Breaking News: You won't have Anthony Weiner to kick around anymore

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) will resign his seat in Congress.

I'm of two minds on this: there are worse sexual offenders in the current Congress who have survived and continue to serve with the support of their party. I'd have been fine with him getting an official reprimand from the House...with the caveat that if he really did knowingly have sexual exchanges with underaged girls, he should have faced expulsion.

But Weiner's denials for the better part of a week undermined him more than anything. And the continued roll out of more and more personally offensive behavior instead of a straight up confession in the face of inevitable revelations sunk him more than anything else.

It raises a larger point: what personal behavioral standard SHOULD there be for Congresscritters and what level of privacy for personal "quirks" such as a penchant for sexting should exist?

Comments

[southwest]

I feel sorry for his wife. She had so many hopes of becoming the First Lady of the New York City.

[shweetnettie13.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna miss his speeches. They were always so entertaining.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a shame.
It was bad enough he did that -- worse when he publically lied about it.


It's unfortunate NOT that Weiner is stepping down - he should. It's that others haven't stepped down.

Vitter being a glaring example of someone who not only did NOT step down, but was "forgiven" by his party (lest the even "greater" sin of a Democrat being appointed to replace him be committed).


Not sure what the behavioral standard should be -- but I'm pretty sure things like sleeping with prostitutes while in office, sending pictures of your junk, should be outside the bounds..

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

That is unfortunate.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

I don't like him, and I don't like his politics however he should not have resigned and there should have been no calls for him to do so (unless like you say there turns out to be evidence that he knowingly sent sexually explicit messages to an underage girl, however there is no such evidence of that at this time).

As far as how much privacy for his personal "quirks" he should have, that is not so much the issue. He ran for Congress putting himself in a very public position, he can't really expect too much privacy. The really question is how much tolerance we should have for them and in this case what he did was basically nothing. Sure it is not nothing to his wife, but we're not his wife. He didn't abuse his power as a Congressman, he didn't break any laws, he was not being a hypocrite, yes he did lie to us but it was about a purely personal matter and he wasn't under oath at the time.

He did absolutely nothing to deserve to lose his seat.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

What a moron, the wife is totally hot:

http://www.lemondeavance.com/lemonde_Huma-Abedin-L-intelligence-au-service-de-la-beaute--434.htm

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

To each his own, personally I think she is way too skinny and her mouth is way too big.

She's not ugly but based on looks alone she is not someone I would have ever been interested in.

That said smokin hot wives has never stopped guys from having affairs before so I'm not sure why Weiner should be any different and in this case he didn't even have an affair (so far as we know. We also don't know just how much she would care about his sending flirty texts, I mean sure the average woman would probably be threatened by it but I know several who would have been personally ok with it and she may be as well.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

They're staying together, another woman would have bitterly sued his sorry ass. I agree though, it's a private matter if even he cheated on her.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

Isn't she pregnant? Or is that just a rumour?

[southwest]

for now she is pregnant
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/weiners-wife-is-pregnant/
hope she will keep the baby

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

i can't even see how pregnant she is, the blog doesn't load for me? wth

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I don't think full details have been released, I just googled and all I could find was 'early stages of pregnancy'. Women, especially women in the public eye, do not usually announce their pregnancy right away due to the high occurance rates of first trimester miscarriages so I'm wondering if the release of this news was an attempt at public image clean-up Although if that's the case it seems to have back-fired, it just makes him look sleazier.

[southwest]

I guess you have exceeded the number of freebes on the site of the NYT, here is a copy:

June 8, 2011, 5:11 pm
Weiner’s Wife Is Pregnant
By MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER


Their marriage has become the subject of intense speculation and scrutiny amid an embarrassing online sex scandal.

Now, Representative Anthony D. Weiner and Huma Abedin are about to make news of a different kind: they are expecting their first child.

Ms. Abedin, 35, is in the early stages of pregnancy, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

The pregnancy, which the couple have disclosed to close friends and family, adds a new dimension to questions about the future of their marriage.

Mr. Weiner, 46, has admitted to engaging in salacious online conversations with at least six women over the last few years, including an incident last month in which he sent a photograph of himself in underwear to a college student in Washington state. He apologized to his wife and declared that they have no intention of splitting up.

“We will weather this,” Mr. Weiner said on Monday, during his emotional news conference. “I love her very much, and she loves me.”

But Ms. Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has remained silent about the topic as she keeps up a hectic schedule at the State Department.

Ms. Abedin returned to work this week and departed on Wednesday for a trip to northern Africa with Ms. Clinton.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

ok, thx

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

hahaha, well done

[southwest]

that reeks of photoshop, try this one
http://static.thehollywoodgossip.com/images/gallery/anthony-weiner-and-huma-abedin_552x831.jpg
plus, she is a muslim

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

in all fairness, she's a lot better looking than most muslim ladies and above average in general. he's definitely not good looking even by muslim standards.

[southwest]

he's alright, though not Brad Pitt, but did you see his package?

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

skinny guys are always hung like horses

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I'm saying ;)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

And can send pictures to prove it. Oh wait.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I think the level of privacy has to be "Very Strict" for public officials. These people should be trained to be sexless public servants. I don't want my tax money wasted on some horny bald guy in the whitehouse looking to tweet his semi-erections. Should they be communicating vicariously, flirting, sexting, flashing, let them suffer the threat of immediate dismissal pending evidence, like a heavy sword dangling above their heads.

In this case I deem a purple letter "A" should be branded on his left buttock.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

In this case I deem a purple letter "A" should be branded on his left buttock.

Yeah, and I think he should tweet a picture of it to all his followers. Oh, wait. That's how he got in this mess in the first place.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

methinks we need a special adult version of tweeter to track his accomplishments

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Pure fear. Working that hard for your constituents and then dropping them all because you can't take the heat from the press.

I have no idea what he's thinking.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Finally our long national nightmare is over.

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

haha

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

I wish the voters had been allowed to decide, but I shed no tears for him. While I think the Dems need strong and vocal liberals like him, they don't need any that exercise such monumental stupidity.

His poor wife, I feel so awful for her.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

So many possible comments, so little time....

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

The Democrats are either too saint-y, or too much of a sissy who easily submits to pressure. Somehow I rather doubt the former.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

That's true, Dems don't make "family values" and "morality" such a big deal in their chest thumping like Republicans do, and certainly are more open to equal rights for sexual minorities. But like Jon Stewart said, what a whimpy sex scandal to loose office over, because Weiner didn't even get the goods :P

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

His main problem was denying it, continually and stridently, and then showing that it was all true. If he had admitted it from the beginning, it never would have gotten traction.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Weiner can blame this squarely on Kos and his supporters. They kept this issue alive because they thought they could burn Breitbart on it.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it's fitting he met this end considering he first won political office due to a smear campaign that he at first denied being behind but later admitted.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Once again I've had to google Ginger Lee.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Weiner is the second congressman from New York who has resigned over a virtual sex scandal. Who would have thought New Yorkers would be so uptight about virtual sex?

Others have mentioned Vitter, the Senator from Louisiana. As William Jefferson and others have established, the standards that politicians are held to there are... quite different.

The standards for behavior seem to have much more to do with the people they represent than the office they hold. I'm actually a supporter of this rather than having congress police itself through some rules. After all, this is the group of people who wrote campaign finance laws that pretty much ensure that nobody who is honest or decent can raise enough money to make it past the primaries.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

To answer the questions posed at the end of the post...

I think the line is crossed when the law is broken. Lying under oath, harassment, underage sex of any kind (real or virtual), rape, assault, etc. That said, if a person lies at a press conference or has an affair, while that doesn't (necessarily) have any bearing on his ability to function as a congressperson, it's true that their constituents might lose respect for them and wish to vote someone with more character into office - and there's nothing wrong with that.

Being a politician means your character and choices are under a lot of scrutiny, which is something you should come to terms with before running for any kind of public office. And I personally would like those representing me to have character, because I want them to do what's right and not just what's popular. I want them to be honest. That may be asking too much from a politician, but I don't know if I could trust a guy who lies at a press conference about a Twitter pic. How do I know he's telling the truth about other things?

tl;dr it is the prerogative of the constituents to vote out anyone who doesn't meet their moral/ethical standards, but breaking of the law is grounds for impeachment or at least a serious reprimand (depending on the severity of the broken law).