It shouldn't matter to the voters who a politician sleeps with. It's a personal thing. If it doesn't have an effect on how that politician executes the duties of their office, it's none of my business.
Until they break the law.
(keep going)
This is why Senator Huggies' regular use of prostitutes matters. The above graphic is aletter to the editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune from October, 1998. It was unearthed by Lamar White, Jr., of the CenLamar blog. In this opinion piece, then-State Representative Huggies argues for President Clinton's removal from office:
“President Clinton, having had a workplace affair with an intern in the Oval Office complex, having directly and repeatedly lied about it to the American people, having committed perjury on numerous subjects on at least two occasions and having probably obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses has not created a crisis of leadership,” he writes. “But Congress, because it has carefully and soberly taken up the impeachment question in light of above, has. This kind of thinking is perhaps the most compelling evidence that some meaningful action must be taken against the president. If none is, his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture.”
"...having committed perjury..." - That's the heart of the matter. in Huggies' opinion, perjury was enough of a "high crime or misdemeanor" to get Clinton impeached and convicted. While he's doing this, he was booking "dates" with prostitutes, sometimes even on the floor of the US House of Representatives. Using a telephone to facilitate a criminal act is a crime in itself. Prostitution is also a crime, although there is no clear chain from the DC Madam's black book to illegal behavior on Huggies' part.
But there's the Louisiana side of the coin:
Unlike the DC trail stopping cold with the death of Deborah Jean Palfrey, the Louisiana prostitutes Huggies used are alive and well. Senator Huggies broke the law.
It's not so much the prostitution itself, but the fact that soliciting prostitution is illegal in Louisiana, and Huggies did just that. It's not the sex. It's not the lies to his wife and family. It's not the lies to the public. Huggies broke the law.
If law-breaking was sufficient for Huggies to support President Clinton's impeachment, it should be sufficient to exclude him from public office as well.
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