I guess I have to talk about the Eliot Spitzer scandal. It is just too important to let it slip by unmentioned. After all, how many times do you see a governor of a state having to step down, because of a scandal? At the time of this article, the only thing I know about this particular case is the fact that the governor, yes he is still governor for a few more days, was paying huge amounts of money to have prostitutes flown around to where ever he was. Apparently this was going on for years and when he came out to resign, he had his wife at his side and if you looked you could see all those years written on her face, after she found out. I think that I have never felt sorrier for a wife in a case like this. Some say she must have know about this, but it certainly didn't look that way. She seemed to have aged about 20 years and it looked like she was in a state of shock. One has to wonder how a man who is a governor and always in the public eye, ever thought that he could get away with this without being found out? There must have been a lot of people that knew it was going on. This particular governor made a lot of enemies. It is said that he even had the police investigating some of the political leaders of the opposition party. He had launched investigations on Wall street and some of the traders there were so happy when he announced that he was resigning, that they broke out champagne bottles that they usually reserve for big up days and toasted his resignation. There is talk that he may be disbarred and even be subject to Federal prosecution, because he did bring women over the state line and he tried to hide where the money that was being paid to the prostitutes was going. This guy will survive and is extremely rich, so we can't feel too sorry for him.

This certainly was not an isolated case. I remember when the Chief Judge of the Courts of New York was caught in a scandal and forced to resign, his name is Sol Wachtler. The judge resigned from the court after his arrest in 1992. The New York Times stated that he was harassing a woman with whom he had an affair with at one time. If I remember the story correctly, he was calling her using a made up name and sending things like condoms in the mail. Unfortunately for this woman, Wachtler was the administrator of a trust fund that was left to her by her father. He would dress up as a cowboy and stalk her according to different repots that I have read. He was said to also have harassed her daughter. The former judge claimed that prescription drugs caused his strange behavior, but he was sent to prison for 11 months anyway. He was also sent to a mental health facility where he was stabbed. At the time this happened, it was perhaps as big a story as the Spitzer story. Wachtler was a very famous person in New York and there was even talk of him being chosen to run for higher positions. He might have also been elected governor were it not for his foolish actions. The woman had become a major fund raiser and become close with the Bush Sr. people. She had been pushing Wachtler for Chief Judge of the U.S. Supreme Court, before all this happened. She had known him for many years and it was said that he helped get her to where she was at the time, near the top of her profession. She is said to have ended their relationship when he wouldn't leave his wife.

Getting back to governors, let us not forget about Ex-Governor John G. Rowland from Connecticut. He was the governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004. Rowland was a popular governor and was into his third term, before everything fell apart. Stories began to circulate that the governor had contractors improving his weekend home. That in itself was okay, but the fact was that they were doing it free of charge and that is not permitted under the law. Next it was said that he sold a condo in Washington at an inflated price and benefited from it improperly. I think what this means is that the sale was an excuse to get money to the then governor. Next it came out that he was taking gifts from subordinates in the state government. Lastly it was said that he was taking partial ownership of businesses, just before they were getting state contracts. All this caused federal investigators to look into the case and at that point, some of the governor's aids decided to cooperate with the authorities. I would like to know how the governor ever thought he could get away with this? In 2003 Rowland went on television and admitted the work done on the cottage, but his wife decided to write a poem deriding the media, which just made things worse. In 2004 Rowland pleaded guilty to stealing honest services. He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, four months house arrest, three years probation and community service

Jim McGreevey was the governor of New Jersey from 2002 to 2004. The governor was not charged with a crime, but decided to resign, because of a scandal. Before I get into this, does anyone else think that it is strange that three states that border each other, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut all have had their governors resign recently in disgrace? Can you imagine what odds you could have gotten against this, from the odds makers in Los Vegas? Anyway Governor McGreevey was having an extra marital affair with another man. He then put his lover into the position of homeland security adviser, which caused criticism about his lack of experience. On top of that he was not able to get him a security clearance from the federal government, because he was not a U.S. citizen, he was an Israeli citizen. Lawsuits were taken out against McGreevey and he decided that he had to resign and on November 25, 2004 he stepped down under the threats of a sexual harassment suit from his former lover.

Scandals are nothing new in political circles. There have certainly been enough of them lately. Sometimes political scandals involve more than one politician at a time. A for instance of this, is the 1983 Congressional Page sex scandal. In 1983 the House Ethics Committee recommended that Rep. Dan Crane and Rep Gerry Studds be reprimanded for having engaged in sexual relationships with minors. The minors in question were pages working for the House of Representatives. The pages were 17 years old and the age of consent in Washington D.C. is 16 years old, but the House felt that this was a serious breach of duty by the representatives in question. Crane was alleged to have had sex 4 or 5 times with a female page and Studds was said to have invited a male page to his apartment and later on a 2 week trip. Both men admitted to the charges. Neither man resigned. The reprimand was later reversed and changed to censure, a more extreme measure. Crane lost in the next general election, but Studds was re-elected.

Mark Foley served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2006. Over those years Foley had built a reputation as a crusader against child abuse. Much as Spitzer had built one as a crusader against crime. People in his district thought highly of him. That was all to come to an end in 2006, when he resigned under a cloud. He had been accused of sending suggestive emails and sexually explicit instant messages to teenage boys, who were either serving as Congressional pages, or had formerly been Congressional pages. The FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement began an investigation of him. The House Ethics Committee then opened their investigation of the matter. One has to remember that in the entire House of Representatives, this man was the foremost opponent of child pornography. He had served as the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. He even introduced a bill called, "Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act of 2002". The bill was to outlaw websites that feature sexually suggestive images of preteen children. He even stated that, “these websites are nothing more than a fix for pedophiles.”

Then there are what I like to call the little scandals. Don Sherwood, a representative from Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district lost his election after a woman, who he was supposedly having an extramarital affair with, came out and said that he had assaulted her. John Sweeney from the 20th congressional district. lost his election after his wife came out and said that he had assaulted her.

There will never be an end to scandal in politics. There are just to many things available for the taking to people of weak natures. I call the temptations SMOP. This stands for Sex, Money and Power and there is plenty of each available in Washington D.C., as there is in the big political capitals of every state. These places are the playgrounds of all the lobbyists and "would be" power brokers, who are more than willing to supply anything to anyone who can do them political favors. Some politicians are also not above seeking sexual favors from their staff, some of who will agree rather than hurt their chances at getting ahead. Politics can be a real dirty business at times and all we can hope for is that we exercise our best judgment in picking our leaders, there is not much more that can be done.