“A full airing”

Harry Reid won’t make nice with David Vitter.

Harry Reid looks more and more like a “wartime consigliere.”

Instead of playing the Senate-club game, he came out and said that David Vitter’s transgressions:

… should have a full airing. There are a lot of accusations about prostitutes here in Washington, prostitutes in Louisiana. I don’t know if that’s breaking the law or not. It’s obvious that it all came about as someone who’s being charged with a crime here in Washington, D.C.

This, plus a formal complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee from CREW, makes it less likely that Vitter is going to get away with his “I’ve already stonewalled that question once” refusal to come clean, much as his Republican colleagues would like him to. (Of course they don’t know yet whether Vitter broke the law; that’s what investigations are for. But “I’m not an expert in prostitution law” is hardly a response.)

Footnote Vitter appears to still be Giuliani’s Southern regional chair. Is Rudy getting questions about this?

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com