Okay, but why the RIGHT ear?

 Posted on December 27, 2007 in Uncategorized

I am not one inclined to judge the morals of others. Who a prosecutor is lusting after (committing "adultery in his heart", as Jimmy Carter might say) is not something I consider to be my business, or anyone else's, except...

Except that the prosecutor in question is the individual who orders the DA's office's policy not to agree to less than 10 days in jail for any person (hooker, hustler, or john) charged with prostitution. The prosecutor in question? Elected Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (who, incidentally, describes the path to lethal injection as "the pipeline").

According to an article by the Houston Chronicle's Brian Rogers, Chuck is fighting in federal court to keep secret his emails (from his county email account, which would make them generally subject to the Texas Public Information Act), in which he kanoodles virtually with his executive secretary, with whom he had an affair in the 1980s. (Chuck says that he told his current wife, whom he married in 1991, about the affair before hiring Stevens as his executive assistant when he took office in 2000.)

"While the 51 e-mails between the two contain the phrase ‘I love you' more than a dozen times," the Chronicle writes, "and Rosenthal asks Stevens to let him hold her, the messages are not explicit." An example in the Chronicle article: "The very next time I see you, I want to kiss you behind your right ear."

Morals aren't on my beat. Hypocrisy, however, is. When the prosecutor who has made himself and his office responsible for enforcing the morals of consenting adults (Rosenthal is also the prosecutor who, arguing the constitutionality of Texas's sodomy statute in the Supreme Court, was "outclassed") is publicly revealed to be no more moral than the rest of us (including those he persecutes), I smell karma in the air. It smells like... victory.

(See also: Chuck's Apology and Le Procureur Soleil de la Republique?)