FISA laws, listening in on terrorist conversations, are already being used to get back at government officials who DARE to challenge and prosecute the power structure.

This country is WELL PAST DONE. And you all buy this shit.

Legalization of drugs may end the criminals' control over the drug market, although this is debateable, and we haven't really tried it yet (I'd be willing to).

Is there criminal control over the alcohol distribution network in the USA?

In fact, the experiment was tried and worked, legalizing alcohol manufacture and sales drove the criminals out of that particular line of work.

Alcohol is a drug, just like any other and worse than more than a few.

When was the last time you saw a shootout between alcohol distributors?

If you are going to ask for a major overhaul of public opinion and perceptions of morality, instead of arguing that this disgusting treatment of women be accepted, why not argue that men be taught to respect women enough not to buy them? Would that be any less difficult?

It's a great idea, but it will never happen... unless enough men take it upon themselves to make it happen. The numbers are not in our favor.

Alan Dershowitz, famed defense lawyer (and not by any stretch a raging feminist), trying to put it all into perspective for us:

"Men don't use their brains when it comes to something like this," he said. "They think with a different part of their body and that part of the body, the level of brains, there are no relationship to the level of brains in the skull, unfortunately. And when people think with that organ of the body, they make these kind of really, really terrible mistakes."

Iow, men like Spitzer (et al.) store their brains behind their codpieces, but most of them are not as obvious about it as GWB is. So, of course it's shocking every time we find out. [Again, I note the exceptions in these comment threads.]

Based on personal observations over decades, I could have posted something like Dershowitz's comment much earlier on... but I would have been properly flamed for it. It's okay for Dershowitz to say such a thing, but not one of us.

Ages ago, I had it in mind that we needed a newer and updated version of Lysistrata, complete with musical numbers featuring a men's chorus wearing plastic codpieces molded like brains, but I couldn't think of a logical ending for the play. Neither could Aristophanes. He meant the whole thing as a joke. Ultimately, the women failed.

Who I would be willing to wager a considerable sum were sociopaths..

Both were far more successful with women than the average guy.

Sociopaths can be very charming when they wish to be. Just look at how many people who really should know better that are taken in by GW Bush..

Think about high school/college.. Was it *really* the truly nice guys who had all the dates?

Or was it the shallow, egotistical jerks with a nice car and a smooth line?

And only enough blood to run one at a time.

men who are very successful with women may also solicit prostitutes, esp. if they have sociopathic tendencies. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Quiet Type: "I'm just trying to figure out exactly how hollow a human being you have to be to pay several thousand dollars for an hour of sex."

I agree. And there's evidence that Spitzer has a history of paying for prostitutes, so he's undoubtedly paid well beyond $10,000 just to get his rocks off.

Imagine that same $10,000 paid to a human-rights charity, or a charity like Oxfam that helps feed people.

A bottle of good-quality hand lotion costs maybe $5. A Victoria's Secret catalog is free. So for $5 you could still have a pretty good time and save $9,995.

Or, you could spend $200-$500 for a really nice evening out with your wife -- dinner, a play, some flowers, maybe a horse-carriage ride near Central Park. Toss in another $20 for a nice copy of the Kama Sutra. Something tells me Spitzer would have no trouble getting good sex from his wife, who by the way is really cute and looks a little like Jennifer Aniston or Laura Linney.

Instead, he spends $4,300 on a prostitute, which is sort of like paying $4,300 not to have sex with his wife. Apparently he wanted the prostitute to do something considered unsafe. (Base jumping?)

All moral considerations aside, I could no longer trust Spitzer on the economy alone!

"Governor Spitzer got caught with a prostitute as a result of a wire tap . . . Governor Spitzer probably authorized to catch people with prostitutes." Haha. Pretty much says it all.

As much as I'd like to believe that this is a Bush conspiracy--which the Don Seligman case *really is*--there are several things. It appears this investigation was apparently triggered by multiple $9,000 payments Spitzer made, which were (again apparently) recorded by multiple banks--this is coming off of talkingpointsmemo.com. Second, it was reported by the New York Times--not Fox News or the Washington Times. Doesn't mean it wasn't Bush & co., but I just don't think they're smart enough to leak to a significantly less partisan source. If Spitzer's dumb enough to go to a prostitute, which he is, he's presumably dumb enough to make lots of large payments that would trigger the money laundering investigation. Do I think he should resign? No, I don't. But my gut tells me this isn't like Seligman.

It's impossible for those arguing for regulating prostitution not to seem heartless and unfeeling to the other side as they (implicitly) make the case for a (potentially) exploited group's being expendable. Arguing principle over people will often yield that result. -- Anonymust

Compared to the rest of the statements in the thread, this seems so unassuming, and yet -- to me, anyway -- it's the only one which could rightly be called wise.

Fantasies, Well Meant

by Bob Herbert

I must have hit a nerve. While in Las Vegas last week, I interviewed the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who enthusiastically explained how legalizing prostitution and creating a series of “magnificent brothels” could be a boon to his city’s development.

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Columnist Page » Vegas is already a paradise for pimps, johns and perverts, and I accused the mayor in a column of setting the tone “for the systematic, institutionalized degradation” of women.

Mr. Goodman was not pleased. He snarled to the local press that he had no use for me, and added, “I’ll take a baseball bat and break his head if he ever comes here.”

The mayor, who made a name for himself as a defense lawyer for mobsters, loves to slip into a clownish, tough-guy persona. (He never lets anyone forget that he had a walk-on as himself in the movie “Casino.”) But behind his bluster is a serious issue that should be addressed.

A lot of people more thoughtful than Oscar Goodman believe that prostitution should be legalized as a way of protecting and empowering the women who go into the sex trade. I’ve lost patience with those arguments, however well meaning. Real-world prostitution, in whatever guise, bears no resemblance at all to the empowerment fantasies of prostitution proponents. I have never seen such vulnerable, powerless women as those in the sex trade, legal or illegal.

At Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas, the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to a bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. It could be 4 a.m., and the woman might be sleeping. Or she might not be feeling well. Too bad.

When that electronic bell rings, she has five minutes to get to the assembly area, a large room where she will line up with the other women, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who happens to drop by.

“It’s not fun,” one of the women whispered to me during a tour of the brothel.

The first thing to understand about prostitution, including legal prostitution, is that the element of coercion is almost always present. Despite the fiction that they are “independent contractors,” most so-called legal prostitutes have pimps — the state-sanctioned pimps who run the brothels and, in many cases, a second pimp who controls all other aspects of their lives (and takes the bulk of their legal earnings).

They are hardly empowered. Years of studies have shown that most prostitutes are pushed into the trade in their early teens by grown men. A large percentage are victims of incest or other forms of childhood sexual abuse. Most are dirt poor. Many are drug-addicted. And most are plagued by devastatingly low levels of self esteem.

And then there are the armies of women and girls who are trafficked into the sex trade by organized criminals, both inside and outside of the U.S.

That a city, a state or any other governmental entity in the U.S. could legally sanction the sexual degradation of women and girls under any circumstances, much less those who are so extremely vulnerable, is an atrocity. And if you don’t think legalized prostitution is about degradation, consider the “date room” at Sheri’s. That’s a small room where a quiet dinner for two can be served. Beneath the tiny table is a couple of towels and a cushion for the woman to kneel on.

The only one empowered in that situation is the john.

Mayor Goodman’s concept of magnificence notwithstanding, Nevada’s legal brothels are not nice places. “The only place I’ve ever had a gun pulled on me was in a legal brothel,” said Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who has studied the sex trade in Nevada for the past two and a half years.

Ms. Farley, who is in her 60s and has the demeanor of a college professor, was threatened at gunpoint by a legal pimp who didn’t like her attitude. “I tried to change the look on my face in a hurry,” she said.

Any honest investigation of the facts, as opposed to abstract theories, of prostitution — in any form — would reveal a horror show. That’s why the authorities in so many other countries that have given an official green light to prostitution, including Germany and the Netherlands, have been revisiting their policies.

Legal prostitution tends to increase, not decrease, illegal prostitution, in part by creating a friendlier climate for demand. It tends to increase, not decrease, sex trafficking. And the recent explosion of prostitution in all its forms promotes the sexualization of girls at ever younger ages.

Oscar Goodman should be viewed as a wake-up call. As a society, we should be offering help to the many thousands of women who would like to escape prostitution, and providing alternatives to those in danger of being pulled into it.