Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

One of the points that kept suspicions high was that "Client #9" was named, but Clients 1-8 and 10 (including, it is strongly rumored, a prominent New York area judge) remained anonymous.

In short, it was (and is) difficult to believe that the most prominent name involved was Eliot Effing Spitzer.

But Client #6 has been revealed, and he's none other than Price William's godfather, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor. (Can you tell he's English?) And "Kristen" is much nicer about Spitzer than this:

Prostitute Zana Brazdek, then 26, described the 56-year-old Grosvenor as dull and demanding.

"I thought his conversation was quite boring," the Lithuanian woman told the newspaper. "He talked about the Army, going to Afghanistan and bin Laden. And he wanted unprotected sex. I refused."

Married, with four children.

Two down, eight to go.

Labels: homeland security, just life, Politics, Sex

by Ken Houghton

Ignore the Federal/State issues (fair enough), buy into the strange delusion that this is a "follow the money" issue, and ignore Larry Ribstein's points entirely (especially the ones here).

As of Monday, the New York State Governor will be a blind, black man.

Take that, Geraldine?

Labels: homeland security, Politics, Sex, the rule of law

by Ken Houghton

Jane Hamsher and Digby have noticed what anyone who looked at the indictment would know: this is a political smear job.

Not that Spitzer didn't do it, but, not to be subtle about it: you can't keep that high-end a business running with only one client.

Now, I know that no one would ever believe that the Bush administration—and certainly not someone who worked closely with Michael Chertoff—would ever do anything for purely political reasons.

But don't be surprised if that is exactly what happened.

As a side note, I got the chance to see the most famous person prosecuted under the Mann Act live last summer (thank you, Ruth), and it's difficult not to think that that prosecution also made the world a slightly nastier place than it should be.

UPDATE: Felix Salmon summarizes the power struggle that led to the prosecution, and is more optimistic about the results than I (but who isn't?).

UPDATE 2: Lance speak, you listen. But see also the comments from Velvet Goldmine and, especially, actor212:

Ask yourself this, Lance:

Since when has $5G ever been considered "large sums of money"?

That would mean, the next time you buy a car and put a down payment down, the Feds ought to be allowed to look at it first.

UPDATE #3: See Reg at Beautiful Horizons, who appears to have noticed what Tom Tomorrow pointed out, and (via Felix) Justin Wolfers, who basically explains (without noting it directly) why David Vitter and Larry Craig are still in office.

Labels: homeland security, Politics, Sex, the rule of law

by Ken Houghton

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. begins and ends the search for its next Op-Ed columnist:

“I don’t know anything about it,” Mr. McCain said. “Since it was in The New York Times, I don’t take it at face value.”

while Mike Huckabee flashes back to Willy S.

“You know, I’ve campaigned now on the same stage and platform with John McCain for 14 months; I only know him to be a man of integrity,” Mr. Huckabee said, according to NBC. “Today he denied any of that was true, I take him at his word. I have no further comment other than that. I think for me to get into it is completely immaterial. Again, I only know him what I know him to be, and that’s a good and decent and honorable man.”

Labels: 2008, Politics, Republican Party, Republicans, Sex

by Ken Houghton

There are very few religions in this world* worth devotion: sex, bicycling, and soccer are certainly three.

David Hirshey at deadspin sort of combined all three.

"in this world" is deliberate; eschewing Pascal's wager in a moment of carpe diem leaves one with a manageable time scale and therefore definable Utility functions. Assuming an afterlife, or even reincarnation, throws a serious spanner into PV calculations, as the amount of time in limbo/transit/stasis/etc. cannot be discounted appropriately.

Labels: Economics, real football, Sex

by Ken Houghton

Via Felix, Utah has changed enough recently that, someday soon, SLC Punk may, as with Gerald Ford's declaration about the "independent and autonomous" Poles, just have been ahead of its time.

Labels: gender bias, Sex

by Tom Bozzo

Josh Marshall is a little too kind to Sen. Craig:

With that assumption [that Craig's action would be readily recognizable as cruising for sex], it's still clear that the whole thing didn't get far enough for Craig to 'do' anything lewd...

Given what's described, it seems quite possible that, with a good lawyer, Craig could have beaten the rap.

First of all, part of the cited behavior sounds pretty lewd to me. From the police report:

I [the arresting officer] could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, "fidget" with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes. I was able to see Craig's blue eyes as he looked into my stall.

Maybe the angle is that Craig's eyes appear in his official portrait to be more gray than blue. Or not.

While Craig was cited for "lewd conduct," he was charged with disorderly conduct and "interference with privacy." See section 699.746 of the Minnesota Statutes, specifically 699.746(c):

A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:
(1) surreptitiously gazes, stares, or peeps in the window or other aperture of a sleeping room in a hotel... a tanning booth, or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts... or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts; and
(2) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the occupant.

It would seem reasonable to expect a degree of privacy in a public bathroom stall, and repeatedly looking in an occupied stall among other cited actions would seem to rise to an "intent to intrude," something which Scott Lemieux and Garance Franke-Ruta fail to grasp despite TNH's dispositive comment, "Because straight guys are forever gluing themselves to the cracks in bathroom-stall doors in order to stare for minutes on end at some other guy who's got his trousers down."

Pace commentary about the supposed homophobia of the law, the case here is not, really, about the not generally criminal asking for sex — not that framing it so would exactly help un-dig Craig's particular hole. The peeping criminalized by the "interference with privacy" statute and the harassment covered by interconnected statutes isn't characteristically associated with gay men's behavior. And while there may be some circumstances in which an unwanted proposition should be handled with a polite if firm no, such things can reasonably considered nuisances, especially in highly public places like large hub airports.

Now, Craig pled guilty to disorderly conduct and the interference with privacy charge was dropped. Craig, trying to get on offense, has characterized the guilty plea as an overreaction. Yet it would not be better for him to go to court and lose. Plus, the plain language of the complaint suggests that, far from being caught in a Catch-22, Craig fashioned a very fine quality noose before hanging himself.

So the question is whether there's a plausible exculpatory account to be found via public bathroom behavioral norms. I might otherwise leave this to the restroom etiquette expert, but Dan's amusing posts on the subject are enough to suggest an answer subject to the operation of the intrablogiversal self-correction mechanism.

The short answer is: are you kidding me?
1. Non-cruising men's room behavior involves keeping at least some distance from strangers.
2. It isn't hard to tell when someone in an adjacent stall is using the toilet for excretory functions in the prompt fashion that airport bathrooms normally encourage by their ambiance.
3. Looking repeatedly into an occupied stall, and indeed looking more than once for longer than strictly needed to determine occupancy, is highly unusual.
4. Based on the sample of me and my colleagues, a bathroom "stance" wide enough to violate stall boundaries is rare in the U.S. male population. If seated, it's darn near impossible short of removing one's pants entirely, which would itself be highly suspicious among bathroom users past age 5 or so.
5. Part of what would seem to make the Northstar Crossing men's room a prime cruising spot is that it isn't a natural choice of bathroom for someone who's merely a harried business traveler. Those would be the facilities closest to the arrival and (if connecting) departure gates.

It's certainly not clear how retention of counsel would lead to a less embarrassing outcome.

Labels: Republican Party, Sex

by Tom Bozzo

Or, The Fifth Generation of Social Science?! (ref.)

Where are the astrosociologists when you need them? NASA is pondering crew health issues raised by long-duration spaceflight at more-than-quick-re-entry distances. Well, not all of the problems:

One topic that is evidently too hot to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among healthy young men and women during a mission years long?

Sex is not mentioned in the document and has long been almost a taboo topic at NASA. Williams said the question of sex in space is not a matter of crew health but a behavioral issue that will have to be taken up by others at NASA.

The agency will have to address the matter sooner or later, said Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has advised NASA since 2001.

"There is a decision that is going to have to be made about mixed-sex crews, and there is going to be a lot of debate about it," he said.

Uh, yeah, because if you stick a bunch of men in a glorified tin can for months on end, Teh Gay will never happen. Not with a Republican administration's astronauts, anyhow.

Not that I wouldn't expect legions of volunteers for sex-in-space research studies drawn from the population who think we should establish a Martian calendar now.

Labels: Astrosociology, Nasa, Sex