Sex, Spitzer and the Israeli Connection

Within the past seven days I have visited a mosque, a synagogue, a church. I've been to the State Capitol, at a marine barracks, in an airport, at a laundromat and attended a seminar at college in Albany. The mosque is the only place where nobody was talking about Eliot Spitzer, and that is likely because Spitzer's undoing was playing out on national television while I was at the mosque (for the Aref book release press conference), and no one had yet heard about the soon-to-be ex-Governor's fall.

I ran across a very interesting article this weekend: Israeli Angle In Spitzer Scandal

Ron Kampeas writes for JTA, his column appears in "The Jewsih World":
A fast-rising Democratic governor, an out-of-control sex drive and an Israeli enabler — it feels like deja vu all over again on the Hudson.

Just four years after the then-governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, resigned amid revelations of an affair with his Israeli-born ex-homeland security chief, Golan Cipel, Americans again were treated to the spectacle of the governor of a large Northeastern state standing alongside a grim-looking wife and admitting he had erred.

AN ISRAELI CONNECTION...

Mark Brener, the alleged pimp at the center of the prostitution scandal engulfing Spitzer, is an Israeli. Spitzer, a Jewish lawyer, built his career as an anti-crime, anti-corruption crusader. Most of his cases were high-profile Wall Street targets, but during his eight-year stint as state attorney general, Spitzer’s office also investigated at least two Jewish organizations, the National Council of Young Israel and the World Jewish Congress.

In both cases, Spitzer’s office found what it deemed examples of misused funds and reached an agreement limiting the future involvement of a longtime leader of the organization in question.
Of the four charged in the federal prostitution case brought last week, only Brener was denied bail. U.S. Magistrate Michael Dolinger cited the $600,000 in cash and the Israeli passport found in Brener’s home as proof of his flight risk.

Brener’s lawyer told the Associated Press that he has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years. Brener allegedly ran the Emperors VIP Club, described by police as a high-priced prostitution ring in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and London. Clients rated the prostitutes with diamonds on the club’s Web site. Top-rated prostitutes could demand thousands, with the club taking more than 50 percent in commission fees.

You know the rest... Client 9 got tripped up in a legal system he helped create, and...

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO...

Spitzer's downfall involved MONEY... lots of it... MONEY can do funny things to people... Blogger Brian Ledbetter republished Associated Press photographs to criticize the AP, without making money, and he got threatened with a copyright lawsuit. Then AP, LIKE SPITZER, turned 'round and did as they pleased!

SpitzerSquezze Ashley Alexandra Dupre has equally copyrighted photos of herself on her website — photos that no doubt would have netted her considerable cash had she been paid for reproduction rights — and those photos are taken and reproduced without permission by (among many others) . . . the AP. Which (unlike Ledbetter) no doubt made significant money from the photos’ redistribution, as they were clearly in high demand.

You might think that Ledbetter has noticed the irony — and indeed, he has. H/T PATTERICO, who also notes "I think Ledbetter and other bloggers have a much better fair use argument for repoducing AP photos when relevant to a story than the AP has for this use of Dupre’s photos."