"If someone is untrustworthy then they are untrustworthy.

Why split hairs?"

Why be dogmatic would be the natural response to this.

I split hairs because human beings are not simply divisible, in my view, into trustworthy and untrustworthy, but are capable of being trustworthy at one time and perhaps not at another. If you hold that a person is essentially the same from cradle to grave and that when they fall it shows that they were always simply a bad person, then good for you. That's a very simple view of the complexities of the moral maze.

I, on the other hand, believe people to be in a continual state of flux and that age, status, the quality of the close relationships in a person's life, the demands of parenthood, professional ups and downs, etc, can contribute to a person's behaviours and produce no effect at certain times and at other times may result in a 'moment of weakness' etc (that may become a pattern henceforth). But that's because I myself would prefer to be credited as a complex organism, rather than, as you do, seek to reject all notions of nuance in societies as complex as our own and boil down an event into the undifferentiated glob of a simple moral judgment extended throughout a person's entire life and dealings with others.

I suppose in your worldview, Spitzer should never have been trusted and now can never be trusted again. It is sad that you can't see how ridiculous this is, that in our own lives we may have the capacity to regret or be ashamed of past conduct only goes to show that your view is vapid and does not correspond as closely to human behaviour as my own explanation.

Does that help you?

If it were legalized, then organized crime wouldn't be involved -- or at least, no more involved than they are in other legal businesses. But it currently isn't legalized.

OK, but surely you can admit that this is a circular argument.

Let me put it this way. If mammograms were made illegal, so that one could only get one by going to an organized crime operation that - by nature of their illegal business - was involved in violence, extortion, and other terrible activities, would mammograms thereby be rendered inherently immoral?

Maybe Spitzer setup the Justice Department and baited them into prosecuting him for information they could've only obtained through an illegal wiretapping program.

Everyone cares. He's a prosecutor.

He just made us look like a set of hypocrites all over again and now you want to (deliberately IMO) lead the lemmings off a cliff by insisting that he's above the law he's prosecuted so many others for.

The best thing Spitzer can do in this case is, unfortunately, step down and get out of the spotlight.

And damn him for this too. For someone so damned bright he's awfully stupid.

As Glenn said:

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

If they had to be certified pure (by me of course), it'd be a long wait. Just the fact that they'd want to be involved in a stoning would disqualify them.

That said, what an unbelievably stupid thing to do. The rest of us would worry about getting caught, but I think that there's something about a politician's ego that tells them they never will be and has a loosening effect on the zipper.

Staggering hypocrisy aside (oh, and BTW, thanks a LOT Eliot, this is just what Dems need right now Mr. "Up-and-comer", you nitwit, WTF were you thinkin!? etc.) does the fact that he's accused (I believe) of violations of the Mann Act (i.e. a Federal? crime) factor into all the outrage?

No snark, honest question.

...and he knew he was doing it because he's prosecuted people for doing the same thing. Should prostitution be illegal? Probably not. But, to echo many other posters, it is illegal, and our elected officials should try really hard not to break the law, any law. This wasn't a simple affair. It was an actual crime.

It would be nice if George Bush's crimes go the same attention, but that's the world, isn't it? Meanwhile, if he's guilty, Spitzer should resign.

(on another note, I've always wondered where these guys get enough free time to have all this extramarital sex. Don't they have enough to do? As my mom used to say, "If you're bored, I'll find something for you to do." These politicians need a mom.)

I personally believe that if more people in the world were getting laid on a regular basis, 80% of the worlds problems would vanish overnight.

Yes, Spitzer, like most versions of the morality police, are hypocrites....tell me and the world something new. Tell me why this is news though and why all the grand intensity of the moral outrage! Like Joan Rivers used to say about a different issue, "Oh, GROW UP!". This is my advice to America and the rest of the world in general. Don't we have more important things to concern ourselves with??? Better yet, why doesn't everyone realize that the more one pontificates against something, the more likely that person is involved in that behaviour. It is true more times than not.

To argue someone who built their career on sanctimony, moral outrage, and prosecuting others for minor crimes even when his own party told him not to, should not be felt sorry for now that he's caught in the same pattern of behavior he sent others to jail for being caught in. That's justice.

Wasn't it just last week that Boxer or Feinstein - I forget which - was busting somebody's chops from the FBI in Senate hearings over whether they had the manpower and funding to do their jobs, particularly in regard to violent crime, and the guy finally - in exasperation - admitted that, yes, they didn't have time to fuck with petty bullshit like bank robbery and extortion these days, what with terrorists under every other rock and all? What the hell are they doing busting hookers? Could it POSSIBLY be that some of that NSA "fishing" turned up this "big fish?" NAAAAH! Not in America.