"I just had never been treated like that by a man before."

Says David Phillips, describing what he says was a sexual encounter with Larry Craig in one of a series of audio clips presented by The Idaho Statesman in an article titled "More gay men describe sexual encounters with U.S. Sen. Craig." In the third audio clip, Phillips has Craig giving him a $20 bill and telling him to keep quiet because he can "buy and sell your ass a thousand times over" — which is odd, since $20 is not a display of wealth and is an insulting amount of money if it's supposed to be paying for sex. Phillips sounds sympathetic and sincere as he talks about feeling humiliated 20 years ago.

If Phillips is telling the truth, then, on top of it all, Craig was an inconsiderate sexual partner. Not that that is a reason one ought to have to resign from the Senate. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if it was.

Leave Larry Craig alone.

Larry Craig is not leaving the Senate. He's not gay and he's not leaving. I say good.

There are many reasons not to like Senator Larry:

1. The denial of gayness. (Even if somehow he's not gay, it's disrespectful to gay people to feel that you need to deny it.)

2. His apparent willingness to have sex in a bathroom the general public uses. (I'm strongly opposed to sex in public bathrooms, but he didn't actually do that, he only, probably, indicated his willingness to have sex, probably, right there and then.)

3. He's making life hard for his fellow Republican senators. (They're "embarrassed," and they don't want to have to go through with a lot of conspicuous procedures to oust him. Plus, he "promised" to go, so why doesn't he keep his promise? Deal with it. He was elected. Let the people of Idaho pressure him to go if they don't want him.)

4. He pleaded guilty and then refused to accept the consequences, like everyone else who pleads guilty. (Obviously, he couldn't withdraw that guilty plea, and I'd have been outraged if the judge had bent the rules and let this powerful man with his high-priced lawyers break free of the rules that apply to everyone else. But I would have loved to see the legal battle over police tactics and freedom of expression.)

5. He was convicted of a crime. (Yes, a little "disorderly conduct." Does one misdemeanor unrelated to your job mean you've got to go? Are you willing to apply that rule across the board? I think not. As a crime, it's less bad than a drunk driving conviction. How many senators have those?)

6. He's not a solid family man. (Care to apply that rule to every Senator?)

So let's leave Larry alone.

Can Senator Larry Craig withdraw his guilty plea?

If he can, who can't?

To withdraw a guilty plea under Minnesota law, defendants must prove that ["manifest injustice"] has occurred....

Craig, who has declared he is "not gay" and never has been, has contended in legal motions that he was "deeply panicked"...

But the prosecution has contended that Craig did not panic and was keenly aware of his legal standing during the two months from his arrest date to Aug. 8, when the court accepted his guilty plea and a $500 fine....

[The government argues] that in at least three phone conversations, the senator "seemed calm, intelligent and methodical in his questions" before filing the guilty plea.

"Subsequent to a sex scandal in a Minneapolis airport water closet for men...."

I love getting my American news filtered through India!

AS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY recovers from the Craig scandal, which forced the Idaho Senator Craig to resign (subsequent to a sex scandal in a Minneapolis airport water closet for men), a US tabloid has published more news which could damage the Republican Party even after Bush leaves office.

A US tabloid called “Globe” has published the news that First Lady Laura Bush is writing her divorce diaries about life in Washington. It has been reported that Laura Bush is unhappy with George Bush returning to drinking and spending more time with Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

According to the Globe, Laura Bush did not accompany her husband even to the APEC Summit in Australia because of her marital discord with George Bush. George Bush loves secrecy and has even asked members of his government not to write about their times in the Bush administration.

It appears that Bush is afraid that his reputation will be further damaged if there are further revelations of what happened inside the White House. The Republican Party has indeed suffered heavily in its so called “Annus Horribilis ” with Karl Rove imitating a rapper, Craig and his water closet, Giuliani dressed as a woman and now the Bush marital crisis.

It's so freaky!

Doubling Up Day.

Hey, I just noticed that after blogging about Erwin Chemerinsky, Sally Field, and Larry Craig this morning, I proceeded to put up posts about Erwin Chemerinsky and Larry Craig this afternoon. What's going on here today? There's only one way to set things right. Here you go:

"We believe the sting operation used to apprehend Mr. Craig was unconstitutional."

"The statute the government is relying upon makes it a crime to use certain offensive words.... To be able to solicit sex in private, in public spaces, for instance, is constitutionally protected speech."

The ACLU backs Larry Craig.

"People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door."

The Larry Craig toilet stall -- a Minnesota tourist attraction.

"Clearly Sen. Craig is watching TV and making decisions based upon what he sees."

Says "a top Senate GOP aide."

"We want to make sure that he understands that we think he’s resigned. There is no question that our leadership wants him to stand by that decision."

Larry Craig's life is all about the ambiguous, deniable signals. Get used to it!

Come back, Larry!

Fight it!

Now, it gets interesting!

"I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood."

Said Sgt. Dave Karsnia to Larry Craig -- yes, it's another Craig-tagged post -- and Dale Carpenter, at Volokh Conspiracy, penned a crisp post accusing Karsnia of racism:

It seems to me that the phrase, “the guy that we get out of the hood,” is an implied racial reference. It refers specifically to blacks, though one could say the officer meant to refer only to young black men from the ghetto who, in the officer's view, are prone to commit crimes.

Either way, it’s still race-specific in a case that otherwise has no obvious racial dimension. To shame Craig into telling the truth, the officer could have used a different example, like, “I expect this from some punk we get off the street.” Or, “I expect this from some low-life, but not a Senator.” It’s also fairly clear from the context that the officer is not associating blacks with bathroom cruising, but with dishonesty and "disrespect" toward the police.

This leads to a fascinating comments thread about the word "hood," including this from "anonymous":

How many of you VC posters listen to rap? For nearly twenty years, most rap / hip-hop music has been sold to white males under the age of 25. In the same way that so many of them appropriated the baggy pants of "the hood" (without having any idea why baggy pants have an advantage in the hood but not in the suburbs), they also appropriated the language, and refer to their neighborhoods as "the hood" and their friends as "homies" or "homeboys".

Just because in your rarified [sic] pseudo academic imaginations the phrase "the hood" has racist connotations, it does not follow that most users of the phrase (who are white and use the phrase self-referentially) also use it with racist overtones. Get out of the ivory tower and talk to people who live real lives.

And Sarah says:

.. I think the cop meant "you're lying in the way that lower-class people -- the sort of people you probably think commit most crimes -- do." I'm sure he was trying to conjure generic, Jerry Springer-esque, "40 of our high schools now offer daycare to teen moms," bars-on-the-windows, stolen shopping carts, 'this is why we wrote that 3-strikes law,' high school dropout images. Whether they were black (or whatever) people in the Senator's mind wasn't as important as the social and economic trappings surrounding them -- and the cop got a "I'm not that kind of guy!!" response, just as he'd hoped. The message was "fine, upstanding, non-criminal citizens such as yourself would do themselves credit by Acting Like A Man and admitting to everything." It's another version of the "if you've got nothing to hide, you'll let us do X" tactic, which only works on people who think of themselves as decent.

Much more at the link, including some puzzling over whether the cop might deliberately use a racial term not because he is racist, but because he assumes the person he's talking to -- here, a white, conservative Idahoan -- is racist.

"What most people do when they see a law being broken: go get a cop."

That's a line from a piece by Arianna Huffington, which complains about the sting that got Larry Craig arrested in an airport men's room.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not wild about walking into a public restroom and seeing a couple using the a stall for something other than, as Sgt. Dave Karsnia, the arresting officer in the Craig case put it, "its intended use."

But that is not what Larry Craig did. If he had, someone in the restroom could have done what most people do when they see a law being broken: go get a cop.

So -- in Arianna's world -- if you have an airport bathroom that's become a notorious place for gay sex, you don't need to station an undercover cop inside to catch anybody and deter the behavior, you can just hang back and wait for the bathroom-goers to see the sexual beharior and to do what "most people do." These busy travelers will officiously run around the airport looking for a cop. That doesn't sound to me like the way "most people" react to sleazy quality-of-life crimes. I think most people would be disgusted, immediately leave the bathroom and plan to avoid that bathroom -- and maybe that airport -- in the future.

Even assuming that men going to the Minneapolis airport bathroom would go searching for a cop, the cops in the airport should be a paying attention to other things, not dealing with a very particular problem that has nothing to do with airport security. Yet Arianna says:

And as it happens, since Craig was arrested in an airport, presumably there were plenty of law enforcement officers nearby looking for, you know, real threats -- like explosives or folks on a Watch List.

And you want to take them off that task to go after some guys having sex in the bathroom (who'd probably be gone by the time he arrived)? How on earth is that better than using a police officer like Karsnia who is trained for a specialized task?

But Huffington thinks Karsnia's job is simply ridiculous:

It's unsettling that more people here in the land of the free aren't at all discomfited at leaving it up to the prognostication skills of Sgt. Karsnia and his crack team of B-men to determine what crimes people might have committed if not for the mind-reading and daring-do [sic] of Minneapolis' Special Forces Bathroom Unit.

What other public servants with difficult jobs -- imagine training to be a cop and then getting assigned to sit on a toilet all day -- does the imperious Arianna Huffington think deserving of her mockery?

Is sending Sgt. Karsnia into the men's room to spend all day trying to get other men to look at him and tap his foot really the best way to use our limited law enforcement resources?

And just how much money is Minneapolis/St. Paul spending on sting operations like this one? Just since May, 40 men have been arrested on allegations of illegal sexual activity at the same airport. And how much taxpayer money in total is being allocated across the country by local police to protect us from people whom the Sgt. Karsnias of the world think might, at some point, commit a crime?

I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that the sting is cost effective. One police officer, carrying out very few arrests, ruins the reputation of this bathroom as a place for sex encounters. That bathroom is in the state's most important airport, a hub of commercial activity. Minnesotans have a huge interest in maintaining the quality of their international airport, and travelers have endless opportunities to choose other routes when they dislike an airport. I would speculate that Karsnia's work probably produced a large net benefit to taxpayers.

"Shouldn't we stick up for the poor guy? I can't believe it's a crime to tap your foot on the bathroom to signal that you want to hook up..."

Writes Jacob Weisberg, in a debate among Slate editors about how to handle the Larry Craig story. More:

David Plotz: I understand why they want to stop a bathroom from becoming a den of blowjobs, but this seems pathetic. Also—there is little deterrent effect in doing this generally. It is an airport, so by definition it caters to people in transit, who aren't going to know that it has become a police target.

John Dickerson: Seems to me you should have to go a bit beyond tapping your toes.

Jack Shafer: He pleaded guilty to lewd conduct.

He also stared through the crack into the stall.

Plotz: Jack, for a libertarian such as yourself to say that a guilty plea is the last word is crazy.... He is guilty—but of a fake crime. The fact of the guilty plea does not somehow end discussion. He pleaded guilty because he was scared and embarrassed about the public revelation. The problem—my libertarian friend—is that the government has put on its books a law that serves very little public purpose, and has given the police free rein to enforce it with heavy hands (and tapping feet). You should be objecting to the excessive power of the state being harnessed to create and enforce laws that serve so little purpose.

Plotz raises some good points, but he's missing the peeping aspect of the crime. You can see that "peeping" was one of the crimes charged. That is clearly defined and a proper offense. The other offense is charged was "disorderly conduct":

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:...

Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

Maybe there are some problems here. Did he have "reasonable grounds to know" that what he was doing would "alarm, anger or disturb" the police officer? I think only the initial peeping was a problem. A person who was not interested in sex should object to the first peep. It seems Craig made a series of subtle gestures and the officer let him go on. That would cause a reasonable person to think that he wasn't upsetting anyone but that his advances were wanted.

Dale Carpenter says:

Disorderly conduct is a notoriously nebulous crime, allowing police wide discretion in making arrests and charges for conduct or speech that is little more than bothersome to police or to others....

At most, Craig was implicitly inviting another adult to engage in some kind of sexual behavior in a public place. I'm not a Minnesota criminal lawyer, but I don't think asking a stranger for sex in a public place, while vulgar and rude under many circumstances, would by itself be a crime under state law. At any rate, Craig wasn't charged with that.

What really seems to have happened is that the airport police had received complaints about sexual activity and were acting over-zealously to deter it, regardless of the niceties of state criminal law. Many gay men throughout our history have felt the sting of these public decency campaigns, have been arrested for alleged sex crimes, and have pleaded guilty at unusually high rates in order to avoid the embarrassment and other consequences of being outed. When newspapers print their names, as they often do, the consequences can be devastating. Like them, Craig probably wanted to avoid publicity and pleaded guilty to "disorderly conduct" in a futile effort to save his reputation and his job. Whatever we think of Craig's views on gay rights, or of the cosmic justice in this particular Senator being ensnared in these particular circumstances, it's difficult to see how he's a criminal.

But how can you disregard the peeping charge? Here's the statute:

(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:

(1) surreptitiously gazes, stares, or peeps in the window or other aperture of a sleeping room in a hotel, as defined in section 327.70, subdivision 3, a tanning booth, or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts, as defined in section 609.341, subdivision 5, or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts; and

(2) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the occupant.

Isn't this statute the basis for the strategy of having the police officer to wait inside the stall? And why isn't this an acceptable police practice to deal with the problem of a public bathroom that is used for sexual activity?

Captain Ed notes that Craig only pled guilty to the disorderly conduct charge. But I have to suspect that he decided to plead guilty to disorderly conduct to resolve the matter and that if he hadn't agreed to that, he would have faced the peeping charge. Captain Ed sees a way to defend against that charge: Craig was three feet away from the door and perhaps the police officer looked at him first. But he didn't choose to fight the charges. I'm not an expert on criminal law, and I would like to hear more discussion of how a good lawyer would have resolved the case for him. Isn't what he chose to do the most sensible path? And if the man is competent to be a Senator, shouldn't we assume that he looked at his options and chose what was in his best interests?

Whether Craig is gay or not is irrelevant, but I should note that Craig has made a point of telling the world he's not gay.

ADDED: I said above: "I have to suspect that he decided to plead guilty to disorderly conduct to resolve the matter and that if he hadn't agreed to that, he would have faced the peeping charge." Beldar agrees and amplifies:

Sen. Craig was almost certainly given an accommodation here by the prosecution and the court in being allowed to plead guilty to the crime that, of the two charged, has by far less social stigma attached to a conviction. Yes, disorderly conduct is a broad and vague charge — one that doesn't much seem to fit the facts alleged. But it's entirely possible that it was charged in the first place as an obvious, attractive basis for compromise, i.e., a charge with at least some factual correspondence to what happened, and upon which a more attractive plea could therefore be negotiated (especially for someone with no criminal record or other indications of dangerousness)....

[T]his plea, like countless others every day, aptly reflect[s] the litigants' well-informed judgments as to their respective risks and benefits from going to trial....

That said: Once Sen. Craig voluntarily pleaded guilty, he became guilty of disorderly conduct, conclusively and irrebuttably, under the Rule of Law as it speaks for our society. Whether he mighta, could, shoulda won if he'd fought all the way through is irrelevant, and it's unproductive to even speculate about. He has deliberately forfeited his right to even hint — ever, to anyone, for any purpose — that he was "really not guilty" of disorderly conduct in that airport men's room. That argument insults the listener (us) and only further degrades the maker (him); it is the argument of a scoundrel who thinks he's arguing to fools.

I think that last paragraph is too broadly stated, but in this case, Craig needs to find a better way to deal with his predicament.

By the say, Senator McCain has called on Craig to resign.

"What do you think about that?"

I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to weigh in on this yesterday, but everybody's talking about Senator Larry Craig. The story:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom... On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct...

After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states....

What do I think about that? I think the fact that he did that suggests it works sometimes to get him off the hook. It certainly shows that he thinks it can and he's willing to use his power that way. He should resign for that alone.

[Sgt. Dave Karsnia, a plainclothes officer,] entered the bathroom at noon that day and about 13 minutes after taking a seat in a stall, he stated he could see “an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall.”...

“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes,” the report states.

Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.

“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,” Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.”

Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

What a sad, pathetic scene! It's awful that public bathrooms -- especially in places like airports -- are used for sexual activity. The police have to figure out how to drive this activity elsewhere. Karsnia has a tough job, but he seems to handle it with efficiency and as much dignity as you can when it involves sitting on a toilet and letting someone watch you through the crack in the door.

Craig has a difficult moral problem if, as it seems, he has a gay sexual orientation, but he has chosen to marry a woman. Cheating on his wife and obtruding on the bathroom-going public is no way to deal with his predicament. It's especially ugly if he's taking this miserable course in order to maintain his grip on political power with an electorate that wouldn't tolerate him if he lived his life openly and honestly.

Worst of all, to my mind, is the proffering of the business card and the "What do you think about that?"

UPDATE: I see Glenn Greenwald is attacking me about the Senator Craig story:

The reaction to the Larry Craig story provides one of the most vivid illustrations yet of how the right-wing movement works. Last October, just weeks before the midterm election, gay activist Mike Rogers reported that the married, GOP "family values" Senator repeatedly had sex with anonymous men in public bathrooms. His report was based on "extensive research," including interviews with several men whom Craig solicited for bathroom sex.

As Rogers argued at the time, the story was relevant -- just as the Vitter prostitute story was -- in light of Craig's frequent political exploitation of issues of sexual morality and his opposition to virtually every gay rights bill. Rogers' story, as a factual matter, seemed relatively credible, both because of his history of accurate outings and because there is no discernible reason why, if he were intent on fabricating, he would single out someone as obscure as Larry Craig, who was not even up for re-election....

Among right-wing pundits -- weeks before the election -- there was nothing but support for Craig and outrage over the reporting of this story. The most hysterical outrage of all was from Glenn Reynolds, who went so far as repeatedly to predict -- literally -- that the country would be so repulsed by Rogers' reporting that it might actually swing the election in favor of the Republicans. More absurdly still, Reynolds cited a grand total of two reasons why he voted for GOP's Bob Corker over Harold Ford in the Tennessee Senate race, one of which was actually Rogers' report on Craig ("the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd . . . . has convinced me that [Democrats] just don't deserve a victory with those tactics").

As usual, Bush-supporting bloggers like Ann Althouse and Patterico dutifully echoed Reynolds' line: "I truly believe this sort of tactic is going to create a backlash."

So this is a link back to something I wrote in October 2006. I have to go back and check because I don't remember writing about Craig before. Here's the old post:

"Lefty Blogger Outs Senator As Gay."

Patterico notes. Captain Ed comments.

Kos is taking a poll. "Do you agree with outing Gay Republicans?" 70% say "yes. But don't you think this percentage would change if the strategy backfires? I think aggressive characters like our "lefty blogger" think that uncovering gay Republicans will disgust social conservatives and change their voting behavior. They might also believe that they are demonstrating hypocrisy and that doing so will motivate Republicans to abandon social conservatism. I would like to see Republicans abandon social conservatism, and I'm not cheering on these slimy outings. But, honestly, I think these creepy, gleeful efforts at outing will only make social conservatives more conservative, and they will continue to look to the Republican party to serve their needs.

Well, this isn't about Senator Craig or sex in public bathrooms. (And it doesn't link to Glenn Reynolds either.) This is about the general practice of outing gay Republicans, which I find offensive. Moreover, I didn't even say that I thought this would produce a backlash. I said that lefties wouldn't use this tactic if they didn't think it would stimulate homophobia and turn voters away from socially conservative Republicans. Of course, I am hoping the tactic backfires and that the voters are not really homophobic. This is a longstanding theme here, and Greenwald either can't understand it, won't take the time to see what I'm saying, or is deliberately misstating what I say in a low, sleazy attack. Which is it?

Let's see if Greenwald apologizes and corrects his post. Now that he can see how inaccurate and inappropriate his attack is, a failure to correct is outright deceit.

Also, Greenwald's post is incredibly boring and windy. Maybe he actually can't understand things that aren't blathered about at great length. Ugh!

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Over 300 comments, and I know some of them are abusive. I'm not able to comb through and delete, so I apologize to readers who find some of this offensive. Please try harder to argue with each other in a way that doesn't involve name-calling. And don't use the F word!