GOP Senator arrested in men's room for trying to be the head man

[The Dog]

Sorry for the miscommunication, wasn't directly responding to your post - I just know a lot of people that always quote that part of the movie and act like the military can do whatever it wants simply b/c they are our protectors and doing the dirty things that us civs can't even comprehend.

[JMack]

Sorry for the miscommunication, wasn't directly responding to your post - I just know a lot of people that always quote that part of the movie and act like the military can do whatever it wants simply b/c they are our protectors and doing the dirty things that us civs can't even comprehend.

Not a problem.? At first I was WTF but I figured I'd ask just to verify.? Thanks, yeah I know there are a few intentional miscommunicators out there.? Like I said also I was long winded and things tend to get lost in translation.? As of now I'm a civilian too.? ?Have a good one..

[Chief]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Decision2008/story?id=3538411&page=1

[DevilHatesALoser]

Sorry for the miscommunication, wasn't directly responding to your post - I just know a lot of people that always quote that part of the movie and act like the military can do whatever it wants simply b/c they are our protectors and doing the dirty things that us civs can't even comprehend.

QFT

[Layne Staley's Sunglasses]

Romney is such a self-righteous douche. Possibly even more unlikeable than Bush.

As are his children.  The whole Romney family is bland and unlikeable.

How he won the Iowa Straw Poll, I'll never figure out.

[AxlsMainMan]

How he won the Iowa Straw Poll, I'll never figure out.

I thought the Mormons owned at least half of Iowa?

[Layne Staley's Sunglasses]

How he won the Iowa Straw Poll, I'll never figure out.

I thought the Mormons owned at least half of Iowa?

You must be thinking of Utah, brah.

[GeraldFord]

GOP Senators Says Craig Should Resign 
 
Aug 29 03:56 PM US/Eastern
By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent       
 

?It Was Disgraceful?: McCain Calls for Craig to Resign

Craig: ?I Am Not Gay, and Never Have Been Gay?

Audio: ?Deeply Disturbed? Senator Coleman Says Craig Should Resign

 
  WASHINGTON (AP) - Two Senate Republican colleagues, including John McCain, called Wednesday for Sen. Larry Craig to resign. The White House, too, expressed disappointment in the case of the Idaho Republican caught in a men's room undercover police operation.
Arizona Sen. McCain and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the state where Craig was arrested, became the first senators to join Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., urging Craig's resignation.

McCain told CNN the decision was Craig's to make, "but my opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve. That's not a moral stand. That's not a holier-than-thou. It's just a factual situation."

"I think he should resign," McCain said.

Coleman said in a statement, "Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator."

Hoekstra said Craig "represents the Republican party" and that "his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator."

Craig pleaded guilty in August to a charge of disorderly conduct following his arrest in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport. He said Tuesday he had done nothing wrong and was sorry he pleaded guilty.

Senate Republican leaders have called on the ethics committee to review Craig's case, and White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he hoped the panel could do its work quickly.

Stanzel made no expression of support for Craig. "We are disappointed in the matter. It has been referred to the Senate Ethics Committee, so they will have to deal with it," he said.

There were other signs of difficulty for Craig.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, issued a statement calling on the senator to consider stepping down. The organization is a self- described conservative government watchdog group.

"Senator Craig admittedly engaged in illegal activity that brings serious disrepute to the public office he holds," Fitton said.

Fitton's suggestion that the senator leave office suggested tenuous support among conservatives who make up his core political supporters.

Craig, 62, a third-term senator up for re-election next year, defended himself Tuesday against a police report alleging he attempted to engage in a homosexual encounter with an undercover officer.

Flanked by his wife, Suzanne, Craig stated three times that he was not gay. He cast his arrest for lewd conduct as unfounded and his subsequent guilty plea to disorderly conduct as an error in judgment spurred by frustration with the state's biggest newspaper prying into his past.

The Idaho Statesman published a lengthy story on Tuesday, a day after the June 11 arrest was first reported, detailing allegations of homosexual behavior by Craig. The senator denied the allegations and contended the paper was engaged in a witch hunt. In a statement, the newspaper said its story spoke for itself.

"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 hopes of making it go away," Craig said. "It's clear, though, that through my actions I have brought a cloud over Idaho. For that, I ask the people of Idaho for their forgiveness."

The Idaho Republican Party took a measured, wait-and-see stance while Democrats remained mum, content to let Republicans sort through the fallout. The GOP's biggest names reminded voters of Craig's tenure in the Senate and his powerful seat on the Appropriations Committee.

"I would encourage all Idahoans to avoid rushing to judgment and making brash statements about a man who has dedicated his life to public service," GOP state party chairman Kirk Sullivan said in a statement.

Ignoring that plea, some social and religious conservatives and right- wing radio talk show hosts called for Craig's resignation. And political analysts said Craig will have trouble convincing Gem State voters that his 27-year political career is worth sparing.

In Idaho, with its 1.4 million people, politicians know many supporters by name. The state also likes its Republicans. The GOP controls the statehouse and Congress, and President Bush carried the state in 2004 with 68 percent of the vote.

More than 166,000 residents are Roman Catholic and more than 385,000 Mormon.

Republican leaders in the Senate called for an Ethics Committee review of the case.

"This is a serious matter," they said in a written statement issued in Washington over the names of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party leader, and several others.

Two Republicans seeking the party's presidential nomination didn't mince words. Mitt Romney, in whose campaign Craig was playing a prominent role until he quit amid the scandal, told CNBC, "He's disappointed the American people." McCain called for the resignation.

Craig signed a guilty plea on Aug. 1 and later paid $575 in fines and fees and was placed on unsupervised probation for a year.



 

[SLCPUNK]

How he won the Iowa Straw Poll, I'll never figure out.

I thought the Mormons owned at least half of Iowa?

That's Utah and Idaho.

[JMack]

Aren't Mormons and the Latter Day Saints responsible for Davey and Goliath show?

[Doc Emmett Brown]

There's more to life than the 'tearoom trade'...

Our (not so) private Idahos
The Los Angeles Times
By David Ehrenstein
August 30, 2007

Gentle reader, by now you've probably read more than you ever nightmared you'd want to know about the latest Republican gay-sex scandal. The revelation that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was caught allegedly trolling for sex in a Minnesota airport men's room in June comes on the heels of Florida state Rep. Robert Allen's July restroom arrest, making it reasonable to suspect that yet another GOP bathroom bust may burst forth by the time this Op-Ed article goes to press.

But barring further white-tiled tragedy, the all-too-obvious question remains, "What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" The answer rests on what can safely be described as bipartisan grounds.

To get there, let's climb into the Wayback Machine and return to Oct. 7, 1964. That's when Walter Jenkins, one of the most senior aides in President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, was arrested for soliciting sex in the men's room of a Washington YMCA. Being that it was three weeks before the election, LBJ suspected some kind of Republican foul play, but the GOP chose not to exploit the incident.

The Jenkins affair put "homosexuality" on the nation's front pages in a way it hadn't been since Dr. Alfred Kinsey's famous report in 1948.

Like Craig, Jenkins could well have said he "wasn't gay." But who was in 1964? Then as now, if you were wealthy and well-connected, you could enjoy what's contemporarily referred to as a "gay lifestyle" with some ease -- and a soup?on of caution. For those less well-off, danger lurked. Sodomy laws were on the books. Bars and clubs catering to the same-sex-oriented were "speakeasy" affairs often run by Mafiosi who bribed the police to stay open. When the money didn't arrive on time or in insufficient quantity, such clubs were raided.

On June 28, 1969, when New York's far-from-fashionable Stonewall Inn was raided, the patrons responded by fighting the cops. Although gays and lesbians had resisted before (often right here in Los Angeles), this Manhattan uprising served to jump-start the modern phase of the gay rights movement.

That movement, with its defiant insistence on being free to be as gay as all-get-out, quickly left the likes of Walter Jenkins and, if the cops were right, Larry Craig in the dust. They're part of a subculture within a subculture that was memorably identified by the daring sociologist Laud Humphreys in a landmark sociological study titled "Tearoom Trade."

Taking his cue from Kinsey, Humphreys was fascinated with married-with-children men who didn't self-identify as gay or bisexual, yet still sought clandestine sex with other men on the side. Humphreys, when he began his research, was one of these I'm-not-gay(s) himself, though he eventually came out.

Published in 1970, "Tearoom Trade" is full of useful information about foot tapping, shoe touching, hand signaling and all the other rituals those so inclined use to make contact with one another in such places. Clearly no media outlet should be without a copy -- especially Slate.com, whose editors revealed their cluelessness on the subject this week in a "real time conversation" rife with unintentional hilarity: "I can't believe it's a crime to tap your foot." "Can someone explain the mechanics of how two people are supposed to commit a sex act in a stall where legs are visible from the knee down?"

As for the less blinkered among us, in the age of Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, "Brokeback Mountain" and the smooching gay teens on "As the World Turns," bathroom cruisers seem almost antique.

Moreover, if what you're "proposing" falls well short of marriage, there's always the Internet. Larry Craig, meet Craigslist. In short, never has the admonition "Get a room!" seemed more apropos. It's up to the I'm-not-gay(s) to discover the real freedoms fought for and won by the people they so fiercely claim they're not.

I was thinking to myself, once this old fogie generation of "I'm not gay"s are in their graves, we can finally live without the tearoom trade I would hope.

[freedom78]

I was thinking to myself, once this old fogie generation of "I'm not gay"s are in their graves, we can finally live without the tearoom trade I would hope.

True, but there's a booming group of young religious right voters, who'll continue to hate gays.

[The Dog]

I was thinking to myself, once this old fogie generation of "I'm not gay"s are in their graves, we can finally live without the tearoom trade I would hope.

True, but there's a booming group of young religious right voters, who'll continue to hate gays.

this is very true, but i think we'll reach a level of tolerance eventually.  it might not be 100% acceptance, but more of a begrudging "fine, you're gay, do what you want, just don't come near me" type of attitude.

god its soooo f'ing stupid why anyone would care if two guys/two girls have sex with each other and want to say they are married.

[polluxlm]

I was thinking to myself, once this old fogie generation of "I'm not gay"s are in their graves, we can finally live without the tearoom trade I would hope.

There will always be a tearoom trade as long as people are always looking for things to frown upon.

I'd put down a hundred that in 50 years time stuff like kissing and hugging are the new gay and nigger.

[freedom78]

god its soooo f'ing stupid why anyone would care if two guys/two girls have sex with each other and want to say they are married.

Two guy & two girls isn't gay...it's a party! 

[Doc Emmett Brown]

yeah, I guess there will always be the religious conflict. What I personally hope will die out are the people who publicly denounce gays while being on the downlow.  It doesnt help gays, it "shames" the religious right,  and I'm sure the wife is feeling more than a little uneasy right now.  It may be a pipe dream, but I hope it will end.

[polluxlm]

god its soooo f'ing stupid why anyone would care if two guys/two girls have sex with each other and want to say they are married.

Two guy & two girls isn't gay...it's a party!?

Damn, you do have a peculiar taste.

[freedom78]

god its soooo f'ing stupid why anyone would care if two guys/two girls have sex with each other and want to say they are married.

Two guy & two girls isn't gay...it's a party! 

Damn, you do have a peculiar taste.

Nah, never actually done that.  Just jokin' around.

yeah, I guess there will always be the religious conflict. What I personally hope will die out are the people who publicly denounce gays while being on the downlow.  It doesnt help gays, it "shames" the religious right,  and I'm sure the wife is feeling more than a little uneasy right now.  It may be a pipe dream, but I hope it will end.

I do feel sorry for his wife/family, for being forced into the spotlight and for having their relationships examined so publicly, but I'm willing to bet she/they share many of those same anti-gay views. 

As often as this has happened the last year or two, you'd think people would realize that what's best is for people to be themselves, and to be happy, rather than to hide behind a wall of anti-gay rhetoric, until they slip up, get caught, and have a family torn apart.  Of course, this doesn't solely apply to the GOP (former NJ governor, Jim McGreevey, for example).

[Dr. Blutarsky]

This guy is not guilty of any crime.

He's gay and won't admit it.

Just come out of the closet.

[The Dog]

soliciting for sex in a public bathroom is considered lewd behavior which is a crime.  right?