The magic word here is felony. Spitzer, governor of New York, has committed one. Whether you agree with a given law or not, you should certainly agree that it is a serious matter when an elected official has committed a felony.

Surly, Glenn, you don't think that politician can choose not to obey laws he does not agree with. That standard would get the Bush administration off the hook for all kinds of bad business, wouldn't it?

If the rule of law is to mean anything, politicians should surely be held accountable when they commit serious crimes. The fact that the Bush administration has managed to largely escape legal accountability is no argument that other politicians should be excused as well. The consenting adults argument does not apply at all here. Consenting or not, the adults involved committed a crime, which was decidedly not the case with Bill and Monica.

Whether or not Spitzer should be prosecuted is not clear to me. Such a prosecution would be selective but not completely out of line. The fact that this, apparently, was a Bush Justice Department sting operation is troubling to say the least. However, there is no question that Spitzer must and will resign. A politician who has clearly committed a felony is by definition on political life support. For Spitzer to stay in office would only give yet more fodder to the Republican attack machine than he has already.

An earlier commenter was quite right to be angry and disappointed that Spitzer would have such hubris to expose himself in this way. Glenn asked if the commenter felt the same way about Bill and Monica. In fact, the the two situations are very different. Spitzer's behavior, being criminal, is much more serious. That said, I personally was extremely angry and disappointed in Clinton. Who wouldn't have been? My God, the man gave the Republican party the greatest gift they received in the entire 20th century. And I, a regular reader of Daily Howler and this very column, am as far from one of those anti-Clinton conspiracy buffs as a person could be.

Clinton's behavior did not merit resignation and he was right to fight back. Spitzer's behavior was far far worse and his position is untenable. Immediate resignation followed by a long term (possibly lifelong) hiatus from public life is his only option.

Christopher Hitchens was mean to me once, therefore all atheists are fundamentalists bent on terrorism and bloodletting.

I think Shapiro is far too impressed by Obama's ability to make self-deprecating jokes when he does something to make himself look foolish. While Kerry may not have been very good at that sort of thing, most candidates are.

Hillary is generally very good on the trail at smiling and laughing at herself. I find Obama to actually be fairly humorless by comparison, so I'm glad to hear he's finally puncturing his own seriousness.

Bush, of course, regularly made sniggering comments about himself ("I may have massacred a syllable or two"). But the real master of the self-deprecating bon mot on the campaign trail was Al Gore. No one did it with the kind of dry tone and sense of timing that Gore did. The fact that this was not the general perception of him by the public should tell you something.

Obama can be as smooth and "at ease with himself" as he wants (isn't that what the media always said about the absurdly awkward GWB?), but he won't get points for this unless the media decides to make this the narrative about him--Obama is comfortable in his own skin . . . I suppose Shapiro is trying to get that narrative going. Good for him.

Far be it from me to defend McArdle, but I guess that's what I'm about to do.

Glenn, you have chosen to selectively highlight her remarks and in the process totally misconstrue them. On this particular issue I find her position to be pretty reasonable and not at all a support of torture. I actually find her position shockingly close to mine.

What I see her doing is responding to the one and only argument anyone ever makes in favor of torture--the ridiculous "ticking time bomb" argument. What would you do if you knew the guy in front of you "knew" X Y Z and you could only stop him by torturing him?

McArdle does not exactly go after how ridiculous this premise is in the quoted remarks, but she does take a pretty reasonable position about it. Allow me to highlight the comments Glenn chose not to focus on:

I'm not sure [officials who engage in torture] should always be punished. But neither do I want to see the apparatus of the legal system turned to codifying, regulating, and normalizing torture . . . It should happen in dark rooms, at risk to the lives and careers of the men who carry it out, so that the hidden law will only trump the written law when times are truly desperate enough to call for such desperate measures.

In other words, there should be no official policy or sanction of torture by the government. If, in a given circumstance, some Jack Bauer wannabe decides he's going to save New York City from a nuclear device by cutting some suspects finger, well, he'd sure as hell better be right. If he saves NYC then no one is going to call for his prosecution. If he's wrong then he'll be treated like any other criminal who violated the law. Such a "system" (if you could call it that) is only common sense.

Glenn, you should have stuck to your original subject. McArdle's pleas about being slandered were nonsense--until now.

Instead of just saying that my argument is laughable and foolish, why not engage with it and tell me specifically where you think I'm wrong and why. It's easy to just say "you're stupid" and laugh, but please, Kitt, show me the error of my ways!