But media interest in Dupre still swirled. Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt told the AP Friday that he had e-mailed Dupre, offering her $1 million to pose nude for his magazine. He said he hadn’t heard back.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23646374/

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd.

For the full post . . .

Do I think it should be? No. But it is. And Spitzer has been a law and order pit bull—and the great hope of NY democrats.

Those here in St. Louis ought to remember George Peach, a local prosecutor who made a HUGE deal out of ridding St. Louis city of pornography, and then got nailed by an undercover cop in the county for soliciting prostitution. It wasn’t the sex, it was the double standard.

Spitzer has also let down the Democratic Party because he had been such a forceful and effective voice in a state that has been in Republican hands for some time.

If you’re gonna run on a straight arrow platform, you better tow the line. It doesn’t matter if the line being towed is occasionally feckless and stupid. Spitzer screwed up. (pun intended.)

* All decent people agree that what Eliot Spitzer did is repulsive, morally disgusting and totally nauseating — which is why it’s so important to learn about and report on every last titillating detail about what he did, the kind of sex he had, with whom he had it, how many times he had it, and what his partners looked like — because it’s all so completely appalling that it’s critical that we stay fully informed.

* Governors who hire adult prostitutes must resign immediately lest the public trust be forever sullied. Presidents who break the law by spying on Americans with no warrants, who torture people in violation of multiple treaties and statutes, who start hideously destructive wars based on false pretenses, who repeatedly proclaim the power to ignore laws, and who imprison people — including Americans — with no charges of any kind, should remain in office for as long as they want. Anyone who suggests otherwise is an irresponsible, shrill, partisan radical.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/12/prostitution/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

Or just this last week, vetoing a bill that would have banned waterboarding:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/03/democrats-rights-groups-criticize-bush.php

Or failing to recognize the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court:

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm

(Note: The U.S. is one of only seven states - along with Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar, China, and Israel - to vote against the Rome Statute creating the Court).

This Administration’s disregard of international law is not only heartbreaking, but dangerously setting international jurisprudence back to a time prior to the implementation of nearly universally accepted treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, a time of the darker ages of international law when leaders/individuals who encouraged and committed torture and other crimes could escape the realm of universal jurisdiction and accountability for their actions.

Who better to know the evils of a vice than someone who is himself a captive of it? If you know human nature you should know that the person who accuses everyone else of stealing is the thief.

Meanwhile, Spitzer, who a year ago had a shot at national office, is today a laughingstock because of his reckless involvement in … what? Let’s just say this right out: in nothing. He arranged for a date with a hooker and she crossed a state line. This violates something called the Mann Act, which was passed in 1910, before women could vote. It’s the legal equivalent of an old chestnut, it seems barely constitutional, and no one with half a brain could possibly think of it as anything worth prosecuting anyone for. Although Eliot Spitzer might. This is the problem these guys get into: they’re so morally rigid and puritanical in real life (and on some level, so responsible for this priggish world we now live in) that when they get caught committing victimless crimes, everyone thinks they should be punished for sheer hypocrisy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/eliot-spitzer-the-short-_b_90869.html

I’m not convinced the current hype is mostly about the hypocrisy, though. We Americans are obsessed with public figures having sex. It drives substantial amounts of what passes as news.

What motivates my post is my wish that we’d spend 1% of the passion and energy that we’re spending on this Spitzer story covering any of the 10 most critical issues facing this country.