(Kerry Maloney/Idaho Statesman/AP/FILE)
Senator Larry Craig loses airport bathroom misconduct appeal
By Jimmy Orr | 12.09.08
Politics is about winners and losers. This year has been especially bad for politics as an occupation.
An Alaska senator was convicted for accepting gifts. A couple of Boston city councilors were caught allegedly taking bribes. The governor of Illinois was arrested allegedly for trying to profit from high office.
No withdrawal
And then there was today’s decision by a Minnesota appeals court not to allow U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) to withdraw his guilty plea to a charge of disorderly conduct at an airport restroom.
The latter case, of course, was huge news a year and a half ago and provided Jay Leno and David Letterman endless amounts of material — but pretty much ended the career of the Idaho senator, who leaves office at the end of his term in January.
Guilty
Craig initially pleaded guilty to the charge after being arrested by an undercover police officer for solicitation.
Although Craig didn’t verbally solicit an officer, he inappropriately tapped his foot and made hand signals which are apparently code for solicitation.
Not Guilty
After the case became public, Craig changed his mind and asked that his guilty plea (which he was allowed to mail to the court) be withdrawn. But the District Court judge wasn’t buying it and denied the request.
So Craig appealed claiming that the Minnesota law violated his freedom of expression.
To which the court replied today, “…foot-tapping and the movement of his foot toward the undercover officer’s stall are considered speech, they would be intrusive speech directed at a captive audience and the government may prohibit them.”
The court also shot down Craig’s appeal that the court should have allowed him to change his mind.
“Appellant has not shown that the district court abused its discretion in denying his petition to withdraw his guilty plea,” the court ruled.
Disappointed
Craig’s reaction? Not happy.
“I am extremely disappointed by the action of the Minnesota Court of Appeals,” Craig said in a statement. “I disagree with their conclusion and remain steadfast in my belief that nothing criminal or improper occurred at the Minneapolis airport.”
He now has the option of keeping his name and the issue in the news cycle even longer by further appealing the decision to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
“I maintain my innocence, and currently my attorneys and I are reviewing the decision and looking into the possibility of appealing,” Craig said in a statement.
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2. Ram | 12.09.08
Enough of this story already! The germane questions is why does Larry Craig think he has a right to change is mind? Other than the I plead guilty before to avoid publicity. Now that it is so public, I want to change my mine.
3. Nicole | 12.09.08
Well written. The breakup of paragraphs makes for an easy to follow (all the way through) read. Kudos.
4. Voter | 12.09.08
Give it up! Caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Be a man and take the punishment that comes with your actions. Stupidity is not a defence.
5. geral sosbee | 12.09.08
The police lie,falsify reports, suppress evidence, entrap, threaten, malign, assault, murder across the nation with impunity. See the evidence that I have documented on my site for the past decade.
The police are corrupt and the courts know it. So, belief in the law enforcement community (including fbi) is the same as sleeping with the devil.
7. Bryan | 12.09.08
This is the best spin of this story that I have ever seen. “Although Craig didn’t verbally solicit an officer, he inappropriately tapped his foot and made hand signals which are apparently code for solicitation.” Come on….he didn’t do this gesture by happenstance, in a bathroom notorious for such activity! He is a complete hypocrite and deserves the charge!
8. nick gisler | 12.09.08
The Devil made him do it ? Stay out opf airports Larry—-espically when you acting like a fool.
9. Robert | 12.09.08
Larry Craig should be embarrassed for his actions, in the rest room and his trying to withdraw his guilty plea, He insists nothing illegal or inappropriete happened in the restroom. he’s publically disgraced not only himself, but betrayed his constituants. Low life career polititions like him need to be exposed and stopped. Some have said Craig was being brave during these proceedings. Brave is an overstatement, arrogant is a more fitting term. It’s time to expose these type of closet ***** and put an end to self-serving polititions like Craig and his ilk.
10. Robert | 12.09.08
Larry Craig should be embarrassed for his actions, in the rest room and his trying to withdraw his guilty plea, He insists nothing illegal or inappropriete happened in the restroom. he’s publically disgraced not only himself, but betrayed his constituants. Low life career polititions like him need to be exposed and stopped. Some have said Craig was being brave during these proceedings. Brave is an overstatement, arrogant is a more fitting term. It’s time to expose these type of closet ***** and put an end to self-serving polititions like Craig and his ilk.
11. Jerry Haskins | 12.09.08
I think that it is time that our nation require a higher standard of truth an virtue than has been demonstrated by our elected officials. Morality and
good character should be as vital as proper discernment.
12. Mike | 12.09.08
I’m sorry but there’s just too much fish odor surrounding this guy. He has been suspect for years and then THIS. If it walks like a duck etc. Some folks are left with only denial to keep their dignity–can’t blame him for that.
13. Myjake | 12.09.08
It is no longer a question nor matters if Craig is gy or not the point is he ‘pleaded quilty” to a violation of a state statue and now should do like the rest of us do when making the same plea~ PAY UP!
14. JD | 12.09.08
First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Not sure how “intrusive speech” isn’t a subset of “speech”
15. cambion | 12.09.08
I hate the guy’s politics, but anyone who really thinks he was soliciting sex needs to get their head examined. This story was pure sensationalism from the get go. This was a BS police sting. It could have happened to anyone. Ridiculous.
Oh well, at least his religious-right politics can’t do anymore harm.
16. flossing | 12.09.08
If america didnt have such a stupid hang ups about homosexuality this kind of stuff would not be an issue.
17. Mike | 12.09.08
Well….if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, taps it’s foot in a public bathroom stall moving it towards the neighboring occupied stall and then takes it’s hand and slides it underneath the wall….it is definitely a duck! His poor wife is the one I feel bad for. Stupid sexually-conflicted men that get married and then lead these underground sex-lives are very sad sad beings. I can’t imagine that level of self-loathing.
18. jack dadny | 12.09.08
if craig is allowed to repeal his guilty plea. I want an opportunity to repeal my guilty plea. fair is fair.
19. Matt | 12.09.08
Does anyone know…when he retires in January what is his pension that we taxpayers are going to have to pay for the rest of his life?
20. FINNCOOP | 12.09.08
Look, the testimony by the arresting officer, who had made many of these same kinds of arrests over the past few years, many in the same bathroom, involved specific hand signals and actual foot contact under the stall.
I don’t know about any of these Craig defenders, but if you just go into a public bathroom stall and (after making sure there is no one in the next stall) just try to stick your foot far enough into the next space to touch someone elses’s foot. Extremely difficult, especially for a big guy.
You have your pants down, holding your ankles together and can still somehow reach your foot under the stall divider to touch the guy’s foot beside you?And you stuck your fingers under the divider gesturing to the guy? Eeewww!
Then, when you are arrested, you flash your senate ID card and expect a get out of jail pass. When you see that isn’t going to fly, you plead guilty
A- because you are,
B- because you don’t want your constituency to know you puff sausage.
Being gay or bisexual is not the problem, hypocracy is.
21. Ritch | 12.09.08
I know some feel that just tapping ones foot doesn’t mean anything. However, these moves and taps (Having seen a gay friend of mine demonstrate them to me, don’t ask me how he knows!) are quite specific and I can’t see how anyone could do them in the right sequence just by dumb luck. Frankly, he should just come out and he’d probably have a better quality of life. My friend sure seems happy, certainly happier than I am as a rule and I’m Het!
22. whoiamnow | 12.09.08
Why is asking for sex a crime? Isn’t that basically what Craig was doing? I mean he wasn’t asking to pay for it, which is prostitution (and shouldn’t be illegal either, but that’s for a different thread). If Craig had just walked up to the guy and said “Hello, would you like to hook up?” would he have been arrested for that?
23. Leo | 12.09.08
The more he fights this, the more public relations damage he inflicts on himself. shut up, or come out of the closet, like a real man!
24. Robert | 12.09.08
We self-respecting *** are embarrassed by this closeted queen. Come out, come out, wherever you are, Larry.
25. Cheeseman | 12.09.08
I mean this is sick. And i do feel bad for his wife. But wow, I didn’t know people just gave each other favors in bathrooms at airports. Seriously? Feet tapping? What did he do? Give the sign of his finger going into the hole in his other hand? He totally deserves to get kicked out seeing how this has everything to do with his position as senator.
26. Larry’s a fairy | 12.09.08
I do hope this dolt keeps appealing this! He’s such a lamebrain and I take great pleasure every time he makes news with his wide-stance nonsense.
27. pleasure stick | 12.09.08
Listen, guilty plea, mixing politics and religion, and hypocrisy aside, I’d be fighting this “crime,” too. How are Craig’s actions a crime? Please tell me how someone is hurt by this odd behavior. What does society lose? My brain hurts thinking about why this is a crime.
28. Mike | 12.09.08
As far as I can tell, most people who are homophobic and persecute gays tend to be closet gays, or at least leaning that direction. This is just another case in point.
29. emeraldeyes | 12.09.08
the damage has been done.. now its time to pay for the sickening act.. Hes lucky it was an adult He solicitated not a minor .. theres no excuse for that be havior.. stop trying to get away with being a sick old man
30. James | 12.09.08
One of my friends frequents gay bathhouses… He tells me that half the guys in there tell him “of course, I’m not gay…
One of my friends has been to prison… He tells me that half the guys in there tell him “of course, I’m not guilty…
One of my friends is in the Senate…
31. Davey | 12.09.08
whoiamnow, thanks for one of the few comments that get it. How was what Craig did any more harmful than what goes on at bars every night? He didn’t buy drinks? What ever happened to the basic rule that police don’t get to use entrapment? I’m against everything Craig stands for, but this faith-based police state is about to destroy our freedom beyond repair.
32. aguy7 | 12.09.08
Mr. Wide Stance, your continued denial is only making matters worse. The higher court has now given its stamp of approval to the actions of the lower court. Quit prolonging your and your family’s humiliation. Better yet, for the sake of your soul, admit your guilt. You did it, and denial doesn’t undo it.
33. Greenjeans | 12.09.08
This sad man has made a career out of humiliating others for his own personal gain. Denying equal rights to gays was just one of his pet projects. There is poetic justice here, even if this was a victimless ‘crime’.
34. Michael | 12.09.08
Not really a bad year to be in politics. I don’t think of it that way when people are having bad things happen to them due to hypocracy and stupidity
35. Marshall | 12.09.08
RE# 5 @sosbee “police lie,falsify reports, suppress evidence, entrap…”
What’s your point? Do you want to add the allegation that at the PD he was tortured to the point of mailing-in his guilty-plea when he got home? Waterboarding should be so effective…
Thanks for posting, but you better hurry back aboard your UFO - Elvis’ alien love-child is honking out in the driveway!
36. Eric | 12.09.08
What happened in the bathroom is not the worst of what Craig did. What he should be hung for is what happened after, when he tried to use his position as an elected federal official to get preferential treatment for himself. The man is a hypocrite of the highest order.
37. Richard | 12.09.08
Do the cops really have nothing better to do but hang around bathrooms and bust the homosexuals?
Good grief, we all know that politicians are just wanna be car salesmen.
38. MrBob | 12.10.08
Has morality and common decency gone out the window. Bedroom behavior is one thing, public bathroom behavior is another. He;s another one of those “white haired old men” that we must VOTE OUT. Let’s get some new blood in the senate and house. Set up term limits, these should not be lifetime careers. Look at Ted Kenedy (and others), past time to retire.
39. frank burns | 12.10.08
I tap my foot all the time, I guess in Minnesota I’d better watch out. Long live the land of the free, home of the brave. But hey, tap your foot, that’s intrusive speech, and you are going to jail.
40. Jones B | 12.10.08
Well, it looks like discrimination agsinst gays to me. He did nothing lewd. He gave a subtle singal. I suppose as a heterosexual I can be placed under arrest for smiling at a woman or winking at her? C’mon, hypocrites, at least be honest — this is discrimination against gays, cut and dried. Homophobes love it though.
41. geral sosbee | 01.29.09
Marshall- hold off the ad hominem and read the evidence that I present:
http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/forum/topics/americans-embrace-their
fbi/cia/army/marines new exotic weaponry to torture, kill
See the following sites for USA admission that the country engages in *Brain Entrainment and other atrocities ( as I have reported for the past decade). If the reader believe that friends and allies of the usa are safe from fbi/cia torture & killing sprees, see my sites for compelling evidence to the contrary.:
http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2009/01/30585.php
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part4-worldinabo.html
[A slogan to be remembered:
The Few, the Proud, the Brain Entraining Fiends of the US Marines.
See link in above referenced reports on “USMC_NeuronalEntrainment_NonlethalApplications”]
QUESTIONS! geral sosbee (956)371-5210
See:
http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/forum/topics/intelligence-report-attack-in
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. Jeff | 12.09.08
Give it up, you should have been run out of the Senate on rails. Hypocrite