Folks, it’s gonna get ugly out there.

GOP Pork, Imperiled By McCain

(WP) – The congressional Republican establishment, with its charade of pretending to crack down on budget earmarks while in fact preserving its addiction to pork, faces embarrassment this week when the Democratic-designed budget is brought to the Senate floor. The GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, is an uncompromising pork buster with no use for the evasions by Republican addicts on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Jim DeMint, a first-term reform Republican from South Carolina, is to propose a one-year, no-loopholes moratorium on earmarks as a budget amendment. McCain has announced his support for the amendment and intends to co-sponsor it. DeMint wants to coordinate McCain’s visits to the Senate floor from the campaign trail so the candidate can be there to speak and vote for the moratorium.

The irony could hardly be greater. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, an ardent earmarker, is smart enough politically to realize how unpopular the practice is with the Republican base. Consequently, McConnell combines anti-earmark rhetoric with evasive tactics designed to save pork. But McCain, surely not the presidential candidate McConnell wanted, is pledging that as president he will veto any bill containing earmarks. McConnell, meanwhile, is running for reelection in Kentucky by bragging about the pork he has brought the state.

McConnell has appointed a “task force” of five Republican senators to study earmarks, headed by the universally respected Richard Lugar of Indiana. But Lugar has never shown much interest in the subject. The dominant member is Thad Cochran of Mississippi, ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee and the Senate’s reigning king of pork. Cochran, who not long ago suggested McCain is unfit to be president, has secured $774 million in earmarks this year. Add the earmarks of three other members — Lugar, Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Mike Crapo of Idaho — and the task force itself accounts for more than $1.1 billion in pork.

The fifth member is Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, DeMint’s partner in pork-fighting and a McCain supporter. How will Cochran and Coburn agree on earmarks? The answer is that they will not. “Everyone knows,” a Senate reformer told me, “Cochran will never allow his right to earmark to be diminished.” Since McConnell insists on “consensus” without a majority or minority report, all that will come out of the task force is a call for “transparency.”

Lawyer-like, Republican leaders are demanding a definition of an earmark. They could get a good idea by looking at a sample of earmarks recently secured by task force members. Cochran: $475,000 for beaver management in Mississippi. Lugar: $240,000 to rehabilitate the Alhambra Theater in Evansville, Ind. Isakson: $300,000 for Old Fort Jackson in Savannah, Ga. Crapo: $250,000 for the Idaho sage grouse.

House Republican evasions are subtler. Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, a staunch defender of earmarking, has proposed a statutory “earmark reform commission,” with a maximum life of six months, during which Republicans would refrain from earmarking. But that would allow them back at the pork barrel before the year ends.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, who, unlike McConnell, does not earmark and criticizes the practice, flinched from making a bold move as this year’s session began. He could have led the House Republican Conference to endorse a yearlong moratorium and name reformer Jeff Flake of Arizona to a vacancy on the Appropriations Committee.

Instead, the Republicans picked Jo Bonner of Alabama, who spent 18 years as a House staffer before his election in 2002. Bonner has voted against Flake in 49 out of 50 attempts to kill earmarks. He has promised his Mobile area constituents that they would get “fair value” for their tax dollar — the justification for bringing home the bacon from Washington. Incredibly, Boehner hailed Bonner’s selection as a step toward earmark reform.

The GOP may be falling behind the Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moving toward a moratorium. In the Senate, courageous freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri supports the DeMint amendment. She could be joined by her choice for president, Barack Obama. These developments encouraged Flake to say: “If Democrats actually move ahead with an earmark moratorium before Republicans, the Democrats will get the credit for eliminating earmarks, and, frankly, they’ll deserve it.”

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‘I Apologize to the Public’

Updated, 5:44 p.m. | Following is a transcript of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s brief statement to the public, delivered at his Midtown Manhattan office on Monday afternoon:

Over the past nine years, eight as attorney general and one as governor, I’ve tried to uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all. We vowed to bring real change to New York and that will continue. Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. I will not be taking questions. Thank you very much. I will report back to you in short order. Thank you very much.

More than 100 reporters, along with 30 television cameras and 20 still photographers, had awaited Mr. Spitzer’s announcement — originally scheduled for 2:15 p.m. — in a packed briefing room at the governor’s office at 633 Third Avenue. As the door opened, Mr. Spitzer had his arm around his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer; the two nodded and then strode forward together. Both had glassy, tear-filled eyes, but they did not cry.

The governor — addressing reports that he had been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-price prostitute at a Washington hotel last month — spoke for just 64 seconds, declining to take questions and remaining silent on his political future. As he prepared to leave, three reporters screamed out, “Are you resigning? Are you resigning?”

Holding his wife’s hand, Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, strode quickly from the room, saying nothing, until the metal door slammed behind him.

Although Albany is in turmoil, so far, public response has been muted. Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who is speaker of the State Assembly and one of the three most powerful officials in state government, said in a statement, “The allegations against the Governor are before the public. I have nothing to add at this time.”

James N. Tedisco, the leader of the Republican minority in the Assembly, appears to have been the first state official to call publicly for Mr. Spitzer’s resignation. Mr. Tedisco said in a statement:

Today’s news that Eliot Spitzer was likely involved with a prostitution ring and his refusal to deny it leads to one inescapable conclusion: he has disgraced his office and the entire state of New York. He should resign his office immediately.

Public service is a public trust — Eliot Spitzer violated this trust and has forsaken his oath of office. For the good of his family, for the good of our state, for the good of the governorship, Eliot Spitzer must resign immediately. He is unfit to lead our state and unfit to hold public office.

Joseph N. Mondello, the chairman of the New York State Republican Committee, said in a statement:

The stunning allegations of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s personal involvement in an interstate prostitution ring are a shocking disappointment to the people of New York. This is a sad day for Governor Spitzer and his family as well as for the citizens of our state.

It is hard to see how Governor Spitzer can hope to govern effectively while the political, governmental and legal consequences of his behavior swirl about him.

New Yorkers are facing hard times. They need a Governor who is fully focused on serving their best interests. Governor Spitzer should do the right thing, not only for himself and his family, but also for all the people of New York.

He should resign immediately, so New York’s government can effectively return to serving its citizens.

United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, who was elected in 1998 and has sometimes been mentioned as a possible governor some day, said in a statement, “I feel bad for him and his family but until he makes a more complete statement, I have nothing more to say.”

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Spitzer – Hoisted on his own petard

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda.

ALBANY -(NYT) Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.

The wiretap captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat, today made a brief public appearance during which he apologized for his behavior, and described it as a “private matter.” He did not address his political future.

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong,” said Mr. Spitzer, who appeared with his wife Silda at his Manhattan office. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.”

“I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”

Before speaking, Mr. Spitzer stood with his arm around his wife; the two nodded and then strode forward together to face more than 100 reporters. Both had glassy, tear-filled eyes, but they did not cry.

As he went to leave, three reporters called out, “Are you resigning? Are you resigning?”, and Mr. Spitzer charged out of the room, slamming the door.

The governor learned that he had been implicated in the prostitution inquiry when a federal official contacted his staff Friday, according to the person briefed on the case.

The governor informed his top aides Sunday night and this morning of his involvement. He canceled his public events today and scheduled the announcement for this afternoon after inquiries from The Times. The governor’s aides appeared shaken before he spoke, and one of them began to weep as they waited for him to make his statement at his Manhattan office.

The man described as Client 9 in the affidavit arranged to meet with a prostitute who was part of the ring, Emperors Club VIP, on the night of Feb. 13. Mr. Spitzer traveled to Washington that evening, according to a person told of his travel arrangements.

The affidavit says that Client 9 met with the woman in hotel room 871 but does not identify the hotel. Mr. Spitzer stayed at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Feb. 13, according to a source who was told of his travel arrangements. Room 871 at the Mayflower Hotel that evening was registered under the name George Fox.

The law enforcement official said that several people running the prostitution ring knew Mr. Spitzer by the name of George Fox, though a few of the prostitutes came to realize he was the governor of New York.

Mr. Fox is a friend and donor to Mr. Spitzer. Asked in a telephone interview Monday whether he accompanied Mr. Spitzer to Washington on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Mr. Fox responded: “Why would you think that? I did not.”

Told that the Room 871 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel was registered in Mr. Fox’s name but with Mr. Spitzer’s Fifth Avenue address, Mr. Fox said, “That is the first I have heard of it. Until I speak to the governor further, I have no comment.”

Federal prosecutors rarely charge clients in prostitution cases, which are generally seen as state crimes. But the Mann Act, passed by Congress in 1910 to address prostitution, human trafficking and what was viewed at the time as immorality in general, makes it a crime to transport someone between states for the purpose of prostitution. The four defendants charged in the case unsealed last week were all charged with that crime, along with several others.

Mr. Spitzer had a difficult first year in office, rocked by a mix of scandal and legislative setbacks. In recent weeks, however, Mr. Spitzer seemed to have rebounded, with his Democratic party poised to perhaps gain control of the state Senate for the first time in four decades.

Though his signature issue was pursuing Wall Street misdeeds, as attorney general Mr. Spitzer also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. “It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

Albany for months has been roiled by bitter fighting and accusations of dirty tricks. The Albany County district attorney is set to issue in the coming days the results of his investigation into Mr. Spitzer’s first scandal, his aides’ involvement in an effort to tarnish Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican.

Under the state constitution, should Mr. Spitzer resign, the lieutenant governor, David A. Paterson, would become governor for the remainder of Mr. Spitzer’s term.

Mr. Paterson’s current office would remain unfilled until the 2010 election, as the constitution makes no provision for filling a vacancy in the lieutenant governor’s office. Under those circumstances, Joseph L. Bruno, is the Republican majority leader and temporary president of the state senate, would “perform all the duties of the lieutenant-governor” until a new one is elected in 2010.

Those duties include acting as governor when the nominal office-holder is out of the state. Moreover, should Mr. Spitzer resign and if Mr. Paterson were unwilling or unable to take his place, Mr. Bruno would become acting governor—a possibility that would hold special irony, given the vicious and ongoing battles between Mr. Bruno and Mr. Spitzer over the last year.

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Agency Confronts Iran With Evidence on Weapons

WASHINGTON – (NYT) -The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that it had confronted Iran for the first time with evidence supplied by the United States and other countries that strongly suggested the country had experimented with technology to make a nuclear weapon, but that Iranian officials dismissed the documents obtained from an Iranian scientist as “baseless and fabricated.”The exchange was contained in an 11-page report in which the agency painted a mixed picture of Iran’s activities, saying Iranian officials had answered a number of long-standing questions about its nuclear activities but continued to defy the United Nations Security Council by refusing to halt the enrichment of uranium. Still, the amount of uranium that the agency reported that the country has produced so far was small — roughly a tenth of the amount that would be required to produce enough fuel for a single nuclear bomb.

The agency’s report was published at a moment that the Bush Administration’s efforts to greatly increase the pressure on the country is in disarray.

A National Intelligence Estimate published in early December concluded, to the surprise of many in the White House, that Iran had suspended its work on a weapons design in late 2003, apparently in response to growing international pressure. That report immediately undercut President Bush’s effort, in his last year in office, to rally other nations to impose harsh financial sanctions on Iran for continuing to produce uranium fuel. Russia and China, both of which have deep commercial relationships with Iran, have made clear they would not go along with severe sanctions, and a watered-down set of new sanctions is now headed back to the Security Council.

America’s allies in Europe have expressed puzzlement about the intelligence estimate, and some have suggested its timing was intended to reduce the chances that Mr. Bush could take military action against Iran’s nuclear sites in coming months, a notion intelligence officials deny. In recent weeks the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, told Congress he now has regrets about how the intelligence estimate was presented, saying it had failed to emphasize that Iran is moving ahead with the hardest part of any bomb project: Producing the fuel. Designing a crude weapon is considered a far easier task.

It was the evidence that Iran was secretly working on such a design for many years that is now at the heart of the confrontation between Iran and the nuclear agency, which is based in Vienna.

Since 2005, the I.A.E.A. has urged the United States and other countries to allow the agency to confront Iran with evidence obtained on a laptop computer that once belonged to an Iranian technician with access to the country’s nuclear program. But the U.S. refused until a few weeks ago, and only agreed on Feb. 15, the report said, to allow original documents to be shown to the Iranians. In the report issued Friday, the agency described some of that evidence in public for the first time, “all of which the Agency believes would be relevant to nuclear weapon R & D.”

The most suspicious-looking document in the collection turned over to the I.A.E.A. was a schematic diagram showing what appeared to be the development of a warhead, with a layout of internal components. “This layout has been assessed by the agency as quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device,” the I.A.E.A. wrote. But that does not prove it was a nuclear warhead, and Iran argued that its missile program used “conventional warheads only.”

The report referred to other documents drawn from the laptop — though the source of the material was never mentioned — that included documents describing how to test “high-voltage detonator firing equipment” and technology to fire multiple detonators at one time, which is required to trigger a nuclear reaction by forcing a nuclear core to implode. The report also described work on whether a detonation could be triggered in a 400-meter-deep shaft from a distance of 10 kilometers, or about six miles, leading to suspicions that the Iranian scientists were already thinking about nuclear testing. But it is unclear whether the shaft would have been wide enough for a nuclear weapon.

In a briefing for reporters and nuclear experts on Friday, a senior I.A.E.A. official said that the agency had reached no independent conclusions about whether the documents added up to an effort to build a nuclear weapon, or whether those efforts were suspended more than four years ago, as the National Intelligence Estimate concluded. “At this point in time we don’t make any conclusion” about the documents, the official said.

David Albright, a former weapons inspector who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security, said that “The issue now is whether this is symptomatic of a comprehensive nuclear weapons effort, or just individual projects. Is it part of a plan to design and develop a weapon that can fit on a nuclear missile? And if so, why are so many pieces missing?”

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