It truly is more fun when it is a republican!Follow

Prolly 'cos he's worried that all sorts of past 'aquantainces would pop out of the woodwork....



You really do live in a very odd world!

Yes. I live in a world where left leaning bloggers like DailyKos and (relevant to this topic) BlogActive receive major funding from the same lobbying groups that fund and back the Democrats.

It's the same puppet masters pulling both sets of strings. You are aware that Mike Rogers of BlogActive is essentially a site dedicated to outing gays and suspected gays in Congress who don't hold the appropriate political positions (ie: Liberal Democrats), right?

Where do you suppose he gets his funding? Where do you suppose he gets his inside Washington information? Of course, the funding information is kept secret, so we can't actually trace who's funneling money into sites like this, but it's pretty obvious who benefits politically from their existence.


The historical fact is that Conservative "grass roots" blogs, radio shows, and cable talk shows are able to garner sufficient support and funding via normal advertising revenue streams (because they have sufficient popular pull to work financially). Liberal equivalents typically fail unless there are some really big money financiers behind them, so over the last 2-5 years groups that traditionally fund Democrat political issues have channeled their funds into Air America and these blog sites, specifically to manipulate public perception.


There's nothing wrong or illegal about that of course, but it would help terrifically if people were aware of *where* those "facts" they're repeating actually come from.

Eveyone on the board was clamboring for him to resign? The media was all about him resigning? Public outcry in general was for him to resign?

Well! Who knew? Funnily enough, my first response was one of sympathy. I honestly believe that it must absolutely suck to want to strive for conservative values as a public official and also have homosexual urges knowing that your party will castigate you at the drop of a hat no matter how effectively you served in government. If you asked, I doubt anyone on the forums would say that they felt this incident made him unsuitable for public service (although many might feel smug about his hypocrisy which goes again to my point about Pubbies ready to pounce). Most people, by in large, aren't really worried about where you put your dick. This is why the Pubbies had to keep screaming "Perjury!" about Clinton; the ******** aspect of it might have been good for some jokes but few people thought it made him unsuitable to serve. But conservatives care. They care a lot. They care so much where your dick has been that this man's "disorderly conduct" meant they might lose a Senate seat fourteen months from now and so they'd rather throw an long serving Senator out of office over a misdemeanor than risk losing a seat. Because of sex.

This is purely a Republican invention no matter how you might keep trying to deflect it. But keep blaming the Democrats.

It's the root of the all the evil in this world...

honestly, i could care less if the senator was shanking animals in a public restroom.

what do disdain though is hearing about gay sex in bathrooms on every tv station and radio station in my house in front of my kids. between that and viagra commercials, im afriad to let my kids watch tv anymore.

The "general response" on this board was that he's clearly a repressed closet homosexual, hypocritical, and generally "yucky".

The same "general response" appeared in the media. And in the public.

I wasn't talking about the specific action to call for resignation. I was talking about the general assumption that his plea of guilty to the misdemeanor charge automatically meant that he was guilty of soliciting for gay sex in a public restroom (which, as I've shown, the charge did not specifically admit).


I've already stated my annoyance with Republicans in Congress who are so scared of a scandal that they'll toss their members overboard at the first sign of trouble. But that does not change the fact that he was vilified in the media before he ever got a chance to explain his side of the story. The tape of the interview with the police officer was (IMO) very telling and corroborated a heck of a lot of what he'd said about the event. However, by the time that information came to light, the damage had already been done, virtually everyone had already made up their minds, and it was too late for him to do anything.


Again. I fully believe that the party should have supported him, or at least taken a "we're waiting for the facts" stance. The "fact" is that he plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge that had nothing to do with sexual activity at all. But since it was presented in the context of an allegation of sexual activity, assumptions were made that were not proven.

What was *really* annoying was that I was watching an interview with some senior Republican (think it was Chris Wallace doing the interview). The Republican Congressman was talking about how he (Craig) had to go because he'd been convinced of a crime which was a Felony. The idiot didn't even know that it wasn't a felony. He assumed it was (or had been misinformed). This was one of the party leaders (can't for the life of me remember his name though). The point being that in a case like this, the assumed crime takes over and people lose sight of the facts. He (and I think most of the Republicans in Congress and a whole lot of American citizens) simply saw "plead guilty" and "solicited sex in a mens room", assumed that was the crime he'd plead to, and proceeded forward based on that assumption.

I'm reasonably certain that if you were to randomly ask people on the street what crime Craig had committed, most if not all of them would say something about having sex in a public restroom. Heck. Most of the "jokes" made early on in this thread assumed that that fact was a proven "fact" and not just allegation that was not made in court (nor was he charged with a crime relating to solicitation).


So yeah. The Republican's knee-jerked this one. However, given the way these sorts of stories seem to get hyped so much so quickly, and on so little facts, it's really not surprising that they did. Most Americans did. The only difference is that "most Americans" and "members of this forum" don't get to make the decision as to whether or not to force him to resign.



Case in point. You assumed that he was in fact homosexual and he did in fact try to solicit sex in a mens room. It never even occurred to you that this might have been an embarrassing mistake and that he plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to prevent it from becoming public knowledge.


See. My first thought was "Gee. I'd really like to know exactly what he plead guilty to".

Maybe that's just how you and I are different. I don't just automatically assume that the allegations being made are true. In fact, I start with the assumption of innocence (kinda like our legal system is supposed to be).

I still don't get why solliciting gay sex in a public toilet is a crime.

Is it offending to public morals? Is it illegal to chat-up gay men in toilets? Is this gay-related, or are the rules the same for heterosexuals?

As funny as this situation is, I just don't get what the cops were doing with this sting operation, and why this conduct was "illegal"...

Ah, well in that case

I see. But I still don't understand how that would hold up in court.

Does the fact that you do little signals with the guy next door automatically entail you'd have sex with him there and then? Technically, if the crime is sex in public, how can the signals be sufficient proof that sex in public would ensue? Is it like terrorists discussing a plot, and then getting arrested on that basis and being charged with "conspiracy to commit terrorism"? Would Craig have been charged with "Conspiracy to have sex in public cubicles", had he not accepted the plea bargain?

I realise you're not an expert on this subject, I just can't get my head around it...

Beats me. I assume it's similiar to solicitation of a prostitute.

Post this event, I've heard several policemen on the radio describing their own experiences on the "cruising" beat and how their experiences jived with those of the arresting officer, etc. Occam's Razor would lead me to assume that there is a supportable legal basis for arrest under those circumstances or else you wouldn't have police across the nation using the same general set-up.

Of course, I could be wrong and this case will set up a collapse of the whole anti-cruising police beat and the Republicans will have opened up America's restrooms for gay sex. I'd find that delightfully ironic.

Probably. I guess my point was that there is no worst case scenarion from this for Democrats and a potential glimmer, however slight, of hope. McConnell is talking of minimizing Senate losses in '08, not making gains, so I doubt they want to spend any more money than they have to.

Didn't McConnell tell Craig not to expect GOP support if Craig stayed on and ran in '08? I could swear that he did but can't find the cite now.

From what I've read the cops don't bother setting up stings like this unless they get complaints. "Er... officer? My son needs to use the men's room but there are a couple of... uh... men in there having... uh.... Is there another restroom?"