Can you die of hay fever?

[dcwash]

I ask that every spring, so you'd think by now I'd realize the answer is "no," but I feel like I will, anyway. And it's just getting started! Christopher Buckley said "the hideous Washington summers are Nature's revenge for the loveliness of Washington's springs" in Thank You for Smoking but he didn't say how many of us wind up enjoying those

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[dcwash]

Eliot Spitzer was governor of New York until a few days ago. He resigned after being caught with a prostitute. I honestly think that, normally, getting caught with a prostitute wouldn't force a New York governor to resign, especially not one who was only elected in November (I think), but Spitzer was a very zealous, unforgiving prosecutor before he became governor and went after every kind of activity you can imagine, big and small....including prostitution. He couldn't even claim he was set up, or that the federal investigators targeting him for political reasons, or any similar mitigating circumstances.

What happened goes back to banking regulations, of all things. Banks routinely report all large cash transfers from accounts in an effort to curb money laundering. If those transfers match certain pre-determined patterns, a computer flags them and the Feds--the F.B.I., the taxation people, somebody like that--takes a look at them. The fact that a high government official was regularly transferring thousands and thousands of dollars in cash looked really suspicious, and they set up a wiretap thinking it might be blackmail payments or that bribery might be involved. What they found in the wiretaps was that he was spending the money on prostitutes who charged up to $5500 an hour. (!!!) Normally, I think they would have ignored any free-floating allegations, but when they had tape recordings of Spitzer making the arrangements with the call-girl service in New York, and then of the call-girl herself talking to the service about what Spitzer liked in the way of sex....irrefutable evidence like that, staring them in the face, meant they had no choice but to take action. I don't know that I would have paid any attention to it, thinking it a New York story, but the tryst took place IN THE HOTEL RIGHT BEHIND MY APARTMENT! The irony is, he wouldn't have gotten into trouble if he didn't insist on using this one super-select service in New York because he thought he could count on their discretion, and then having them send the girl down here from there. If he had stuck with local talent, there wouldn't have been any phone call to record. As everybody here has been saying, "What, our whores aren't good enough for you?"