Glenn: "But fine - if someone came out today and said: "Hey, I was at a private party this weekend with Eliot Spitzer and saw him take a drag of marijuana," would you be here saying: "This is a terrible betrayal of the public trust! It's illegal. He must resign!!!""

Well, I certainly wouldn't use the triple exclamation points or the ridiculous tone that you're imposing on the argument to make the other side look foolish.

If Eliot Spitzer were smoking pot at a party, out in public, I would question his judgment in putting his office at risk. I would question how this squares with his previous role as Attorney General, which is all about upholding the law. I would also question why he wasn't arguing for the legalization of pot in public.

Glenn: "They're both illegal. You can't have it both ways. Either something is illegal and that's it -- end of story. Or you make assessments about how seriousness the lawbreaking is. Which is it? And if you're making seriousness assessments, what factors are you using?"

I'm not trying to have it both ways. You know full well that there are degrees of criminality or illegality. We know that prostitution, at its worst, has ties to kidnapping, slavery, drugs and abuse. We know that gambling, at its worst, has ties to more gambling, to loan sharks, extortion, etc. We also know that they are enforced differently, and that the public stigma of each is quite different, as well as the cultural history related to each. Prostitution has already been established as a very touchy (no pun intended) subject for politicians, on many recent occasions. Gambling on sports has not. So it also ties into questions of judgment.

Glenn Greenwald: "The answer is the same for adultery and hiring a prostitute -- very, very, very few people are ever prosecuted for either crime. But they are both crimes. On what conceivable basis do you claim that adultery is more "innocuous" than hiring a prostitute?"

On the basis of the consequences for the individual. People in my city who are public servants or work in public roles have essentially been run out of town for being caught with prostitutes. In one case, a well-known local celebrity was caught with a prostitute who turned out to be underage, and he lost everything. (Did Spitzer check the woman's ID before ejaculating into her birth canal?) The courts will almost always avoid prosecuting for adultery, and rarely is anybody even handcuffed or booked for adultery. People are routinely cuffed and questioned for prostitution, and often booked and taken in for mugshots. I don't really know on what basis you're saying they're roughly the same.

Glenn Greenwald: "At least with adultery, there is inherently a victim -- the spouse who is cheated on. With prostitution, there is not always a victim -- if a single person hires one, etc."

This doesn't really work in this case, eh?

Glenn Greenwald: "You just keep spitting out these totally subjective, baseless judgments -- X is more serious than Y! -- and think that you've made some persuasive point."

I am sure you would like to paint my judgments as subjective and baseless. But that doesn't make them so. I am making logical arguments. You're being crybabyish. It's weird, coming from you. I expect better. I almost always like your columns!

Glenn is so utterly correct that the level of ignorance displayed by many in this thread about the sex work industry is appalling. It is highly, highly unlikely that the woman Spitzer hired at rates of $1000 an hour was "compelled" to sell her sexual services. Women who can command that kind of money are not working for "Leon the Bastard Pimp." They have auditioned, been interviewed, are expected to know the social graces, and they choose their line of work -- many do it to get through their undergrad and graduate degrees....I'm not talking out of my @ss here.

Obviously that's exactly what you're doing. The issue isn't whether the woman was a free prostitute. The issue is that a District Attorney has broken the law by engaging in sex for hire, and that he just happens to have a high-profile history of prosecuting the exact industry his pants were caught down in.

But you knew that. Just capitalizing on the lefties here being dumb idiots and planning to snicker and cackle about it, right?

I was a good friend of a tender-hearted man who owned a gay counterpart of such services, and his fierce protection of the young men who worked for him was exemplary -- one bad experience with a client, and that client was almost certainly history. Oh, the business was "organized," and it was "crime." But it was not "organized crime."

Oh, you're just melting my cold heart.

Not everything that is wrong is also illegal. Many things that are not really wrong, like medical marijuana, are illegal.

There are a variety of elements to the law that are morally ambiguous. The criminal sanction is best used to minimize harm, not increase it. I know I'll sound like HRH but our prisons are bursting at the seams right now. Cui bono?

http://www.americandrugwar.com/

http://www.americandrugwar.com/new/drugwartv.htm

Pretty damn good documentary.

I'm not trying to have it both ways. You know full well that there are degrees of criminality or illegality. We know that prostitution, at its worst, has ties to kidnapping, slavery, drugs and abuse. We know that gambling, at its worst, has ties to more gambling, to loan sharks, extortion, etc. We also know that they are enforced differently, and that the public stigma of each is quite different, as well as the cultural history related to each. Prostitution has already been established as a very touchy (no pun intended) subject for politicians, on many recent occasions. Gambling on sports has not. So it also ties into questions of judgment.

Exactly. Add to that that Spitzer has a history of busting up this same industry and braying about his good deed publicly in doing so and the whole thing just stinks of hypocrisy to high heaven. It's been a big let down for me as he was truly a hero to me. I have no idea why he didn't resign, but it's not as if he'll ever get anything done again and considering the daily debacle of Democratic circuses these days I can't help feel the best thing he can do is resign, get out of the spotlight and stop embarassing us.