Strong Evidence That Newt Gingrich Has Lied in Describing His Personal History

Proclaiming Yourself a Moral Person Means Not Having to Have Morality

The personal history of former House Speaker and current (soon to be former) Presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich has focused on his past behavior in his three opposite sex marriages.  (Presumably they have the Rick Santorum stamp of approval).  Mr. Gingrich divorced his first wife to marry his second wife,

When Gingrich filed for divorce, he was already seeing a 28-year-old congressional aide, whom he married six months after his divorce was final in 1981. The second wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, told Esquire magazine last year that Gingrich even introduced her to his parents in the summer of 1980, the same time he filed for divorce.

and has claimed that the divorce was the idea of his first wife. 

A new defense that has arisen as Gingrich entered the presidential race this year is the insistence that she, not he, wanted the divorce.

On the "Answering the attacks" page of his campaign website, Newt.org, which "(Sets) the Record Straight: Newt's Positions on the Issues and His Record," the campaign discusses Gingrich's first divorce.

"It was (Jackie Gingrich) that requested the divorce, not Newt," the campaign website said, referring readers to an online column written by Gingrich's youngest daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, last May.

Now actual court documents, you know, hard evidence, show otherwise.  CNN did some actual investigative reporting, you know, the kind newspapers used to do all the time before they became, well, what they are today.

Newt Gingrich filed a divorce complaint on July 14, 1980, in Carroll County, saying that "the marriage of the parties is irretriebably (sic) broken."Jackie Battley Gingrich, the congressman's wife and the mother of Jackie Gingrich Cushman, responded by asking the judge to reject her husband's filing.

"Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time," her petition said.

Of course, some of his may have been legal posturing because it turns out the champion of family values was not all that keen to provide for his family.

When Jackie Gingrich and her daughters moved from their other home in Fairfax, Virginia, back to their house in Carrollton, Georgia, there were "no lights, no heat, no water, no food in the home," former Gingrich friend and academic colleague Carter said.

Carter, who helped collect donations for the family, said Gingrich "wouldn't give them a dime" in the first months of the separation.

"We had a food drive at First Baptist Church," Carter said. "The deacons went down and stocked her pantry."

Johnson, the former state legislator who was in Gingrich's Sunday school class, said when the church's minister asked him to donate money, he gave $100 to the fund.

A judge ordered Gingrich to appear in court a week after his wife filed her complaint. The result was a ruling that he bring the utility bills up to date and begin paying his wife $700 a month in temporary support until the case was settled.

No,  none of this made the main stream media, because after all Mr. Gingrich has said that God has forgiven him and that’s all that is needed.  It’s not. What is needed is a more vigorous national press that gives Americans the information they need to make informed choices for government leaders.  And that of course is the last thing people like Mr. Gingrich want.