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September 2, 2007

Larry Craig: The day after the day in the stocks

Salem, Mass., Witch Dungeon Museum

For Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), it's the day after the day in the stocks

How's that going?

Craig Arrest.jpg
AP
Suzanne and Larry Craig leave the Boise Depot train station in Boise, Idaho yesterday after Craig announced his resignation from the Senate.

Craig Arrest2.jpg

Collateral damage:

From the Idaho Press-Tribune, this surreal headline: Craig's son says his dad is

And Suzanne says?

Crippled Inside: John Lennon, from the Imagine album. Mp3s and other audio files at the Internet Archive | (Low quality) video | Lyrics

Mike Rodgers at BlogActive posts the sentence in an email he says started his research on Sen. Craig:

Over three years ago -- within a month of this site's launch -- I received the following email:
From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 12:30 PM
To: Mike Rogers
Subject: Outing

I've hooked up with Craig... why not out some actual members and not their staffers?

This is part of a fundraising pitch, but the conservative Idaho Statesman confirms that "When Larry Craig stood up and lied to the people of Idaho, the Idaho Statesman had a 3,800 word article ready to run because of my reporting the story last October."

Comments on this post seem to ignore the relay in place here:

-- Rodgers' collection of similar anecdotes persuades the Statesman to investigate decades of rumors that the anti-gay Senator is gay.
-- Statesman reporter Dan Popkey writes his report, but the story does not meet the standard of indisputable evidence. They do not publish it.

-- Roll Call in Washington gets a tip that there is a police report of an arrest in a Minneapolis toilet stall and a guilty plea. (Big hole in the story is where that came from.)

-- The Statesman publishes its now-confirmed story

It's a classical model.

But why?

Our View: Craig's saga was one of too much information. The Idaho Stateman editorial board says honesty and consistency matter. Then:

...Perhaps, however, politicians will take an even more constructive lesson from the episode. Perhaps they will keep forays into social issues to a minimum and refocus their energies on more urgent legislative priorities.

I totally agree. I do not want your religion to become the law of my life. This is the melting pot, where we try to agree on our common interests and agree to disagree on the rest.

And if you don't even live the religion you would legislate, you're too messed up to represent anybody.

Posted by Sheila Lennon at 12:17 PM | Permalink