We can debate the relative morality of prostitution until the cows come home. Illegal does not necessarily equal Wrong.

There is a term "Equal Justice Under The Law" - perhaps you've heard of it?

Mr. Spitzer, sworn to uphold the law, broke it. Mr. Clinton, having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, lied under oath.

In both cases, regardless of the reason for it, they lied and violated laws, rendering their word worthless when it comes to any future oaths they might ever take. It's called dishonesty.

Spitzer is a hypocrite whose form of crusading justice has resulted in the incarceration of many people who probably felt that they were really doing nothing "wrong" when they broke the laws that resulted in their arrest and prosecution.

Messers. Bush and Cheney probably thought they were doing nothing wrong when they compelled the telcos to wiretap without a warrant.

If you don't like the a law, our form of government allows you to publicly petition or lobby to have it changed. There is also an American tradition of civil disobedience, where you publicly and explicitly break a law in order to emphasize its injustice.

Once people in power decide arbitrarily which laws to obey and which to ignore, and do so surreptitiously, we are faced with a situation whereby there is no real respect for law by the people sworn to uphold it.

When you are empowered with enforcing and representing the word of law, you cannot choose to violate those same laws with impunity and expect to be taken seriously by intelligent people.

We don't live in a perfect world, and politicians lie and break the law every day.

However, if we are to continue to move towards the ideals established by our founding fathers, the law cannot tolerate dishonesty on the part of those people empowered to create and enforce it.

A lawyer is merely a politician in larval form...

Aycharaych said: "Making prostitution illegal has certainly worked to almost completely eliminate the practice, eh?"

Personally, I'd be in favor of amending, or at least revisiting, the laws surrounding prostitution. I agree on that point.

But, as things stand, it is illegal, and it is connected to violent and exploitative organized crime. Mr. Spitzer knew this, and chose nevertheless to support this, and to apparently commit several federal crimes, and to compromise his office while he was New York's highest elected official.

Hope he's picked something nice out of the closet for the perp-walk.

When the conversations about sex start devolving to incest and animals the thread is basically dead.

I'd hate to be a child or a dog in their house. That's all they seem to think about.

Wives get beaten up as often? Not even close.

-- tina schrier

A woman in America is more likely to be beaten or murdered at the hands of a partner, husband, lover or boyfriend, than anyone else. A pregnant woman, in fact. Not a john.

But domestic violence rates have come down because violence is against the law, as it should be, and the law was enforced and other measures, such as counseling and education became mandatory. Street walkers are subject to higher incidences of violence. Anyone who spends that much time doing that is putting themselves at risk. Regulation would improve their lot.

This discussion shows just how absurd are the standard partisan/ideological fault lines, doesn't it?

True, but it also shows how absurd some of the ideological/political *agreements* are as well.

Is it possible for opponents of Glenn's position to engage this issue on a logically consistent, principled basis, and without resorting to the standard accusations that people just don't understand, or refuse to understand?

No.

This has been another edition of simple answers to silly questions..

I'm still wondering why you had to go all the way back to the 1920's to find an example of laws which increased violence and decreased respect for the law in general..

Glenn,

If all this involved was two consenting adults I would agree with you but it doesn't. Spitzer is married. So, when he decides to have sex with prostitutes he is potentially endangering the health( and even life) of an unconsenting adult, his wife.I realize that there are probably precautions taken to prevent the spread of STD's but in the heat of the highly-paid moment, accidents happen. Now, his wife has to get tested for AIDS and other STD's and even if the tests are negative, for THE REST OF HER LIFE she will have to worry about some disease related to Spitzer's whoring affecting her.So this isn't like pornography, it's more akin to a life sentence of nagging worry for Mrs. Spitzer. I read your column because you seem very intelligent, insightful and caring about the rights of others. But I thought the same thing about Eliot Spitzer.

pobrecitoshame

The issue isn't whether the woman was a free prostitute.

Yes it is, because those were the precise claims made here in comments that she was not free to which I was responding. High-end "escort services" -- het or gay -- are not bad employment as considered by the many women and men who choose that work.

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.

He's now a governor, former DA. But in any event, I have no problem if he is allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor, as usually happens in these cases. Charge him, under the same laws he has viciously used against others. But this is not a resignation-worthy offense, any more than it should have been for Vitter.

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

Uh, ok. Whatever. [scratching head]

There is a term "Equal Justice Under The Law" - perhaps you've heard of it?

Equal Justice Under Law is a phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. This phrase was apparently first written in 1932 by the architectural firm that designed the building. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes subsequently approved this inscription, as did the United States Supreme Court Building Commission which Hughes chaired.[1] The architectural firm that authored the phrase was headed by Cass Gilbert.[2]

The words "Equal Justice Under Law" apparently paraphrase an earlier expression coined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller.[3] In the case of Caldwell v. Texas in 1891, Fuller wrote about the Fourteenth Amendment as follows:

By the Fourteenth Amendment the powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law.[4]

Neither this entire sentence, nor even the last seven words, would have fit on a pediment or architrave of the U.S. Supreme Court building, which explains why the architects would have wanted to shorten them. In the years since Fuller wrote these words, the Supreme Court has decided that the Fourteenth Amendment, and especially its Due Process Clause, do limit the powers of the states in dealing with crime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_justice_under_law

I did not know that!