The Senate ethics committee has dismissed a complaint against Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) for soliciting prostitution.

The complaint was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group had charged that Vitter's solicitation of prostitutes in Washington, D.C. and Louisiana had broken the law and thus was "improper conduct" that ought to be punished. Vitter reportedly used the D.C. Madam's escort service, in addition to repeatedly visiting a prostitute in New Orleans back in 1999.

The committee dismissed the complaint, according to the letter, because "the conduct at issue" occurred before Vitter's run for the Senate, he was not charged criminally, and because it "did not involve use of public office or status for improper purposes."

The letter, signed by all six members of the committee, adds: "The Committee also wishes to make clear that this decision to dismiss this matter without prejudice should not be taken as personal approbation or acceptance by any of the members of the Committee of the kind of conduct alleged in this matter. In fact, if proven to be true, the Members of the Committee would find the alleged conduct of solicitation for prostitution to be reprehensible."

You can see the letter here.

Update: The response from CREW's Naomi Seligman is to the point: "The Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what is does best: nothing.... While Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who committed suicide last week, was found guilty of operating a prostitution ring, Sen. Vitter has not been held accountable for his activities. He walks away without even a slap on the wrist."

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), your prayers have been answered! The D.C. Madam's attorney tells the AP that he will not be calling her most famous former client as a witness.

Of course, Vitter's attorney made it as clear as he could that Vitter would not be a helpful witness for the former madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Palfrey's defense is that she was running a legitimate "fantasy sex" operation from her laundry room in California. Vitter's attorney said his client would plead the Fifth if called; not a helpful spectacle for the madam's case.

If Vitter and his escort didn't restrain themselves to fantasy, they weren't alone. The prosecution has called more than a dozen of Palfrey's former escorts to testify, and it hasn't been pretty. From The Washington Post:

The jurors have watched a procession of scared, mortified ex-prostitutes (13 so far) reluctantly take the witness stand, forced to reveal their secret former lives in intermittently graphic detail -- a past each clearly hoped was buried forever. Most testified that they grew weary of the business in less than a year and quit.

At $250 for 60 minutes or so, these weren't high-priced call girls, it turns out. They didn't measure up in appearance to the elites in the business. As the women tell it, Palfrey's niche was a middle-of-the-road, largely suburban clientele -- a long way up from the streetwalker trade, but well south of Emperors Club VIP, the four-figure-per-hour call girl outfit that last month proved the undoing of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer....

[T]he trial has been just a long, sad parade of former prostitutes, some in wigs provided by the government, a feeble disguise, a few dabbing tears on the witness stand.

The Post offers some snippets of testimony to convey the tone of things:

Prosecutor: "Of those 80 appointments, approximately how many times did you have sex?"

Ex-call girl: "Seventy-nine. . . . All except the gentleman who was a quadriplegic."

and:

Defense attorney: "Ma'am, you ultimately decided that this wasn't for you, right? . . . I believe you were tired of lying to your boyfriend, correct?"

Ex-call girl: "Yes."

Defense attorney: "And you're not particularly happy to be here, are you, ma'am?"

Ex-call girl: "Who would be?"

Amen to that, eh, Sen. Vitter?

You remember the D.C. Madam, the not-a-people-person who ran a high-end escort service out of her laundry room in California.

Well, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) certainly does, and in a hearing Friday, Vitter's lawyer was trying his best to keep the senator from being called at Deborah Jeane Palfrey's upcoming trial. Palfrey, who has pleaded not guilty and says that she was running a legitimate "fantasy sex" operation, has subpoenaed Vitter, apparently with the idea that Vitter would testify that no, there was no sex, only fantasy.

But for some reason, Vitter seems reluctant. From The Times-Picayune:

[Lawyer Henry Asbill], who represented Vitter in some earlier motions related to the Palfrey case, told [Judge James] Robertson that the defense has a responsibility to establish that it has a valid legal reason to call his client other than to simply "harass and embarrass him." He also said that it's hard to imagine a legitimate reason to call him as a witness given that the escort service had hundreds, if not thousands of customers, and the defense hasn't even spoken to his client about whether he would have anything to say that would assist its case.

Preston Burton, Palfrey's attorney, told Judge Robertson that he shouldn't be required to reveal his reasons for putting people on his witness list because it would disclose his defense strategy to prosecutors.

The judge declined Asbill's suggestion that he hold a hearing in chambers, and declined to nullify the subpoena. Robertson said he didn't know the name of Asbill's client and "didn't want to know."

Vitter narrowly avoided testifying earlier in the case at a pretrial hearing in November. That hearing was mercifully canceled.

Asbill also seems keen to indicate that Vitter would be no help to Palfrey's defense. He'd take the Fifth, Asbill told the judge -- obviously not what Palfrey would want since fantasy is as legal as can be. As the Legal Times reports, the prosecution have a line up of 14 former escorts from Palfrey's service who are expected to testify that the job involved more than a vivid imagination.

And what does Sen. Vitter have to say about all this? Well, when the Times-Picayune queried, he was both sentimental and eager to change the subject:

"I want to reaffirm how sorry I am to have hurt the people I love so deeply, starting with my family and certainly including the people of Louisiana," Vitter said. "I continue to work every day to make up for that."

He continued: "I continue to focus on crucial challenges for Louisiana families like health care reform and good-paying jobs."

Boy, does Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) have something to be thankful for:

A federal judge spared Sen. David Vitter an embarrassing appearance on the witness stand in a prostitution case when she abruptly canceled a hearing scheduled for next week.

The Louisiana Republican was under subpoena to testify about his ties to a Washington escort service. Deborah Palfrey, the woman accused of running a prostitution ring, had sought to question Vitter about whether he paid for sex.

But U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler canceled the hearing Wednesday, saying it served no purpose in the criminal case. It was Kessler who originally set the hearing but, after seeing Palfrey's witness list, the judge said she was convinced Palfrey was just trying to game the judicial system....

The Nov. 28 hearing was merely a tangent to Palfrey's prosecution, but Vitter's testimony would have drawn a crowd. With Vitter on the stand, attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley said he would ask, "As a client, did you engage in illegal sex acts?"

It's a novel strategy, asking someone to say they paid for sex to help bolster a prostitution case. But Palfrey says she provided a fantasy service, not a sexual one, and anyone who sold sex was a "rogue escort" who violated her employment contract.

Oh, good. No more embarrassment. Like those embarrassing details offered up by New Orleans prostitute Wendy Yow Ellis in Hustler, such as the fact that he insisted that prostitutes not "wear any perfume, body lotions, not even take a shower," because "he did not want any scent on him whatsoever"; that he took his used condoms with him afterwards; or that after he found out that Ellis had the same first name as his wife, he stopped visiting her, although he'd still go to watch Ellis dance at a French Quarter strip club occasionally. Phew!

More troubles for Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). Washington, D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed an ethics complaint against him, based on his admitted use of the D.C. Madam's escort service. The basis of the complaint?

Engaging the services of a prostitute violates both District of Columbia and Louisiana criminal law.

The Senate Ethics Manual provides that certain conduct may be improper even though it does not violate specific Senate rules or regulations. Such conduct has been characterized as "improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate." This rule is intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the Senate as a whole. The Ethics Manual explains that "improper conduct" is given meaning by considering "generally accepted standards of conduct, the letter and spirit of laws and Rules..."

Whether or not Sen. Vitter is ultimately adjudicated to have broken any criminal laws, the Senate may still discipline him for improper conduct as it has other members in the past.

Unlike in the House, the Senate ethics committee does not require that a member file a complaint in order for it to be heard, so this could potentially become a liability for Vitter.

Update: Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants a "full airing" of the prostitute-scandal swirling around Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

Well, at least it wasn't during Lent. From The Times-Picayune:

A phone number for Sen. David Vitter, R-La., appears at least five times in the billing records of what federal authorities say was a Washington call-girl operation, the first just four months after he was sworn in to the U.S. House in 1999 and the last on Mardi Gras of 2001.

Under pressure earlier this week, Vitter acknowledged committing a "very serious sin" and that his number showed up in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who has come to be known as the "Washington, D.C. Madam." An attorney for Palfrey earlier said that Vitter's number was found once in the records, but a search of the documents by The Times-Picayune turned up four more calls to a number once registered to Vitter. The attorney said that clients also used phones in hotel rooms, so that not all the numbers can be traced to individual callers.

The records show that Vitter number was called by Palfrey's service beginning Oct. 12, 1999 and ending Feb. 27, 2001, which was Mardi Gras. Palfrey has said she was running an escort service that her employees were instructed not to engage in sex acts. But federal prosecutors say she was running a prostitution ring that netted more than $2 million in assets.

Records show that the return calls to Vitter's number generally lasted a minute or two and were placed in the evening. The phone number had a Washington, D.C., exchange. Vitter keeps an apartment in Washington where he stays while Congress is in session.

During a press conference this afternoon, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt released the phone record that led to Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) admission that he'd been a customer of Pamela Martin & Associates, the escort service run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, otherwise known as the D.C. Madam.

Flynt's investigator, Dan Moldea, matched the D.C. number -- which appeared February 27, 2001 for a 1.2 minute conversation on Palfrey's records -- to Vitter last Friday. Hustler called Vitter's office for comment on Monday afternoon; Vitter then released his statement to the AP admitting to using the service Monday night. Vitter was a member of the House at the time.

During his conference, Flynt said that he'd outed Vitter -- and would be outing others, because of his hypocrisy; or as he put it: "I'm not exposing anyone's sex life, I'm only exposing hypocrisy."

Flynt took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post in June, offering $1 million for "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder." He said that Hustler had a number of investigations still going as a result, and that he'd be releasing the data "as we have it."

Update: See the update on this here.

A press release just out from Kim Dower, Larry Flynt's spokesperson:

Larry Flynt's ongoing investigation into the dirty secrets of prominent elected officials has exposed another hypocrite. Monday's confession of marital infidelity by GOP right-wing marriage-protection advocate Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was the result of a multi-pronged investigation launched and run by Larry Flynt, publisher of HUSTLER Magazine.

Within hours of a phone call from the offices of HUSTLER Magazine asking Vitter to comment on an article HUSTLER reporters were working on, Vitter ran to the Associated Press in an attempt to get ahead of the story.

As of 2 p.m. West Coast time on Monday, only Larry Flynt and the HUSTLER investigative team knew that Vitter¹s phone number appeared on the phone records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam. Within hours of obtaining the phone records, Flynt¹s team found what ABC News has so far been unable to ferret out. Flynt's team is currently continuing its investigation into improprieties by other high-ranking elected officials.

Senator Vitter, a churchgoing Catholic who is married and has four children, is seen as a hard-line right-winger. A staunch supporter of President Bush, Vitter has built his reputation on family-values platforms such as marriage protection and abstinence-only programs.

In opposition to same-sex marriage, Vitter recently stated, "Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It's something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure."

Sen. Vitter announced his support for Rudy Giuliani in March and was tapped by the presidential nomination candidate to serve as his Southern Regional Chair.

Update: Here's more on this from Justin over at the Blotter.

Update: So maybe Vitter doesn't have such a blind faith in the Fourth Estate. Oh well.

It wasn't immediately apparent from the stories yesterday, but Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) showed great faith in the Fourth Estate yesterday, admitting to being a customer of the D.C. madam as a sort of preemptive measure. The madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, released her business' phone records to the press last week and uploaded the records to her website (currently down) yesterday. Apparently Vitter thought it was just a matter of time before some muckraker found him out.

Update: Actually, Hustler Magazine says it was behind Vitter's sudden statement.

Vitter's statement only admits obliquely that Vitter's number was on one of Palfrey's old lists. The AP's New Orleans' bureau apparently received the statement yesterday, and then spent some time trying to confirm its authenticity. "Vitter's spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement Monday evening in an e-mail to The Associated Press," according to an early version of the wire story.

No one seems to know when (or how often) Vitter used the service; all his statement says is that it was "prior to his running for the U.S. Senate" in 2004. He'd been a congressman since 1999, and Palfrey's records date back to 1996. The AP still hadn't seen the records as of last night, since reporters were "unable to connect to Palfrey's website."

The records contain thousands upon thousands of numbers without names. Most of the recent records, dating from 2002 to 2006, were released to ABC News back in March; a team of researchers set to matching the numbers to names. Jeff Schneider, a spokesman for ABC News, said that they had not found Vitter's number in those records. "With the release of a full ten years of records, it seems clear that his number came up in one of the records we did not have access to," he told me.

As for now, the race is on for who can pile up the most vividly hypocritical quote from the family values (or as he put it, "Louisiana values") conservative. In the running: Sen. Vitter maligning the "Hollywood left" for violating the "sanctity of marriage," and Vitter arguing that President Clinton should step down for his extramarital affair (Vitter, by the by, replaced Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) after the speaker was forced to step down because of an affair). There are, you can be sure, many more. Glenn Greenwald has a rundown here.

Update: The prevailing quote of the day seems to be this one:

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse reporter: If her husband were as unfaithful as Livingston or former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”