomy law.

I'll bet that's the first and last time that cracker ever cites a right to privacy in his office's legal filings.

But Mr. Kelley's brief says that it was Mr. Rosenthal who appeared before the court to argue for Texas.

Heh. Cracker better hope the second wife isn't as big a death penalty enthusiast as he is.