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a touch of class .....
Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington.
If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq.
That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night.
For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.
- By John Richardson at 9 Mar 2008 - 4:43pm
- John Richardson's blog
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not the only Dem...
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: March 11, 2008
The rendezvous that established Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with high-priced prostitutes occurred last month in one of Washington’s grandest hotels, but the criminal investigation that discovered the tryst began last year in a nondescript office building opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island, according to law enforcement officials.
There, in the Hauppauge offices of the Internal Revenue Service, investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said.
The investigators working out of the three-story office building, which faces Veterans Highway, typically review such reports, the officials said. But this was not typical: transactions by a governor who appeared to be trying to conceal the source, destination or purpose of the movement of thousands of dollars in cash, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The money ended up in the bank accounts of what appeared to be shell companies, corporations that essentially had no real business.
US$80,000...
It seems to me that moral hypocrisy has got quite out of hand. We have allowed the chattering classes, notably journalists and in the current case also the police, to impose on the community, moral standards that often enough they do not practice, any more than does the community.
The spectacle of the governor of New York abasing himself on television about how he had violated his obligations to his family and that he had violated his or anyone's sense of right and wrong was invidious.
What did he do? Did he kidnap children, confine them in a basement and then rape and murder them. Did he run an orphanage, and violate those entrusted to his care. Did he steal the gold from Fort Knox.
No, he did none of those things. He availed himself of the services of a sex worker, in a New York Hotel. He paid a lady for a service, and received it, like a number of other guests at the same and other New York hotels. And nobody would have been any the wiser had the federal police not tapped the booking and made it public.
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Gus: This rant by David Barnett falls short in its journalism... First it was because a few thousand bux went amiss that investigations went on... and second, like the father/guy in "La Cage Aux Folles", senator Spitzer was at the forefront of "moral" rectitude in society... Sure moral hypocrisy is rampant everywhere but Spitzer had a good life and got elected on his rectitude... That's why a few people are upset. Not that he did sumpthin' but that he has claimed a soul whiter than snow white... He got caught with his pants down by the tax department investigating about US$80,000 going into shifty bank accounts...