Posted on 09/04/2007 7:48:46 PM PDT by RightOnTheLeftCoast
Ben Stein: Gestapo Tactics Got Larry Craig
Tuesday, September 4, 2007 7:39 PM
Former Sen. Larry Craig didn't do anything illegal and was railroaded with "Gestapo tactics," says actor and commentator Ben Stein.
Appearing recently on Your World With Neil Cavuto program, Stein remarked: "I don't like the idea that people are sitting in the next stall from you at a public bathroom listening to whether or not you tap your foot. This is, as I said, Gestapo tactics. Gestapo, Gestapo, Gestapo. It's not America."
Stein says Craig, who was arrested June 11 by Minneapolis police and pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct, is a victim of "pure police entrapment and thuggery."
"The police have real work to do at the airport," Stein says. "It's an airport, hello. There are security problems at airports. Al-qaida: Are you listening? Our security people are entrapping perfectly honest U.S. senators in lavatory stalls instead of looking for you terrorists."
Stein charges that police intimidated Craig into pleading guilty to disorderly conduct after he was arrested for tapping his foot in a bathroom stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
Police say foot tapping is a common overture used to signal interest in a sexual encounter. Minneapolis police had reportedly made several arrests in recent months for lewd conduct in restrooms at the airport.
"A policeman drags him off, or verbally drags him off, starts browbeating him, essentially threatens he's going to ruin his career if the guy doesn't plead guilty right away," Stein tells Cavuto. "This is Gestapo tactics in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It's not nice."
Stein adds that it was wrong for GOP stalwarts to join the drumbeat for Craig's resignation: "This is some way to treat the people who have been loyal members of your party for many years. What did he do wrong? Suppose he was soliciting for gay sex. Gay sex is not illegal in the United States, the Supreme Court has said that. If it were illegal, it would be a different story. It's not illegal. He didn't do anything illegal, they're just bludgeoning him into a confession."
The Craig scandal points out a fundamental question about the balance of political power, according to Stein.
"On trumped up charges, they bring down the legislator and change the balance of power within the United States generally," he says. "This is a really serious case of police overreaching and the victim here is Larry Craig and the Constitution of the United States."
Craig has represented Idaho in Congress for over a quarter of a century and was up for re-election next year.
But is it illegal? There's a gulf between kicking someone in the balls for saying that and calling 911 to have them arrested.
In places like Santa Barbara California vagrancy was pretty much ignored to the point the citizenry kind of decided it was detracting from things and went about zoning the vagrants out of view. The people passed laws designed to control vagrancy. If homosexuality is as Stuart Smalley might say, Okay, then perhaps some homosexual bathrooms need to be set up at public places. Hahaha. Zone it. haha. fat chance. tagline epiphany!
With Garrison Keillor and Company so prevalent in that neck of the woods I am a bit surpriused to see the community standards so strictly enforced. I guess we could all use a hypocrisy check.
So quote the statute then. A lot of people would disagree that "it's clear" that alone is a crime.
I'm not an attorney and I don't know a single thing about city ordinances in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Neither am I inclined to go searching for an ordinance that Craig's behavior broke. But I have no doubt that one exists, nor will you if you think carefully about the situation. It must be the case that Karsnia had a lawful justification for arresting Craig simply on the basis of Craig's solicitation of a sex act. Otherwise, there would have been no basis for a sting operation in the first place. No big city police force sets up a sting operation without being sure about the legal niceties of what's required for a bust.
And, again, it's clearly not enough for it to be illegal only to actually perform a sex act in the restroom. The solicitation of such an act must also be illegal in order that vulnerable individuals be protected by law from predators. And I'm surprised that Ben Stein appears not to have recognized that the simple solicitation of a sex act can be a crime (whether the sex act is gay or straight being irrelevant).
I was suggesting that kids use public restrooms, and I’ll further suggest that perverts that cruise restrooms for sex seem unlikely to be preoccupied with legal or moral prohibitions.
If the libertarians on this thread have their way I guess we’ll have to start equipping our kids with flash-bangs or bear spray if they have to go unaccompanied into a public restroom.
He was convicted of committing physical acts that would be construed by a reasonable person as being disturbing, specifically disorderly conduct. This is not behavior as some try to defend then equate with men picking up women in a bar.
I assure you if a man walked into a ladies’ room and peeked through the stall door repeatedly, then hit the woman’s foot under the stall wall, and started running his hands under the wall into her stall, no one would be amused, and he would end up arrested just as Craig was. It was the deviant physical behavior which caused him to be arrested.
See my post #98 for a more detailed listing of charges (what he did that was illegal), and his guilty plea.
The argument is not whether they can ask each other out, it is the very depraved way they choose to do it in a place where the public has a right to privacy because of the nature of a public restroom.
They place their lusts above everyone’s individual right to privacy in the stall. The have no ability to control themselves and they think that assaulting people should be protected behavior.
They are wrong.
making the public toilets off-limits really puts a crimp on the venal part of venality. I see your point.
He Did NOT EXPOSE himself!!! What kind of freeper are you insinuating FALSE propaganda??? geesh....write TRUE stuff next time, OK?
Is “disorderly conduct” also “breach of the peace”?!
I just included you, because the other poster who I was responding to was playing off of your comments.
I don't believe that there is a whisker of difference between how you and I assess the risk that homosexuals pose to innocent youngsters in public restrooms.
I just included you, because the other poster who I was responding to was playing off of your comments.
I don't believe that there is a whisker of difference between how you and I assess the risk that homosexuals pose to innocent youngsters in public restrooms.
Ben IS right here, along with, strangest of bedfellows, Pat Buchanan and his ironic take on this.
THis almost makes up for how far off Ben was in his
rather idiotic assessment of Borat months back.
And I frankly don’t understand the “pride” Republicans are taking in “cleaning up their own mess” when it’s the Dems who get away with it, give themselves standing ovations,etc etc. all the examples we hear over and over.
I would have more respect for Craig if he hadn’t found it necessary to deny being gay, as if that were the issue.
It may be his personal issue in order to save face with his wife and family, but he and everyone else knows he’s gay,and it’s no crime to be gay, and everyone knows there are gays in both parties.
What he and everyone else who has the nerve and the political smarts should be doing is attacking the tactics of entrapment, and how they’re used to destroy both political figures and the unfortunate “rest of us”.
I don’t think he should resign either, but unless he’s willing to reverse course and make a coherent defense of himself, he will at length do just that. The Republicans are playing right into the Dem’s hands here, and making themselves look homophobic, ganging up on one of their own for no reason other than to play to the most “bigoted” sector of their “base”.
-—He Did NOT EXPOSE himself!!! -—
That was a figure of speech as in, “The person is trying to expose himself to new experiences.” It’s like when we say someone has fallen for something, we don’t necessarily mean they have literally fallen... Is English your first language?
The other night I was trying to do a double post for comic effect and had a lot of trouble forcing it. Tonight...doubles and even triples...no problem.
This is pretty exasperating and does not, IMO, indicate a moron at the keyboard.
Especially if you are using a mousepad, as I am, which seems not always to respond.
I am not a frenetically impatient computer user. But when you see absolutely no sign that your tap has made any impression at all, it is a pretty strong reflex to tap again.
This could be remedied at FR central.
Maybe public facilities will have 4 separate restrooms:
Men
Women
Gay Men
Gay Women
Man! This country is getting squirrelier by the day.
Society is now so PC that no one can just simply say ‘this is just bad behavior’.
Have you seen this?
And you think we should be attacking the cops who collared him.
I say we should double the entrapment detail assigned to busting sex cruisers in public restrooms.
-—The Republicans are playing right into the Dem’s hands here-—
Yes, throwing the bum out and putting an electable Republican in his place a full year in advance of the election, and upholding a platform of family values. What could we be thinking?
This is not about being gay; this is about being a pervert, a very stupid pervert.
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