The Carl Kruger backstory, via Gatemouth's long memory

Room 8 blogger Gatemouth, aka Howard Graubard, has a couple of very interesting posts on the charges against state Senator Carl Carl Kruger, Assemblyman William Boyland, and lobbyist Richard Lipsky

First, in Restling With Our Rights, or Lincoln Suspends the Constitution (Due Process for Electeds, Part One), he criticizes District Leader Lincoln Restler, who became the first pol to call for the elected officials' resignations before a trial

But he's no supporter of Kruger, not at all. He writes:

Carl Kruger and I go back a long way.

I’ve despised Carl ever since 1984.

Brooklyn Democrats were then in the midst of a leadership war between the forces of Borough President Howard Golden and the late Tony Genovesi, fighting a series of proxy wars across the County.

The anecdote continues for a while, leading to this:

I then looked at an angry looking bald man watching us warily. Having already been through a morgue of newspapers clippings looking for dirt on Maisel’s associates, I said the following, and nothing more:

“You must be Carl Kruger.”

The man turned blood red.

I guess I understand why. If someone called me “Carl Kruger,“ I’d be insulted too.

But this man was Carl Kruger.

The mad man now started screaming at the top of his lungs.

“FUCK YOU!!!!…AND FUCK YOU, KENNY, FOR BRINGING HIM OVER HERE.”

There's much more, including an account of Democrat Kruger's endorsement of Republican Rudy Giuliani for U.S. Senate and Republican Marty Golden against sitting Democratic State Senator Vincent Gentile, a trade that ensured Kruger's safe seat, and an explanation of how Kruger's alliance with Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno sabotaged the reform efforts of Gov. Eliot Spitzer:

Truthfully, no one writing on the blogs today has a longer and more distinguished record of hatred for Carl Kruger than I do..

Read on for details that have surfaced only recently.

Part 2

In a follow-up post, Cox Sucks and Golden Showers (Due Process For Electeds, Part Two), Gatemouth takes on the call by State Republican Chair Edward Cox for the officials' resignations, suggesting it's hypocritical to call Albany corruption a Democratic problem, given Bruno's record of operating a private consulting business out of his office, among other things.

He adds:

But the problem with Republicans calling Kruger a specifically Democratic problems is more than a systemic one. If indeed Kruger is a problem (there has been no trial), then there is convincing evidence that it is a problem largely enabled by Republicans.

The evidence: Kruger's willingness to vote with the Republican senators.

There's much more.