N.Y. Gov. Spitzer in sex scandal; pimp said to hold Israel passport

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, touted in the past as the first potential Jewish U.S. president, found his political career on the brink of collapse Monday after he was accused of paying for a romp with a high-priced call girl, in a prostitution ring allegedly led by a man found with an Israeli passport at his home.

The Associated Press reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger ordered Mark Brener, 62, of Cliffside Park, N.J., to be held without bail after the passport and $600,000 in cash were found in his apartment.

Brener's lawyer, Jennifer Brown, said her client was a U.S. citizen who had lived in the United States for 20 years.

The scandal Monday drew immediate calls for his resignation after a news
conference in which a glassy-eyed Spitzer, his shell-shocked wife at his side, apologized to his family and the people of New York.

"I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of
myself," said the 48-year-old father of three teenage girls. "I must now
dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."

He did not discuss his political future and ignored shouted questions about whether he would resign. And he gave no details of what he was apologizing for.

Spitzer, a son of Jewish Eastern-European parents, grew up in Riverdale, N.Y., and was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law.

Spitzer was clearly examining his legal options following the break of the scandal; a spokesman said the governor had retained the Manhattan law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, one of the nation's biggest.

Spitzer was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet in a Washington
hotel room the night before Valentine's Day with a prostitute from a call-girl business known as the Emperors Club VIP, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still going on.

The governor has not been charged, and prosecutors would not comment on the case.

But an affidavit based on the wiretap told of a man identified as Client 9 - Spitzer, according to the law enforcement official - paying $4,300 in cash, some of it credit for future trysts, some of it for sex with a petite brunette, 5-feet 5 inches (127 centimeters), and 105
pounds (48 kilograms), named Kristen.

The scandal came 16 months after Spitzer stormed into the governor's office with a historic margin of victory, vowing to root out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general.

But his first year in office was marred by turmoil, and the latest scandal raised questions about whether he would make it through the week.

Lawmakers call on Spitzer to resign
"He has to step down. No one will stand with him," said Rep. Peter King, a Republican congressman from Long Island. "I never try to take advantage or gloat over a personal tragedy. However, this is different. This is a guy who is so self-righteous, and so unforgiving."

Democratic Assemblyman John McEneny said: "I don't think anyone remembers
anything like this - the fact that the governor has a reputation as a reformer and there is a certain assumption as attorney general that you're Caesar's wife. It's a different element than if you were an accountant."

Democratic Lt. Gov. David Paterson would become New York's first black
governor if Spitzer were to resign.

The allegations were outlined in papers filed in federal court in New York.

A defendant in the case, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, told a prostitute identified only as Kristen that she should take a train from New York to Washington for an encounter with Client 9 on the night of Feb. 13, according to the complaint. The defendant confirmed that the client would be paying for everything - train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time and hotel.

The prostitute met the client in Room 871 at about 10 p.m., according to the complaint. When discussing how the payments would be arranged, Client 9 told Lewis: "Yup, same as in the past, no question about it - suggesting Client 9 had done this before.

According to court papers, an Emperors Club agent was told by the prostitute that her evening with Client 9 went well. The agent said she had been told that "the client would ask you to do things that ... you might not think were safe ... very basic things, according to the papers, but Kristen responded by saying: I have a way of dealing with that ... I'd be, like, listen dude, you really want the sex?"

The next day, Spitzer testified before a congressional subcommittee about
regulations on the bond industry.

The ring arranged sex between wealthy men and more than 50 prostitutes in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, London and Paris, prosecutors said. Four people accused of helping to operate the ring were arrested last week.

The club's Web site displays photos of scantily clad women with their faces hidden. It also shows hourly rates, with prices set according to each woman's ratings, which range from one to seven diamonds. The highest-ranked prostitutes cost $5,500 an hour, prosecutors said.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong," Spitzer said at the news conference. "I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better."

The case began as a financial investigation by Internal Revenue Service
agents, and at some point was referred to the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney's office, authorities said. It was not clear from the
authorities whether Spitzer was a target of the investigation from the start, or whether agents came his across his name by accident.

Prosecutors compiled statements from a confidential source and an undercover officer and examined more than 5,000 telephone calls and text messages and more than 6,000 e-mails, as well as bank, travel and hotel records.

The four people arrested were charged with violating the Mann Act, a 1910
federal law against crossing state lines for purposes of prostitution.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, noted that
prostitution customers are often not charged, and said charges against Spitzer might be unlikely.

"Especially if he resigns, he may just be left alone. It may be that the public is satisfied by his resignation as governor," Tobias said.

Spitzer clashed with Wall Street executives throughout his two terms as
attorney general. Among other things, he uncovered crooked practices and
self-dealing in the stock brokerage and insurance industries and in corporate board rooms, and went after former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso over his $187.5 million compensation package, calling it unreasonable.

He soon became known as the Sheriff of Wall Street. Time magazine named him Crusader of the Year, and the tabloids proclaimed him Eliot Ness.

His campaign slogan during his run for governor was Day One Everything
Changes. But his term as governor has been fraught with problems, including an unpopular plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and a plot by his aides to smear his main Republican nemesis.

Spitzer had been expected to testify in front of a state commission he had created to answer for his role in the scandal, in which his aides were accused of using the state police to compile travel records to embarrass Senate GOP leader Joseph Bruno.

His cases as attorney general included a few criminal prosecutions of
prostitution rings and tourism involving prostitutes. In 2004, he took part in an investigation of an escort service in New York City that resulted in the arrest of 18 people on charges of promoting prostitution and related charges.

Whites to become minority in U.S. by 2050(And the White news commentator said it with a smile!)

Recent studies have shown what most of us who don’t have our heads in the sand know all too well. Whites will be a minority in their own country by 2050. Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into minority status, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday. This will make it impossible to vote our way out of this situation, or hope for legislation that we prefer. With the hope for a peaceful political solution to the problem facing Whites today dwindling, it appears our nation is pointing head long into the abyss with no hope of a u-turn. It is important that you share this with your friends and family, we need to start thinking about racial politics now, and what is right for our family, and our extended racial family. Someday it will come to a head, and we need to be mentally prepared for it. Your children are counting on any small action you take right now to help spread the word.

How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.

Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms.

Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.

Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.

An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance.

John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies."

Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency.

Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.

There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse, depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their "symptoms" had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric survivors.

While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.

Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?