An update on Ireland's gay candidate for president, who was once leading in the polls, and had already begun to lose support after revelations emerged he advocated legalizing adult-child consensual sex. Now he's withdrawing from the race:

Senator David Norris has withdrawn from the presidential election campaign following the controversy over letters he wrote to the Israeli authorities seeking clemency for his former partner.

It emerged last weekend that Mr Norris wrote a letter in 1997 to the Israeli authorities pleading on behalf of Ezra Yitzhak Nawi, who had been convicted of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy.

... “It is essential that I act decisively now to halt this negative process. I do not regret supporting and seeking clemency for a friend, but I do regret giving the impression that I did not have sufficient compassion for the victim of Ezra’s crime," Mr Norris said.

... Meanwhile, it has emerged that a number of letters written by Mr Norris on behalf of Mr Nawi have not come into the public domain. Ex-campaign workers said he wrote letters appealing for clemency for Mr Nawi to a range of public figures in Israel and beyond. After they were shown the letters last Thursday, a number of Mr Norris’s campaign team resigned. --Irish Times