Arrest Clouds Idaho Senator's Future (has faced rumors about his sexuality since the 1980s)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Associated Press

By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) - A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against Idaho Sen. Larry Craig Tuesday after Craig said he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from complaints of lewd conduct in a men's room.


Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is seen during a hearing Thursday, May 25, 2006, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Craig pleaded guilty on Aug. 8, 2007, to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after being arrested at the Minneapolis airport. A Hennepin County court docket showed Craig pleading guilty, with the court dismissing a charge of gross misdemeanor interference to privacy.(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)


The conservative three-term senator, who has represented Idaho in Congress for more than a quarter-century, is up for re-election next year. He hasn't said if he will run for a fourth term in 2008 and was expected to announce his plans this fall.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Senate ethics committee seeking an investigation into whether Craig violated Senate rules by engaging in disorderly conduct.

Craig, who has voted against gay marriage, finds his political future in doubt in the wake of the charges, which have drawn national attention.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070828/D8RA4DBO2.html

[mac56]

1. Craig: "In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty."

I think his "hindsight" is what helped get him into trouble here. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink....

[kestrel91316]

3. I'm sure he had a lengthy talk with his attorney and plenty of time to

think over his plea - and now he says it was a mistake????

Maybe he thought the media wouldn't pick the story up and it would just die?

BTW, I don't know about the rest of you, but if I were accused of a crime that I had NOT committed, there is no way in hell I would EVER plead guilty to it. Period. Because that guilty plea would be a lie, and perjury.

[Javaman]

21. Yearning to tell the truth, his "handlers" advised him otherwise...

Inside every repuke is a gay democrat. :)

Someone I know closely was just that for a long time, until he finally came out.

He was mayor of a small town. Very right wing, married, had two kids, lived the father knows best life style, until one day, he couldn't do it anymore, his kids were grown and he came out.

He's much happier now.

[calimary]

23. Sounds like a footnote to me...

:rofl:

[rodeodance]

2. I think this is going to be (and is) much more serious than Vitter's.

[depakid]

20. You know the old Louisiana saying... (Edwin Edwards)

....the only way he could lose an election in Louisiana was to get caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.

[calimary]

24. I'd suspect that, too. It's one thing when you're dallying with the opposite sex.

It's quite another when it involves the same sex - PARTICULARLY when you're a loudmouth arch-conservative who's made a name for yourself as staunchly and aggressively anti-gay. vitter can be forgiven by his own camp because at least he did it with the ladies instead of younger men, and evidently he also consulted party higher-ups before he 'fessed up. larry craig, on the other hand, appears to have assumed he could just ride it out and it really would "go away." Maybe because of the former cloak of invincibility his fellow republi-CONS enjoyed up til recently. I think he just assumed he'd get away with it. If you look at a lot of these sins and sinners, it all seems to have its roots in arrogance - that they were riding so high for so long with no accountability and nobody asking questions or bothering to work that hard to dig beneath the surface. Everyone in the Press Corpse was always so deferential to republi-CONS and so disproportionately and unfairly hard on the Dems all the time that I think this arrogant schmuck just got used to it and never figured it'd come back to bite him. I can hear him now - "I can just ride this one out, too, if I sit tight..." (in some men's room stall or outside, I suppose :evilgrin: )

[CottonBear]

4. Blogactive is reporting on this story: Michael Rogers says he has new info:

http://blogactive.com/

He posted that he'll be on Ed Schultz's show today with new info on the Craig case.

[CottonBear]

5. Mike Rogers (blogactive) LIVE on Ed Schultz now w/ new info on Craig.

http://blogactive.com/

edit: The radio show is being simulcast on CSPAN!

edit: Liberal Talk Radio link w/ links to live radio streams: http://ltradio.blogspot.com/

CSPAN: http://www.c-span.org/

[LibDemAlways]

6. Pleading guilty and then later making

laughable excuses about a "wide stance" tells me Craig has no idea how to deal with this. The police reports indicate that he was very interested in the disposition of his case weeks after. Yet, he apparently never sought the advice of an attorney. He honestly thought he could quietly pay the fine and no one would ever find out.

Criag is done. Had he fessed up right away, tearfully begged public forgiveness from his wife and God, and entered rehab, he might have stood a small chance. Lying about it and making statements months later about his "wide stance" will impress nobody. Even the freepers aren't going to buy it.

[okieinpain]

16. I think that is re-education, not rehab. n/t.

[LibDemAlways]

18. I was just thinking he could have pulled a Mark Foley and

pretended to have an alcohol problem that made him do it. Anything would have been better than "I have a wide stance."

[TrogL]

27. Rehab - for what???

[mac56]

7. G.O.P. = "Groping On-duty Policemen"

:rofl:

[0007]

8. This poor bastard .. I can't indeed feel for him, because he's so

goddamn stupid. I've watched him for years on the senate floor with extreme abhorrence.

[David__77]

9. I don't think hypocrisy is the issue really.

I'm gay, and am repelled by this person. But I do not think it has actions are necessarily hypocritical. There are plenty of "non-gay homosexuals." "Gay" is a conscious identity, while homosexuality is a sexual orientation, in my opinion. Craig may be homosexually- or bisexually-inclined, but is certainly not gay. He could oppose overt or public manifestations of homosexual orientation, while at the same time thinking it's fine if done covertly on the sly. It's despicable, this position. It's like these men want a wife to keep up appearances, or perhaps as a means to get progeny and to fulfill domestic tasks, but then they want sexual gratification with men. It's a terrible combination of misogyny and sexual exploitation. I feel bad for his wife.

[atreides1]

11. I think for Craig it's about appearances

Craig is married and has adopted the three children that his wife, Suzanne, had from her previous marriage — her two sons Mike and Jay, and her daughter, Shae.

[David__77]

12. Right. The woman is fulfilling a social function serving him.

She's the "beard!" That term is sooo funny! Perhaps she's getting something out of it too, I don't know. My inclination is be sympathetic to women married to such men, but perhaps that isn't a good response.

[mahina]

14. Thanks for that clarification.

Never thought about that.

[Tight_rope]

10. I don't give a damn about how he feels...Fry his ass...

I'm so sick of these holier then thou REPUKE's. They never think twice about judging others. In fact, they always want to control other peoples lives. Well now is ass is on the cutting block. I say chop his ass up. :spank:

[goodhue]

13. much more here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1681468

[jca]

15. Craig press conference?

Someone on MSNBC just mentioned that Larry Craig is going to hold a press conference today. Anyone have any information on this?

[Hissyspit]

17. CREW: Request For Investigation of Sen. Larry Craig

Source: Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics In Washington Press Release

Dear Chairwoman Boxer and Vice Chairman Cornyn:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics In Washington, a non-profit, non-partisan organization, respectfully that you begin an investigation to determine whether Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-ID) violated the Senate Rules of Conduct by engaging in disorderly conduct.

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics should immediately commence an investigation into Sen. Craig’s conduct," Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said in a statement. "If pleading guilty to charges stemming from an attempt to solicit an undercover officer in a public restroom is not conduct that reflects poorly upon the Senate, what is?"

"In 1995, the Committee recommended that Senator Bob Packwood be expelled for repeated sexual misconduct," Sloan writes in a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who chairs the ethics committee, and its vice chair, Sen. John Cornyn.

Read more: http://www.citizensforethics.org/files/082807%20-%20Sen.%20Craig%20Ethics%20Complaint.pdf

[Stand and Fight]

19. Will read at home. n/t

[dailykoff]

22. Sure looks like a Texas take-down to me.

What the hell did he vote for, taxes on oil profits?

[brentspeak]

25. What's a Texas take-down?

[dailykoff]

26. Big nasty and mean.

See Nov. 22, 1963.

[ButterflyBlood]

28. You're more whacked out and paranoid than the John Birch Society

Jesus Christ...

[dailykoff]

29. You're surprised somebody here figured it out?

Don't be. It's pretty obvious.

[ButterflyBlood]

30. That doesn't seem to be the general consensus

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1710301

There's nothing to "figure out" here. Craig is an idiot. That's the end of the story.

[dailykoff]

31. The general consensus you refer to

is as manufactured as Fox News.

[ButterflyBlood]

34. So DU is also some right wing propaganda outlet like Faux?

n/t

[sendero]

32. If you're going to make such a charge...

... perhaps you could be so kind as to provide us with a shred of evidence of crimes against the powers-that-be.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The guy has apparently been doing this crap for years, and he finally got caught.

[dailykoff]

33. "Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Military Construction

and Veterans Affairs," "Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health," and there are several other possibilities:

http://craig.senate.gov/committees.cfm

Exactly whose cash cow he gored I don't know, but I imagine we'll find out soon enough, at least those of us paying attention.

[ButterflyBlood]

35. You still have zero evidence

You're using a logical fallacy commonly used by creationists, where everything operates under the assumption that one thing must be true regardless of what evidence says, and any holes in evidence or contradictions are explained with either some twist of logic or a "we don't know exactly what's happening, but it obviously can't contradict the obvious ultimate truth that the earth was created in 7 days 6000 years ago/every single thing that ever hits the media is an orchestrated conspiracy and things never happen on their own"

You are the most paranoid, tinfoiled covered whackjob I've ever met. You remind me of the Freeper whackjobs screaming about the "Arkansas death count"

[dailykoff]

36. You're wasting your keystrokes brother.

I've heard it all before, from the creationists line to the the bit about "hard evidence," and when it comes to chimpco talking points, every word of it is crap. But don't let me stop you from doing whatever you need to do. :)

[ButterflyBlood]

37. If you keep hearing that, take that as a hint

Such things keep being said for a reason.

Keep a good watch for any black helicopters in your neighborhood.

[dailykoff]

38. I've heard that one, too.

I also know hawk from a handsaw, and quite a few unfortunate "surprises" in the last four or five decades haven't been.