Posted on 03/16/2008 10:24:40 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
Ben Stein Says The Feds Driving A Governor Out Of Office Is A Scary Thing
Like every other American, I was stunned by the fall of Elliot Spitzer. Of course I feel terrible for his family and for him. He fought the law and the law won.
But something sinister is happening here and it scares me.
Governor Spitzer was elected by an immense majority in the third most populous state. He got millions of votes. Now he's out of a job and in disgrace, and a man the voters did not vote for as governor is governor.
Why? Because some nosy civil servants at the IRS started a fishing expedition against Spitzer because they suspected he might be moving around money for political bribes.
So they wiretapped him and they found he was using the money he was moving around to buy the services of prostitutes.
Now, this is illegal in most states, and clearly it is in New York and in DC. But let's be honest: Men hire prostitutes by the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, every day They also bring women across state lines for sex every day.
The punishment for the men who hire hookers is usually nil, or at most a small fine close to what you'd get for a traffic ticket.
However, in Governor Spitzer's case, he got outed, humiliated, disgraced in front of his family, and then the voters lost the guy they voted for.
It is deeply scary to me that a few employees of the federal executive branch can start a train rolling that has such immense effects on the electoral process. Basically, a few career civil servants have nullified the will of the voters of the Empire State (over something clearly wrong, I don't doubt that, but it's not a political crime, not treason, not terrorism).
Having elected officials kicked out of office by appointed officials is a very dicey proposition. Over hiring prostitutes?
I strongly suspect that if the feds followed a hundred young male elected officials around for a year, they would find some sexual hanky panky among a lot of them, and some money or gifts changing hands often. If the feds prosecuted them all, it would basically mean that federal prosecutors have a veto over the electoral process.
That is dangerous.
More will be revealed but it all scares me. Elections are a lot more important than call girls.
I think NY polls were saying the voters wanted him out. Doesn’t that count, Ben?
Think a little bit about what Ben is saying. We know he’s not really looney.
Imagine Hillary in office. Imagine she has reappointed all those state Attorney Generals and imagine she, once again, has lots of FBI files and tax returns on politicians duly elected.
Now what kind of power does a party have in picking off elected officials in a witch hunt.
I think Ben is talking about checks and balances and a slippery slope of unintended consequences. We have to be very careful that abuse cannot occur, that’s all.
So NYC will have even more clout in the legislature. This will cause an even greater hemorrhage as left wing policies destroy the economy there. What will be left upstate will be a larger version of Vermont.
Kicked out of office? I seem to remember, just last week, a resignation speech.
I guess Ben missed school the day they covered constitutionaly specified lines of succession.
While I can see Mr. Stein’s worry over “political prosecutions”, I think he’s forgetting those done by the media all the time.
As well as the pressure the average citizen gets everyday from petty bureaucrats.
Elected Officials are not above the law. Spitzer held the Governor’s Office; he was not the Governor’s Office. The USA does not have kings.
I don't think Ben Stein does, but I'll bet a lot of the Hollywood crowd he knows does.
Our society has deteriorated since the 1950's 1960's from
don't do it
to
don't get caught.
Cheers!
Richard Nixon swept 49 out of 50 states in the 1972 election.
Where was the outrage when that election was “nullified?”
It wasn’t just the IRS that thought Spitzer was taking bribes, they had to convince the judiciary of that too to get a wiretap didn’t they? That’s two branches of government stupid Ben ignores, not just a couple “nosy civil servants”.
And in the course of an investigation they find a different crime are they supposed to ignore it?
The fedgov exceeded it's Constitutional authority a loooong time ago...to worry about it now, in the context of Smelliot Spinster is closing the barn door after the horse is in the next county.
In this case, I think the feds actually have legitimate concerns. Tens of thousands of men might use prostitutes every day, but few of them are in the position to be blackmailed over the security posture of a large state containing the world's financial hub. That the ex-governor got hoisted by his own petard is not only, IMHO a legitimate exercise of authority on the part of the feds, but also poetic justice in a very karmic way.
FWIW, as a Louisiana resident, and generally a supporter of him, I posted this about him last July...
"If there's enough evidence to charge him with solicitation, charge him under LA and DC law, and let the chips fall where they may."
...so at least, I can claim philosophical and intellectual consistency, even though my feelings towards the two men couldn't be more different.
Actually people like Spitzer are dangerous and Stein’s moral compass is broke.
Among other fascists activities this is what Spitxer was up to when the law caught up with him:
Remove criminal penalties even from unlawful abortions
Forbid any protections, such as parental notification, even for young teenagers
Effectively prevent even an unborn child who is the intended victim of a crime from being recognized as a victim
Mandate Medicaid funding for abortion-on-demand through all nine months
Redefine pregnancy as beginning at implantation – not fertilization
Negatively redefine fetal (child) viability
This time we owe the attorney general’s office a great debt of gratitude...
Ben Stein should refresh his memory a bit and try to remember what it was like when we had an amoral sociopath sitting in the Oval Office who perjured himself, wagged his finger in America’s face and tried to deny that he had done anything improper with one Monica Lewinsky.
Eliot Spritzer is an arrogant, hypocritical a$$hole who thought he was above the law.
He was wrong.
“Ben Stein is one of the good guys, but I’m baffled by his take on this.”
Ben Stein is not one of the good guys. He has mostly very liberal views and he gets too much attention from conservatives for his very few and limited things he does agree with us on.
He wrote a column last week that the GOP should have tax hikes. It looked like what a liberal would write because he is a liberal. Don’t be fooled. He is not a conservative.
That thought popped into my head too.
He broke the law. Does he get to pick and choose which laws he’ll observe?
It's worse than that....it's Hypocrisy !
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