The revelations that Republican senator David Vitter was a client of prostitutes employed by "DC madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey has set off an internet treasure hunt to find other guilty secrets hiding in the madam's phone records.
After a judge lifted the injunction on publication of Palfrey's phone records, listing several years' worth of her telephone dealings with clients, websites have been posting the records allowing readers to undertake freelance investigations to try and find other high profile scalps.
Palfrey's own website allows users to see the complete phone records. A group called Citizens for Legitimate Government also lists the numbers, broken down by year, along with an updated list of identified numbers.
Another site, DCphonelist.com, allows users to search the records for specific phone numbers - making it easy to check up on a cheating spouse or politician.
Vitter, meanwhile, is receiving more bad news: the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that a local madam named Jeanette Maier claims Vitter was also a client.
Maier said: "I know he's not a drug addict. I know he's not a person that would down-talk a woman. I know that he's respectful. I know from what I've seen that he is honorable, that he's a good man. His wife should be very proud of her husband irregardless of what he's done.
She added: "He was not a freak. He was not into anything unusual or kinky or weird."
The Washington Post, though, suggests Vitter may have more to worry about. It found an old quote from Vitter's wife Wendy: "His wife, Wendy, told Newhouse News Service in 2000 that if her husband cheated on her, she would react less like Hillary Clinton and more like the Manassas woman who cut off her sleeping husband's penis in 1993. 'I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,' Wendy Vitter said. 'If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me. I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage.'"
