<p>The restraining order was lifted after a judge ruled that the prosecution’s arguments simply didn’t hold up. </p>
<p>No grounds to freeze her private property when she hasn’t been convicted of anything; no reason to believe–as prosecutors alleged–that releasing the records to the public would mysteriously make them unavailable to the prosecution; and no grounds to believe that using the records to locate potential defense witnesses would amount to “harassment.”</p>
<p>If there are any high profile names that haven’t already come out, things are going to get interesting.</p>
<p>Sex scandals involving middle aged mid level apparatchiks aren’t going to excite any attention. It is a yawner unless it turns out Nancy Pelosi or Condi Rice were customers or part time employees.</p>
<p>Or Al Gore Jr. - course he probably has performance issues with all those drugs in his system. Still I have to give him credit if he really got a Prism to do 100mph or was that kph?</p>
<p>Allegations about him using a sex worker were raised in 1999, but were not published at the time, mostly because the worker would not go on camera, but also because (as a local paper was preparing to run with the story), Vitter dropped out of the governor’s race, saying he needed more time to work on his marriage and go to marriage counseling.</p>
<p>“Sex scandals involving middle aged mid level apparatchiks aren’t going to excite any attention. It is a yawner unless it turns out Nancy Pelosi or Condi Rice were customers or part time employees.”</p>
<p>The republican machine was on full throttle not so far back.</p>
<p>Every time one of these scandles arises it never seems to raise a legitimate debat as to whether prostitution should be a crime in the first place. If a woman has a constitutional right to abort her child, marry anyone she wants, use contraceptives, have sex with any consenting adult, it seems to me she should have the constitutional right to have sex for money.</p>
<p>Speaking of double standards, I was expecting some of the folk who lambaste Hillary for not ending her marriage over her spouse’s infidelity to be equally critical of Wendy Vitter, and yet there’s been scarcely a murmur on the blogosphere or anywhere else. </p>
<p>Aren’t we supposed to hate all injured spouses the same?</p>
<p>We must be on the same wavelength, I was thinking the same thing about double standards. Only I was wondering why people who thought it was none of anyone’s business who Bill was boffing are taking such interest in this story.</p>
<p>Two reasons. Prostitution is a crime. If a law-maker is a law-breaker, it’s news.</p>
<p>Second is the hypocrisy factor. Vitter has made a point of talking about how same-gender marriage is a threat to hetero marriage–even claiming that same gender marriage is the biggest problem we face: bigger than Katrina, bigger than Iraq. So when it turns out the biggest threat to his own marriage was his adultery, it’s news.</p>
<p>Then there’s the conflict of interest. Vitter and Tobias both oppose efforts to educate low-income women, women in developing countries, and sex workers about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing STDS. </p>
<p>You have to wonder if this is motivated only by a desire to see these women become ill if exposed or if there’s a personal motive…wanting to keep their sex workers from being empowered enough to demand that they themselves wear condoms during the liaisons. I think it’s a major conflict of interest for johns to be in the business of determining what health information prostitutes can and cannot be told.</p>
<p>Of course Hillary had already done the stand by your man pretty in pink thing on national TV before Bill was elected. If she wants to keep it up through all these myriad sexcapades I figure it is her business though it is a little hard to reconcile the big feminist thing with the personal life.</p>
<p>The thing that set the Lewinski affair apart is that it was on the job in the Oval Office and with a subordinate. Clinton boinked prostitute too in the bushes in Little Rock while he was governor but those little dalliances got covered up by a press that adores him. Whatever boys will be boys and the rabidly partisan like conyat will always have a double standard. Nothing really wrong with that. Folks will make up their own mind in the long run what matters to them and what doesn’t in a politician. In a really sorry field such as they have in La. Vitter still looks pretty good by comparison.</p>
<p>I’m the one with the double standard? Not the people who hate Hillary for the very thing that they give Wendy a pass for? :)</p>
<p>Not to mention this gem: “boys will be boys” </p>
<p>You forgot: boys will be boys, and the women who do their bidding go to jail.</p>
<p>But I guess to the reactionary right, that’s how the world is supposed to work. Men are supposed to philander and women are supposed to be punished for letting them.</p>
<p>Seriously, I wish one person would be honest enough to admit that if they hate Hillary for being cheated on (and not the “D” behind her name), they have to hate Wendy, too.</p>
<p>Many keep forgetting that we’re not talking about people on the Democratic side being in favor of the sexual aspects of what Bill Clinton did but against what Vitter et.al (and the et.al. is getting to be a pretty long list) did. I don’t know a single Democrat who believed what Clinton did was acceptable (even if the affair was legal which Vitter’s was not). In fact, most favored Clinton being reprimanded because clearly what he did was wrong. The issue we were grappling with was whether it was an impeachable offense or not. That’s a significant distinction and I think it would add to the integrity of the conversation to remember that, instead of using the straw man approach.</p>