This story raises so many issues it's hard to track all of them. There are lots of losers here as a result of this story.
1. If JW assaulted young boys, or uses the mayoral office for the purposes of generating sexual liasons, he must resign and should be prosecuted if he broke the law. JW loses.
2. The Spokesman Review should be investigated and censured for entrapment for the purposes of creating news instead of reporting on events. The Review loses.
3. The local Dems accuse the Repubs of being hypocritical because JW is gay??? The only hypocrisy here is that the Dems on one hand support gays, but then attack gays for being gay when they see a possibility to score political points. Repubs lose because of guilt by association, and the hypocritical Dems lose because they're eating their own.
In other recent Spokane news, the previous mayor's (John Powers) adult children were in court to plead quilty last week for seriously beating one of the family friends. Even the previous mayor loses.
Must be something in the water at City Hall.
I applaud the Spokesman Review newspaper. They were given information that accused a public official - the mayor - of molesting boys. Then they received information that he was frequenting gay internet sites. Put two and two together, and the Spokesman Review had a duty to go undercover and find out what the hell was going on in the mayor's office. And guess what - they did!
Some say that's the job of the police, but the police won't launch an investigation into the alleged molestations because of the statute of limitations.
The Spokesman Review did absolutely the right thing in this case, just as TV journalists do the right thing when they pose as 12-year-old girls in chat rooms and set up hidden-camera meetings with perverts who abuse the internet so they can then abuse this nation's young people.
This wasn't a random sting by the Spokesman, it was a targeted sting involving a city's mayor who was being accused by two people of outrageous and sickening crimes against children.
I was disappointed to see Joe Scarborough and one of his msnbc guests last night criticizing the Spokesman. The newspaper DID NOT create news. It went undercover to report news. Good job, Spokesman Review!