Above reproach

If Caesar's wife must be above reproach, how much more so must Caesar?

Some bloggers are focusing on the circumstances of the FBI's investigation into Gov. Eliot Spitzer's walks on the wild side.

Digby writes: "Far be it for me to mistrust the Bush Justice department or think they might have partisan motives, but it might be worth asking whether there might be a little partisan prosecutorial hanky panky involved. It certainly wouldn't be the first time." And this: "[T]he Mann Act is a musty relic of Jim Crow that should never be applied to consensual sex. It was bad enough back in 1910. That anyone would use it in 2008 is outrageous."

Jane Hamsher weighs in with a list of very valid questions whose answers suggest that the Spitzer case is a politically-motivated prosecution, the latest in a series of Justice Department hit jobs on Democrats.

All quite true. It was one of my first thoughts when I heard the news. I would put money on some of the evidence having been obtained using methods, such as National Security Letters, that were supposedly designed to catch terrorists, not Democratic governors. So far, we have only the FBI's word that the wiretapping of the Emperor's Club started as a money-laundering investigation.

Nevertheless... Had Spitzer not been an arrogant, intemperate idiot, there would be no case. It doesn't matter if the Mann Act is a relic or that the FBI should be spending its time catching evildoers instead of prostitutes and their johns. It's deplorable that the Justice Department is so thoroughly corrupted that Democrats are punished while Republicans walk for the same behavior -- but it matters not.

The bottom line is that the feds have Spitzer cold: They have wiretaps of him arranging meetings, discussing transportation to Washington, bank transfers, hotel bookings in his friend's name, wiretaps of the prostitute and her booker, and more.

Spitzer knew the law, knew the risks, knew his position and decided none of that mattered enough. He's not a babe in the woods. Every Democrat knows that the Republicans play a rough and dirty game. He could easily have anticipated being targeted by a politicized Justice Dept.

Would it have been so terrible to keep his pants zipped until he left Albany? Couldn't he just buy a magazine and say hello to his right hand? An old friend of mine once said, quite vulgarly and hilariously, "When the dick is hard, the mind is lard." He was a guy, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.