Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, attracted unwanted attention during the State of the Union address, when press reported on what appeared to be flirtatious tweets sent to a very pretty 24-year-old blonde. It didn't help Cohen's case when he then deleted the tweets just a few minutes. Oh no, it's another Weinergate only not as exciting because there's no penis photo, the conservative media crowed. Turns out Rep. Cohen actually has a very pretty 24-year-old daughter, a fact that has been kept secret from the public for, well, 24 years. Scandal dodged. Sort of. 
 
 It's actually pretty sweet story. Cohen told NBC News the whole thing on Thursday. Yes, Brinks has a secret daughter. Her name is Victoria Brink, and she appears to have had some sort of career as a bikini model. The congressman only found out about her three years ago. "I googled her mother, found out she had a child and the math looked pretty accurate," he said. "The mom told me we had a lot of catching up to do." Since then, Cohen's done his best to be a good dad. He's given her a tour of the Capitol and even took her to the White House Christmas party, where he asked the official photographer to take two pictures — one with him and Brinks together and one without Brinks — since nobody else knew about the situation. After that, Brinks took a trip to Memphis, Cohen's home district, though it's unclear if she hung out with dear old dad. 
 
 Cohen shows me picture of him and his daughter Victoria at White House Christmas party twitter.com/LukeRussert/st… — Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) February 14, 2013 
 
 All that said, the circumstances of Cohen's revealing his relationship with Brink are sketchy at best. That is to say, we can see how some people might think she was some sort of mistress. Cohen is not married, though his spokesperson says that he "has a longtime girlfriend in Memphis." Accounts vary as to when Cohen actually found out that Brinks was his daughter. His spokesperson says he's known her "pretty much since she was born" while NBC News says it's only been three years. There are a bunch of pictures on the Internet of Brink in skimpy bikinis, not that there's anything wrong with that. But again, we can see how some people would draw the conclusion that Brink is Cohen's secret lover, not his secret daughter. 
 
 One thing is absolutely clear: Cohen is bad at Twitter. Initially, Cohen's spokesperson said that the tweets were meant to be "private" direct messages to "the daughter of a longtime friend." You can almost smell Weinergate's return. As for the tweets themselves, Cohen says it was just good old fashioned paternal pride that compelled him to send them. "When she let me know she was watching the State of the Union address I was thrilled that she wanted Steve Cohen to be part of her," he told NBC News. "I had such joy, that I couldn't hold back from tweeting her." Everybody all at once: Awwwww. 
 
 The Sunlight Foundation maintains a website called Politwoops that archives politicians' deleted tweets, and this is not the first time that Cohen's tweeted at Brink. New York Magazine's Joe Coscarelli traces their Twitter relationship back to February 2012, almost exactly one year before the State of the Union, when Cohen favorited Brinks' first tweet. Tweets since then have been pretty adorable, especially Cohen's classic dad-just-learned-to-text spelling tricks — "miss u/wil call later_-give me a good time." 
 
 There will inevitably be a group of people that thinks Cohen is lying, that he made up an elaborate story about a long-lost daughter to avoid his own Weinergate. It's a pretty terrible cover story, though, you have to admit. Brazen at best. While we're eager to find out more details in the story of the Tennessee congressmen and his secret bikini-clad daughter, we're in no rush to dive into another Twitter-induced political scandal. There are more important things going on in the world. 
 
 Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. 
 
 Adam Clark Estes ||||| Porn Star Says Weiner Sent Her a Private Message 
 
 Ginger Lee—a porn star, stripper and fan of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY9)—was ecstatic on March 13 2011: 
 
 Ginger Lee’s tweet said: You know it’s a good day when you wake up to a DM from @RepWeiner. (I’m a fangirl, y’all, he’s my trifecta of win.) 
 
 [NOTE: DM is a Twitter abbreviation for Direct Message, in which a tweet is sent privately and only to the one recipient. To send a DM, the person you wish to message must be following you on Twitter. Ginger must have been following @RepWeiner for him to DM her. He would not necessarily have to have been following her to send the DM. However, a tweet was publicly broadcast by @patriotusa76 back on April 12 saying that Weiner only followed 91 people at that time, and it names “PORN star Ginger Lee” as one of them. PatriotUSA76 aka Dan Wolfe appears to have been on Weiner’s trail for some time now and has been tweeting his curious finds to various blogs and conservative websites, apparently to no avail.] 
 
 Following Ginger’s excited announcement of receiving a DM from Weiner, a few Ginger and/or Weiner fans piped up with questions: 
 
 @MilesLord asks @GingerLee: How do u DM people, and why the heck is Congressman Weiner DM-ing u??? To which @GingerLee replies: Because he is one of my heroes, & a DM from him is like a DM from Buddha. 
 
 And then there was this: 
 
 Ginger Lee tweeted to @starchild111: He thanked me for the shout-outs and said he likes my blog. (I died a little inside…in a good way.) 
 
 A couple months ago, around the time of this message, @Starchild111 was a high school girl who was trying to get Weiner to be her prom date. She was overjoyed when he followed her, upset when conservatives laughed that Weiner was trolling the school yard, and dismayed when he unfollowed her. Starchild has deleted her twitter account. I only just found her last night, so I have no knowledge of when she deleted it, but I have found tweets by her as recent as May 18. 
 
 Starchild is not the only teenage girl with a crush on Weiner that he has followed. There’s another one that he has apparently had an on-again, off-again following involvement with for a couple months. And he’s currently following her again now. 
 
 This pattern of behavior, following and DMing young women that apparently have no relation to his district or his work, fits in with the suspected behavior of him DMing a crotch shot to a college girl in Seattle. Weiner is claiming his Facebook account was hacked, which doesn’t explain how the photo was uploaded to his yfrog account and then tweeted from his twitter account (that he was tweeting on around that time, including after the supposed hacking). 
 
 For more coverage on #Weinergate, see these excellent roundups: 
 
 I have more that I have found. Still sorting through it to see if there’s anything else to contribute to fleshing out the full extent of #Weinergate. 
 
 UPDATE [5/29/11 6:00pm] 
 
 Thanks to The Other McCain for the linkage. Welcome, TOMers. 
 
 Yukyuk: In a bit of irony, back in May 2004, Rep. Weiner introduced legislation to stop sexual harassment on college campuses: 
 
 “Institutions of higher learning have a responsibility to establish clear boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable conduct on campus,” said Rep. Weiner. “That means putting students on notice from day one that sexual harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.” 
 
 Perhaps Weiner’s just been conducting online research for some new legislation? 
 
 UPDATE II: [5/29/11 6:30pm] 
 
 Thanks for the links from JustPaste.It and Uncoverage.net 
 
 UPDATE III: [5/29/11 7:15pm] 
 
 Thanks for the links, DaTechGuy and DailyCaller! 
 
 UPDATE IV: [5/29/11 7:25pm] 
 
 Oops…and not to forget, thanks to Velvet Hammer at Ironic Surrealism, Gateway Pundit and AceOfSpades. 
 
 Another yukyuk: The Wall Street Journal has posted a very short little AP story regarding Weinergate. Note the pronunciation key they give in the first sentence. When was the last time you read an AP story that had that?: 
 
 NEW YORK — A spokesman for New York Rep. Anthony Weiner (WEE’-nur) says a lewd photograph sent from the Democrat’s Twitter account is just “a distraction” perpetrated by a hacker. Weiner spokesman Dave Arnold told The Associated Press in an email Sunday the Twitter episode was “a distraction” from the congressman’s “important work representing his constituents.” The photo showed a man’s bulging underpants. It first was reported Saturday by BigGovernment.com, a website run by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. The site said the photo was tweeted to a woman in Seattle. The photo was quickly deleted. Weiner later joked about it on Twitter, asking whether his kitchen blender would be next to “attack” him. 
 
 UPDATE: [5/30/11 9:00am] 
 
 Thanks for links from Doug Ross, The Pajamas Media Tatler, American Power and Verum Serum. 
 
 UPDATE: [6/1/11 1:30am] 
 
 Thanks to the following linkers (and welcome to their readers!) 
 
 Daily Beast 
 
 Gawker 
 
 American Spectator 
 
 Patterico 
 
 Plus, thanks to Socialite Life, Carolyn Castiglia, Newsvine, Just Barking Mad, Temple of Mut, Ragan’s PR Daily, Conservative Blogs Central, and Texas Sparkle. 
 
 UPDATE [6/1/11 11:45] 
 
 The Daily Caller has a new story in which Ginger Lee emailed them a nonresponse to all of their questions, except to say: 
 
 “I haven’t met Rep Weiner. I follow him on twitter because I support him & what he stands for,” Lee said in an email to TheDC. “I have been hounded by his political opponents but that hasn’t changed my view of him and what he fights for.” ||||| Rep. Anthony Weiner says his Twitter account was "hacked" and that he didn't send that picture of his bulging penis to that college student. 
 
 Is that true? Or is Anthony Weiner lying? 
 
 Odds are he's lying. 
 
 How do we know? 
 
 Because here's what Weiner says about that picture: He "can't say with certitude" that the picture is not of him. 
 
 As John Podhoretz of the New York Post observes, that is just a political way of saying that the picture is of him. 
 
 There is only one way to shoot a picture like that (see below): Take your pants off, hold a camera at shoulder level, and aim it down. Because of this, Weiner has to know if a picture like that was ever taken of him--and when and by whom (odds are, by him). 
 
 If such a picture was NOT taken, or if Weiner does not own underwear like the ones in the picture, Weiner would be able to say with almost 100% certainty that the picture was NOT of him. 
 
 He didn't say that. 
 
 He said he can't be sure the picture isn't of him. 
 
 And that means it is almost certainly of him. 
 
 To "hack" Weiner's Twitter account and post the picture, therefore, someone would have to break into his computer or phone or wherever the picture is stored, gain access to his Twitter account, and upload the picture--all without alerting him to the fact that his phone/computer and Twitter account had been hijacked. 
 
 Having your Twitter account and computer hacked and having lewd, fabricated pictures of yourself sent to a college student is serious business if you're a politician. It's potentially career-destroying. It is also unequivocally a crime (not a "prank," as Weiner and his people have said). 
 
 If Weiner's account had been hacked in such a fashion, he would likely have instantly freaked out and called the authorities. Upon being questioned about the incident, he also would have immediately issued a full, categorical denial. 
 
 Weiner didn't do any of that. Instead, he made a joke on Twitter about how his "FB account" had been hacked. Then, for three days, he blew up at reporters for daring to ask him questions about the affair. 
 
 Is it possible that Weiner is telling the truth? 
 
 Anything's possible. 
 
 But the far more likely explanation is that he tried to send the college student a Direct Message with the picture of his crotch, accidentally blasted it out to his whole Twitter list, and then tried to cover up his mistake with a b.s. story about how he had been "hacked" (which was presumably the first thing that popped into his head after he realized with horror what he had done and deleted the tweet). 
 
 It would hardly be the first time someone has screwed up with an "accidental DM." And it also would hardly be the first time a married politician has followed his penis into trouble and then lied about it. 
 
 (And, by the way, there's an obvious explanation for why Weiner and his people have called their lawyers, instead of the police: Because they know the police will instantly be able to determine who sent the picture. We'd place a nice, big bet on the fact that they really don't want that to happen.)
– Note to tweeting politicians: Watch what you post, because Politwoops will remember it forever. The transparency-minded website is safeguarding politicians' deleted tweets, enabling the rest of us to giggle or ponder over them at our leisure, The Atlantic reports. The site's current 6-month stash includes a few doozey deletions, including John McCain mocking Vladimir Putin's tears and Rep. Jeff Miller posting a link to a poll that asked, "Was Obama born in the United States?" A few deletions are more odd than obvious, begging us to ask what politicians were thinking. Why, for example, did Rep. Tom Graves remove a tweet about going out one night with his wife? Or Rep. Kathy Hochul delete one about her visit to a cancer institute? Perhaps Rep. Stephen Fincher's tweet comparing The Bachelor to The Hunger Games is a more obvious case, but the online avenues of a politician's mind can be dimly lit indeed.