Opinion: In today’s pages: War, sex, and real estate
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Columnist Joel Stein asks the question on everyone’s mind -- what exactly do you get for $1,000 an hour?
I called a high-end escort in Las Vegas who charges $500 an hour -- but gives, according to her website, a discount to educators and political activists. The escort , it turns out, is a huge fan of Spitzer, particularly his prosecution of Wall Street crimes when he was New York’s attorney general. ‘I liked him. And I don’t like many politicians. I have nothing but respect for him,’ she said. ‘It’s a shame politicians can’t have sex like everyone else.’The roughly $1,000 an hour that Spitzer paid for time with ‘Kristen,’ she told me, was not, as I assumed, to guarantee secrecy.... And the exorbitant rate wasn’t a premium for weird or talented sex.
Former soldier and military historian Ed Ruggero notes near the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre that war is never simple. And the Center for American Progress’ Lawrence J. Korb and Sean E. Duggan argue that if Gen. David H. Petraeus testifies alone, we’ll never get the full picture of Iraq.
The editorial board examines new mortgage regulations proposed by the Bush administration, and says that after 136 years, it’s really about time for a new mining law. Finally, the board urges the state to do away with another historical relic -- loyalty oaths.
On the letters page, readers react to Max Boot’s take on Adm. William Fallon. Escondido’s Blaise Jackson cracks, ‘So armchair-admiral Boot crawls out from under his ideologue rock to toss dirt at the departing Fallon; what a surprise.’