Oh yeah -- I forgot about that! So, when are politicians - everywhere - going to stop pretending that they don't get a little on the side?? Ridiculous.

Well You might recall the Mele case a couple of years ago ( see below ) - Yes Clinton will not make a case in Italy - The people who lost their job in Italy went a lot further - see the Mele case ( from the right wing ) and the Marazzo case ( from the left wing ) -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2169777.ece
MP quits party of family values after prostitute takes overdose in hotel room
Richard Owen in Rome
Recommend?

A married Roman Catholic politician whose party has espoused family values and is pressing for all Italian MPs to take drug tests was exposed yesterday after a prostitute took an overdose of cocaine in his hotel room.

Cosimo Mele, 50, a parliamentary deputy for Italy’s Christian Democratic UDC party, resigned from the party after colleagues complained that his behaviour was incompatible with the Centre Right’s espousal of family values. The timing of the dismissal was particularly sensitive as the party has been at the forefront of a campaign to oblige all parliamentarians to take a voluntary drugs test. This is due to take place tomorrow.

Mr Mele, whose wife is about to give birth to their fourth child, said that he felt proud to have risked exposure by calling the emergency services when the girl began hyperventilating and experiencing delirium and hallucinations. “At least I avoided the worst – for her,” he said. Mr Mele, who comes from Brindisi, in staunchly Catholic southern Italy, claimed he had not realised that the girl was a prostitute.

During a recess in an evening vote in the lower house, he had gone for dinner with friends at a fashionable restaurant near the French Embassy on Piazza Farnese, and had struck up a “sympathetic rapport” with a woman in her late twenties to whom he was introduced.

The MP said he had been flattered by her interest. “I am not exactly the kind of man women seek out with a lantern,” he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily. He said that “one thing led to another” and they ended up in bed in a suite at the Hotel Flora on Via Veneto, which features in Fellini’s 1960 classic film La Dolce Vita. .

Asked if he had paid the girl for sex, Mr Mele replied: “Not exactly. I spontaneously gave her a present.” Pressed further, he admitted that the present had been a sum in cash, “though not excessive”.

Grazie! Many people - me included - believe that we should leave politicians' piccadillos well enough alone. And, in the case of Berlusconi, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and a host of others, I'd say - right on.
But, when it comes to people who make the laws illegally paying for sex, using illegal drugs, 'associazione a delinquere' through the services of illegal immigrants, well, it's open season in my book.
Funny though, that it's usually women who get ousted out of office (in the USA) when the nanny or gardner is an illegal immigrant...

Well Burnt
I just arrived in Italy and I heard about the Marazzo video. Besides him being with transvestites there was also 3 stripes of coacaine in the video and cash. Anyway here is also another blog that explains about the Marazzo 'affair'

Marrazzo: Italy's Latest Trans Sex Scandal

Wow...awesome! I wish I was there. I didn't know there was such a thing as international pasta day!