Republicans and the Media are focusing on Spitzer's indiscretion. But what happened to the "thousands of names" from the DC Madam investigation? Were they ever released? Why isn't the media obsessing on the "White House officials" supposedly named in that list?
Sure, Elliot Spitzer is grabbing all the attention. But I'd like to call your attention back to another prostitute story: The DC Madam Debra Jean Palfrey, whose list of thousands of names included White House and Pentagon officials.
That story broke back in April. But to my recollection, ABC released the names of just two of Palfrey's clients: One ambassador I'd never heard of and a member of a think tank. Big deal!
What happened to the rest of the names on the list that Palfrey gave ABC? Were they too "Republican" to have their names see the light of day?
As ABC News' Brian Ross said at the time:
"There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers. And there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list."
Now, I don't consider prostitution a crime. In fact, I think it should be legal. But there is plenty of smoke that the timing and investigation of Spitzer's trip to funky town has political overtones. I'm not saying it excuses his actions -- in fact, I wrote some comments on this earlier, so I won't go into length. But what happened to the rest of the list of Palfrey's names? An ambassador doesn't qualify as a White House official in my little black book.
And yeah, I heard that ABCs' lawyers prevented the other names from being revealed in the "20/20" special. But as the Madam's own lawyer said:
there remain 20 to 25 client names "that anyone in this room would recognize." He also revealed that another print news organization -- not based in Washington or New York -- has been given the same phone records given to ABC News.
C'mon, ABC, name some names. Or that OTHER news organization should name some names. Why should these 20 to 25 clients be treated any different than Eliot Spitzer?
Well, there are long stretches where I don't have time to surf the intertubes, so maybe I missed it. If so, send me a link to when ABC revealed the Full Monty.
Otherwise, it looks like a case of the media treating Democrats one way, and Republicans another. And they'd never do that, would they?