Another press-centric theory of the current Spitzer mess, stolen from a different smart friend than the last:

Dopp and Baum and, perhaps, Spitzer himself went after Joe Bruno the same way they'd gone after adversaries for the previous eight years.  Leaks, along with threatened and real indictments and lawsuits, are how prosecutors wage their fights.

And as a matter of convention, more than of any conscious decision, prosecutors are allowed to leak.

Sure, it's often against the law. Sure, there are all sorts of ethical bans on it.

But cases involving the nation's most respected local prosecutors -- like Spitzer mentor Bob Morgenthau; state prosecutors around the country -- Spitzer was a master, and Cuomo seems to beusing the current situation to test out his leaking apparatus; and the Justice Department (Remember U.S. Attorney Giuliani?), you do tend to find detailed, anonymous previews of cases, details from closed grand jury hearings, and the like winding up in the press.

It's really a matter of journalistic convention: We tolerate, indeed encourage, this particular genre of abuse of power.

Executives, though, really aren't allowed to play this way. Maybe there's a logical reason -- perhaps because the police whose reports they're leaking actually work for them, a scarier situation, in a way, than that of the prosecutor. But I'm not sure it's that logical.

So amid all the current media outrage, it's worth keeping in mind that Spitzer was used to getting away with this sort of press strategy because the currently-outraged press taught him, for years, that this is the way to play.