Taking the Wide Stance on the witness stand

Sen. Larry Craig has raised his right hand, placed his left hand on a bathroom stall roll of toilet paper, and made oral arguments (insert all the jokes or other items you want) and argued on appeal against his Minneapolis airport stall guilty plea last year.

You can also insert the “you haven’t got a leg to stand on” line, wonder about Craig’s legal “stall tactics” and more.

Will his case remain in the crapper? Only the Minnesota Court of Appeals can tell.

Picture this bit of dialogue:

Craig: No shit, officer, I’m Sen. Larry Craig.

Officer: No shit? Well, I don’t care who you are, I can tell you don’t give a crap about why you’re here.

And yes, if you have more bad puns about toilet humor, let me have them!

Don’t worry about a post-Senate career, either, Larry. Apparently, per an e-mail I got, there’s a big market for for gay real estate agents.

NOT on the coffee table – Larry Craig

Craig (R-Wide Stance), is writing a book.

And, yes, he’s going to give his version of “Moon over Minneapolis” as part of it.

This ought to be fun.

I wonder if he will drop his attempt to get the charge against him dropped; the book might out him as giving false information to a police officer.

Nefarious Congressmen are in the dock — literally

Sens. Larry Craig and Ted Stevens are in the dock with their Washington residences. Their D.C. homes are boats with the Capital Yacht Club, where convicted Representatives Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham used to drop anchor.

Is that a “wide sail,” Sen. Craig?

Cry me yet another river, Larry Craig

Yet another GOPer shows that the river of personal responsibility, like that of capitalism, flows only one way. Now Craig is blaming the media for his pleading guilty to solicitation of gay sex. His lawyer, Billy Martin, is saying Craig did not “knowingly and intelligently enter a guilty plea.”

Sure, sure. Some first-time homeowner buys a house, or someone with bad credit gets a predatory-terms credit card, and “capitalists” are willing to stick it to them over “personal responsibility.”

But a U.S. Senator, who first tries to buy his way out of an arrest by flashing his Senate ID, gets arrested, gets read the charge against him by a judge, including terms of the agreement, and signs it? Well, now, that’s not “knowingly and intelligently.”

Bullshit.

Then, you have Martin claiming this isn’t a crime.

Wrong.

Now, whether it should be a crime is a matter entirely different. But, it’s anti-gay GOPers like Craig, including anti-gay, but actually gay or bisexual, GOPers who lock themselves in their own sexual closets, who have made this a crime anyway.

Going by what Martin appeared to have meant, Craig’s “wide stance” against gay rights again leaves him nobody to blame but himself.

Hey, Larry, get down off the cross, we need the wood. And stop crying for yourself; we’re under a flash flood watch as it is.

Larry Craig’s in-and-out dance, courtesy Karl Marx

Larry Craig’s “well, wait a minute, maybe I won’t resign, or let me caveat that again stance (would that also be a “wide stance”?) soooo reminds me of Marx’s famous dictum: “Historical facts … occur … twice …, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Further thoughts on Craig:

1. Maybe he’s trying to parse “gay” like Bill Clinton parsed “sex.” I’ve been waiting for some reporter to ask: “Well, if you’re not gay, are you bisexual?”

2. Another good follow-up question: Ask Craig if he always uses that bathroom when he flies through Minneapolis.

3. Can some hacker find Craig’s credit card numbers and see if he’s ever taken out a gay sex ad?

The way I see it, if this joker wants to unresign, or unplea his guilty plea, he deserves to get kicked as often and as hard as he can.

And, the out-and-in-and-out-again of Sen. Wide Stance (R-Fundamentalistville) is the punch line for many a joke as is. Can somebody in Minneapolis spend a few bucks for a faux bronze commemorative name tag/plaque for that toilet?

Update, Sept. 7: Well, I almost got my wish; a reader of a Seattle alt-weekly took a photo of the bathroom. Plus, a TPM e-mailer reminds us that the 2008 GOP convention is in — Minneapolis.

Contrary to some, I don’t feel sorry for Larry Craig

An e-mailer to Talking Points Memo says s/he’s kind of willing to cut Craig some slack:

Sure, he’s a hypocrite, sure he’s probably gay or bi or whatever, and sure, I despise his politics. The problem is, I'm torn between the schadenfreude of watching another one of the Family Values crowd being shown up, and feeling really bad for the guy, because he didn't do anything.

Look at the police report. Did he directly ask a cop for sex? No. Did he expose himself lewdly (as opposed to exposing himself to use the facilities)? No. Did he do anything that was unambiguously sexual? No.

I, on the other hand, feel nothing but schadenfreude for Craig at this time.

The people I feel sorry for is gays and lesbians, especially in places like Idaho (next door to Matthew Shepard's Wyoming!), where gay and lesbian visibility is almost totally beat down because of people like Craig.

As for the e-mailer’s later Walter Jenkins reference (the LBJ aide arrested more than 40 years ago in similar circumstance), it’s ultimately the fault of gay-bashers like Craig that people still get picked up in men's rooms for somewhat iffy solicitation charges. Assuming Craig has been self-knowingly in the closet for the decade or more that seems to be the case, he knows the rules of the game on anonymous pick-ups, too. He's got nobody but himself to blame for causing the rules to be what they are, and for playing by them, rather than being honest and true to himself and living out his sexual preferences without squalor.