Posted on 08/31/2007 2:04:37 PM PDT by freedomdefender
"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state," wrote Shakespeare. Sen. Larry Craig knows today whereof the bard spoke.
Rarely has a United States senator fallen so fast from grace or been so completely abandoned.
As the nation now knows, Craig was arrested in June in an airport men's room in Minneapolis, charged with propositioning an undercover cop, who was on duty there because the place had become notorious.|
According to the officer, Craig, in the next stall, flashed known signals of a man seeking anonymous and immediate sex.
Rather than fight the charge, Craig pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor. This week, the story exploded and Craig is fighting what appears a losing battle for his career and reputation.
In a statement carried nationally, he declared his innocence of any allegation of immoral conduct. I did nothing wrong, I am not gay, he said again and again.
Yet it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept the complete innocence of Sen. Craig. After all, he pleaded guilty, and for years similar rumors have swirled about him. The Idaho Statesman has produced a tape of a man who claims to have had a recent sexual encounter with Craig in a men's room at Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Craig denies all and calls the Statesman investigation of his private life, going all the way back to college days, a witch hunt. In his favor, after 300 interviews, the Statesman came up with nothing solid save the Union Station allegation and the airport incident.
As ever, such episodes reveal almost as much about the accusers as about the accused. Reveling in Craig's disgrace, the liberal media not only cast the first stone, but most of them. They are mocking Craig as a family-values hypocrite who indulges privately in conduct he publicly condemns. But even assuming Craig has led a second and secret life, would that automatically make him a hypocrite, a fraud, an Elmer Gantry?
Is there no possibility a man can believe in traditional morality, yet find himself tempted to behavior that morally disgusts him? Is it impossible Craig is driven by impulses, the biblical "thorn in the flesh," of which Paul wrote, to behavior he almost cannot control?
Why else would a United States senator take the incredible risk of disgracing himself and humiliating his family, and ending his career, for a few minutes of anonymous sex in an airport men's room?
Is every alcoholic who falls off the wagon a hypocrite if he has tried to warn kids of the evil of alcohol? Many men have tried to live good lives and fallen again and again. They are called sinners.
Yet, if the charges are true, and it appears they are, Larry Craig has worse personal problems than his impending loss of office.
And how have his colleagues responded?
Republicans immediately denounced him, stripped him of all his seniority rights, and ordered an ethics committee investigation and a study of whether more immediate action should be taken.
Sens. John McCain and Norm Coleman called on him to resign. "(W)hen you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve," said McCain, adding, "That's not a moral stand."
Sorry, but the morality here is far more relevant than the admitted misdemeanor. If Craig had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for punching out an obnoxious heckler, he would not be friendless today.
The silence of most Democrats is understandable. If you belong to a party that declares homosexuality a moral lifestyle, that perhaps should be elevated to the level of matrimony, then what would Craig be guilty of, other than being horribly indiscreet?
Up to this week, Craig was one of only two senators to have come out for Mitt Romney. He headed up the Romney campaign in Idaho. He vouched for Mitt in Congress and the country.
And Mitt wasted no time throwing his Idaho chairman under the bus, adding he deserved it: "Once again, we've found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence. Very disappointing. He's no longer associated with my campaign."
Larry Craig's conduct "reminds us," said Mitt, "of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton ... of the fact that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint, and they somehow think that if they vote the right way on issues of significance or they can speak a good game, that we'll just forgive and forget."
"And frankly, it's disgusting."
That Mitt was decisive, that he was a "good butcher," as a prime minister must be, said Asquith, is undeniable. This speaks well of Mitt's executive intolerance of failures and failing. But one did not hear much here in the way of compassion for Larry Craig or his family.
Some senators, like Chris Dodd, cut Larry Craig some slack and asked that we hear him out before sentence is passed.
Count your friends when you're down, Nixon always advised.
I wonder if Larry Craig would be willing to take a lie detector test. If he's telling the truth, he should jump at this opportunity to exonerate himself. If he refuses, he burries himself.
THAT was a home run, Sir_Ed !
bookmark
I hope it is not remiss in mentioning another similar thread to FR. They put me off of it because I used the word "bastard" as in silly. I used asterisks. Well best not dwell on that.
A woman claimed her relative was injured on the job. She had to fight for a year for medical and compensation by small payments. She said she called Larry Craig. She said he got right back and the next day, compensation (comp) came right to the house. Things worked out satisfactorily for the unhappy woman. If true, has this man been doing some really great things?
Well, the good men do, is often interred with their bones- or some Shakespearian quote.
Sometimes an intervention (tough love) is necessary to produce an artificial "bottom" before one recognizes shortcomings. "One must be hurt before one has something to heal."
yitbos
But he didn't, and Pat knows it. Reminds me of another Pat B. mind fart:
""Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him...Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." "
It is the pack in full cry that merits some disgust. News is one thing, but gloating for political purposes is another.
At least we got a light breezy look and voice from sombre Wolf Blitzer. This at his first report.
“My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, then you shouldn’t serve,’’ McCain said in an interview with CNN’s John King for The Situation Room.”
Except when he’s your buddy Teddy Kennedy, whom you love to compromise with at every turn.
“I have never been in an airport without a family bathroom,,one room, with a lock for people with children.”
I have not been in an airport in 20 years.
I am, however, frequently in public bathrooms at malls and parks, so that is my concern.
I was just saying that to a friend of mine. These stings seem to be a little iffy, from what I am understanding. YET the part of me that finds this whole behavior appalling wants them to be caught and prosecuted.
If cops started visibly monitoring public bathroons, would they then move their repulsive activity to another bathroom, in say “Target” then?
I am never letting my boys use public bathrooms again—and just when I had started letting them be “big boys”! UGH.
“I think you’re making a little more of it than you need to. These types almost never do anything if warned off.”
I do teach the kids to fight, yell, etc.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are big issues, here.
Also, keep in mind, even if my sons do warn potential buggers off, they are still subject to the sexualizing and to being exposed to random homo sex in the stall next door. Am I oversensitive? That is not ok with me.
pretty magnanimous of Pat.....I applaud that in spirit
but we cannot waste energy defending a public bathroom trolling Senator
we already have one political party for that
and we should trumpet that very difference
A few years back, the leading opponent of Sunday alcohol sales was photographed at a party on a Sunday drinking -- that's the kind of hypocrisy I'm talking about.
BTW, for those unfamiliar with dry counties. In a wet county, you buy alcohol at the liquor store. In a dry county, you buy it from the bootlegger.
Anyone who heard that tape can tell that that cop was a total jerk and the only one trying to do the intimidating.
You would have to have a uniformed cop standing in every mens room, 24/7 for your idea to be effective. On the other hand, a cop in a few random mens rooms will be very effective, once word gets out that stings are being conducted. Sort of the same way that a concealed carry law benefits not only those who do carry, but those who don't. It introduces a level of doubt and fear in the "bad guys."
Mark
It's impossible to shame the dems. Sort of like trying to get a maggot to willingly leave a corpse. It's just not going to happen. But not only aren't the rest of the dems disgusted, they'll actually rally around the bad guys. As you mentioned, there's `ol waterwings, who's not only not had to resign, but is one of the highest ranking members of the senate. Or Barney Frank's former lover who ran a brothel out of Frank's home. Again, Frank is a senior member of the House leadership. Then there's the recent scandals surrounding Feinstein's funneling contracts to a company she's got a financial stake in. Then there was the incident of Gary Studds, who left the country with an underage male congressional page in order to have sex with him. He got a standing ovation from the dems... And of course, there's William Jefferson. Something that's been forgotten is that this is the guy who comandeered National Guard resources to save some of his own property during the rescue operations immediatly following the destruction of the Gulf Coast by Katerina. Oh, yes, and then there's Alcee Hastings...
Nothing the dems do could possibly surprise me. I keep expecting to see them suggest that Charles Manson would make a good AG! Frankly, he might just be better than Ramsey Clark.
Mark
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