My must read of the day is "One Way or the Other, Christie Should Resign," by Bob Braun in the New York Times:
New Jersey is the ultimate corridor state. Its highways, especially the turnpike and other interstates, shape who we are and help create both our wealth and the poverty in our racially and economically isolated cities like Camden and Newark.
To strike at New Jersey’s soul, strike at transportation. Chris Christie, who enchants out-of-staters with his version of a Jersey attitude, a James Gandolfini with presidential ambitions, presided over such a strike: A dangerous, deliberate, politically motivated tangling of traffic on the George Washington Bridge, possibly the nation’s busiest interstate crossing. Yet a dark, even sinister, poetry lies in it. What worse damage could be done by an ambitious politician to the soul of the state he is sworn to protect? […]
This time, he didn’t just show scorn for those his followers love to hate, public employees and reporters and opposition politicians. This time, he showed contempt for all of us in New Jersey, for their safety and well-being, for the very soul of his state. And he must resign.
Christie was wrong, and he is responsible for the tone he set that allowed his staffers to think an action like this would be acceptable. But resign? That’s silly. If there is more information to come that suggests Christie knew about the plan to close the lanes, then absolutely call for his resignation. However, to date the most serious thing he seems to have done is set a bad tone. Last time I checked, "tone" doesn’t typically lead to resignation.
It’s comical that Braun thinks the lane closures were an attack on the "soul" of New Jersey. From what I can tell, he has never called for the resignation of Rep. Rob Andrews (D., N.J.), a politician who has been accused of misusing, and found to have misused, campaign funds for personal expenses on numerous occasions since 2009. In 2013, the House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into longstanding allegations from 2011. The accusations have earned Andrews a spot on CREW’s list of the Most Corrupt Members of Congress for the last two years.
Andrews’ behavior is what people in the real world call "stealing." It’s the same as a businessman taking funds from the company bank account and using that money to take his family on trips. That actually warrants resignation.