It's pure hypocrisy, and doubly unexpected coming from someone many Democrats had high hopes and expectations for.

Not unexpected by me at all.. I automatically clutch my wallet any time someone brags of their superior moral fiber.

Emerson once spoke of a guest at dinner: "The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted the silverware".

"I disagree, when the voting public votes for those who hold themselves out as morally straight they are indeed asking to be put in the position of having the straight arrow implode dramatically."

Not living in NY, I don't know what Eliott Spitzer's line was regarding morality but it does appear his charge was to enforce the law. I don't think it is asking too much for the public to expect law-enforcers to not break the very laws they are charged to enforce. We are then lowering the bar to meaninglessness.

"It's been my experience in life that those who most often and vociferously promote their own "morality" are usually those who have an entire boneyard in their closet. The Republicans are rife with such people and the Democrats are trying hard to catch up with them."

I agree that is often the case.

At the core, adherents and supporters of both tack an emotional and irrational response which prevents a more nuanced debate as to whether or not either "war" is actually doing any good.

An argument can, and should be made that neither do anyone any good, in the end. That it is both better to (a) not lock up non-violent offenders in the drug war or (b) consenting adults in the sex war; that it is better to (a) spend money on drug treatment instead of incarceration and to (b) spend money on offering health care to sex workers than incarceration.

Certainly, legalizing drugs will not stop widespread drug use problems, a real public health crisis, nor will legalizing prostitution solve the problems of child slavery, abuse against sex workers male and female (or "other", I suppose), but continued prohibition helps no one at all. No one.

Except maybe the conscience of the devotees to the cult of prohibition, a bizarre and deranged dogma the founding father's would have found both curious and disdainful.

of COURSE the GOP targeted Spitzer, and of COURSE a politicized DoJ singled him out. That's a given, politics as usual.

Spitzer's irresponsibility here is unforgivable, just as Clinton's was before him. We can debate the idiocy of America's sexual neuroses until we're blue, but that doesn't change them.

Spitzer, and Clinton, should have been acting like saints until they were out of office. The fact that they didn't displays an arrogance and heedlessness that I find hard to fathom, given what both of them knew about their political enemies.

Until we take the GOP completelys seriously in their constant, unwavering desire to take down every democratic office-holder they can get their hands on, we'll continue to see this.

These guys play for keeps. They play dirty. And if we play right into their hands like arrogant fools, we deserve what we get.

Once again you befuddle me..

You say I'm right, about some things. Which to me implies you think I'm wrong about some other things.

And then go on to essentially agree with me.

No one could have shot Spitzer with his own gun had he not loaded it and handed it to them himself.

Spitzer broke federal laws. Period. Whether we think those laws are necessary or not. It makes liberals/Democrats look really bad to come up with a lot of reasons why Spitzer should be excused for this behavior. If you want to attain high level elected office in this country, you have to obey the law or accept the consquences...that SHOULD go for Democrats and Republicans.

The "but look at all those other guys who did x, y, and z!" excuse also makes us look really bad. Even Craig whom you mention, was entrapped into breaking whatever local law about soliciting in a bathroom that he pled guilty to.

In answer to your question, I would care that Spitzer broke the law in actually a fairly flagrant manner in this case, even though I have close to zero (except for sympathy for his wife and family) "moral outrage" about who any of our elected officials sleep with. Cash changed hands in an illegal manner...the Gov and former prosecutor should have exercised much better judgement than that, and just had a plain old affair with someone who wasn't charging him by the hour.

I see that I am already wildly late to the party, and given the number of replies this post has already generated, I obviously have not had time to poor through any of them. However, I would still like to offer my response to DClaw1's question regarding the difference between prostitution and pornography:

It is not for lack of trying that pornography is not illegal. The February 2008 edition of the ABA bar journal had an article titles "The End of the Net Porn Wars," with the tag "Despite big talk, federal efforts against adult obscenity online have withered." The article notes that "Federal law prohibits distributionof obscenity through interstate or foreign commerce. The only question is whether a jury will agree with prosecutors as to whether materials are obscene by the standards of their communities."

Of course, the Supreme Court has been very helpful in the area of obscenity by boldly declaring "I know it when I see it," which of course ranks up there with other great legal statements such as "He who smelt it, dealt it."

So DClaw1, please be careful when you ask what the difference is between the two, because some people might answer the question in a way different than you intended.

I am thinking more and more that there should be some sort of "private sexual activity amendment" to the Constitution, which would prohibit the federal government and any state or local government from prohibiting any consenting mentally competent person over the age of 18 from engaging in any sexual activity by him/herself or with another consenting mentally competent adult over the age of 18. This would be coupled (no pun intended) with the Freedom of Marriage Amendment, which would prohibit the the federal government and state and local governments from prohibiting two consenting mentally competent adults over the age of 18 from getting married. Now, who is going to be the candidate brave enough to propose these amendments?