True - my post wasn’t well phrased. For “laws”, substitute “standards of behavior”.
For another example, check out his DC parking ticket problems of a couple of months ago.
Yes - that’s what I’ve been trying to say.
No, indeed. The private messages to the 17-year-old were pretty much the straw that broke the camels back here. Pelosi et al. had reached the limit of what they could stomach, and this new revelation - of behavior not dreadful of itself, but inappropriate - was simply too much.
Sorry, this is just wrong. What they couldn’t stomach was the risk that he’d been talking dirty to a high school student or sending her pictures of his dick. It’s now been investigated and there’s no evidence any thing like that happened. The problem is not that he was communicating with a 17-year-old on Twitter, it’s that given his lying and the nature of the scandal, they assumed the worst and had no reason to wait and see how that turned out. That being said, they still want him out, and Pelosi is supposedly confident he’ll resign.
I guess this is possible - but what’s the evidence for this view of their actions?
ISTM this is a risky strategy, and gives Weiner a strong card to play: You assumed the worst and called on me to resign; now you know the truth and must rescind that call.
The fact that it’s obviously true. As you said, they called for his resignation shortly after the thing about the high schooler came out, and the police didn’t clear him for another day or two. I understand why they weren’t going to wait for it to get sorted out, since he’s acted like a slimeball anyway and they have nothing to gain by sticking up for him. But his conservations with that girl are of no interest if not viewed in light of this scandal. They’re not calling for him to resign because he sent two messages to a teenager. They called for him to resign because the whole thing has been an embarrassment to them and because for a day or so, it looked like his online dalliances included messages to an underage girl. Unlike the texts he did send and the parking thing, that might have actually been illegal.
No, I didn’t. Magellan said it. 'Make it happen" was Magellen’s words. I was telling Magellan, that the Dems can’t make anybody resign. Whether Boehner actually demanded it is neither here nor there. I was correcting a perception of another poster, not Speaker Boehner.
There isn’t.
This is not accurate. Whether or not Boehner actually demanded Weiner’s resignation was not germane to my point. My point was that another poster was wrong in saying that the Dems could “make it happen.”
There was nothing inappropriate about those messages, and the more you try to spin them as anything disturbing, the more grasping and disngenuous you sound. Weiner flirted with grown women. That’s the extent of your scandal. The Dems just wanted to get rid of the political distraction.
So the Democratic party either has a sense of morality or they’re all scum sucking cowards who won’t stand up for what’s right. Which is it Dio?
Scumsucking cowards, of course. When did I ever say the Democrats had morality? I’m not a Democrat.
Or they’re politicians doing what they believe is best for themselves individually and their agenda. I guess that could be interpreted as “scumsucking cowards,” but it seems par for the course when you put it that way.
I have changed my mind on this. Weiner should go on the offensive, and get the ACLU involved.
Everybody should be proud of such a man-who has the courage to expose himself to women.
Using this great tool (created for us by Al Gore), Weiner is showing us how liberating it is to “let it all hang out”.
He should be commended, not censured for this.
:D:D
What he did was beneath the office he holds and shows a lack of judgement. If his own wife can’t trust him why should his constituents? There’s room for morality in his party and it’s not independent of the distraction factor.
He embarrassed himself and Congress and showed terrible judgment, I agree.
That’s up to his constituents, then.
There’s always room for morality in politics. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of anything else, that is. 
Front page of CNN says Weiner will announce his resignation.
(It is the front page listed in a “Breaking News” banner so no link except to www.cnn.com).
ETA: There is a link now: Weiner resigns after sexting scandal - CNN.com
Thank goodness this didn’t turn into a distraction. 
Once again , I think the Dems showed they don’t really know how to fight effectively politically. NY state now has to have a special election to fill a seat that probably won’t exist in 2013.
Do you mean they proved they were ineffective in trying to get him to quit promptly, or that they couldn’t fight on his behalf? If it’s the first, they did everything they could to get rid of him and it eventually worked. If it’s the second, they weren’t trying to fight for him. They wanted him out, and they’re the ones who pushed him out, not the Republicans. It’s true that the Democrats wanted him out largely because they didn’t want the Republicans to use his scandal against him, but the GOP didn’t do very much here. They sent out a few messages saying that Democrats who took money from Weiner should give it back, but I don’t think that went anywhere. The old saying in politics is that when your opponent is screwing up, you should stand back and let him dangle. That’s pretty much what the Republicans did.
I don’t think this is going to hurt the Democrats in the long-term because it’s not as bad as, say, Mark Foley and it didn’t occur nearly as close to an election, and because they were consistent in saying he needed to go. I’m sure Weiner would like to wait for this to die down and then start looking at the mayor’s office again, but he probably needs to go away for a year or two, and a lot of the groundwork for a campaign has to be done in that time.
Given the circumstances, perhaps this wasn’t the best choice of phrasing…
I don’t think this will hurt the democrats. If anything, it will help them (as compared to the situation if he stayed in office). This will be old news by the next election.
Definitely a good move for Weiner to pull out.