Don’t know the particulars on that. I just know that an apology has to be made and accepted or it’s a lot tougher to survive. There are no guarantees either way. Kennedy killed a woman and is still in the Senate. Craig didn’t even get his freak on and he’s out the door. Frank had a live-in prostitute but unlike either of them he was single.
The hypocrisy ratio probably has something to do with it. Nobody expects a Kennedy to keep his pants on and Craig rode on a high moral horse.
Sending people to jail as a prosecutor while simultaneously engaging in the same behavior yourself is certainly unethical. BUT IT IS NOT HYPOCRISY. Hypocrisy consists of personal behavior at odds with publicly professed belief. It is not correct to impute the man’s actions as a lawyer for the state of New York to his personal beliefs. For all you know, he may believe that prostitution is fine, but that the laws of the state must be enforced. That’s not hypocritical.
Now, if you can show me something that indicates that he condemned prostitution in his own person, as opposed to just as a function of doing his job, I’m happy to call him a hypocrite. But what’s been adduced in this thread so far is NOT hypocrisy.
Anyone else think his wife looks like Jennifer Aniston + 15 years or so?
So does he resign before or after Sen. Vitter does?
Had he directed the resources of his office toward investigating prostitution rings, as opposed to investigating some other forms of crime, would that be hypocritical? Suppose it turns out he steered investigations along those lines because he came across information that state Republicans were using those prostitution services? I suspect this wouldn’t necessarily be illegal, unless he also knew about Dems using difference services, and chose NOT to investigate those services. And even then, is “selective prosecution” a criminal act?
Or suppose he directed the prostitution prosecutions because he wanted to remove some of the competition against his favorite ring of prostitutes?
As a friend mentioned earlier tonight, is Spitzer possibly in some extra legal trouble having transported a postitute across state lines for sexual purposes?
I think that would be a stretch. He didn’t actually transport her. That’s a stupid statute anyway. Have you ever actually read it? Under the statute, it’s not only illegal to transport a woman for the purpose of prostitution but “debauchery” as well (whatever the fuck that is). According to the Caminetti decision, it’s technically a violation of the Mann Act even for non-martial consensual sex – that is, you’re technically in violation of the Mann Act if you take your girlfriend to Vegas for a weekend. What a stupid, bullshit law.
I think there’s no chance he gets prosecuted under the Mann Act. That’s just cheap shot grandstanding by Spitzer’s political rivals.
I think he should resign and I think he will. He’ll probably just hang around long enough to cut some kind of deal to avoid a felony conviction or jail time. The powers that be will agree to ease his way out as long as he goes - most of them, after all, have their own skeletons in the closet and know that it might be them next time.
Clinton is a non-factor in New York politics - she’s in Washington. The players in Albany are Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver - they’re the entrenched interests that Spitzer vowed to overcome. And they’ve basically been handing him his ass since about the second week of his term.
A felony conviction or jail time for what? Solicitation of prosecution is a misdemeanor, isn’t it? I sure never heard of anyone doing time for it. All he did was order a hooker. The most they can do to him is make him pay a fine.
Sorry but I have to shout since this was said a few times already. HE WAS NOT A PROSECUTOR! He was the Attorney General of the state at the time. I would agree with you if he were a prosecutor assigned to a prostitution case. He was not. He was the AG. Instead of letting some lower level DA handle the case he chose to get in front of the camera. He chose to be the face of the case. He grandstanded for the press about the case. He is a hypocrite.
But is it hypocritical to get in front of the TV cameras and publicly denounce prostitution, as he apparently did, while engaging it himself?
As others have pointed out, there are other options, such as having some else get in front of the cameras, so simply prosecuting the ring without the publicity stunt.
(If in fact, he was a client at the time. Maybe he started up this hobby later, as the Gov. I know I used to laugh at golfers myself, but now I’m a hacker, I laugh even more.)
The question concerning hypocrisy is not necessarily related to strictly prostitution. My understanding is that he promised to bring back ethics to New York State, which on the face of it, doesn’t seem to include willfully breaking at least a couple of laws.
If he had pushed to legalize prostitution, then we could have at least been able to nod our heads when he was caught.
It seems inevitable that as long as people are campaigning on their virtues, then we’ll continue these silly games of being shocked when the players don’t match up to their press releases.
From the Times.
He allegedly paid cash, so as long as it was his own money, I don’t see how that “conceals” a source.
My dim understanding (TG, IANAL) is that the crime is dancing financial in order to pussy-foot around the $10,000 Federal limit on cash transfers, which is to say the miscreant horndog “structured” his payments to evade that limitation.
And by the way, its not illegal to transport your sweety over the state line if you cant testify under oath that you had no intention of fucking as you actually crossed the line. The Supreme Court has not ruled on hand jobs.
I doubt Spitzer will be charged, but technically he could be charged with the Mann Act. I believe two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they deem acceptable and their personal moral code dictates, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone not in the agreement. Sex is an industry. Spitzer would have been legally entitled to rent some sleazy hardcore porno. I don’t see the difference, except nasty porn is legal and hookers are not.
My problem with this case is Spitzer’s judgment as an elected official. Whether or not he feels prostitution should be legal or not doesn’t really matter when you take an oath to enforce the existing law. Furthermore, why would an elected official or anyone in a high profile public service job take this type of risk, knowing it could come back to haunt him? Surely, he knows the enemy by now. He could have just had a casual extramarital affair like most men, which would have probably garnered public support and partisan outrage at the NY Times.
Maybe its tough to meet women when you look like a vindictive version of Larry Miller.
You wish. Unless you are referring to a pearl onion, big boy.
Not so. From another article, also in the Time.
It looks like they got this ring from tracking the governor’s transactions.
This is perhaps the largest problem in here. We’ve got a governor who rode into office on a mandate to clean up town and corruption, then uses – what appears to be – illegal methods of payments.
All too often further corruption starts this way. Someone finds out about it and wants a payoff, etc.
It’s still his own money, so what’s the big deal? They investigate to see if he’s doing anything shady with his money, and it turns out to be perfectly innocent. He’s just paying call girls. No corruption involved. What’s the problem?
From the Wikipedia article about the Emperor’s Club:
I am really utterly baffled by this. There are men who can afford to pay $31,000 for one day with an escort who can’t just pick up a woman for casual sex without having to pay for it?
Someone who has accumulated that much money is likely to be confident enough to pick up a woman for a one-night stand.
Someone who has accumulated that much money is likely to have gold-digging (but hot) women coming to them.
Who would pay that much money for one day with an escort? Are there a bunch of really really rich guys out there who have hunchbacks or leprosy or something? They really can’t seduce a woman through legitimate means?
I dunno, but the old saying comes to mind: you’re not paying a prostitute to have sex with you, so much paying for her to go away afterward.