Democrat New York Governor Eliot Spitzer paved his way to Albany by doing things that, had he not had the immunity granted to elected office holders, would have probably found him on the losing side of several large slander and libel suits -- at the very least.

Spitzer has continued playing his thug-like games as governor. The new attorney general of New York, Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, just released an astounding report on Spitzer's conduct towards another political enemy, Republican New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. From OpinionJournal.com's Political Diary (sub req):

Mr. Cuomo found that key Spitzer aides directed the State Police to manufacture documents that hadn't previously existed that would purport to show that Mr. Bruno had used State Police vehicles and personnel for solely political trips, when that was not the case. The documents were supposedly assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request that was, in fact, never made. A liberal newspaper, the Albany Times Union, was then encouraged by Spitzer aides to write an article about Mr. Bruno's alleged abuse of power. After the Times Union story appeared, Mr. Spitzer himself then got into the act and called for an official probe of Mr. Bruno's purported wrongdoing.

Manufacturing evidence, eh Eliot? Been a busy few months. Even the New York Times has an editorial out (Mr. Spitzer's Unacceptable Means) blasting the governor. And, according to Spitzer's mouthpiece at the Albany Times Union, Spitzer already has another aide under investigation and on unpaid leave. No surprise there, Spitzer is conducting business the way he always has, and with the same personnel -- it's just that he isn't able to hide behind a prosecutor's cloak and immunity anymore.

The governor has issued a denial that he knew anything about anything.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's self-created mess, concerning his Nixonian use of the New York State Police to 'get' a political opponent, continues to get curiouser and curiouser. Sunday, the New York Governor penned an apology for the New York Times that read more as a blueprint for how he wants the media to cover this scandal than a real mea culpa. Then we learned that the two key aides involved in the episode were not allowed to speak to NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigators. Funny that Spitzer didn't include that particular detail in his apology.

The latest development keeping the issue alive is that Spitzer's office, far from cooperating as he claimed, actually blocked two top officials from talking to Cuomo's investigators. Although Cuomo's report was vague on the issue, Spitzer's office now admits that its lawyers told probers that Communications Director Darren Dopp and chief of staff Richard Baum would not be permitted to answer questions. The two submitted brief, signed statements drafted and notarized by Spitzer's top lawyer. Cuomo's office was so frustrated by the refusal to testify that it didn't include the statements in the report as a punishment for the failure to cooperate.

A concurrent investigation to Cuomo's, conducted by the New York State Inspector General, found no criminal conduct by Spitzer or his office. The problem with that is two fold: first, the Inspector General neglected to use her subpoena powers to question Spitzer or his aides, failing to even interview them; and second, the Inspector General, Kristine Hamann, was appointed to her position by Spitzer!

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is finally getting negative attention from some of his biggest allies from his career as New York State attorney general -- the mainstream media. For years they ignored Spitzer's obvious and continual abuse of his prosecutorial powers in order to maintain access and good relations with him. Now they're discovering that once a law-stretching bully, always a law-stretching bully. From MSNBC:

"He was not prepared to govern," Mr Siegel says. "When he was attorney-general he had extensive subpoena powers that allowed him to embarrass private companies with reputations to protect. That gave him tremendous leverage."

Subpoena to embarrass -- and extort. That pretty much sums up Spitzer's career as AG, and how he got elected as governor. Here's a scathing bit from an editorial in Investors Business Daily, titled Richard Milhous Spitzer:

Corruption: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the one president ever forced to resign seem to have a lot in common. But at least Nixon waited a little while before using the tools of state against his political enemies.

Even the New York Times is getting in on this now, with front page articles both yesterday and today. Message to Eliot: when the same media outlets who have previously given your conduct a pass start critically scrutinizing your tactics, watch out. Who knows what might start being reported on, and how far back they will dig...

The Clinton campaign can crow over key pick-ups of two governors. Maryland's Martin O'Malley announced his support Wednesday and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, from Hillary's home state of New York, is expected to do the same next Monday. So, it's time to update the endorsemepalooza list:

Democrats
Hillary Clinton: Tom Vilsack; Rep. James McGovern (Mass.); Gov. Jon S. Corzine (N.J.); Gov. Eliot Spitzer (N.Y.); Gov. Martin O'Malley (Md.)
John Edwards: Sen. David Obey (Wisc.)
Barack Obama: Gov. Rod Blagojevich (Ill.); Gov Tim Kaine (Va.); Jesse Jackson

Republicans
Rudy Giuliani: Steve Forbes
Mike Huckabee: Gov. Mike Rounds (S.D.)
John McCain: Gov. Mitch Daniels (Ind.); Gov. Jon Huntsman (Utah); Gov. Tim Pawlenty (Minn.)
Mitt Romney: Orrin Hatch, Bob Beauprez

Note: for the most part we are currently not listing all the endorsements of congressional members from a candidates' home state, since these are mostly shored up. Check out The Hill for more details.

How important are endorsements? Did we miss any key ones? Weigh in with comments below...

A Hillary presidency would present New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer with an important decision.

The Associated Press reports that if Hillary wins in 2008, Spitzer has the power to appoint her successor, who would serve until 2010. At that point, voters will determine (in a special election) who will carry out the remainder of Hillary's term (2012).

Spitzer's choices might include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late New York senator; Lt. Gov. David Paterson; and Congressman Gregory Meeks, the AP reports.

I can't emphasize enough how important the latest Eliot Spitzer scandal is. A Democrat State Attorney General has issued a 57 page report detailing that close aides to the Democrat Governor of the same state manufactured evidence in order to take down a Republican political opponent. While Spitzer claims ignorance, the aides accused are longtime Spitzer associates who worked in similar positions for Spitzer when he was the New York Attorney General. Imaging the outcry if a Republican Governor (or President) did this to a Democrat. You wouldn't read or hear of anything else in the news for weeks. Methinks a Grand Jury investigation of the Governor's role in all of this should be next.

And as to Spitzer's denial, I offer this from Michael Goodwin in today's New York Daily News:

In the fall of 1998, Eliot Spitzer was winning the race for attorney general. I was the Daily News Editorial Page editor, and my colleagues and I had pressed Spitzer about the source of millions of dollars he was spending on the race. He told us, as he told election officials, that he had taken out personal bank loans. Days before the election, Spitzer confessed to another newspaper that his father really was the source of the money.

Soon after I got to my office that day, the phone rang. It was Spitzer, calling to explain. "Eliot," I said, "you lied to us."

His response was prompt and certain: "I had to," he said, adding his father didn't want his role known.

So, he lied, confessed to a paper (probably after the paper had found out the truth), and then told everyone that he "had to lie". Tells you alot about the guy's character. I think that perhaps a Grand Jury should not only look into this event, but into Spitzer's past as Attorney General of New York as well.

Read the rest of Goodwin's column - it's a real shocker. We could, and should, be watching the downfall of a governor. Can we say emergency state-wide election?

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was known as a man who wouldn't back down from a fight while serving as attorney general for the state. He went after corporations (his favorite targets) including: insurance, record and financial firms. He stuck it to the man at every opportunity like a good anti-Capitalist.

Now, as governor, he has the opportunity to stop crime by doing nothing, just letting a law on the books stand. But no, Spitzer has gain street cred with the other Dems and try to increase his vote among Hispanics by changing a law that stopped illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses:

The change rolls back rules adopted four years ago under the Pataki administration that made it difficult, if not impossible, for tens of thousands of immigrants to obtain driver's licenses because they could not prove legal status. Under the new rules, the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept a current foreign passport as proof of identity without also requiring a valid yearlong visa or other evidence of legal immigration.

Just a question, governor: didn't at least three of the ten men in two planes kill thousands of people in your biggest city overstay their visas? They all had passports as I recall, so your little plan here would not have caught them.

It's coming folks, the individual states are making their moves to subvert federal law and pass their own amnesty plans. The same party that freaks out every time someone suggests that abortion should be decided by the states will have no issue with states acting on this issue. They couldn't care less about the national security implications or even the implications to local security, as long as it gets them more votes and keeps them in power, it's all good.

Spitzer has his eye on a run at the presidency and he's being a good soldier for the real leadership in New York, Hillary Clinton and Chuckie Schumer. They are the power players and whatever they want, Spitzer will give them. Keep that in mind when he runs in 2012 or 2016.

Deval Patrick has been a bit critical of Governor Mitt Romney not spending much time in the state in an apparent bid to run for president in 2008, and help elect Republicans across the country. While you can take your stabs at Romney for not staying in the Commonwealth much -- who can blame him -- at least he's honest about it. Deval Patrick, on the other hand, attended a fund-raiser in New York what was not on his "public schedule."

In a sign that Patrick may be getting ready to follow in Romney's footsteps, the Democratic nominee attended a New York fund-raiser Friday morning with Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic nominee for governor in that state.

Patrick spokeswoman Libby DeVecchi said Patrick rarely puts fund-raisers on his public schedule.

In this case, the pro-Patrick Blue Mass Group website reported on the fund-raiser, which apparently was held at the Harvard Club in Manhattan. Along with money from the fund-raiser, Patrick brought back a new joke: "I thought the polls in Massachusetts were good news until I sat down to breakfast with Eliot Spitzer and he told me about his 50-point lead."

Romney, meantime, was in Iowa this weekend. The trip was noted on his public schedule.

Interesting behavior for a candidate who asked that Kerry Healey be "candid with people." Perhaps it's time that Deval Patrick start being "candid with people."

Hillary Clinton should be thanking her lucky stars that Larry Craig's Bathroom Abuse landed on the frontpages of the nation this week, of all weeks. If not for Craig, the ongoing unfolding revelations about Norman Hsu would be above the fold. The latest is that he has turned himself in to authorities in California, for an outstanding warrant from 15 years ago.

Hsu, who a judge ordered handcuffed, faces a grand theft charge. He is being held on $2 million bond. A bail hearing is scheduled for Sept. 5th, where a judge may consider reducing his bail to $1 million.

Hsu signed on to be a Clinton "HillRaiser," a group of individuals who pledged to raise at least $100,000 for the New York senator's presidential run. He has helped raise or donate money for many Democrats, including Clinton (during her presidential run), Obama (during his 2004 U.S. Senate run) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Rarely comes a person who is fun, smart, and politically ethical and a very real human being ... unlike 99 percent of the opportunist candidates who make you want to bring Kaopectate to the interview.

Such a grand fella is Malachy McCourt, who is running on the Green Party ticket for governor of New York. And I had the chance to interview him this week.

Malachy was born in Brooklyn, and from the age of three was raised in Limerick. A very undistinguished academic career plus the need to eat at age thirteen drove him to work in and as a laborer. That immediately caused him to begin a career in Broadway and Off-Broadway plays 'Mass Appeal,' 'Da,' 'The Hostage,' 'Inherit the Wind,' 'Carousel' and 'Translations.' He then took another step up the aesthetic artiste's ladder doing soap operas: 'Ryan's Hope,' 'Search for Tomorrow,' 'One Life to Live,' and 'All My Children.' Of course they also kept him drunk.

It sounds like folks in New York are in for an interesting ride over the next four years. Spitzer's in town and he's loaded for bear. Take a look at this article from which I've clipped this list of very ambitious initiatives.

...seek to ensure every New Yorker has affordable high-speed Internet broadband access...

...use the state's bargaining power to cut payments to pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy chains.

...guaranteed access to health insurance for all 500,000 uninsured children in the state, and 900,000 uninsured adults.

...seek to eliminate those of more than 700 state authorities

...find ways to consolidate New York's ``multiple layers of local governments,''

...education, an area where he has promised unspecified billions more in state spending over coming years.

...He proposes the state provide $6 billion over three years in property tax relieve, targeted at middle-income homeowners.

...Infrastructure projects he supported included replacement of the Peace Bridge between Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, and completion of planning for replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River

...long-sought plans to connect Long Island Rail Road commuters to Grand Central Terminal

...He said he would seek voter approval of a Stem Cell and Innovation Fund to invest in research with commercial uses.

...unspecified changes to the workers compensation program. The state's employers now pay the fourth-highest premiums in the country,

This list is already raising eyebrows over the size of the agenda in its totality. Some of these things have been tried and have failed to get support. Other things like the union busting proposals and ideas on education will attract opposition from the unions.

Out of fifty, only seven governors have so far made endorsements. This is not surprising considering how early in the process this all is. I was surprised to learn that Richardson is the only sitting governor so far. Huckabee and Romney are former governors.

According to this article:

• McCain: Mitch Daniels of Indiana, John Huntsman of Utah, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
• Romney: Matt Blunt of Missouri
• Huckabee: Mike Rounds of South Dakota
• Obama: Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia

The New York Times and its brethren may have succeeded in defeating Republicans this year (with more than ample help from said Republicans), but the NYT Company itself is in rough straights. Business-wise, it's cratering, with share value down from its high of above $40 per share in late 2004 to $24.50 earlier today. Shareholders are up in arms because a majority of the voting shares are held by the founding Ochs-Sulzberger family - leaving all other shareholders twisting in the wind as publisher Pinch Sulzberger runs the company into the ground, operating it as an extension and mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.

Needless to say, shareholders are looking for solutions. Shareholder watchdogs, the kind that usually get favorable coverage in the news pages of the NYT, have been going after Sulzberger with a vengeance - not that you'd read about it in his paper. Now billionaire Hank Greenberg, former head of the mega-insurance company AIG, is starting to buy up large blocks of stock, in what could develop into a (probably hostile to Pinch) takeover bid to right the company, as is reported in today's New York Post.

Let me give you a little recent background to this story. Click:

The lefty blogs are all full of themselves today because a man that rode his wife's coat tails to notoriety endorsed Hillary Clinton. Here's the take from Taylor Marsh:

A conference call announcing the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by Joseph Wilson was just held with bloggers to hear the breaking news. This is a huge deal for Candidate Clinton and a big endorsement for her candidacy. That it was broken on the blogs sends a powerful signal. I'll provide the transcript as soon as it is available.

Yeah, it sends the message that Joe Wilson is a loser who can't announce his endorsement anywhere else that will publish it.

Let's be straight about this; Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, have a lot of explaining to do. Why was Wilson sent to Niger in the first place when he didn't have the experience? Why did his wife recommend him and then say she didn't before she said she didn't remember? Why did they claim Valerie Plame was covert when she wasn't and why did they pose for Vanity Fair when she was supposedly a covert agent?

It's all about the war – the civil war in Iraq, Stupid! So forget Kerry. Forget Hillary. Forget McCain, they are currently without power and hopefully will have no more than sleepovers at the White House, ever.

Keep your attention on the managers of U.S. foreign policy power who are Bush-Cheney. The civil war they have unleashed is as predictable as the denial in the White House and Pentagon. Second only to that is the deliberate denial of facts by the "true believers" you see blogging and flacking for them, trying to distract the American electorate from voting in their own best interests.

The Bush-Cheney GOP war is all about winning the perpetual war in behalf of corporate state America -- no matter what the cost to you and I and to every soldier they can get to put "boots on the ground."