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Miley Cyrus Thanks Fans At Disney Channel Games – News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

Posted by: on: May 6, 2008

‘Hannah Montana’ star avoids questions about controversial pics by skipping down red carpet.

By Chris Harris

In her first major public appearance since near-topless photos, which were shot for Vanity Fair, stirred considerable debate among fans, parents and celebs like Madonna and Hilary Duff, “Hannah Montana” star Miley Cyrus appeared Saturday night at the Disney Channel Games concert, held at Orlando, Florida’s Walt Disney World, and thanked her fans for their undying support.

“I hope you had an awesome time,” Cyrus was quoted as saying on People.com. The Disney moneymaker skipped her way down the event’s red carpet, seemingly to avoid questions about the photo scandal. “I saw a sign back there that said, ‘Miley, I’m praying for you.’ I could not be more appreciative. Thank you, guys, for all your support. Without you, none of this would be possible. I love every one of you, and I could not be more appreciative. God bless you.”

Cyrus’ set opened with “See You Again,” and later on, the star previewed two tracks — “Fly on the Wall” and “Breakout” — from her forthcoming, yet-untitled album, which hits stores July 22.

Other performers that took the stage Saturday included the Jonas Brothers, the Cheetah Girls and Jordan Pruitt.

But the fans weren’t the only ones backing Cyrus up. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Cyrus’ “Hannah Montana” co-star Jason Earles said she’s taking last week’s controversy in stride. “She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” he told the paper. “She’ll do everything to make sure she does right by her fans. It will be all right. I know what kind of person she is. She has a great heart.”

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Posted by: on: April 25, 2008

People Actually Shelling Out Money to Download Crappy Ashley Alexandra Dupre Music Online

Posted by: on: March 29, 2008

In addition to being a high-priced hooker, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, 22, is a budding singer – and has already banked an estimated $200,000 from online music downloads in the past week, according to the New York Post.

It’s hard to blame soon-to-be former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute for cashing in on the sex scandal… but come on, people. Put your money in a savings account instead, then go to her MySpace and have a listen for free. Sheesh.

Ashley Dupre made two tunes, “What We Want” and “Move Ya Body,” available for purchase as 99-cent downloads on music site Amie Street shortly after the scandal broke. Musicians can earn a 70 percent cut on download fees via the site.

“What We Want,” a pulsating dance tune, was also added to New York’s Z100 play list on Thursday (she first streamed it on her MySpace page).

Kristen

But is Ashley Dupre merely cashing in on her 15 minutes of fame, or does she actually have a future in the music business? Some reviews so far …

“With MySpace, American Idol and cheap home-recording equipment demystifying the creation of pop music, there’s this idea that anyone can become a star if she tries hard enough. It’s not that simple, but [’What we Want’] is not especially good or bad. It’s serviceable post-Britney Spears dance-pop, Dupre panting and sort of bleating over a clubby track with Middle Eastern pretensions, the sort of thing Scott Storch might make if he only had access to a $45 Casio.” – The Village Voice

“‘Move Ya Body,’ isn’t as good as ‘What We Want.’ It’s got a Britney Spears-ish ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ feel, but it sounds like it’s not quite finished. Her vocals aren’t fully processed as she sings things like ‘Sex, money, drugs is what I’m all about, step your game up so you can see for yourself.’ Still, with a little polishing it could totally pass for a single from Spears or a lesser Pussycat Doll.” – Newsday

“Her song is absolutely terrible. If people are interested in signing her, then they shouldn’t be in the music business.” – Billboard

Friends of the 22-year-old high-priced call girl named “Kristen” are now rallying around the woman they knew as Ashley Youmans of Wall, N.J.

“We’re just trying to keep her head up and keep her strong, have her look at this as a positive,” high school friend Joe Pawlak tells People.

Pawlak, who graduated from Wall H.S. in 2003, a year ahead of Youmans – who now goes by Ashley Dupre – says she’s only human and “people make mistakes.”

“She’s just trying to work through it,” says Pawlak.

THG NOTE: Come on Pawlak. The girl slings the poon for thousands of dollars an hour. We’re not judging, but there’s no “mistake” about this.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre was identified this week as “Kristen” – the escort linked by federal authorities to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned.

Bevin Doherty, who knew Ashley Youmans on the Pop Warner cheerleading squad in middle school, tells People that, in contrast to statements Ashley made on her MySpace page about her home life, Ashley lived with her mom.

“Her mom would pick her up from cheering at school in a Jaguar,” says Doherty, who assumed Ashley, who wore designer clothes, was wealthy.

Ashley Dupre (Ashley Youmans) High School Photo

Set to graduate from the Wall H.S. class of 2004, Ashley Youmans disappeared near the end of her sophomore year. At some point, Youmans legally became Ashley DiPietro, but later took on the “stage” name of Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

“When she left high school,” said Doherty, “me and others thought she left to go get married. That’s what I was under the belief … that she met someone and had a ring and left to get married. We always wondered what happened to her.”

A teacher of Ashley Dupre, Gerald Basiak, 58, recalls her as a very kind person, but a “B-C student who really wasn’t focused on anything.”

As for Ashley’s being caught up in the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal: “I would never expect this, there were never indications of any problems at home.”

Thanks to People magazine, as usual, for this collection of some of the funniest and most most memorable celebrity quotes from the past week …

“She looks at me and says, ‘Nice top shelf.’ That was one of the greatest days of my life.” – Justin Timberlake on Madonna

“He’ll have to restrain his hair.” – A Waffle House employee, on Kid Rock

“Do not pull them up tight and have your bulge showing. Let it hang!” – Victoria Beckham on the way to wear jeans

“You always want to point out the elephant in the room.” – Jim Carrey, dressed as an Dr. Seuss’ Horton the Elephant, on American Idol

Britney Spears, Josh Radnor

“She knew her lines better than me.” – How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor, on Britney Spears‘ visit to the set

“I had to face some difficult spending decisions and I’ve had to conduct sensitive diplomacy. That’s called planning for a wedding.” – President George W. Bush

“I really romanticized being pregnant. Then I realized, this is awful!”
– Marcia Cross, reminiscing about pregnancy

“A little later on I’ll be at the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament, of course. That’s if it doesn’t conflict with my women’s basketball games that I go to.” – Ellen DeGeneres, leaving a message for Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma

“I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster.” – Ashley Dupre

How Bush’s Treaty Power Grab Failed

Posted by: on: March 29, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney listens as President George W. Bush speaks to the media after meeting with the Bicameral Republican Leadership

Vice President Dick Cheney listens as President George W. Bush speaks to the media after meeting with the Bicameral Republican Leadership in the Oval Office of the White House February 15, 2008.

When it comes to power, the Bush Administration has always firmly believed two things: first, the President should have more of it; and second, international institutions like the U.N. should have less of it. In that respect, the landmark ruling on U.S. treaty commitments handed down by the Supreme Court Tuesday seems to be both good news and bad news for Bush and his hard-line colleagues in the office of the Vice President. The court slammed the door on a provocative power grab by the White House, but it also potentially undercut a whole category of treaties, in the process exposing America’s weak system for complying with international law.

From the start, the case turned conventional wisdom on its head. The Administration had argued that Jose Medellin, a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder in Texas but denied access to Mexican consular officials after his arrest, should get a retrial as ordered by the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The idea of Bush and Cheney arguing to take a foreigner off death row because the U.N. court ordered it had baffled right-wingers and internationalists alike. John Bolton, Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, called the Administration’s position “ridiculous,” “crazy,” and a “cave-in” to the State Department. But the big brains at the White House were working with an ingenious plan, or so they thought.

Back in 1969, the U.S. had joined the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, part of which requires countries to give arrested foreigners access to consular officials, as in the movies when a pin-striped diplomat soothes a worried American in some Third World dungeon. The Administration renounced that part of the treaty after the ICJ ruled Medellin should get a retrial. (The U.S. still abides by the parts of the Treaty governing immunity for embassy officials and sovereignty of embassy buildings.) Yet Bush told Texas to retry Medellin anyway — since the ICJ ruling came before the U.S. backed away from the treaty. In essence it was a double power grab: Bush wanted the right to unilaterally leave a treaty — and still order state courts to comply with obligations while the treaty was in effect. The move was supported by, among others, David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, a proponent of expanded presidential powers.

The Supreme Court had different ideas. In Tuesday’s 6-3 decision, the justices rejected outright Bush’s assertion that he could tell state courts what to do. But instead of issuing the final word themselves on whether Texas should retry Medellin, the justices said that was Congress’s job. Most treaties, the Court ruled, don’t automatically apply domestically unless the full Congress passes a separate law specifying how and when the treaty should be implemented.

Some liberals saw this double-tracking of treaty approval as an erosion of America’s respect for international law. Law professor Marty Lederman of Georgetown University, writing on the widely read Scotusblog after the decision was handed down, called the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts “an implausible interpretation” that was “potentially very troubling for construction of treaty obligations going forward.” He worried that by letting states ignore treaties unless Congress ordered them to abide by them, the Supreme Court had opened the door for chaos in compliance with all international law.

Others worry about America’s standing abroad. Though the U.S. abides by most treaty obligations, its reputation has been seriously damaged after eight years of high profile snubs by the Bush Administration — starting with the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and peaking with Bush’s war on terror end-runs around the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. In fact, Bush’s attempts to expand presidential power, and now the Medellin ruling, have exposed to Americans and foreigners alike the real problem: the weakness of the U.S. system for complying with international law.

America approves formal international treaties differently from almost all other countries, requiring the President and two-thirds of the Senate, but not the House, to sign off on them. Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School, surveyed countries around the world and found that only the U.S. and Tajikistan allow just one part of their legislature to approve a treaty and make it the law of the land. “Most countries make international law the same way they make domestic law,” Hathaway says. The discrepancy has led American conservatives to argue that international law is anti-democratic and an abdication of sovereignty — and raises questions about when and whether Congress really intends Americans to comply with treaties.

Partly for that reason, most of America’s international agreements no longer go through the cumbersome constitutional process anyway, Hathaway found. Between 5 and 20 formal treaties a year have been enacted by the Senate and the President for the last century. More often, international agreements are passed by votes in both chambers of Congress and signed by the President — like a regular law. Treaties approved that way have multiplied from 11 in 1930 to over 300 in 2006. The most famous example is NAFTA, which was passed by both chambers — including the Senate with less than two-thirds supporting it — and was signed by the President.

With the Medellin case, the Supreme Court may have accelerated that trend. By ruling that most traditional treaties only become the law of the land if the full Congress “implements” them, the justices made it more likely that political leaders will opt to pass them as if they were a domestic law. (The Court has previously upheld the full enforceability of treaties passed in that manner.)

That may produce concern abroad in the short term, as foreigners worry any U.S. state can now ignore existing traditional treaties that haven’t been “implemented” by Congress. But by regulariziing American treaty approval in the future, the Court may clarify and even strengthen the force of international law at home. In that sense, the Bush Administration may have lost twice in the Medellin case ruling.


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