NYT:
Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a rising star in Democratic politics who has long aspired to be mayor of New York City, admitted on Monday to having inappropriate online exchanges with at least six women, and repeatedly lying about his role in sending a sexually suggestive photograph to a young woman over Twitter last month.
After a week of sometimes indignant public denials and insistence that he was the victim of an Internet hacker, a weeping and stammering Mr. Weiner, 46, acknowledged at a news conference that he had sent the photo of himself in his underwear to the woman in Seattle.
The six-term congressman from Brooklyn insisted that he had broken no laws and vowed to remain in office, calling the matter an “aberration from which I’ve learned.”
During an extraordinary 27-minute appearance, the congressman went on to describe a side of his life that he had kept secret from his closest confidants and family members, in which he befriended young female admirers over the Internet and engaged in intimate sexual banter with them.
“Over the past few years, I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally on the phone with women I had met online,” Mr. Weiner said.
What do you think? On the one hand, totally inappropriate behavior and days of public lies. On the other hand, no direct relation to his job, no criminal wrongdoing and, as yet, no official finding of any ethics violations or, if so, their severity.
It’s not entirely fair, but elected officials should be held to a higher standard. Conduct unbecoming, one might say.
as there have been several prominent Massachusetts politicians whose careers in Congress would have been much abbreviated otherwise.
Weiner has to put the party before his own ambition. He screwed up, created a distraction, and is now an embarrassment. This is really no different than the Chris Lee thing, except that Lee didn’t deny it (or not for long) and realized that it was game over. And FWIW, he wasn’t the reason the Dems eventually won in the NY-26 special.
What I want to know is if there’s something in the water in DC, or does hyper political ambition also spill over into other aspects of politicians lives? This was just stupid in at least three ways:
1) Seeking out these sorts of relationships in the first place.
2) Using the Internet, where you should assume that anything you send can and will be seen by the world, to transmit the pictures.
3) Lying about it afterward when you know it will eventually come out.
I’m disappointed and just befuddled.
n/t
He’s an idiot.
He didn’t break the law so far as I can tell. There’s no suggestion that Rep Weiner’s, ahem, interests resulted in his constituents getting insufficient constituent services. There’s no suggestion that Rep Weiner has missed votes or not been available as a result of his activities.
He may be a bad husband, and he’s certainly a poor role model for husbands (and wives). However, his antics don’t render him incapable of being an effective Congressman — representing his constituents well in Congress.
I wouldn’t let him anywhere near my wife, but I’d be glad to have him fighting for me in Congress.
just send pictures of your junk to college girls. Must be constituent services.
If Lee resigns he resigns, no way with his last name and this silly fortnight of activity he can still be an effective legislator.
Chris Lee has some baggage that makes his decision to resign clear: he ran on family values. Anthony Wiener did not. He’s clearly been effective even with his unfortunate pastimes.
As usual, it’s the lies, not the underlying wrong, that sinks him. Plus by staying, he’s hurting the Democratic Party.
Will, I’m pretty sure. He’ll be gone with in the next two weeks. Breitbart has got even more embarassing stuff to release.
I really liked the guy, but he’s done.
This behavior is unacceptable. I wouldn’t vote for him, and I won’t give money to a party that supports candidates who behave this way.
Who really cares whether this is technically an “ethical violation”? Do you trust a bunch of politicians to define what is ethical? I don’t.
Nancy Pelosi has officially requested an ethics investigation.
That implies the Party does not condone the behavior.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/pelosi_officially_asks_for_ethics_investigation_of.php?ref=fpb
Do you know any party that would “condone” the behavior?
The point is, though, it’s all moot. The moral police can huff and puff all they want, and it ain’t going to change diddly squat. He’s an elected congressman that serves at the will of his constituents. So long as he hasn’t broken any law, he doesn’t have to go anywhere, and you can bet your bottom dollar his constituents will forgive and forget this incident so long as no laws were broken.
As for the ethics investigation, that’s pretty standard stuff and probably won’t amount to anything… again, assuming no laws were actually broken. So far, that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
He’s a friend of the environment, America’s allies and a rising star of the Party. It would be a waste for him to leave for a high school prank. The good that he does outweighs the only-too-human error.
This incident should never have made the media.
Really? Not even his wife?
Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe they’ve got an “open marriage”. Maybe she has a sense of humor about that shit.
Who knows? I don’t.
What percentage of wives would not care? What percentage of marriages are “open”? What percentage of voters would approve of an “open” marriage in any case? In any case, the fact that he publicly apologized to his wife, and that she was not at his press conference to back him up is very clear indication that he did in fact hurt her pretty deeply.
Huma is a grown woman, and she is perfectly capable of handling her husband’s behavior without the help of cable TV commentators. If Huma wants someone’s advice on her marriage, she will no doubt ask him/her.
but there is no question that this did hurt her and it is quite silly to suggest otherwise.
The argument has gone from “he didn’t hurt anyone” to “who cares if he hurt her, she is a big girl”. Hmmm.
Pretty sure his wife can take care of herself. People who empathize with her, at any sort of level, will leave her and the scandal part of the story (as opposed to the aspect that he repeatedly lied about it) alone. This could range anywhere from no big deal to minor crisis to I want a fucking divorce, and it’s *none* of our business. She ought to have the right to decide for herself, without a million people obsessing over what happened. It’s none of our business.
That’s a different story. I hadn’t read that.
I think you are confused.
How was his wife hurt?
If you’re trying to make it seem like people who have sympathy for her are somehow the bad guys here … I find that twisted.
Are you really suggesting that the word “hurt” only applies to physical harm? That is intellectually dishonest of you. Please tell me that you have never in your life used the word “hurt” to refer to emotional distress, humiliation, etc. I don’t believe it.
He had no way of knowing the age of those with whom he was communicating. He had met none of them in person, that is the most troubling aspect of this in my opinion. In addition I have problems with those who look me (or the camera) in the eye and lie with no hesitation.
Just trying to get a sense of the standard. Was he different because he was a president, whereas Weiner is a lowly congressman? Jaisu, hr’s Kevin, jconway, etc., did you want Clinton to resign after having affair and lying about it? Has Weiner even had an affair?
It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t broken any laws, only that he has been shown to be an inappropriate person to speak for his constituents and craft laws to govern them. He’s a tool, and we can and should have better representing us.
Clinton resigning would have created a huge national and international crisis. So I don’t think it would have been at all practical for him to have resigned as much as I was disgusted by his actions. Clinton did huge damage to the Democratic party as it was. Resigning would not have lessened the damage.
It is different for a congressman. Weiner has tainted the party and needs to go. I really don’t understand why so many people are making excuses for him. Is his behavior much more common than I realize?
If Clinton resigned, Gore would have taken over. Maybe, as an incumbent, been able to more handily defeat Bush.
Nixon resigned- the U.S. survived it. I don’t see the “international crisis” thing- wasn’t impeachment distraction enough? How would Clinton resigning have been any worse than what occurred?
The President is never “too big to fail”- that’s why we have a Vice-President.
None of which is to suggest that I think Clinton should have resigned, or been impeached. And this Weiner thing is an even smaller deal than that, as it hasn’t involved any real perjury. Maybe someday they’ll make “lying to the public by an elected official” a crime- that would actually be awesome.
The President is a far, far different office than a Congressman. I also think that the Republicans rush to impeachment would have made a resignation tantamount to an admission of an impeachable offense, which I don’t really believe it was.
In any case, maybe we would indeed have been better off if Clinton had resigned. Perhaps Gore would have stepped up and then gotten himself reelected. Who knows?
Clinton resigning would have created an (even bigger) crisis for the Democratic Party, which is necessarily an international crisis.
That depends on how common you think infidelity is. The statistics say it’s borderline inevitable, though. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by that much. If people routinely were forced to resign over infidelity, roughly half the population would be out of a job.
1) Admited what he’d done on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. Press went on vacation, too.
2) Invited folks to join him on Breezy Point Tip for the long weekend while sunning himself à la Vladimir Putin.
It doesn’t appear that he broke the law. The issue now is the “cover up” after the fact…hehe…get it?
We need more members of Congress like him, and as long as there is no crime I completely separate one’s job performance from personal indiscretions.
No, that is exactly what we do not need. After this, nobody is ever going to take him seriously, and he therefore cannot possibly be an effective advocate for the causes he claims to believe in. I don’t much care whether or not Weiner resigns now; the point is that his political career is over – he will not win reelection, if he even runs, and he will never be mayor of New York.
And that’s as it should be. This episode reveals, at the very least, a colossal failure in judgment on his part. And we need politicians who have good judgment.
Maybe he and Eliot Spitzer can do sort of a tag-team talk radio thing.
I would think that people might forgive or forget this after six months or so. Voters have forgiven all kinds of lies and fraud. Chuck Turner, George Bush, probably DiMasi would have been reelected in the North End if he hadn’t resigned. That Perry character from the South Shore almost went to Congress. People still take Bill Clinton pretty seriously.
Also, Spitzer committed a crime by patronizing a prostitute.
Holy overreaction, Batman!
I suppose no one ever took Bill Clinton seriously again, right? Or, hell, it’s not as if David Vitter was thrown out of office. The fact of the matter is people don’t really seem to give a damn about a politician’s sexual indiscretions given an eventual apology and enough time. It helps when no laws are broken, too, though even that doesn’t seem to be a requisite for the voting public.
You underestimate the public’s willingness to eventually forgive — and, even more importantly, completely forget.
anymore. And Weiner should resign. Maybe his wife will do a “Hillary” and stand by her man, but love does help us tolerate our partners character flaws and the resulting stupid actions .
Depends on who the actions hurt I guess.
I’d watch.
…we need more Congressmen sending lewd photos around, but we need fighters and from a political standpoint, not to be confused with moral, we should have his back. I wish Spitzer had stuck around too, given his track record against Wall Street, just when we most needed someone like that. We must build in our minds a firewall between personal and public lives. Case in point is the 1884 race of Cleveland vs. Blaine. The former had impeccable credentials against public corruption while dealing with “MA, Ma Where’s my Pa?” on the personal side. The latter apparently had a picture-perfect personal life, but was as politically corrupt as all getout. If fighters on our side weren’t so few and far between I’d be more acquiescent in sacraficing Weiner.
But what does that actually mean? Sure, I agree with him on a bunch of issues. But so what? There are lots of people I agree with, but many of them I wouldn’t want to see in high office. Weiner is now on that list, because his judgment is obviously so incredibly poor that I have zero confidence that he can be an effective advocate for the beliefs we happen to share.
Weiner has humiliated himself, his wife, and the party. He can no longer do any good in Congress, and will likely only drag down the prospects of congressional Democrats as long as he stays in. I now think he should pull a Christopher Lee and resign and get it over with. I predict he will not survive the month in office.
I would add that he wound up rehabilitating the credibility of that Breitbart guy, buy denying the allegations, and leaving all the people that leapt to his defense with extremely eggy faces.
This is not a desireable event for his team.
I don’t know if that means resign; the Clinton and Lee things are hard to distinguish. I don’t buy the “Lee campaigned on family values” argument, unless the Democratic party is going to advocate for more of this type of behavior in its platform.
The guy is a scumbag, as most of the world was finally starting to figure out (esp. with Shirley Sherrod). And now, as a result of Weinergate, he looks like (a) a serious journalist, and (b) an honorable guy trying to break an important story while also doing the right thing. Thanks, Anthony.
As for Clinton, the question whether what Clinton did is “worse” in a moral sense is above my pay grade. But politically, I’m pretty sure that what Weiner did was more stupid. People have affairs. It may not be not right, but it’s true, and it’s a reasonably common facet of human experience. But very few people send photos of their dick (WARNING: NOT WORK-SAFE) over the internet, and most people recognize that doing so is stupid and reckless behavior that goes way beyond what normal people do.
One might add.
It means exactly what Democrats said about Clinton during the 1998 election cycle, to wit: “What the President did was wrong, but…” I’m fine with Pelosi’s call for an investigation to see if any laws or rules were broken, and depending on what is found maybe I’ll change my tune, but you may recall in a midterm election with the President under a cloud, his party somehow managed to GAIN seats that year.
Politically at least, it’s not hard to argue that what Weiner did was worse than Clinton.
Wiener’s marital relationship is separate from his duties as a representative. Details of that relationship are private. His wife may divorce him, his wife may have known what was going on, or his wife may decide that what he did was relatively harmless, but in any respect it is not public information any more than knowing if John Boehner only likes anal sex with his wife or if Mitch McConnell likes to wear a superman costume to bed.
If Wiener was a big “morals” guy then it would be a different story, but this is between him and his wife, and I think this area should even be out of bounds for “investigative journalism”. The big fallacy here is that people are imposing their own sexual standards onto Wiener. Maybe John Boehner should give us a detailed list of the kinds of sex he likes, and the rest of the nation can decide if they like his sex or not too.
Not once he’s put them on Twitter. That’s also, incidentally, one of the ways in which this is different from Bill Clinton’s transgressions. We can all agree that what Clinton did wasn’t a very good idea, but at least he wasn’t YouTubing it.
If he wrote a sexy letter to her but accidentally wrote her neighbor’s address on the label and it was a reporter, it’s no longer private but not because he meant for it to be public. Same goes for a telephone call to the wrong number.
Weiner clearly didn’t intend for this to become public. He misused communications technology which he thought was private in a way which was public.
Weiner intended on this remaining just as private as Clinton did. And David Vitter for that matter.
Look, Weiner is a (reasonably) sophisticated user of social media, particularly Twitter. If he really believed that anything he sent over Twitter, or Facebook, would stay private, well, he’s a fucking idiot. Not sure how else to put it – it’s pretty simple. And me, I wouldn’t want a fucking idiot representing me in Congress, however much his views on the issues may align with mine.
are we so puritanical that just seeing that makes someone unfit for office?
I really don’t get the big deal about the photo, or even the action to a lesser extent. The big deal, to me anyway, was the fact that he went on every media show he could get on to lie about it in ways that just didn’t make sense — and for that his constituents should be able to judge him on come next election, one way or the other.
worse than that!
Granted, Scott’s a little easier on the eyes than poor Anthony…
Gawker
THIS is it getting worse: Reportedly, his wife is pregnant.
If he’s going to release a nakky pick, then go ahead and release it. He can’t say he’s not going to release it, then show what he claims to be it to a radio shock jock host who he knows will snap a picture, then claim to have the ‘integrity’ of a person who wouldn’t release a photo like that. If this is the kind of person he wants to be — a worse-than Perez Hilton figure, because he’ll not only release anything, but also manufacture his own stories (up to and including doctoring shit up) — then at least grow a pair of balls and really do it. I’d have had more respect for him if he posted the picture on his own website for the entire world to see than the stunt he did on the radio show, somehow trying to claim to be the bigger man. What a joke.
It’s well past time that someone on the left starts to look at everything he does, says and touches. He’s an absolute creep, who does absolutely creepy things, and it’s well past time he gets a taste of his own medicine. I’m honestly not sure, given how many things he and his compatriots have done, how he stays out of jail.
But people keep falling for it. Not “the media” but his targets seem to play into his hands over and over.
The congressman HAD to know he sent all of this junk, and that it was all coming out. But he gets dragged along, issuing statements that are proved false, and then having to backtrack again, and again, and again. He could have admitted it all on day 1, and by now it would be over. Breitman delights in dribbling things out in a way that make the target seem like a liar and a boob a half dozen times over. Why do they always let him?
Until yesterday, I thought that this situation, while pretty deplorable, wasn’t really all that easy to distinguish from Clinton’s and Lee’s behavior.
Then I read, in yesterdays NYT, this article. This wasn’t one of these “two consenting adults” type situations. Rather, it seems like a a fair number of this “inappropriate communications” were unsolicited.
The guy makes an appearance on TV, and when he gets an approving email, twitter, or facebook message from someone he thinks is an attractive woman, he shoots them a picture of his stand-up guy. That is a whole new level of creepiness.
I’m sure I would be in a minority, but I would go a bit further than that. In my view, the whole point of marriage is that it is a public recognition of the relationship, which implies that there is indeed something not-so-private about it. Indeed, the importance of the public recognition was the entire essence of the “marriage” position in the civil union-or-marriage debate of the last few years.
If it were indeed a purely private matter, then the public recognition implied by the word would have been a non-issue for both sides.
I feel quite free to find his behavior creepy now that I know about it. And I feel quite free to decide that I would not vote for someone who acted that way. If there are enough other people that feel the same way, then he should probably resign. If most people don’t care then he can probably get away with not resigning, but he will probably have to tolerate jokes at his expense for the rest of his political career.
sex jokes at his expense are anything that he wouldn’t have looong been used to…
He didn’t break any laws. If his congressional district doesn’t want him to represent them, they can vote him out next time around.
How many times has this story been told in the papers? He isn’t the only fellow in public life looking for shiksa. Clinton, Schwarzenegger, Spitzer, Edwards, Gingrich, Craig and on and on. The names, genders, and places change but the story is the same. How many of those politicians that are “Shocked!” now will have the story told of them?
The story is more of an attack on the person than a moral tale. The congressman must have made some powerful enemies.
Perhaps too many people are reading romance novels rather than out understanding life. What bourgeois prudes.
I don’t think it is prudish to have the expectation that not all male politicians are hitting on every woman within reach. This is a married man we are talking about, not some twenty-something single guy.
How can I believe that someone who is willing to risk his marriage for a few cheap thrills isn’t going to fall to other temptations like doing favors in return for political contributions, etc? This is why we should have higher standards for people who we put in positions of power.
Kennedy (pick one), Johnson, Roosevelt, Clinton, etc. And politics and power through the beginning of time. People don’t change due to some 19th century hypocritical morals.
It is a real world.
This is about moral/ethical standards of conduct. Just because everyone doesn’t always live up to some given standard doesn’t mean we should automatically drop it. Otherwise we would have no standards at all. And no one is saying that all bad behavior should be proscribed by law. It is just that the electorate has every right to express its displeasure over the behavior of its elected officials and try to force them to live up to the standards we would like them to live and work by.
I don’t cheat on my wife, I don’t cheat on my taxes, I try to be a law abiding citizen. I fully expect the same from politicians that I vote for. There is absolutely nothing hypocritical about that.
And, PUL-ease, don’t go to any party conventions. A whole lot of prowling for flesh goes on there.
(^o^)
You or I shouldn’t try to set those standards for them. If it comes out that some politician had a non-law-breaking affair, then his constituents get to have the final say. The media may go into a frenzy, as well as morally self-righteous zealouts within the party, and they could force a politician out —- but that really doesn’t leave the choice down to the voters, does it? And isn’t that what democracy’s all about?
So, no, I don’t buy into the notion that “we should expect more from them than us” in their personal lives. Any push to bypass the decision of the voters, forcing people out, should only happen when laws have clearly been broken.
and when a politician violates the self-determined standards of too many of his constituents, they often hurt the causes they care about and sometimes do not get reelected. So this really comes down to what percentage of people think this crossed the line.
I do think that politicians have to realize that their personal moral/ethical choices will have consequences for their careers. Whether Weiner resigns or not, he definitely lost support and will probably will continue to suffer from this for a very long time.
First off, how do we know that his wife didn’t tolerate this? It may be over _your_ line, but there are plenty of married men who frequent strip clubs whose wives know and aren’t divorcing them. Other married men have subscriptions to Playboy (and no, not just for the articles). Everyone sets their own parameters in their relationships.
Second, people, including many members of congress, risk short-term pleasure for long-term pain quite often. Speeders are doing this. So are people who get drunk. So are people who overeat. Taking this concept to the next level, should we make all fat speeding members of congress who get drunk from time to time resign too, because who knows what they’ll do with our country?
I have already answered this. Why did he publicly apologize to his wife if she doesn’t care? Why did she not appear at his press conference to support him? It is pretty obvious that she is not at all happy about this. It is presumptuous to suggest otherwise.
Regarding your second point, I will also not vote for politicians with active drug or alcohol problems (in recovery is fine) or who have a history of reckless behavior because I feel that I cannot trust their judgement.
Politicians do have the right to a private life, of course, but they also should have the full expectation that they will be held accountable for any aspects of their life that become public. I don’t think that politicians should resign as soon as any given foible is exposed, but if they displease voters to the point that they may not be reelected, I think they should seriously consider stepping aside if it would benefit the party or their favored political causes.
Then, no.
The thing about sex scandals is you’re only the next sex scandal away from being out of the news. The Governator must be ready to throw a party right about now. Give it another week and some other politician or celebrity will do something foolish and within a few weeks most of us will have forgotten all about his little incident.
It will take him longer to recover his credibility as a spokesperson, though, which is a big shame given the fact that he was one of our only effective voices on the left in Congress who could get his voice out there and talk about what Republicans were really doing.
Is he doing his job as Congressman?
Let the voters decide in November 2012.
He didn’t break laws, he made some stupid embarrassing personal mistakes.
As for what his wife thinks? That is none of my business. I am sure she made him aware of her feelings on the matter. It is not for me or anyone else to judge her decision on how to proceed with her marriage.
I don’t think he should have to resign for this and I don’t think that a Republican who did the same thing should have to resign either.
His judgement about using social media and thinking that anything sent over the airwaves will never become public was similar to a teenager’s judgement, but is it relevant to his position on issues important to the country and his voting record and his constituant services? I don’t think so.
America’s obsession with the sex or in this case the “sext” lives of our politicians is ridiculous.
Are we really that naive and/or cynical that we believe that human beings who happen to get elected to office are going to or even must conform to some puritanical ideal of “moral character”? We tolerate flagrant lying in our politicans as a matter of course. John Kyl’s 97% of Planned Parenthood’s work is abortion services must be the “higher standard” we value and want. Just so long as John Kyl doesn’t take a picture of himself in his underwear and send it to someone.
If Weiner should resign it should be for reasons having to do with breaking the law; otherwise, his constituents are the ones to judge his non-criminal behavior and whether or not his sexual peccadilloes is even relevant when it comes his voting on the matters that are important to them. Moralizers go home.
I reject the notion that expecting more of the LEADERS of the world’s greatest democracy is moralizing. That is way too cynical. There are 300 million of us. Give someone who helps progressive causes a chance.
If this remained private, and turned up a bio years later, I’d laugh (like i’m laughing now). But he made it a public problem, and therefore our problem.
We can expect them to be leaders of reforming the law, helping people, managing the budget well, providing local aide, and helping constituents cut through the red tape when nothing else works.
They are not priests. They are not marriage counselors. By and large, they are not anyone who pretends to have any sort of “leadership” when it comes to a happy and healthy marriage. They’re entirely human that way. Punishing them for failing at their marriages, when their success in their marriages isn’t the same skill set as having success as a legislator, makes no sense. If being able to have a successful marriage was one of the core metrics we used in determining who to vote for, I’d imagine the quality and talent of the people we elected would be even worse than it is now…
Put aside marriage, or any personal choice or orientation, but leave a general category called something like Personal Conduct or Upholding the Office.
If Weiner were a manager at an Arby’s, he would have been fired last week. Yes, the analogy is imperfect (they all will be), but I still say we’re entitled to expect a certain decorum from our elected representatives. And that is not mere subjective “moralizing,” it’s a prerequisite for the conduct of government.
The problem is that us so called “moralizers” aren’t going to go away. I do have high standards for politicians and will stick to them. If someone behaves like this, I am not going to vote for him. Sorry.
I don’t expect politicians to be saints or never have marital problems. I do expect them to be honest, avoid conflicts of interest, and vices that will impair their judgement or subject them to threats of blackmail. I feel that most citizens are capable of living up to this standard, and I see no reason why politicians can’t live up to it as well.
If you just look the other way whenever someone on your side does something wrong, then you will inevitably lose the respect of the voters and find it harder to push your agenda. If Democrats let this kind of stuff slide, then they only have themselves to blame when voters believe that all politicians are inherently corrupt tools for pushing the interests of their supporters.
This is the most sensible comment yet on the whole thing. Again, with the new format, I don’t quite know how to make a “neat” link, but here it is:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/09/cain.weiner.scandal/index.html?iref=allsearch
The way to create links in comments is:
1. Use the cursor to highlight the text you want to turn into a link;
2. Click the “link” button in the Preview bar;
3. Enter the URL in the popup box.
That should do it. You can then click “Preview” to see whether it worked before you publish the comment. Give it a try – if it doesn’t work, please let me know.
It was not clear to me how to create a link. I did finally figure it out. Maybe this can be documented clearly.
I’ll give that a try next time around.
the thing that really bothers me about Weiner’s actions isn’t that they’re “deviant” by someone’s definition. It’s that they were monumentally stupid. And I don’t like the idea of monumentally stupid people, of either party, in Congress. To give just the most obvious example, a lot of these folks sit on committees that give them access to classified information. If they’re also sending cock shots around the internet, it at least raises the possibility of extortion and sensitive information coming into the wrong hands.
one could argue that, as a result of Weiner’s actions, “sensitive information” has already “come into the wrong hands.” HA! Get it? Oh, I slay myself.
Weiner’s stupidity in this matter is clearly something voters must consider when or if he is up for reelection. Poor judgment or stupidity in some matters does not necessarily spill over into poor judgment or stupidity in all matters. Smart people regularly do stupid things. Again, this is the nature of all humans.
At this point in time, he has the support of his constituents. ’nuff said.
The link button didn’t work. Aye yay yay.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/poll-majority-of-weiners-constituents-think-he-should-stay-in-office.php?ref=fpb
1. Weiner doesn’t resign, but is shunned by his party (who already didn’t like him much anyway), and is completely ineffective for the rest of his term except when it comes to repairing potholes in his district.
2. NY is losing two congressional seats, and Weiner will be the primary victim of redistricting.
3. Weiner will try to run again, but will be easily beaten by the incumbent in whichever new district he tries to run in.
This is still a pretty active thread that has scrolled off the bottom of the front page. Time for a bump, editors?