Judge rules that Larry Craig cannot change his guilty plea. However, proving that he has been a clandestine liberal plot since always, Craig plans to keep his seat.
The New Yorker comments:
by Tim F| 66 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Judge rules that Larry Craig cannot change his guilty plea. However, proving that he has been a clandestine liberal plot since always, Craig plans to keep his seat.
The New Yorker comments:
Comments are closed.
Zifnab
Before TZ says anything, I would like to say with all seriousness that I encourage Senator Craig to fight this thing, and appeal all the way up to the highest court he can take it. Legislators and their enforcement officers that spend time busting up toe-tapping in bathroom stalls are a drain on tax payer dollars and a gross violation of citizens’ Constitutional Rights.
And no man, be he Senator or Janitor, should have go through what the gentleman from Idaho was put through, when living in a society that claims itself to be as open and free as that of the United States of America.
I’ll still bust up laughing every time I see him, though.
Tsulagi
Go Senator WideStance! Draft Larry Craig 08!
Not only them. The GOP has unveiled their official logo for their nominating convention in Minneapolis, the place of Craig’s stand. Note the wide stance in the prancing elephant. It’s code. They support the real widestancers in their party, not the phony ones. Just ask Rush.
One thing you have to give them credit for, they deliver comedy while totally oblivious to irony.
ThymeZone
Hey, if you don’t agree with me on this issue, write and tell it to Frank Rich. Rich makes the same argument I did, for all intents, but … being Frank Rich … makes it better than I did.
(Note: Times Select is dead, this content is now free to all)
The whole Craig case is nothing but bullshit designed for harassment and posturing. Craig … giant asshole that he is … is a victim and deserves protection. As much as I hate him, he doesn’t deserve to lose his seat over this, and he totally deserves the support of every so-called lefty who pretends to care about equal protection under the law.
Hypocrisy is thick around this. It’s in the GOP, the Democratic Party, and even in the gay community. Everyone wants to throw Craig under the bus. Alas, it’s our rights that are getting thrown under the bus along with Craig.
Tim F.
Equal protection is exactly right. Larry Craig should get exactly the same treatment as the thousands of other Americans arrested and harrassed for doing exactly what he did. I see no reason why a politician should walk when others can’t.
I do, however, see a stupid law that should be repealed yesterday. But as long as the law exists a laminated Senate card shouldn’t magically protect someone who violates it.
dlw32
Zifnab, as much as I was for Craig fighting this insane law that wastes police effort in the first place, I’m not in favor of allowing people to change guilty pleas on a whim.
Craig was in command of his faculties and had every opportunity to avail himself of legal advice.
ThymeZone
No, you idiot, he should fucking be left alone, he committed no crime.
When a so-called lefty starts turning away from people being arrested for tapping their feet, the idiot right wingers have won. But please, keep up the bullshit and geneerate churn for your goddam blog.
Jake
Bingo.
Fuck him. Fuck his fellow Republicans who are flipping out over this.
John S.
Is this a statement of fact or opinion?
ThymeZone
I think it was John Cole himself who decried, just within the last few days, the growing “irrelevance” of the blogosphere.
I gotta tell you, when the blogosphere can’t do better than promote the patently absurd and toxic idea that people should be subject to arrest for tapping their feet and waving their hands, then … yes, the blogosphere is irrelevant, and reduced to farce.
When you can’t stand up for the rights of citizens to tap their feet in public, I gotta ask you, what the hell do you imagine that you are doing here? What are you standing up for? The right of jurisdictions to impose foolish and useless “laws” on citizens? Pathetic.
Give it up, seriously. Listen to yourselves, for crissakes. You’re embarassing.
Tim F.
People are prosecuted for doing what he did every day. You can argue that cops should quit the bathroom gay sting and I will agree with you, wholeheartedly. They should change the law and find a more useful way for law enforcement to spend their time.
The gay persecution should end yesterday. But as long as these stupid stings keep happening I won’t bat an eye when a self-righteous hypocrite like Craig gets caught in one.
ThymeZone
Both, unless you can argue successsfully that the tapping of a foot actually constitutes a crime by any reasonable set of understandings.
Are you fucking serious?
ThymeZone
Yes, but that just makes you exactly the target of my disgust here. It’s okay to fuck over a citizen, as long as it is one you don’t like. How exactly does that make you different from a Republican with his faux moralizations and rationalizations? The whole righty mantra in “social conservatism” is grounded in fucking over disposable citizens and disposable rights. But apparently it’s okay to do that in return as long as the victim is one of “them?”
Give me a break. Not only is defending Craig the right thing to do, for obvious reasons, it’s the SMART thing to do. It forces the hand of the phony moralizers and the values-clutchers and totally exposes them.
Jesurgislac
ThymeZone: when the blogosphere can’t do better than promote the patently absurd and toxic idea that people should be subject to arrest for tapping their feet and waving their hands, then
I think what’s being promoted is that people who are not Republican Senators who are tapping their feet and waving their hands in restroom cubicles next to policemen waiting to make their sting are being arrested, all the time. Senator Larry Craig never thought it was a big deal till it happened to him, and there’s no evidence that he feels it shouldn’t happen to other gay men – he just thinks it shouldn’t have happened to him. If Craig responds to this by starting a legal campaign against letting policemen hang out in restrooms and arrest men for cruising, that would be a positive move: so long as he’s just whining that it’s not fair when it happens to him and is indifferent that it happens to others, why should anyone else care about what happens to him?
ThymeZone
So, ANAICT, the consensus here is,
Wow, the bright shining star of progressive principle here at BJ has really streaked to new heights. Right before it plunged into the ocean and went out, I mean.
Congrats, really. When’s the awards party?
ThymeZone
Then the right thing to do is to stand up for all of them, including Craig. Thereby demonstrating not only that one genuinely cares about the principle, but displaying that in defense of the despised outlier. Once you agree to tossing aside the rights of the outliers, you have no basis for defending the rights for everyone else. This is pretty basic stuff. Fuck, they taught us this in high school fifty years ago. WTF? When did people stop getting this?
These guys are college professors and the best they can do is promote the idea of throwing away the protections of the law for some guy becasue they don’t care about him?
Great. That’s really great. Uplifiting, it is. Proud to be a fucking American today, really.
Because equal protection either means equal, or it doesn’t.
grumpy realist
Exactly, it’s like the pro-lifer women who say “but MY abortion is an upright and moral decision, as opposed to those other sluts out there!”
Don’t judge other people by standards you wouldn’t apply to yourself. And that’s why we’re all laughing at Craig. Maybe it’s a ding-dong stupid law, but it IS a law of the land, he pled “guilty”, and now he’s whining because how Mean everyone has been to him. He doesn’t give doody-squat about whether this is a good law or not (in fact, he was one of the people who got this law signed into existence, if I remember correctly.) He’s not going around talking about how Silly and Stupid the law is–he’s just arguing that it shouldn’t be applied to HIM.
A preening, narcissistic boob who’s perfectly happy with anti-gay legislation but wants himself considered exempt from the law and the rules of civil procedure.
Jake
But don’t forget to hold on to your pants’ waist when you do.
Seriously, given the facts of this case, how exactly can anyone stand up for Craig? We can say tap dancing in bathrooms should be legal, whatever. Based on the motion filed he doesn’t seem to care if tap dancing in bathroom stalls stays illegal. The man plead guilty and then wanted that plea thrown out. What, if we stand up for Craig, are we standing up for? The right to withdraw a guilty plea because you’ve changed your tiny little mind?
I say again, fuck him. Fuck his GOP buddies. If/when he wants to start the Bathroom Tap Dancers Protection Federation, maybe we can talk.
ninerdave
All due respect to our hosts here, but I don’t think Balloon Juice has every held itself out as a “shining star of progressive principle”. Hell, the subtitle is Hot Air and Ill-Informed banter and Cole’s only bout of online activism was to rail against Steely McBeam.
Balloon Juice has never been more than Tim and John’s opinion on subjects they deem interesting and snarky comments from the peanut gallery.
grumpy realist
And TZ? I fail to understand why this has been the hill you have chosen to die on, considering that there are so many other silly and stupid laws out there.
I don’t see how my stance on this immoral at all. The only way certain people learn that a stupid thing is stupid is by letting them realize the hurt associated with it. I think rescuing Craig from the consequences of his own behavior WOULD be immoral. Do you honestly think that if the left managed to somehow get the law rendered inapplicable in his case, Craig wouldn’t turn around and insist that it Still Had To Be Implemented Against All Those Nasty Gay People? (And That He Is Not Gay!)
Since the blinkin’ idiot still obviously hasn’t wrapped his head yet around the idea that “the law for thee is the same as the law for me”, I have no sympathy for him or the ass-kicking he’s now going to get from the Ethics committee.
Pass the popcorn.
chopper
i like mine better.
chopper
as i’ve said numerous times, you can get hauled in by an undercover for soliciting prostitution without actually making any sort of money-for-sex deal. the laws are far-reaching in these areas because people who solicit illegal behaviour like sex in public places or prostitution consisitently try to come up with ways to skirt the law.
in truth, if you’re against the foot-tapping thing, there are about a thousand others with a similar legal threshold you should rail against as well.
personally, i’m more against prostitution/drug laws than i am those banning sex in public.
Stooleo
Chopper,
Just blew beer out my nose. Too funny. Thanks!
Vladi G
Maybe he should have thought of that before, ya know, pleading fucking guilty.
incontrolados
Last dying gasping straw for TZ.
Post more about Craig, Tim F.
Before we know it TZ will be the next Huey Long.
F*ck the undercover cops. Laws are meant to be broken. Only the little guy pays. All that.
But remember, how things go down in the House and Senate have to do with votes and pats and taps and payback and counting.
Bored.
Brachiator
Frank Rich’s tiresome and irrelevant column almost makes me wish that he were still behind the Times Select curtain. Craig may not have copped a feel, but he freely copped a plea. He was not forced or coerced in any way, and the statement that he signed clearly says that you cannot make a guilty plea if you are not guilty of the charges. But Craig did so anyway, and his claim that he did so only to avoid being dogged by a bad, dirty newspaper, does not give him a magic reset button.
Neither constitutional nor gay rights is an issue here. One of the things that ThymeZone keeps ignoring is that in other cases, according to the officer who arrested Craig, the elaborate wide-stance foot dance and other behavior was a prelude to public sex acts in the rest room, not arrangements by interested parties to meet later and elsewhere for an assignation. So even if Craig is the unluckiest guy in the universe, and his typical bathroom behavior just happens to exactly match the elaborate signals used by people soliciting sex in public restrooms, he could easily have avoided any problems simply by pleading innocent the first time out of the box.
However, since Craig is not making any free speech claims, it is pointless for Frank Rich or anyone else to try to use this as some kind of defense of Craig’s actions.
It is equally ridiculous for Rich to try to appeal to gay rights or gay activism since Craig is vigorously proclaiming that he is not gay, has never been gay, and was not either “flirting” (another stupid Rich claim) or seeking a sexual encounter. If Craig is not seeking to defend his actions, it makes no sense to whine about people not rallying to his cause.
Rich is also typically living in the rhetorical past when he attempts to cloak bathroom assignations with earlier prohibitions against gay behavior. Increasingly, proud, happy, non-conflicted gay people are at home with their spouses or domestic partners happily loving each other up, leaving those who insist on staying in their own closets to hang out in restrooms and get hoist by their own petards.
pacified
if it wasn’t a crime, he shouldn’t have plead guilty.
John Cole
I think we should throw that bastard in Gitmo.
chopper
indeed – making it out like these laws against public sex are inherently anti-gay imply that public sex is part and parcel of being gay. that’s actually quite offensive.
whippoorwill
Craig isn’t just a citizen, he’s a GOP Senator who regularly condemns those who do what he is doing himself. This isn’t about the left, unless you’ve become a concern troll. It’s about the putrid pus filled hate group called the Republican Party. And yes, it’s also about vicious nut-busting politics
that is ugly as hell, and I believe, absolutely necessary in the here and now. And your right, I don’t give a shit about Larry Craig’s rights, I only care about winning. The only decision to be made is how you choose to fight. You say with platitudes of “we can’t do that or we’re as bad as they are” or “We must rise above right wing nastiness”. Ten years ago I would have said yes, that’s the way to go. But now they’ve gone and shredded the beloved Constitution and those responsible can go straight to hell in a hand basket after there asses have been properly kicked in whatever sewer they choose to fight in. End of Sermon.
Tsulagi
I do too. That’s pretty good.
Gotta give the RNC credit, that is one happy (gay?) looking, wide standing elephant. Somehow before the convention I think there’s going to be a whole lot of photoshopping going on with their new mascot look.
Remfin
How come everyone seems to forget that he wasn’t just toe-tapping but peeping too? That was after all the point of the plea deal – drop the peeping charge. So sure, the toe-tapping maybe shouldn’t be a crime – but saying “he committed no crime” at all is wrong.
incontrolados
Personally, even before i saw the cop’s pic, I thought he was hot. Just from his voice. Mmmmmm.
Ann Althouse has been fighting off the Midwestern label.
Her loss. That cop is teh hot. (imho)
incontrolados
Gak — I look up one ann Coulter book and amazon thinks I love her. WTF?
I’m a Vox generation type.
Might be a bad link — let’s see.
John S.
I see you’ve already gone to 11 on the hyperbole meter, but you need to turn it down to 3.
From reading the actual police report, it would appear as if Craig basically hit on the wrong dude in the can. While it may be your opinion that it was not a crime, the fact is that charges were filed to which Craig plead guilty to. Under our justice system, that would mean he had officially commited a crime.
Was it stupid? Yes. AFAIC, Craig was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t think what he did really should be a crime. But charges were filed, Craig plead guilty and that’s all there is to it. It’s a little impractical to apply what should be the law to what is the law, especially retroactively. There a probably lots of other folks who commited ‘crimes’ that are absurd, but that’s something that needs to be addressed in future policy.
Dennis-SGMM
Here’s what I know: if I go into a restroom in a public place I don’t particularly want to see anyone having sex; gay straight, man-on-dog, blue elephant-on-man, anything. This goes double if I have to take my kid to the restroom.
Craig wasn’t just tapping his foot or waggling his fingers, he was going through a recognized set of signals. He signaled the wrong person. If you’re consenting adults, do whatever you want to each other as long as you get a room. If you’re desperate enough or bold enough to do it in public then it becomes the public’s business.
The Other Steve
I still have a problem with cruising for sex in restrooms. It definately ought to be illegal.
We aren’t living in a society where gay people have to hide. This isn’t Iran.
The Other Steve
Have you seen the new RNC 2008 Logo?
I can’t quite figure it out. Are they mocking the wide stance, or are they trying to have sex with 2008?
The Other Steve
It’s official. Dobson is supporting a third party if Julie gets the nod.
Randolph Fritz
My first thought was, go Larry! The more you fight, the more religious right-wingers you alienate from the R’s. But my second thought is that the more Larry fights, the more likely he is to promote an anti-gay backlash. So, let’s let this one die.
John's Minions
Sirs? don’t we have something better to do than poke Grandpa Simpson? The weather machine and germ warfare departments are way behind schedule, and someone needs to sign for those crates of orange jumpsuits and “hola fruita”.
jcricket
I can just hear Larry Craig now… “I was wearing an onion on my lapel, as was the style at the time”
TZ has a weird habit of picking Galipoli-esque hills to send his rhetorical troops (er, posts) up.
rachel
Thread goes from possibly interesting to yet another TZ rant on Sen Craig in six posts. Way to go TZ.
wasabi gasp
There is something deeply wrong with this country when the Honorable Senator Larry Craig can’t go into a public mensroom and peep at other fellas through cracks until he finds one arousing enough to engage in a manly round of footsie without then feeling guilty enough to plead to a crime of lewdness. Oh, the humanity! And to top it all off: now people think he’s gay. {{{ faints }}}
TenguPhule
So we’re supposed to defend the Gay Republicans for being assholes who will as soon as they’re safe go back to making worse and stupider laws but not say a word when the Democrats in power act like assholes and pass shit they could stop and call it working toward gaining seats?
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Craig was caught, pled guilty of his own free will and has his political life being wrecked just as he’s wrecked the lives of who knows how many other people. Nameless gays who lack the power and wealth Craig has. And we’re supposed to pretend he’s a case for defending freedom? I think the old cocksucker can afford to defend himself without needing any help from the rest of us. If his only party chooses to shoot him in the back, well break out the popcorn and start the show.
TenguPhule
And Craig can afford a good lawyer, but I’d be willing to bet TZ that there are plenty of others who can’t and got busted under that same law.
Craig is getting equal protection here, the same protection he dished out to the gays he despises. Why does he deserve better treatment then them? Talking about taking a moral stand is all well and good, but holier then thou trickle down is not going to do shit.
Real equal protection would be to start protecting the ones not rich and famous first.
TenguPhule
I think they’ve decided to go down in a flaming pink blaze of glory.
All they need to do now is hire Steely McBeam to be the official spokesperson for the R’s Convention and John’s conversion to the D side will be complete.
jake
Stick with your first thought. I don’t see backlash or even an increase in anti-gay violence stemming from this. That was my concern when Foley Follies started. I was sure all the knuckle draggers would leap up screaming “I knew it, they’re after our kids!” and start shooting. Fortunately the GOP spin machine spat out “Prank played by Democrats” and “Kids (probably Democratic Kids) Set Him Up,” both of which Dennys Hastert obligingly blurted on Rushed Limpbag’s show.
As much as I hate to admit it, IOKIYAR & The SpinTronic 2000 may have averted some fairly nasty incidents.
Craig isn’t anywhere near Foley, doesn’t fit the stereotype of who “looks” gay and he’s probably scoring some “Hassled by the Man when I didn’t do nuthin'” points from the portions of Das Base who have records.
Satan luvvs Repugs
Craig should know by now that if you want to keep your “seat” intact, don’t play footsie with strange men in airport restrooms.
The Senate ethics committee needs to take action; they won’t expell Craig, but they should force him (and Vitter) to move their desks into a dark corner of the Senate floor.
And confiscate his key to the Senate bathroom. Immediately!
Bombadil
ThymeZone says:
I read the entire decision in Craig’s attempt to rescind his guilty plea (it’s here — PDF warning), and the actual crime to which he pled guilty was not, of course, tapping his foot, but disorderly conduct with general (as opposed to specific) intent, meaning that he intentionally engaged in prohibited conduct. The activities that led to the charges against him are specifically addressed but the judge on page 23, under the heading “The Evidence Supports the Conviction for Disorderly Conduct”, complete with his reasoning in the matter.
One of the points Judge Porter makes in this is that the activities that led to the arrest (staring through the crack of the stall at the officer inside over the course of two minutes, then going into the next stall, moving his foot over enough to come in contact with the officer’s foot, and running his hand along the bottom of the partition several times, moving farther into the officer’s stall with each pass) was intentional, rather than accidental, conduct that “‘tends reasonably’ to cause alarm, anger, or resentment”.
The statute is intended to protect people from having to deal with unwarranted intrusions, and is general enough to be a “blanket” sort of law. You can argue that these activities should not be included under the provisions of the law, but I can guarantee you that at least one District Court judge in Minnesota will strongly disagree you, and will insist that a law was broken here.
Bombadil
It’s not the opinion of the Judge Porter.
Bombadil
It’s not the opinion of Judge Porter.
RSA
…though I understand that the Senate’s construction crew is going to arrange for a bit more space on both sides of it…
grumpy realist
If someone in the next stall were doing this to me, I’d be seriously creeped out.
I can see one look through the partition to see if anyone is there (you’re looking for an empty toilet.) If you’re not intending any hijinks, you’ll simply wait and monitor the door until the prior person comes out. You don’t continually keep peeping in (what–do you think he’s going to evaporate?)
But anyhoo….it will be amusing to watch what the Republicans do now–haven’t they already kicked him off all the committees he was on?
Zifnab
Which is the bottom line. If the law needs to be repealed, then repeal it. But none of this “Convictions for thee, but not for me” nonsense the GOP loves to trot out.
Craig’s foot-tapping debacle reminds me of the Bush Administration’s “crack down” on voter fraud. Diebold, of course, gets the world’s biggest pass, and massive voter irregularities in Florida and California go completely uninvestigated. But nine USAs get canned because they’re not aggressively pursuing organizations like ACORN and local Dem candidates who get tagged by opposition party ops for election violations.
It’s the same damn game. You can arrest the liberal hippie fags, but conservative Senators are off limits. That’s the joke in the Larry Craig case. He’s not arguing for the law to be overturned or the policing practice to halt, he’s arguing for special treatment purely because he is a GOP Senator.
I don’t approve of undercover cops patrolling airport restrooms any more than I approve of GOP Senators being handed “get out of jail free” cards. The law is an all or nothing game. Or, at least, its supposed to be.
The Other Steve
Instead of writing up an opinion that says “The facts fit the crime”, he should have said “he should fucking be left alone, he committed no crime.”
By not doing so, he’s proven he is an Activist Judge!
Bombadil
I certainly agree about the gay persecution thing, and I think the many of these stings are, indeed, stupid and a colossal waste of time and money and should stop. However the decision rendered in Craig’s appeal makes it clear that Craig’s actions can be considered an unwarranted and unwanted invasion of reasonably-expected privacy, and “’tend[] reasonably’ to cause alarm, anger, or resentment”. They fit the definition of the prohibited actions. I know that if someone in the next stall started rubbing their foot against mine and reaching under the partition into my stall, I would be alarmed, angered and/or resentful.
Look, consensual sex of any kind is fine with me (“Do whatever you want, so long as you don’t do it in the street and scare the horses”). But people should have a reasonable expectation that they can go into a toilet stall without having some stranger stand outside the stall, staring through the door crack, or sticking their hands and feet under the partition. This isn’t solely about catching a couple of sad gays trying to get their jollies, but about reasonable rights of privacy.
Punchy
They’ll be answering for this guy for the next 2-3 days.
By the way, that Republican logo will be changed. There’s no way the cocksure blowhard arrogant fucks are going to endure all this ridicule much longer…they’ll have a new non-humping pachyderm in a week.
Bombadil
Oh, and can we please stop this “he was arrested for tapping his foot” bullshit? He was arrested for disorderly conduct, the cop specified in his arrest report what the actions were that led to the arrest, and the judge agreed that the actions were, indeed, covered under the definition of disorderly conduct.
This “foot-tapping” crap is disingenuous and anyone who insists that’s all this is about is a fool.
NickM
What does Republican Senator Larry Craig call a handicapped stall in a men’s room?
The Honeymoon Suite.
jcricket
You are so not the original jcricket dude. I’ve been posting here long before you ever did (check the archives going back to 2004).
Tim F.
Yep. I’ve deleted the comment and banned the IP, which seems to be a first-time visitor.
Pb
Let’s see if the GOP holds onto Larry Craig… on the one hand, you’d be stuck backtracking over a discraced Congressman who is now a national laughingstock, but on the other hand, he could serve up a nice batch of his Super Tubers, mmmmm!
P.S. I’m not kidding about the Super Tubers:
chopper
my god, Pb, that’s just terrible.
Sojourner
Thanks for the laugh, TZ!
After getting lectures from you that we should support the Dems regardless of whether they vote in accordance with our most important values, I find it hilarious that you’re bent out of shape because most of us don’t share your lather over Larry Craig.
The progressive movement won’t die because Hillary Clinton voted (again) to support Bush’s latest prelude to go to war but we’re supposed to get hysterical over a hypocritical senator who freely admitted guilt.
Fascinating.
jcricket
And I’m not kidding when I say that I thought “Super Tubers” was a reference to people from alaska (home of Senator Corrupty McTubes) that really know how to surf the internet.
laneman
Understatement of the year