Thursday, January 03, 2008

Silver Vows To Keep His Other Job, Smacks Bruno In The Process

Ah the quibbles of Albany. Our state capital always makes for interesting news, even if it should be put on a tabloid dedicated to our legislators. Minority Leader Sheldon Silver was asked if he is going to keep his second job at Weitz & Luxenberg after his Republican counterpart Joe Bruno left Wright Investors’ Service due to public pressure over what he was doing there (oh yeah and that Federal investigation too). Silver asserts that he has not been accused of anything and will remain at the law firm and as a "part-time" legislator.

From The NY Times:

Mr. Silver, for his part, said, “Let me very clearly state that nobody ever raised any serious questions about the kind of work that I do, it’s on my ethics form, and as far as certain principles that I might believe in, whether I give up a second job or not is not going to change my core beliefs in terms of who should be responsible to causing damages and injury to individual people.”[...]

One thing that was clear is that relations between Mr. Silver and Mr. Bruno are increasingly strained. Many times last year, Mr. Silver described himself as conducting Kissinger-like diplomacy between the warring Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Mr. Bruno. But that was before Mr. Bruno stepped up his attacks on the speaker, even calling him “the biggest wimp on earth” in a lengthy New Yorker profile of the governor.

Asked about Mr. Bruno’s recent statements that the speaker has become overly beholden to the governor, Mr. Silver said: “The first principle we learned in law school was that if you’re wrong on the facts and you’re wrong on the law, dazzle ‘em with your baloney. I don’t know how far the senator went in law school, but he has that principle down.”


I'm no fan of Silver, but he does dish it out to Joe quite nicely here.