Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will resign today from his seat in Congress. In addition to the political pressure from his own party, Weiner had a couple of strong legal reasons to resign.
I have disagreed with those defending Weiner or opposing his resignation. I could care less about his bizarre fetish with exhibitionist acts. However, he engaged in a pattern of lies that included alleging criminal acts of hacking by others and attacking the media. He is further accused of harassing women with these pictures. I cannot understand the view that a member who showed such utter dishonesty and poor judgment should be forgiven because he is “good for the cause” or a loyal liberal. I agree with the double standard shown in the response of cases like Senator Vitter, but that does not relieve Democrats or liberals of their duty to hold their leaders accountable.
Weiner had two strong legal reasons for resigning. As mentioned in earlier posts, the greatest danger of criminal conduct is his alleged coaching women to lie if contacted by investigators. Yesterday, another woman stepped forward to say that she was pressured to lie by Weiner. Notably, the woman yesterday also said that her efforts to discuss political issues were met by responses from Weiner to get her to engage in sextexting. By resigning Weiner reduces (the admittedly low) chances for a criminal investigation.
Second, Weiner was likely to be investigated for this misconduct and there are risks of claims of false statements as well as the creation of new evidence that could be used against him. This includes possible civil litigation. It also includes possible investigation of Weiner for harassment of women who were contacting him to discuss his work as a congressman. It also includes incidents where Weiner could be charged with using official resources in engaging in this conduct.
By resigning, Weiner shuts down the main threat of investigation that he is facing. The result of that investigation would have likely made it difficult for him to secure a new position — or to come back later and run again as a “healed” individual. The new photos show that this was not a few racy shots but pictures taken from various locations, including the House gym and his office. It also includes claims by women that they tried to get Weiner to discuss his political work and views — not his body parts.
Source: Politico
“Free markets work, so let them be.”
Roco,
I’ve asked you this question time and again, over many threads and you’ve never replied to it. Please show me any instance in history when there has been a “free market?”
“Why hasn’t Boehner’s escapades been all over the MSM?”
Raff,
In my more morose moments I look at the MSM in the same light as an average Russian must have viewed TASS.
@Roco: Free markets do not work. However, I was against the bailout in principle, and aghast at the way it was put into practice. People should have gone to jail for fraud, particularly the leaders of GSachs, and certainly no officers of any corporation or bank bailed out should have been allowed to continue or leave with a dime of what they had “earned.” Their assets should have been frozen until the Justice Department worked out what was legal and what was not.
The free market doesn’t work. What does work is suffering the consequences of bad decisions in management, investment, and execution of one’s job. That is what the government did with the bailout, they protected people in charge from their own bad decisions and law breaking. It worked against us, not for us.
If refusing to bail out the banks had caused a world economic meltdown, then we could have nationalized the banks. Or let the meltdown occur, because both in the lives of private individuals and in the lives of nations, working from a base of truth is a good thing, and if the truth is that our banks have returned to their 1920’s gansta ways, lying and cheating and stealing to manipulate markets, the world should know it. The bailout hid it, and left the same criminals in charge, to steal another day. Which is already underway.
Mike S:
Where we differ is semantically. To me what these people did was what an ordinary human being does.
*********************
Mike, I think we both know enough “ordinary” human beings who typically do nothing of the sort we both describe. I find your family’s story “heroic” as in “grace under pressure.” Good enough a definition of “guts” for Hemingway and therefore good enough for me.
“But fettering them, i.e., regulation, works about effectively as anti-sodomy laws.”
First of all, false equivalence.
Second, regulation that is not enforced or carries no substantive penalty is the same as not regulating at all. Government – by the terms of the Constitution – is supposed to work for the interests of ALL citizens, not just corporations, but the corporate favoritism is a reflection of the graft in the campaign finance system more than the basic premise that regulation isn’t effective. When done properly, it is the only thing that is effective in curbing industrial excesses.
The problem Roco is that free market capitalism is a delusional utopian fantasy. Markets have never been free & never will be. Ready Chomsky, Wallerstein or Nader for historical examples. America gained economic pre-eminence precisely through protectionism (not to mention predatory militarism). The myth of free markets are for suckers like in East Europe. Imperialism is what drives America and that has nothing to do with free markets. Markets are always manipulated by anti-social forces when left unfettered. But fettering them, i.e., regulation, works about effectively as anti-sodomy laws.
Puzzling:
that article which Karl F linked to is interesting. It also begs the question as to why Weiner and Schumer both voted for the bail-out while Bachman and others of her stripe (market capitalists) voted against it. Seems to me there is a disconnect somewhere.
Contrary to popular opinion at the time, main street was not “saved” by the bail-out. I think the number of foreclosures gives lie to that theory. And free market people for the most part, Kudlow was one of the exceptions, were against it and for the financial markets to take care of their own houses.
Granted we would have seen a disastrous drop in unemployment and everything else, but it would probably have lasted 6-12 months and been over. We are in our third year and there is no end in sight. And Obama’s shovel ready stimulus did nothing by his own admission. Keynesian’s take note [hey Krugman call your office].
Frederic Bastiat pointed this out over 150 years ago. You would think someone would take notice of a 19th century liberal who advocated free market capitalism and was mostly right in what he wrote.
Until such time as we teach sound economic theory in schools, we are going to have this kind of nonsense repeated.
Free markets work, so let them be.
Mike S.,
Why hasn’t Boehner’s escapades been all over the MSM? Just a coincidence, right?
Karl,
Agreed. Juan Cole put together the “Top 10 Things Anthony Weiner Had Said That Are Worse Than Sexting”, which I would encourage the numerous Weiner apologists to consider.
Number one on Cole’s list has to do with Weiner’s call for the termination of Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad. Cole wrote:
Weiner was a bootlicker of both the Zionist lobby & the banksters, groveling before AIPAC and voting for the TARP bailout.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06172011.html
And will the historical revisionist troll’s employer please stand up!
“Breitbart is undoubtedly working on his next target. He was successful with Weiner and Acorn.”
Maybe he was succesfull because they are/were a corrupt individual/organization.
@Mike: I think heroism is making the choice to risk one’s own well being to save another. My great grandfather was a single parent with one son. To keep my 15 year old grandfather from becoming WW I cannon fodder, my great grandfather, a common laborer, sold everything he owned so he could buy passage for his son to America. He gave everything he owned to save his son, whom he would never see again.
I find that heroic. My great grandfather could have waited and hoped for the best and hoped his son would get lucky or turn out to be a super soldier, but he realistically parsed and faced a hopeless political environment that he thought was likely to lead to his son’s death, and he chose the certainty of self-sacrifice over the whims of fate.
I will agree it isn’t really heroism to do those things that essentially offer no other choice but death, but I believe there is heroism in choosing to sacrifice or risk one’s self for another.
“Conservative group #bornfreecrew focused intensely on Weiner for months.”
Surprise, surprise!
“I find plenty. My father sacrificed all his life purely for our family. My uncle went to Korea a boy and came back a genuine hero exhibiting gallantry under fire. My grandfather came here as an immigrant with about $18.00 in his pocket and a letter to an acquaintance and thereafter built a business,raised a family, and lived a wonderful life filled with friends.
Mespo,
Being privileged knowing people in my own life who have behaved as you’ve said, “heroically,” I viscerally feel the same sentiments. My paternal grandfather came here a poor tailor from a “shtehtl” and started the first dry cleaning chain in NYC. My maternal Grandfather emigrated to NYC, alone, at age 11 and built a dry goods business into a small empire. Seven of my uncles served in WWII and one a sailor was on two ships that sunk.
Where we differ is semantically. To me what these people did was what an ordinary human being does. To paraphrase John Wayne’s screenwriter “A persons gotta do what a persons gotta do.” In other words to me this is not heroic, but what we humans do to get through this mystifying experience called life. By turning doing ones’ duty into “heroism” we glorify and romanticize it. I don’t think that serves us, nor our children well. In that glorification we tend to invest people with the assumption that they are exceptional in all ways. No one is. Not me, not you and not JT, though he has chosen to perform admirable service for all of us and with his brains and talent he merely could have gone after wealth and status. Can this choice of his be considered heroic, obviously both you and I do consider it so. However, by making an heroic choice does that mean JT is heroic in all aspects of his life, even if we knew him as a friend we may not know that.
This is the point I am making. Humans can do heroic acts, or live their lives heroically in a certain manner and yet still could be very fallible in other ways and the antithesis of heroic in some acts. We all have to honor those heroic things that people do, especially those we know of personally. At the same time we’ve (society) got to stop investing those “doers” with the aura of saintliness, because doing so will inevitably produce the result that we will be disillusioned when they don’t live up to our expectations. In the annals of Baseball history, Babe Ruth, was its most heroic player, yet personally he left much to be desired. To me the fact is that acts of heroism, whether singular or continuous, do not indicate the entire nature of who a person is and yet we humans glorify those doers with worshipful admiration.
In my own work with the poor and downtrodden I met many extraordinary people, who were living lives I could respect, against impossible odds. I was moved by them emotionally, but at the same time they, like me, were also flawed in some ways. To me
there could be none more heroic in the 20th Century than MLK, who literally sacrificed his life in the cause of freedom. We also know though from illegal FBI surveillance that he committed adultery. Does that diminish his acts, of course not. We must honor the individual and ongoing acts of heroism that people do, as examples for us all to follow and yet we must be very careful about investing those people with the aura that they are incapable of acting badly. We humans easily can follow our heroes with a cult-like intensity, losing sight of their human fallibility and in that process reap terrible rewards.
To a disillusioned, beaten and battered Germany laden with a national sense of failure,
Adolph Hitler seemed a heroic figure who would lead them out of their pain and misery.
@Swarthmore: Fake Identities?!?! Sounds like they were lying too…. They must resign!!!! 🙂
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/nyregion/fake-identities-were-used-on-twitter-to-get-information-on-weiner.html?src=tptw Conservative group #bornfreecrew focused intensely on Weiner for months.
@Puzzling: Weiner is correct about the first statement and it proves nothing. I say the same thing; the internet is the venue of choice for predators. Also for terrorists, also for scam artists, also for legitimate businesses, charities, and campaigns.
As for the second quote, “You are not stalking me. I am stalking you,” to Lisa Weiss, it should be clear from the first sentence he is answering a claim of *hers*, and he is refuting *her* worry that *she* is stalking HIM (perhaps by communicating too often) and thus the second sentence in this context is obviously intended to be a funny line using a reversal of premise. This was intended to get a laugh, and probably did, because obviously if Lisa asserts (even jokingly) that she is stalking Anthony, and Anthony asserts (even jokingly) that he is stalking Lisa, then clearly they are both smitten and their relationship is friendly and consensual.
So he is not acting as a predator with this girl, these nine words contain all the information one needs to conclude that.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/breitbart-i-loved-every-second-of-it-congressman-weiner.php
I don’t care how right he was on health care. You cannot be progressive and deny the IDF occupation of the West Bank & Gaza. The less Zionists in Congress the better. Good riddance to this lying imbecile.