David Byrne smells a rat in the downfall of Eliot Spitzer.
"I ask myself: why haven't we been provided the names of clients one through eight? It goes without saying that all are wealthy men, and there are probably a few other politicians among them."
Let me take a stab at this:
1. I'd be willing to bet that none of clients 1-8 flew an escort across state lines. (The Mann Act may be misguided and stupid, and well worth repealing, but if #9 violated it and the others didn't, what's the point of bringing their names out?)
2. Clients 1-8 are also relatively less likely to have engaged in the financial shenanigans Spitzer used to try to cover his tracks. Remember, it was the sketchy money transfers (would look like laundering if not bribery) that let to the investigation.
But the real news here is that if enough people jerk their knees in the same direction Byrne jerks his, we might not even need to wait ten years.
Posted by Matt Bruce at March 20, 2008 05:27 PMDavid Byrne?
Are you so disappointed by the fact that no Democrats have defended this guy that you have to go to a has-been foreigner to make your case for overreaction? :)
Posted by: M.S. at March 21, 2008 04:52 AMyou have to go to a has-been foreigner
Yeah, why go to has-been foreigners when all the idiocy you could ever want on whatever the topic of the day is can be found on Slate's XX Factor blog. Here is your Spitzer defense. My fav lines are "What about the shocking invasion of Spitzer's privacy?" and "Did his purported crime deserve the aggressive prosecuting it received?". I wonder if she ever had those thoughts about any of Spitzer's targets (answer: no).
I forgot my other fav line: "speculates that [the complaint's] authors were at the very least looking for some serious publicity"
Prosecutors looking for publicity??!!?? Really?!? What has this world come to?
Posted by: Kubi at March 21, 2008 05:58 AMChad, thanks for the link--that is worth it.
Posted by: M.S. at March 21, 2008 06:12 AMIt's also true that now that Spitzer is out, the New York Times is raising questions about why the Justice Dept. broke with past practices to pursue a thorough investigation of a prostitution case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/nyregion/21justice.html
Matt's right, it's not going away like Spitzer himself did, and will probably be swept up with other cases of the Bush Administration's politicization of Justice.
Posted by: M.S. at March 21, 2008 06:24 AMwhy the Justice Dept. broke with past practices
One might ask why the NY AG's office "broke with past practices" and began heavily targeting financial firms and their practices a few years back. Times change, priorties change, etc.
It may be that were ordered to do so from above, but my money is on an investigator/prosecutor looking to make a name for himself and realizing he had a really huge fish dead to rights and putting some extra effort in to reel him in. You know, sort of like Spitzer.
That's what makes this whole thing so damn much fun. The exact tactics/strategies/ideas that Spitzer championed and loudly insisted put him in the right are the ones that brought his downfall.
Posted by: Kubi at March 21, 2008 03:53 PM