Scott Madin

I saw someone say "don't Al Franken my Cuomo" and I think it's time for at jack to just pull the plug on this whole site

anyway in case anyone needs a refresher, Al Franken was not "railroaded", there were at least 8 credible allegations establishing a pattern of harassment and unwanted touching, Gillibrand was right to ask him to resign, and many other Senate Dems also asked him to.

he could have chosen to stay in his seat and insist on an ethics committee investigation if he wanted to clear his name, but he decided (and I think he was right) that the right thing was to step down and take the issue off the table politically.

his replacement, Tina Smith, has been just as good a Senator as he was, and the lesson should be that rather than seeing any particular person as indispensable and thus overlooking their bad behavior, we should want to have a deep bench of capable politicians ready to work.

like Franken, Cuomo has been credibly accused by many people; unlike Franken, he _has_ been investigated, and the AG has determined he broke the law. also unlike Franken, he's refusing to salvage whatever dignity he can by gracefully stepping down.

(of course, Franken has a showbiz personality and craves attention, so he has since sacrificed that dignity by publicly regretting resigning, and whining about how unfairly he was treated, but that's neither here nor there.)