On the Prevalence of Prostitutes Among Elected Officials

No, that's the way the title is meant to read -- after all, the prostitutes that government officials hire are merely for sex. The officials themselves offer all sorts of things to their johns.

No, Eliot Spitzer should not resign. And maybe the press should pay some attention to something important, instead of bolstering the Republican campaign talking points. Note: I've seen too much commentary hinging on the hypocrisy mantra. Gee -- Eliot Spitzer is a hypocrite for prosecuting people for things he does himself. How rare and strange among politicians (or any other group, for that matter). Can we just get over it? He hasn't been trying to legislate morality, he hasn't been carrying on media campaigns trying to demonize people who patronize prostitutes, he's been doing his job -- maybe with more enthusiasm than necessary, but that's between him and his mirror. Yeah, I'm disappointed in him, but I'm not about to start calling for blood -- I don't pass judgment on people's private morality unless it causes harm to others, and I don't think prostitution should be illegal anyway.

I think the Republicans in the NY legislature should give him a standing ovation, but I think you may need to wear diapers for that -- I'm not sure of the rules here.

Here's Glenn Greenwald.

Jane Hamsher has some questions that I'd like the FBI to answer:

1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor. We're talking thousands of dollars here, not millions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they spotted a "suspicious transfer" made by the governor, and that this is how things began. It's possible it was just ordinary paperwork the bank had to file with the government whenever some particular flag was raised, but if that's the case, why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3?

2. What is a USA doing prosecuting a prostitution case? This isn't normally what the feds spend their time with.

3. Mike Garcia is a Chertoff crony. Sources familiar with the investigation say that he sent a prosecution memo to DC two months ago asking for authority to indict a public figure (Spitzer). Which means they had their case made long before the wire tap of February 13. Why did they then include this line from that conversation in the complaint?

LEWIS continued that from what she had been told "he" (believed to be a reference to Client-9) "would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe -- you know -- I mean that...very basic things...."Kristen" responded: "I have a way of dealing with that...I'd be like listen dude, you really want the sex?...You know what I mean."

This salacious detail does not seem like it's necessary to make their case, and appears to be added for no other purpose than to destroy Spitzer's career.

Look, it's real simple: you want to nail somebody, particularly a politician, you just start digging. If you have the resources of the Justice Department behind you, you can do quite a bit of earth-moving. Scott Horton adds some observations I think fit here:

Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican. Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles. Indeed, a study of the cases out of Alabama shows clearly that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a broader pattern of going after Democrats. So here are the rather amazing facts that surface in the Spitzer case:

(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.

(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive. . . .

(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.

(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.

All of these facts are consistent with a process which is not the investigation of a crime, but rather an attempt to target and build a case against an individual.

Can you say "Don Siegelman"?

And more questions from Digby.

I like this comment from Greenwald's post:

I have always found it very curious that one of the following, but not the other, is illegal:

(a) Two people have sex, one of them gets paid for it;

(b) Two (or more) people have sex, all of them get paid for it, and it is videotaped and sold to third parties as a commodity.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this difference makes any actual sense.

I've seen variations on this several places. Of course, the answer is it doesn't make any sense -- it's simply the legacy of Christian morality running up against the First Amendment: a consensual, private act is not protected speech.

The big problem with legislating morality is that it doesn't work. Why don't we just legalize prostitution and drugs and regulate them the way we do everything else?

Hmmm?

Update:

TPMmuckraker has put together a timeline of the investigation that raises more questions than it answers. It's all circumstantial, of course, but this commentary seems headed in the right direction.