Friday, March 14, 2008

Spitzer's 'crimes'

Good reading by someone named spiritofpublicus at On the Border Line. A sample:
I have no love for the abuses of Elliot Spitzer and the personal destruction he reigned upon innocent people engaged in commerce. But I do not cheer his demise.

In reality what crimes of humanity did Spitzer commit? He engaged in a sexual transaction with a legally-aged, consenting female; a private affair that with the exception of his family harmed no one ...

Alarm bells should be ringing loudly in every citizen’s head. Since when has it become acceptable for people to surrender their private affairs to the snooping and ever watchful eyes of government? Today, agents of the state spy on our bank accounts, emails, text messages, phone calls, and even what books we order.
Read the rest here.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent post to highlight. Thank you B.W.

We should all be concerned about the encroaching, and increasingly punitive, spying on our personal lives. It'll definitely get worse before it gets better.

4:20 PM  
Blogger Kirsten said...

Here's the problem. As a prosecutor and a politician, this man has made much of his career and his money by destroying other people's lives on the same basis as he is now being busted. He has actively gone after and busted at least two prostitution rings, imprisoning people in the process.

If he was J. Random Guy on the Street, I'd agree that it's nobody's business but his and his wife's. However, given that this man has promoted and enforced the sort of laws that he is now being busted for violating, he voluntarily agreed to abide by those laws so, yes, it is public business if he is now violating those laws. This is not a matter of privacy, but of his violating a contract he voluntarily signed up for. He voluntarily surrendered his private affairs to government snooping, and now he's paying for it.

3:25 PM  

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