Culture of Corruption

So, Larry Craig is gone. He solicited sex without actually soliciting sex or having sex. He pled guilty, but not to lewd behavior — to disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor). He is said to have a secret life involving same sex partners, but where are all these partners? According to one report, a guy in college believes Craig hit on him in 1967. Another says he “believes” he performed oral sex on the senator in a restroom at Union Station. He’s not 100-percent sure. If Craig has been living this secret life since 1967, you’d think others would come forward at some point. Maybe they will. So far, they haven’t. Indeed, where is all the evidence of Craig’s seedy life? Where are the photos, the video, the audio, the solid witnesses, and the rest of the evidence? And if the case against Craig in that airport restroom was so compelling, if it was so sleazy, if authorities wanted to send a message to others, why didn’t prosecutors take Craig to trial? Why let him go with a disorderly conduct misdemeanor? Were they doing him a favor? I don’t think so. They conducted a sting operation without any sting. Let me suggest not only couldn’t they make a gross misdemeanor charge stick, they would have lost the disorderly conduct charge, too. Read the statute. But the law is an ass, as they say. This is an issue of morality.

The truth is I don’t know Larry Craig. And it’s possible he is everything some say he is. But they say it without facts. Is that moral? When the news of Craig’s bathroom encounter first broke, I thought Craig must have been involved in a Pee Wee Herman moment — or something. But he didn’t even touch himself, let alone the officer in any sexually overt way. He didn’t expose himself. Hell, he was in a bathroom stall. And neither he nor the officer exchanged a single word about having sex. In fact, Craig never said a word. In the end, what we have here is a shoe touch … or was it a tap? That, along with his hand on the divider between the stalls and something or other was, we are told, code for soliciting sex. It seems to me that the officer should have taken the sting operation at least one more step, no? Wasn’t he a little premature in flashing his badge when he did?

Let’s be honest. I have no idea who Larry Craig is beyond his senatorial record, and neither do any of his outspoken critics. Even if he lives a secret life, we know nothing of it. It remains secret, if it exists.

Today some Republicans pat themselves on the back for their “courageous” stand against liberal charges of hypocrisy as they were early in their denunciation of Craig. Now, these would be the same liberals who show routinely their hypocrisy embracing Bill Clinton (accused of rape), Barney Frank (accused of allowing his home to be used for male prostitution), and the late Gerry Studds (who had sex repeatedly with a seventeen-year-old page). These Republicans fear the “culture of corruption” label the liberals have assigned them and aren’t quite sure how to respond to it. Mostly, they refuse to fire back by highlighting the numerous examples of demonstrable sleaze involving William Jefferson (alleged bribe), Alan Mollohan (alleged self-dealing), John Murtha (earmarks related to his brother), Dianne Feinstein (her husband profiting from military contracts), Hillary Clinton (Norman Hsu, et al), and, of course, the aforementioned Clinton, Frank, and Studds examples.

There is indeed a culture of corruption, and it extends well beyond any single politician. It swirls around big government. It always has and it always will. It has become institutionalized in many ways. And that culture of corruption celebrates clever word games used by unelected judges to exercise power they don’t have as they rewrite the Constitution; it demeans people of faith who speak out against the culture of corruption and for — dare I say — family values; it undermines and seeks to demoralize Americans in uniform as they fight a horrible enemy on the battlefield; it demonizes entrepreneurs and successful enterprises; it uses race, age, religion, gender, and whatever works to balkanize Americans; and so on. This is the real culture of corruption. Let’s call it what it is — modern liberalism. And its impact on our society is far worse than the disorderly-conduct misdemeanor to which Larry Craig pled guilty and for which he has now resigned.

— Mark R. Levin, a former Reagan-administration Department of Justice aide, is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation and nationally syndicated radio-talk-show host.

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National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjVhMzdiZWNmNGNjYTAyMTBmOWEyYjRhZDQ2MTY3OTE=

I just saw him on H&C. I read about him during the Mark Foley Assassination. Now he is making appearances, and, of course, he has other targets. While they are at it though, they want Vitter and a Texas R with a DUI. The Republicans better come up with a better strategy than self-destruction by forcing resignations.

I agree. I followed Rogers during the Foley affair. Foley was wrong and did need to go, but Rogers is a total slime. He looked manickly ecstatic in his appearance on H&C. He has no right to do what he’s doing. But you are right. We have to find a better way of dealing with this.

I don’t know if you saw any of my other posts about my conservative Republican-elected assemblywoman, Teresa Sayward. She disregarded the wishes of those who elected her and begged to have the gay marriage amendment passed in NYS because her son is gay.

Also, I mentioned to a guy who writes for our local paper that there are those who call themselves free thinkers who want the age of consent lowered because they think pedophilia is just fine. They have even petitioned the ACLU to start proceedings regarding this. And as I said to him, civilization did not advance by normalizing the abnormal. The irony is that those free thinkers unfortunately have more historical and biological precedent to back up their logic than do homosexuals. And that is scary. If we allow the homosexuals to advance their agenda, will the pedophiles agenda also advance? I know it sounds bizarre, but 30 years ago, no one would have been able to predict where we are now.

As far as Larry Craig goes, I just feel that there is an awful lot that is suspect. I don’t appreciate kneejerk reactionism by anyone, but it bothers me a lot when it happens here.

Michael Savage (who I can barely stand in small doses) refers to the Gay Maffia. They have strongarmed everyone with activism that is not based on any solid science or on wisdom of history. As when Melissa Ethridge asked that question that was not a question of Richardson. They are trying to bully us in many ways. Their abiity to coopt the media in their destructive tactics may be due to the fact that there are lots of gays in entertainment.

Personally, I have not had any real problem knowing homosexuals. However, I disagree that children should be taught is is just another family lifestyle. It is often a risky and very dangerous life that only lasts 41 years, on average, for men.

“Personally, I have not had any real problem knowing homosexuals. However, I disagree that children should be taught is is just another family lifestyle. It is often a risky and very dangerous life that only lasts 41 years, on average, for men.”

Agree with you completely. My husband’s youngest brother lives the gay lifestyle in SF. I am not happy with it at all, but I love him dearly. We don’t talk politics.

I read the transcript of Officer Karsnia's "interview/interrogation" of Craig and I was appalled by the officer's bullying of Craig, trying to put words in his mouth, accusations. Craig was set up by an authority figure looking to fish in victims in a nasty sting operation. Karsnia gets rewarded for how many victims he brings down. Craig was reeling from shock, obviously, and was unwise in not calling a lawyer for legal advice.

This whole entrapment business is sick. It makes me sick. A man's life and career are destroyed. Was Craig a good public servant for his district? All that is down the drain because of this very sad case. I refuse to jump up and down on a whoopee cushion and condemn.

why would a 62-tear-old man who needed to go to the bathroom walk all the way over to another terminal to do this when there were bathrooms right there in his flight terminal? Out of all the many bathrooms at that Minneapolis airport, why would he select this distant men's room that just happened to be the only one homsexuals used for casual public sex?

A couple of things I'd want to know before considering this question:

Was this restroom between the gates of his connecting flights? To assume that he had a full bladder is a straw man. The vast majority of travelers will take a restroom break during the layover of a long trip even if they don't have a pressing need at the moment so as to avoid using the airplane toilet later on.

Is this restroom less accessible to the general public than other restrooms; one that would tend to be used by famous people?

I would suspect that a restroom that doesn't have lots of general public traffic would be a choice meeting-up place for the sort of activity for which Craig was accused, but it would also be the sort of restroom that is used by politicians and other public figures for the usual purpose.

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