Free Republic

The cooperation agreement reached between prosecutors and an employee of the call-girl ring known as Emperors Club VIP will come in handy should the Manhattan U.S. attorney, Michael Garcia, decide to charge Governor Spitzer with a crime. The woman, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, who entered a guilty plea to money laundering and prostitution-related charges yesterday, would be a key witness against Mr. Spitzer if the former governor is charged in connection with patronizing an Emperors Club prostitute... Lewis, who booked clients for the call-girl service, had several phone conversations with Mr. Spitzer to hammer out the logistics of payment and...

George Pataki first ran for governor of New York as an inconspicuous freshman state senator, considered little more than the pawn of the state’s then most powerful Republican, U.S. Senator Al D’Amato. By contrast, Eliot Spitzer ran for governor after a celebrated tenure as state attorney general that won him a national reputation as a tough-guy prosecutor. And yet, comparing their early tenures, it’s remarkable that the unassuming Pataki managed to prod his own rebellious party leaders to back his first-year agenda, while Assembly Democrats have steamrollered Spitzer, leaving him looking like a 98-pound legislative weakling. Unless Spitzer can grab...

Many New Yorkers, dismayed at Albany’s sleaze, dysfunction, and stagnation, are cautiously optimistic about Eliot Spitzer as the Empire State’s new governor. After all, the former state attorney general ran on a platform of “wholesale reform, so that we can collectively get back to effectively dealing with the real problems of our state.” As Spitzer put it in one campaign speech, he’ll do to State Street what he did to Wall Street: open up a “system that is controlled by special interests . . . that is not efficient, is not open, and [is not] transparent.” Maybe he’ll put the...