This is a follow up to my March 16th post asking what the real breaking news story involving Eliot Spitzer was.
Responding to those who say the pursuit of former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer was unnecessary and, perhaps, inappropriate - because prosecuting people who use prostitutes is so rare - The New York Times has just published a lengthy article - "U.S. Defends Tough Tactics With Spitzer" - in which The Justice Department details and justifies the reasoning and elaborate methods used to catch former Governor Spitzer.
While I applaud the length the Times went to to get the government to explain itself along traditional themes - (In a world where John's are pretty much never prosecuted, why go after someone for using a prostitute?) - the article never gets into the possible political motivation for getting Spitzer: that he needed to be silenced after having led the effort to protect consumers from the banking industry's predatory lending practices, an effort which was stopped several years ago by the Bush administration's people in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
So, after breaking the story of Spitzer's use of prostitutes with a headline that practically made it sound as if he might be running a prostitution ring on the side, the Times does this follow up story about the pursuit of Spitzer that completely ignores the fact that - since he was a Democratic seeking to prosecute the Bush administration (at least in the court of public opinion) - there might be a political dimension to what The Justice Department did here.
Nice job of digging deep on this story, New York Times!
