When a woman of her free will engages in sexual acts for money, whose rights are violated?

Be specific.

Free will! LOL Surely you are depriving a village someplace of it's rightful idiot. Didn't I list every significant traffic sh*thole on the globe in all it's squalor from Hollywood to Nigeria for you? Did I somehow miss all the "free will" going around?

How I hate to rain on your smug little parade but that gal seeking your money probably din't want a career in prostitution from the time she was six. Dude, she didn't't have any viable alternative (working for a dollar a day in sweatshop or starving or both really isn't one - nor is McDonalds when you have two kids to raise.)

If you want into a contract like that it would be called entering the contract under duress an the courts would negate the contract as null and void for that reason.

And that's not even getting into the societal price which others have already touched upon.

CNN's saying that they've revealed her and her name is Alex or something. Who in the hell cares. Now she's agreed to do interviews. Can a book deal be next. The Republicans are at it again. Imagine how many of his enemies are funding this. No way are they going to let this sordid thing die. And yeah, it IS sordid; paying for sex always is sordid and it always breeds creeps on both ends.

Whatever slimebags the REpublicans are they are predictably ruthless which is all the more reason he's so stupid and all the more reason we needed a veteran to stand up to them, not a newbie.

The dude made his bones in politics as a vengeful prosecutor

Worldcomm et al deserved every damned bit of vengeance they got. That's what's so disappointing and demoralizing about this of all. They are winning in the end. That last ray of hope hasn't just been crushed, it's been nuked.

no more need be said.

Republicans and their press, this is going to go on and on and on.

And she's a prostitute through and through. No dignity at all.

Something way bigger than little old (of course) broken-homed Ashley can ever dream of. That's all I can figure.

But even for that kind of money. I wouldn't have stood there if I were in her shoes. I'd have told him to get one of his call girls to stand with him and ran for my life to my attorney. With the kids.

PS - and yes, the vision of the two of them together is definitely something I can live without.

routinely, pay exorbitant amounts to live out lavish dreams and fantasies and, I doubt, many 40'something men fantasize about hooking up (you define it) with a 40'something woman

Really? I'm 40 something and I do. I always date, albeit (very beautiful women) in their 40's and they are not so hard to find. Anybody can look ok at 23, but there's something about the mystery and self-confidence of a beautiful women with some life experience that can't be beat. Bar none.

As intelligent as he is you never know. Believe it or not there ARE people who care about that even in their 20's.

But I'd take Silda over her any day; she's a fox and I don't care if her bustline isn't 52G . Not one iota.

But it wouldn't matter if I didn't feel that way and I was with her. Let me give you a hint: want what you HAVE. It's a better path to happiness.

I'm not one to knock unattractive women for their looks typically, but holy moly. Pagila would frighten off an entire city of children.

Back to when Salon is going to finally get rid of this babbling battle-axe.

Actually, Barack Obama's campaign started using "racial" politics way back in January. How quickly the ADHD generation forgets -- but that's what Obama counts on.

Well he can count on a landslide defeat if we get stuck with him. It was obviously already the given his decided lack of popularity with all but AA and some uber-liberals in college towns.

But I know he's taken his race-baiting just a little too far by now. I see signs of people being as disgusted as I am everywhere. Most people thought he was an empty-suit anyway. Now they think he's a race-baiting empty suit.

In the end he's going to be the worst thing that ever happened to black America. Second worst thing if Al Sharpton delivers on his riot-inciting threats.

Actually, Barack Obama's campaign started using "racial" politics way back in January. How quickly the ADHD generation forgets -- but that's what Obama counts on.

Fluff and race-baiting that would be. He used his fluff to appeal to the anti-war one-note Johnny's determined to "punish" Hill, and he pandered to the patent racism of blacks for the rest.

And now he's pissed off everyone else in America.

Big-time in my case.

Extremists by any other name are just as F'd up.

And so, from the very comfortable distance of not being married to the guy, we've quickly merged our own experience with that of Silda Wall Spitzer, whose reactions to this story we cannot, of course, even begin to guess at.

Oh, I think we can all certainly make a good guess at them indeed.

Why is she there, who knows. Spitzer's Poppy has got some pretty big money you know. A bona fida billionaire. Maybe they made a deal.

It'll be interesting to see if she's still with him this time next year.