For a minute there I thought I was in the midst of another Clinton Crisis.

Is it really hypocritical to prosecute someone for something you do yourself? No, not really. It's called doing your job. You can't pick and choose to enforce only the rules you agree with when you are enforcing the rules.

You have it exactly backward.. It is hypocritical to do that which you prosecute others for.

If you don't believe in the rules you are enforcing you should quit and make it quite clear why you are doing so.

Actually, I do think that hiring prostitutes is reprehensible. Far more reprehensible than *being* a prostitute, in fact.

However, this is a personal moral judgment. I don't think that this type of sexual peccadillo, which involved consenting adults, should be anyone's business. I may not approve of hiring prostitutes, but I also think that prostitution should be legalized, regulated, and taxed. This is not the sort of personal failing that should result in calls for resignation.

Mr. Spitzer's hypocrisy, on the other hand, is directly relevant to whether he deserves a position of political power. If anyone is going to call for his resignation, it should be over the hypocrisy issue, not the sex issue.

I would also ask you to reread the very small portion of the transcript that was released by the feds. A very unflattering and frankly, disturbing picture is emerging about Eliot Spitzer. What makes a john "difficult?" Let's all guess...

I have absolutely no doubt that if you and everyone you know were surreptitiously tape recorded talking about your private sex acts -- and your sex partners were taped talking about what you liked and how you were when having sex -- there would be nothing "unflattering" about any of it at all. It will all be glittery, uplifting, and morally pure.

But that dirty, filthy Eliot Spitzer. Let us all, the pure ones, gather and stone him for his "morally reprehensible" crimes.

Yes it is hypocritical to prosecute someone for what you yourself are doing. The only way this wouldn't be hypocritical would be if Spitzer started actively encouraging others to prosecute him.

Otherwise he feels that other's should be prosecuted for crimes he commits, but he shouldn't. That's hypocrisy.

How the hell do you know what I am thinking and then some and can put it out so clearly and so fast? Damn you are a treasure.

The continuing war on prostitution is just one more idiotic vestige of our puritanical forefathers that has resulted in class and/or religious war on abortion, drugs, gender relationships, atheists, pornography and illegals. When something goes wrong, blame anything or anyone else but yourself. If you can’t beat someone fairly, use any means to justify your ends. And by all means use smokescreens to hide your real intentions.

Our M$M finds the Spitzer story just like the Clinton BJ story perfect in every respect. Perfect for unthinking readers/viewers. Perfect because little research will be needed since the federal indictment contains so much juicy detail. Perfect because a personal choice can be used to make political hay. Perfect because it involves sex. Perfect because it can bring down a governor and now that man can be called a hypocrite. Perfect because we can watch a very embarrassed wife squirm on TV. And hey, his first name is Eliot and we can take out someone who thought he was Elliot Ness.

I like the way human power put it:

“Which is more deserving of attention, a President who has likely been involved in stealing elections, starting illegal wars based on lies that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and guts the Bill of Rights down to the Bill of Right, or a Governor's sexual escapades? Oh, hands down, give me the sex.”

I do wholeheartedly share the suspicions of Digby and Glenn about the involvement of the Bush DoJ in this case. After Siegelman, and the partisan purging, and Sarah Taylor and the perversion of the civil rights division, the Bush DoJ has a presumption of malfeasance on my part.

They've railroaded one governor into prison, they would do it again.

I'm not saying this would make Spitzer less culpable, but only that of course they're not targeting Republican governors for this kind of behaviour.

The irony is this kind of partisanship is ultimately counterproductive. By ignoring all the flaws of Republicans in office and aggressively prosecuting Democrats, the end result is that the Democrats are much much cleaner than Republicans and we get 2006 blowouts. If the Republicans want to let all their crooked state level politicians graduate to the national scene unobstructed, it only helps Democrats make the case for being the obviously less corrupt party.

The notion that if Spitzer has betrayed the trust of his wife then he must necessarily be untrustworthy in every aspect of his life is to move from the specific to the general without giving pause.

If someone is untrustworthy then they are untrustworthy.

Why split hairs?

I'm personally outraged that there aren't daily mass demonstrations against the US war on Iraq-a clearly criminal adventure that has killed thousands of US troops, hundred of thousands of Iraqi civilians and is creating an economic holocaust here that will change this nation forever. Whether Eliot Spitzer survives this affair politically is of no concern of mine, but the fact that the media and public are all in a state of stupor becaue of a private and basically victimless activity while the Bush/Cheney criminal gang is continuing their criminal and horrendous war while the public and media barely pay attention, is what we all should care and be outraged about.

Elsewhere in the rest of the civilized world this revelation would have been greeted with a rousing chorus of "attaboy." I know it would have been to our southern border as I was in Mexico when Monicagate broke, early Monicagate that is.

It's such a comfort to know that even as we enjoy our evening meal state and/or federal agents are zeroing in other adult acts of passion, entered into consensually, of a remunerative or contractural nature. How awful life must be in much of the rest of the world where nation states have given up any attempt to monitor the morality of their citizens.

Thank God for America. Thank God for law and order. Thank God for the Republicans.

I know I feel safer.