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Yet another gay Republican hypocrite

Monday, August 27, 2007

I have now learned more than I really ever wanted to know about Senator Larry Craig’s sexual habits and preferences and the rituals by which sad and sordid people like him pursue their pleasures. As you may have heard today, he recently pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct, which conduct consisted of trying to pick up an undercover cop in a men’s room. Among other things, this incident proves beyond doubt that Republican poiticians should avoid men’s rooms. The short story, from the Times:

Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge earlier this month after his arrest in June by an undercover police officer in a men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

A second charge of interference with privacy against the 62-year-old senator was dismissed. Mr. Craig was fined more than $500 at the Aug. 8 proceedings and was placed on unsupervised probation for one year. His 10-day jail sentence was suspended, according to a copy of a court document in the case.

According to a police report obtained by Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper that disclosed the episode and guilty plea today, a plainclothes police officer investigating complaints of sexual activity in the bathroom arrested the senator on June 11 after what the officer described as sexual advances made by Mr. Craig from an adjoining stall.

Roll Call reported that the officer said Mr. Craig tapped his foot as a signal to engage in lewd conduct, brushed his foot against the investigator’s and waved his hand under the stall divider several times before the officer showed him his badge. After his arrest, the senator denied any sexual intent and in a statement issued this afternoon he attributed the matter to a misunderstanding.

Craig claims it was all a misunderstanding, but it appears to be consistent with an MO documented by this intrepid gay blogger last year.

As per usual in these cases, it is all a misunderstanding:

At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions,” Mr. Craig said in a statement. “I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct.“

I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”

Right.

Need you ask whether Craig has a virulently anti-gay voting record? No, you needn’t and yes he does. Another day, another Republican hypocrite.

I must admit that if the guy in the stall next to me engaged in such behavior, at least at first I’d simply be bewildered. To complete the thought I started with, I really didn’t need to know all the moves in the men’s room mating dance (Documented in more detail here, for the curious). Wouldn’t you think a Senator could find somewhere a little more private for his sexual encounters or is the squalid nature of the setting part of the thrill? Maybe one of my Republican readers can fill us in.

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My escape from New York

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Just a little over a week ago I was on the losing end of an encounter with a turtle in the relative wilds of Vermont.

I would have faced a thousand turtles to avoid my experiences today, when I voluntarily undertook the task of driving my son and half his worldly possessions to his new apartment in Brooklyn. New York is a wonderful place, but one should go by train, bus, ferry or horseback. To me, driving into New York is a little like descending into Hades. Like Orpheus, I made the descent reluctantly; like the damned in Dante’s poem, I abandoned hope when entering.

We left at 6:00 in the morning, station wagon packed with stuff, mapquest directions in hand. Neither of us had ever seen our destination before. On the trip out I duly noted that just South of the exit to the Merritt Parkway, due to construction in both directions, I-95 narrowed to one lane in both directions. At 7:15 in the morning it wasn’t a problem, but I decided then that prudence dictated a return trip on the Merritt.

With my son as co-pilot (God refused to make the trip-I was going to hell after all) I managed to get to our destination, but it was then that the fun began. The other half of his worldly possessions were in storage, which we proceeded to retrieve. He swore to all the gods that the stuff had all fit in his friend’s small sedan when he originally stored it. Apparently, it had divided and multiplied since then, because we were soon careening through the unfamiliar streets of Brooklyn, every inch of our capacious station wagon crammed with stuff, with no rear vision and my right mirror obscured by the guitar on my son’s lap. We managed to grope our way back to his apartment, when (apparently even the damned have some good luck) we actually found a parking space in front of his building.

Again, like Orpheus, I found the trip back harder than the descent. Navigating solo the highways around New York, surrounded by maniac natives, is not my idea of a good time. I had my mapquest directions, but was well aware that if I made one false move I’d be stuck in the bowels of New York, or whatever god forsaken borough I was passing through. Unlike Orpheus I didn’t look back, and I made it out, to the relative purgatory of the Merritt Parkway.

Resurrection is a wonderful experience, but even better is the perverse pleasure one feels when enjoying the misfortunes of others. The Germans call it schadenfreude, I believe. Such were my feelings as, after leaving the Merritt I tooled North on 95. Across the divider, I observed south bound 1-95, a virtual parking lot from Milford to New London. In my imagination, I observed the northbound folks who were stretched from the New York border to Milford, waiting to enter the funnel I had observed in the morning and avoided this afternoon. Suddenly, life was good.

Despite this uplifting end to my journey, I arrived home physically drained and even more mentally dead than usual. For today at least, I will not inflict my vain (political) ravings on a largely indifferent world.

PS: For more mundane reasons, light or no posting tomorrow as well. The Charter Revision Commission has a meeting tomorrow, and I must do my duty.

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Mini Elvis Concert

Friday, August 24, 2007

From the Seventies

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOuknbvu21Q[/youtube]

to the Zeros, or thereabouts

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMnQFxDltgI[/youtube]

You didn’t think I meant that other Elvis, did you?

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John Edwards in New Hampshire

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Via Susie:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmz4XX-Q5aw[/youtube]

If he means it, he’ll get my vote. If he keeps talking like this, and he starts to catch on, he’ll probably be shot.

Is there any wonder, by the way, why “a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn’t like John Edwards”.

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Hoist by our own petard

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The tiny country of Antigua, egged on by an American lawyer, has beaten the United States at it’s own game, at least for the moment. It has won a ruling from the U.S. dominated World Trade Organization, which found that the U.S. could not prohibit the on-line gaming industry from soaking up excess American wealth. Not, at least, as long as it lets the home grown gaming industry do the same. The article in today’s Times is full of delicious ironies.

The U.S., which has excoriated other countries for blowing off the WTO is now, guess what, blowing off the WTO. The WTO, in turn, is considering allowing little Antigua to blow off American intellectual property laws, which means that maybe, instead of paying .99 to download a song from ITunes, you may soon be paying 9 cents a song from AntiguaTunes.

Speaking purely as a lawyer, I was most amused by this:

If anything, the Bush administration raised those stakes in May when it announced it was removing gambling services from existing trade agreements. John K. Veroneau, a deputy trade representative, said that the federal government was only “clarifying our view” that it had never meant to include online gambling in any free trade agreements.

“It is truly untenable to think that we would knowingly bargain away something that has been illegal for decade upon decade in this country,” Mr. Veroneau said, adding that Washington is not defying the W.T.O. but simply pursuing its case through all legal channels.

The W.T.O. allowed that Washington probably had not intended to include online gambling when it agreed to the inclusion of “recreational services” and other similar language in agreements reached during the early 1990s, when the W.T.O. was first established. But the organization says it has no choice but to enforce the plain language of the pacts.

What a bummer. That plain language rule will get you every time.

But there’s more. The U.S. sought to justify its position by arguing that just as Muslims could refuse to import alcohol on moral grounds, so we could refuse to import gambling services on moral grounds. The WTO found, in essence, that we are not allowed to be hypocrites, something so unprecedented that it must have caught the U.S. government totally by surprise:

The general rule in the world of international trade agreements is that a country must treat foreign goods and services in the same manner as it treats domestic ones. The United States, the trade body found, permits online wagering through sites like Youbet.com, a publicly traded company that allows visitors to place bets at horse racing tracks around the globe.

And, of course, some form of casino gambling is legal in more than 30 states, and even local governments advertise gambling services when states encourage people to buy a lottery ticket.

Unfortunately, it looks like little Antigua may never enjoy the fruits of its victory. The U.S. may yet strong arm the WTO into seeing things its way. And that’s only fair. It’s “truly untenable” to think that the rules would apply to us.

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First, do maximum harm

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Look for more stories like this as the Bush Administration enters the homestretch. It’s already won the prize for worst in history going away, but it will sprint to the finish to make sure its record is never exceeded:

The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.

It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.

The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.

…

The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.
…
Environmental activists say the rule change will lead to accelerated pillage of vast tracts and the obliteration of hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.

“This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration,” said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. “What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal.”

We’ll be seeing more of this. After the election, assuming the Democrats don’t blow it (and even if they do, most likely) Bush will set to work giving gifts to corporations like a drunken Santa. There might be some solace in the thought that a Democratic president can undo the harm, but that doesn’t necessarily follow. Clinton, you might remember, tried to do good in his final days, but Bush will be true to his inner Cheney, and do evil all his days.

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Absolutely unbelievable

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Buzzflash’s Media Putz of the Week just has to get maximum publicity, so let me add my mite. Erin Burnett of CNBC actually said this:

Ya know, if China were to revalue it’s currency or China is to start making say, toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now, they’re keeping prices low and they’re keeping the prices for mortgages low, too.”

If you don’t believe it you can watch the video at Crooks and Liars. There is, by the way, not a hint of irony in her delivery. By the way, what do you think the odds are that Erin Burnett shops at Wal-Mart herself?

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The Prison Industry branches out

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

According to the Christian Science Monitor, farmers are turning to prisoners to harvest their fields, at wages ($2.00 per hours) even an illegal immigrant might turn down. The trend is a result of the crackdown on those very illegal immigrants.

We already have the highest documented prison population in the world. If we find ourselves needing a bigger supply of near slave labor than we can look forward to even larger prison populations. It is a fact that incarceration rates in this country are not driven solely, or even largely, by crime rates.The prison construction companies, private prisons and the prison guard unions lobby for tougher laws and mandatory prison terms, both of which, coincidentally, result in more prison construction, more prisons and more (and better paid) union members. It has created a vicious cycle as those political players seek more prisoners to satisfy their ever increasing appetites. Imagine the pressure there will be to create a new stock of impressed labor if the farmworker trend catches on.

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Downey withdraws his nomination

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Sometimes things happen too fast. Here I was, intending to write about Judge Downey’s nomination to the Appellate Court, which was foundering after it was discovered that he had taken the absurd legal position that illegal immigrants can’t have access to the courts (presumably they still have the right to be sued), when I find that he has already withdrawn his nomination. I’ve seen some pretty weird judicial behavior in my time, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so outrageous as a judge claiming that the courts aren’t open to everyone or demanding that the person before him produce a green card. The unsettling question arises-would the question have been asked had the individual in question not been a Latino?

On the other hand, perhaps more pernicious than the fact that he took such a boneheaded legal position is this mindset:

“Why should a person become a U.S. citizen if they can otherwise enjoy the same rights as the rest of us, especially after 9/11?” Downey said during a divorce hearing.

Yes indeed, why should a non-citizen be able to get a divorce, given that someone they never knew flew a plane into a building.

It’s bad enough that politicians like Bush use the events of 9/11 to shred the constitution and respect for basic human rights, but it’s even worse when a judge does it. At least Bush pretends to direct his ire at people who have some (albeit usually nonexistent) connection to terrorism. It sounds like Downey wants to assign blame for 9/11 to every non-citizen, or at least engage in a sort of presumption that they must pay for what happened. It’s time we all took a deep breath and acknowledged: 9/11 did NOT change everything, nor should it change everything.

Some people act rather strangely when they get on the bench. Some get a sort of god-complex and start to believe that the deference they get is theirs through their own merit and not by dint of the office they hold. That can lead to some strange behavior and, as in this case, some (to say the least) indiscreet language. I hasten to add that I can’t say if this was Downey’s problem-I’ve never been before him. Nor, for that matter, can I say he shouldn’t be on the Appellate Court bench. The next nominee could be far worse, but more close mouthed. These things happen.

While I’m on the subject of judicial nominations, I should add that there’s one judicial promotion I can support. Judge Barry Schaller, who was just appointed to the Supreme Court, served time in the New London circuit court years ago. I appeared before him often. He was, and presumably still is, a rock ribbed Republican. He was not a guy you’d want to be in front of if you were guilty of a crime. Though I’m sure we would disagree on most political issues, I always admired him as a judge. He was unfailingly polite to everyone who came before him, he was never arrogant, he let everyone have their say, and I always felt that he would apply the law as he understood it, whether he agreed with it or not. He was, and hopefully still is, the kind of guy who could almost give conservatives a good name. Of course, I never practiced criminal law. I imagine the folks who practice in that area might have a different take.

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You reap what you sow

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Must reading from Juan Cole. A short history of the roots of the “War on Terror”. No excerpt could to it justice. Read the whole thing.

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