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?"Awesome.
North Carolina: former Christian group leader pleads guilty to solicitation.posted by ericb at 3:17 PM on August 27, 2007 [12 favorites]
Minnesota State Rep. Mark Olsen, the co-sponsor of a (failed) state marriage amendment to ban gays and lesbians from marrying, was convicted by a jury for domestic assault.
Orlando Murder-Suicide involving GOP Consultant -- a Lovers' Row?
Busted Florida Republican state rep's "black gay panic" defense on soliciting charge.
Defiant Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Will Risk Tourism for Anti-gay Views.
Baptist minister arrested for indecent exposure, DUI -- and that's just the start.
Even though I feel bad personally for all the closeted gay Republicans that have been outed. Living a lie like that must be just unimaginably difficult. It's too bad that they aren't in a position where they can be honest about who they are.If they were simply hiding their sexuality, I would agree with you. But many of them -- this one included -- go far beyond that: they actively fight to discriminate against people.
"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.Note to self: remember to not tap toes, lest you wind up fucking a Republican.
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."
Republican Hypocrisy Revealedposted by ericb at 3:43 PM on August 27, 2007 [7 favorites]
Republican Pedophilia
Republican Sex Crimes.
"Scripps Howard News Service reports that former congressman Mark Foley is unlikely to face criminal charges for sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys. … That could change if new evidence surfaces in the next week that proved Foley, 52, sent online messages to male teenagers with the intent to 'seduce, solicit, lure, entice, or attempt to seduce a child,' a third-degree felony under Florida law.” The House has refused to let Florida investigators examine Foley’s congressional computers, stating that they are 'congressional work papers' and only Foley can release them."posted by ericb at 3:51 PM on August 27, 2007 [1 favorite]
"In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty."Hah.
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?”
DOCTOR: You have AIDS.posted by orthogonality at 5:52 PM on August 27, 2007 [15 favorites]
ROY COHN: AIDS. Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don't tell you that.
DOCTOR: No?
ROY COHN: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, not sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favours. That is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?
DOCTOR: No.
ROY COHN: No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?
DOCTOR: The President.
ROY COHN: Even better, Henry. His wife.
DOCTOR: I'm impressed.
ROY COHN: I don't want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because what I am defines entirely who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with boys.
DOCTOR: OK, Roy.
ROY COHN: And what is my diagnosis, Henry?
DOCTOR: You have AIDS, Roy.
ROY COHN: No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have -- liver cancer.
Now, a different question is why someone looking to cruise anonymously would hand their high profile Senatorial card under the stall. I would think the policeman was even more at a loss than I was.This was done after he was arrested, during the police interview.
Yup.at this rate, McConnell, McHenry, and Crist are due to be arrested next.I swear I had read "Christ" and I was like, wtf, he's gay too????
FreeRepublic Reacts:Wow, those people are angry at Barney Frank over this.
When J. Edgar Hoover died in May, 1972, he left virtually the whole of his estate to his long-time companion. Tolson also took control of Hoover's considerable secret files. Tolson retired from the FBI and according to his friends, that the only time he left the house was to visit Hoover's grave. When Tolson died in April, 1975, it was reported that the FBI agents arrived at his house and removed all these documents. Clyde Tolson is buried with Hoover at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.posted by orthogonality at 4:21 AM on August 28, 2007 [2 favorites]
'There's a very clear bottom line here,' Craig said.
"First, please let me apologize to my family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans for the cloud placed over Idaho. I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport. I regret my decision to plead guilty and the sadness that decision has brought to my wife, family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans. For that I apologize.posted by ericb at 1:50 PM on August 28, 2007
"In June, I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it. Because of that, I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed.
"For a moment, I want to put my state of mind into context on June 11. For 8 months leading up to June, my family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been.
"Still, without a shred of truth or evidence to the contrary, the Statesman has engaged in this witch hunt. In pleading guilty, I overreacted in Minneapolis, because of the stress of the Idaho Statesman’s investigation and the rumors it has fueled around Idaho. Again, that overreaction was a mistake, and I apologize for my misjudgment. Furthermore, I should not have kept this arrest to myself, and should have told my family and friends about it. I wasn’t eager to share this failure, but I should have done so anyway.
"I love my wife, family, friends, staff, and Idaho. I love serving Idaho in Congress. Over the years, I have accomplished a lot for Idaho, and I hope Idahoans will allow me to continue to do that. There are still goals I would like to accomplish, and I believe I can still be an effective leader for Idaho. Next month, I will announce, as planned, whether or not I will seek reelection.
"As an elected official, I fully realize that my life is open for public criticism and scrutiny, and I take full responsibility for the mistake in judgment I made in attempting to handle this matter myself.
"It is clear, though, that through my actions I have brought a cloud over Idaho. For that, I ask the people of Idaho for their forgiveness.
"As I mentioned earlier, I have now retained counsel to examine this matter and I will make no further comment."
"...[Criag] also acknowledged that he had told no one about his June 11 arrest, when an undercover police officer said Craig made sexual advances toward him in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport.So, contrary to his claim yesterday that he didn't have counsel back in June, it is now clear that he was "lawyered-up" soon after the arrest.
But 11 days later, on June 22, Craig revisited the Minneapolis airport to complain about how he'd been treated by police and ask for someone with whom his lawyer could speak, according to police records.
...Until the news of his arrest came out Monday in a Washington, D.C., political newspaper, Craig told no one, not even Senate leaders.
Court and arrest records released Tuesday show that Craig negotiated his plea over the telephone, then signed and returned it to the courts in the mail, much like a traffic ticket.
In his plea, signed and dated Aug. 1, but not recorded until Aug. 8, Craig agreed that by handling the matter through the mail, he was giving up a trial and his right to be present at the time of sentencing.
Judge Gary Larson, who handled Craig's case in Hennepin County, would not comment on the senator's plea. A spokesman for the judge told McClatchy Newspapers that since Craig remains on probation, Larson considers the case open and doesn't consider it ethical to discuss what happened until the case is fully resolved."
Why, then, do police continue to act as though it [ed: soliciting gay sex] is? Because of the long and only-recently ended practice of firm legal discrimination against gay people. Until 2001, consensual sodomy was a crime in Minnesota, meaning that it was only six years ago that gay people in that state stopped being treated by the letter of the law as, quite literally, outlaws and criminals.She later agrees that the charge against him is peeping, which requires a sexual intent to be proven. The sexual signaling provided that proof. So, technically, he wasn't arrested for soliciting sex, he was arrested for peeping, and a mere solicitation wouldn't, in theory, be sufficient for an arrest. However, the point I've been making and which Franke-Ruta makes is that whatever they charge someone with is opportunistic—the basic thing is that they want to prosecute homosexuals for having gay sex and these are good places to do so, and always have been.
Meanwhile, in Idaho, the state Sen. Larry Craig has represented in Congress since 1981, consensual sodomy was a felony punishable as a “crime against nature” by five years to life in prison until 2003, when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that a similar statute in Texas was unconstitutional, thus striking down the state’s law. From 1996 until then, the state sex offender registry was written so as to add those convincted of even consensual sodomy to the sex offender rolls for life.
Until the sodomy laws were struck down by the Supreme Court, solicitation of sodomy was a crime in many of the states that had sodomy laws, and it was this “solicitation for sodomy” provision that allowed men who sought sex from other men to be targeted for arrest by police in, for example, public restrooms, under circumstances where there was no money or coercion involved.
"He claimed a higher moral ground while he was cruising for sex in bathrooms because... well, because his fundraising clearly depended on it. It's doubtful that a gay man in Idaho would get elected Senator but I might be wrong about that. Regardless, if he wanted to be in the closet, still stay married, be a Senator, well, I can understand all of that. It's not easy to be out, it means job discrimination, it means physical harassment and sometimes violence, it means not being able to have your loved one be your legal spouse or any of those benefits. It means, often, losing your family and friends. It's not an easy path. I can respect anyone who chooses to live in the closet on one condition: They don't actively fight for laws in an elected office that allow for discrimination, hate and bigotry. If Senator Craig needs a pick me up every now and then from the men's room, I think that's pathetic, but ... to each his own and understand, you're going to get caught."posted by ericb at 8:55 AM on August 30, 2007
"...But we have arrested certainly some high-profile people. It's ranged from CEOs, bank presidents...professors, college professors....so, it really runs the gamut as far as who we actually apprehend and who has been involved in this in the past.Do us all a favour and go visit your nearest gay bar.
...I can't say [whether or not they're gay]. I can tell you that a good majority of these men do have families. And that's been a little bit shocking to us. You would think that it would be more of a gay issue, but overwhelmingly more and more we're seeing that these are people with families.*
"Yes, Billy, this is Larry Craig calling. You can reach me on my cell. Arlen Specter is now willing to come out in my defense, arguing that it appears by all that he knows that I have been railroaded and all that.posted by ericb at 7:21 AM on September 5, 2007
"Having all of that, we have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30. I think it is important for you to make as bold a statement as you are comfortable with this afternoon, and I would hope you could make it in front of the cameras.
"I think it would help drive the story that I’m willing to fight, that I’ve got quality people out there fighting in my defense, and that this thing could take a new turn or a new shape, it has that potential. Anyway, give me a buzz or give Mike a buzz on that. We’re headed to my press conference now. Thank you. Bye."
"Just when Republicans thought things could not get much worse for their scandal-stained party, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig leaked word Tuesday night that he is reconsidering his abrupt plan to resign from the Senate in the wake of his arrest in a police sex sting operation.Time to get out my lawn chair and start popping a ton of popcorn. This'll be fun to watch.
Top Republican strategists were neither delighted nor amused by the senator's decision to rethink retirement after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct following his arrest in a Minnesota airport men's bathroom.
GOP Senate sources said Tuesday night that Craig's staff was trying to tamp down the story because Craig still intends to resign but wants to retain the option of fighting the charges with a newly assembled, high-powered legal team.
On Saturday, Craig said he would resign at the end of this month.
A senior GOP Senate strategist said Republican leaders want him gone now and will press for him to keep his promise to resign. The strategist warned Craig is 'losing any goodwill built up among his colleagues,' adding, 'He is simply a fish out of water, floundering right now to get his last gasp of political air.'
'It simply defies reality,' aid a Senate GOP aide. 'You can't make this up even if you are heavily medicated. The American people heard from Larry Craig that he would resign and using the word "intent" as a back door doesn't work with them.'"
The Senate's top Republican says many GOP senators believe Larry Craig should resign.Mitch thought he got what he wanted when Craig announced his ‘intent’ to resign.
Mitch McConnell describes Craig's conduct as ‘unforgivable.’ And he says Senate Republican leaders have ‘acted promptly to begin the process of dealing with this conduct.’ McConnell adds, ‘We will see what happens in the coming days.’
‘He said he is going to try and get the case in Minnesota dismissed,’ said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, telling reporters he had heard from the Idaho lawmaker earlier in the day.posted by ericb at 2:07 PM on September 5, 2007
McConnell spoke several hours after Craig’s lawyers appealed to the ethics committee to dismiss the complaint against him, saying it stemmed merely from personal conduct, and did not relate to his official duties.”*
“In a 41-page brief filed today, an attorney for the Metropolitan Airports Commission says that Idaho Senator Larry Craig should not be able to withdraw his guilty plea ‘because the basis for his request is not injustice but rather his 'displeasure at the outcome,’ according to the Pioneer Press.posted by ericb at 3:33 PM on September 24, 2007
The prosecutor, Christopher Renz, writes that Craig had more than enough time between his arrest on June 11 and August 1st, when the plea petition was signed, to think about what a guilty plea might mean for him.
The AP reports: ‘'Denying Craig's motion ‘prevents further politicking and game playing on the part of the defendant in relation to his plea,' Renz wrote. Renz wrote that Craig didn't decide to withdraw his plea until after he was hurt by the publicity of the allegations. Craig clearly 'had hoped that he could plead guilty and that the plea would not be discovered by the media or public,' Renz wrote. 'The defendant chose to plead guilty and consciously took that risk. The defendant's current pursuit of withdrawal of his guilty plea is reactionary, calculated and political.' Renz warned of a 'deluge' of defendants who would ask to withdraw guilty pleas if Craig succeeds. The prosecutor said his office was contacted by a defendant trying to withdraw his plea after Craig announced that he regretted pleading guilty.’
Renz also blasted Craig's version of events in the bathroom stall: ‘'The defendant's explanation for his hand being down underneath the stall divider - that he was picking up a piece of toilet paper in a heavily trafficked public restroom - stretches the bounds of credibility, particularly considering: the hand observed underneath the divider was palm up,' and it was Craig's left hand, reaching over to his right side, the memorandum said. And Karsnia 'observed no paper on the ground.'‘
Larry Craig is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.”
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