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Craig quits Senate, says he’s ‘deeply sorry’
BY JOHN MILLER The Associated Press

   BOISE, Idaho — In a subdued ending to a week of startling political theater, Sen. Larry Craig announced his resignation Saturday, bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans worried about damage from his arrest and guilty plea in a gay sex sting.
   “I apologize for what I have caused,” Craig said, his wife Suzanne and two of their three children at his side with a historic Boise train station as a backdrop. “I am deeply sorry.”
   Craig, 62, said he would resign effective Sept. 30, ending a career in Congress spanning a quartercentury.
   Making no specific mention of the incident that triggered his disgrace in his remarks, he spoke for less than six minutes and took no questions.
   Among those attending was Republican Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, who will appoint a successor for the remaining 15 months of Craig’s term.
   It was a relatively quick end to a drama that began Monday with the stunning disclosure that Craig had pleaded guilty to a reduced charge following his arrest June 11 in a Minneapolis airport men’s room.
   Craig at first tried to hold onto his position, contending in a public appearance on Tuesday that he had done nothing inappropriate and that his only mistake was pleading guilty Aug. 1 to the misdemeanor charge. But a growing chorus of leading GOP leaders called for him to step down to spare the party further embarrassment and possible harm in next year’s elections.
   Otter said Saturday that he has not chosen a replacement, although several Republicans familiar with internal deliberations said he favored Republican Lt. Gov. Jim Risch.
   Otter called speculation that he has made a choice “dead wrong” and declined to say when he would fill the seat.
   Craig said he would remain in the Senate until Sept. 30 in the hopes of providing a smooth transition for his staff and whoever is chosen as his successor.
   President Bush called Craig from the White House after the senator’s announcement and told him he knew it was a difficult decision to make, said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.
   “Sen. Craig made the right decision for himself, for his family, his constituents and the United States Senate,” Stanzel said.
   Craig was arrested June 11 in a police undercover vice operation. The arresting officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, said in his report that the restroom where he encountered Craig is a known location for homosexual activity.
   Craig has faced rumors about his sexuality since the 1980s. He has called assertions that he has engaged in gay sex ridiculous.
   “I am not gay. I never have been gay,” Craig said defiantly after a news conference Tuesday. He said he had kept the incident from aides, friends and family and pleaded guilty “in hopes of making it go away.”
   Other lawmakers embroiled in sex scandals also have resigned from Congress, albeit usually at the end of scenarios that took longer to play out than the one that claimed Craig.
   Former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., quit last fall over sexually explicit Internet communications with male pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.
   Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., resigned in 1995 amid allegations that he had made unwanted sexual advances to 17 female employees and colleagues and altered his personal diaries to obstruct an ethics investigation.
   On Saturday, Craig said he would pursue legal options to clear his name. He has retained Billy Martin, a Washington lawyer who represented Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in his dogfighting case, to pursue his legal options. Washington lawyer Stan Brand will represent Craig before the Senate ethics committee, said spokesman Dan Whiting.
   “The people of Idaho deserve a senator who can devote 100 percent of his time and effort to the critical issues of our state and of our nation,” Craig said. “I have little control over what people choose to believe. But clearly my name is important to me, and my family is so very important also.”
   Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Craig “made a difficult decision but the right one.”
   “It is my hope he will be remembered not for this but for his three decades of dedicated public service,” McConnell said. McConnell had been one of Craig’s harshest critics, calling his actions “unforgivable.”
   Some Idaho residents who attended Craig’s public resignation said it felt like a “political funeral.”
   Bayard Gregory, from Boise, said Craig should have been more forthright after his arrest.
   “It’s a horribly embarrassing experience to go through,” Gregory said. “But if it were me and I had done nothing wrong, I wouldn’t have pleaded guilty.”
   Craig spokesman Sidney Smith said he did not know whether Craig would return to Washington on Tuesday, the start of the post-Labor Day congressional session.
   “We haven’t decided that yet, whether he’s going to return or not,” Smith said.

  
  
  

Geezzzz....is anybody else going to come out of the 'closet caucus'?

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GOP leader denies
double standard
in Craig issue
   WASHINGTON — A GOP leader Sunday denied a double standard in pushing Sen. Larry Craig to resign after a sex sting guilty plea, while remaining silent over GOP Sen. David Vitter’s involvement with an escort service.
   A senior Democrat said a double standard by Republican leaders is exactly what occurred.
   Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the Senate Republican campaign chairman, said Craig “admitted guilt. That is a big difference between being accused of something and actually admitting guilt.”
   “David Vitter never did that. Larry Craig did,” continued Ensign on ABC’s “This Week” program.
   Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed a contrary view on “Fox News Sunday.”

I think they were pissed at his arrogance of the remark "do you know who I am"......

Okay, so can someone explain to me why Senator Craig is saying 'I'm sorry'? What is he actually sorry for? Is he sorry cause he's gay? Is he sorry that he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor? Is he sorry that he got caught in a sex sting operation?

I have to say one thing here....I really wish that when these guys get caught in some sex scandal, and then they are addressing the people on national TV...PAALLLLLEEEZZZZ....don't have the wife and kids standing next to him!!!!!!!!! I mean come on now. They were probably kicking him in the a** on the way to the podium! The public is clearly not that stupid as to think that the wife is this wimpy little suportive spouse that UNDERSTANDS, FORGIVES and excepts their extra marital affairs, be it homosexual or heterosexual! Come on here people...we're not in Kansas Dorothy!!!

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AP: Craig reconsiders decision to resign  
  
By JOHN MILLER, Associated Press
Last updated: 10:13 p.m., Tuesday, September 4, 2007

BOISE, Idaho -- Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.
  
"It's not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign," Sidney Smith, Craig's spokesman in Idaho's capital, told The Associated Press.

"We're still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we're able to stay in the fight -- and stay in the Senate," Smith said.

Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he's hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

Craig was a no-show Tuesday as Congress reconvened after a summer break and it wasn't clear whether he'll return at all since deciding to resign over his guilty plea in a sex sting this summer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Another spokesman, Dan Whiting in Washington, said Tuesday that Craig was expected to spend the week in Idaho as the Senate votes on spending bills for veterans and other programs. Whiting did not rule out Craig's returning to Washington before the end of the month.

A telephone call Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urging him to consider fighting for his seat is affecting Craig's decision to reconsider his resignation, Smith said.

"It was a little more cut and dried a few days ago," Smith said. "There weren't many options. He was basically going to have to step aside. Now, there's a little more to it."

On Tuesday, Specter, senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Craig's GOP colleagues who pressured him last week to resign should re-examine the facts surrounding his arrest June 11.

"The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts," said Specter, a former prosecutor. If Craig had not pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, "I believe he would have been exonerated," Specter said.

Craig gave up his senior positions on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Appropriations veterans subcommittee last week, at the request of Senate Republican leaders. The Senate began debating the veterans spending bill Tuesday.

Craig came under a steady drumbeat of criticism from Republicans in the days before he announced that for the good of the people of Idaho, he would step down Sept. 30.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called Craig's actions "unforgivable" after the White House termed the situation disappointing. Republican Senate colleagues John McCain of Arizona and Norm Coleman of Minnesota said Craig should resign.
With Republicans defending nearly twice as many seats as Democrats in 2008, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the Senate GOP's election effort, said he would resign if was in Craig's circumstances but stopped short of saying the Idahoan should give up his seat. Craig's third six-year term in the Senate expires in January 2009.
Republican Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has not named Craig's successor and has not said when he will. Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, also a Republican, is considered the front-runner for the job.

Billy Martin, one of Craig's lawyers, said the senator's arrest in an undercover police operation in men's room of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport "raises very serious constitutional questions."

Martin, who represents Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in his dogfighting case, said Craig "has the right to pursue any and all legal remedies available as he begins the process of trying to clear his good name."

Craig contended throughout last week he had done nothing wrong and said his only mistake was pleading guilty on Aug. 1 to a misdemeanor charge.

Craig has hired a high-powered crisis management team that includes Martin; communications adviser Judy Smith; Washington attorney Stan Brand, a former general counsel to the U.S. House; and Minneapolis attorney Tom Kelly.

Brand, who represented Major League Baseball in the congressional investigation into steroid use, will handle any Senate Ethics Committee investigation of Craig, while Kelly will assist the legal case in Minnesota.

McConnell, R-Ky., disputed there was a double standard in how GOP leaders reacted to Craig's case and to the admission in July by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that his telephone number showed up in 1999, 2000 and 2001 phone bills of an escort service that federal authorities say was a prostitution ring.

In Vitter's case, "there have been no charges made," McConnell said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing occurred before Vitter was a senator.

Craig, by contrast, pleaded guilty to a crime, McConnell said. "The legal case was, in effect, over. At that point, the question was for the Republican leadership, what would be our reaction to it," he said.

All three of Craig's adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father's assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest.

Jay Craig, 33, told The Associated Press that he, his brother, Michael Craig, 38, and his sister, Shae Howell, 36, spoke candidly with their father about the June 11 arrest.

"Our conclusion was there was no wrongdoing there," Jay Craig said. "We understood the direction he was taking (by pleading guilty) and there was nothing illegal that happened there that would even convince somebody what he was doing was illegal. He was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time when this sting operation was going on."

In a separate interview on Tuesday, with ABC's "Good Morning America," Michael Craig used similar language about his father.

Larry Craig adopted Michael and his two siblings after marrying their mother, the former Suzanne Scott, in 1983. Craig has worked in the Senate to promote adoption.

Make up your mind.  Guilty, Not Guilty.  Resigning, Not Resigning.  I've had enough of it. Goodbye already.  you're just giving more and more Republicans a bad name.  We can't take it at this time of year.  Some too important votes coming up for people to get in their minds that one party is good or one party is bad, ESPECIALLY with how some of the local parties are going around here...

Just move along....another dead armadillo elephant.....

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Time to stop the anti-gay stings
Ellen Goodman is a nationally syndicated columnist.

   BOSTON — Well, that didn’t take long. A mere five days from the Roll Call revelations to the presumed resignation. Thirty-three years of public service down the toilet, and that is the last bathroom joke I’ll make.
   When Larry Craig got caught in a sex sting in a Minneapolis airport restroom, Republican stalwarts broke the speed record turning him from the distinguished senator into the disgusting senator. Gay rights groups did not rise to the defense of their public enemy. The only politician expressing actual empathy for Craig was Jim McGreevey, the “outed” former governor of New Jersey who is now — you cannot make this stuff up — in divinity school.
   By Tuesday, even Idahoans thought it was all over. The most popular news on the Idaho Statesman Web site was about a woman rock climber who got her long hair caught in the ropes while she was rappelling.
   Now what’s happening? It looks like Craig’s “intention to resign” left a loophole as wide as his stance. If he can fight off the charges to which he pleaded guilty, his spokesman and his lawyer now say, he may not resign.
   I have no desire to throw myself between Craig and the madding crowd. He was never my kind of senator. I don’t want to send my grandson into a public restroom used for assignations. Nor do I enjoy watching another humiliated wife standing by her husband.
   But I have to agree with Sen. Arlen Specter in separating the law from the lewd, the criminal from the yucky. What law did this sad sack of a 62-year-old senator with his ludicrous explanations actually break?
   Craig was charged with violating privacy under what is essentially a Peeping Tom law. The charge was dropped because it would never have held up. He then pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. But what exactly was the disorder or the conduct? Soliciting sex in a public place? In fact, all he actually did was tap his feet and put his hand under a stall. As Dale Carpenter at the University of Minnesota Law School notes, there was no specific sexual allegation, no indecent exposure, no money, no abuse, and the other man — the policeman — tapped back: “Can’t you send ambiguous signals in Minnesota without it being a crime?” asks Carpenter.
   The stinger, lest you forget, was a 29-year-old police officer with a master’s degree. He must have been trained in gay codes before being assigned to sit in bathrooms waiting for a flirtatious shoe. Isn’t there a murder to be solved in Minneapolis?
   Sex stings to catch gays have been around for more than a century. Sodomy itself was illegal in Minnesota until 2001. It was a “crime against nature” in Idaho, punishable by five years to life in prison. Then in 2003, the Supreme Court finally overturned all the laws against sodomy.
   Today, the same people who couldn’t legally have sex can get legally married in Massachusetts, and form civil unions or partnerships in six other states. In the midst of the Craig debacle, an Iowa court briefly allowed gay marriage. But last fall, Idaho joined the vast majority of states in voting to ban it.
   What a time of duality. Leading Democratic candidates for president flocked to a gay forum and pledged allegiance to civil unions — but not marriage. Many Republican pols split between private acceptance and public hostility, welcoming Mary Cheney’s baby and rousing the religious right. Even Craig’s son, while supporting his father’s denial, added, “Gay or straight, that part doesn’t matter.”
   Yet the stings go on. Craig was only one of 40 arrested since May in Minneapolis. There were 45 arrested in the Atlanta airport this year. How many elsewhere? There must be saner ways to keep a restroom from becoming a meeting ground, better than using a dubious law that shames men into pleading guilty for the same reason Craig did: humiliation and the fear of exposure. “I don’t call media,” said the policeman. But exposure often follows. So too, the loss of a license or a lifetime of registering as a sex offender.
   Craig is trapped in the time warp of same-sex relationships that now run from anonymity to marriage, from the closet to the altar. How much does it — “gay or straight” — matter to the man who grew up on a cattle ranch, studied in a one-room school, became student body president at the University of Idaho, and then a senator?
   Whether he resigns or not, I hope Craig does fight the charge against him. “I am not gay,” he insists. Indeed he’s fought gay rights at every turn. How perfect if his last public service is taking the anti-gay venom out of the sting?  

  
  
  

we just have to keep our public 'bathhouses' safe......straight or gay----KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS.......

Does Schenectady have these little stings.....who cares about the 2000' rule.....as long as they dont live in the bathroom or 2000' near it doesn't mean they cant use it...... >

Should we warehouse the elderly or the sex offenders????? Or both??? can we have our cake and eat it too??

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There must be saner ways to keep a restroom from becoming a meeting ground, better than using a dubious law that shames men into pleading guilty for the same reason Craig did: humiliation and the fear of exposure. “I don’t call media,” said the policeman. But exposure often follows. So too, the loss of a license or a lifetime of registering as a sex offender

Put in cameras or put GPS trackers on all Americans.....no exposure there I'm sure(good stuff for reality TV?)......unless of course you have a tattoo of a crocodile where ya dont want your mama to see.....or do ya......(what is a 'sex offender'?)

Give'em and inch and they take a foot.....no pun intended here.......(whatever the body part)......

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Sen. Craig will seek to take back plea  
  
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press
Monday, September 10, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Larry Craig will file court documents Monday asking to withdraw his guilty plea in a sex sting that seems likely to end his career, his attorney said.
  
Craig, an Idaho Republican, pleaded guilty in August to disorderly conduct following a sting operation in a men's bathroom at the Minneapolis airport.

He has said he regrets that decision, which he said he made hastily and without talking to an attorney. He said he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him.

Attorney William Martin said Sunday night that a request to withdraw that plea would be filed Monday. Such requests are rarely granted. Martin would not discuss the argument he planned to make in court.

Martin said he was not involved in discussions about Craig's future in the Senate. Craig originally announced he would resign at the end of the month, then said he was reconsidering that decision. His chief spokesman later said Craig had dropped virtually all notions of trying to finish his third term.

"My job is to get him back to where he was before his rights were taken away," Martin said.

Craig's congressional spokesman has said the only way that Craig is likely to remain in the Senate is if a court moves quickly to overturn the conviction, something that is unlikely to happen before the end of the month.

But Judy Smith, a spokeswoman for Craig's legal team, said the lawyers are focused only on the Minnesota case, not political outcomes.

Many Republicans have urged Craig to say for sure that he will resign. That would spare the party an ethics dilemma and the embarrassment of dealing with a colleague who had been stripped of his committee leadership posts.

It also would negate the need for a Senate ethics committee investigation, which GOP leaders had requested.

If Craig succeeds in undoing his plea, he would likely try to have the charges dismissed to avoid an embarrassing trial.

A police report alleged that Craig had solicited sex from a male officer at the Minneapolis airport in June.

Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Craig is entitled to his day in court.

"Maybe he'll be convicted, but I doubt it," said Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican.

Specter said that when he learned the details of the arrest "I was convinced that he couldn't be convicted if he fought the case."

Minnesota law is that a guilty plea may be withdrawn if it was not intelligently made "and what Sen. Craig did was by no means intelligent," said Specter.

When ya think with the 'head' this is what ya get......(if in fact it is fact).......

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He has said he regrets that decision, which he said he made hastily and without talking to an attorney. He said he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him.

If you make such off-the-cuff decision in your own life what have you been doing in the public realm?????

Quoted from senders

When ya think with the 'head' this is what ya get......(if in fact it is fact).......

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He has said he regrets that decision, which he said he made hastily and without talking to an attorney. He said he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him.

If you make such off-the-cuff decision in your own life what have you been doing in the public realm?????

Isn't that why there's a Majority / Minority leader?  They tell you exactly what you're supposed to do.  Then, there's the polls that can be read to say anything you want.  Thing is, there's not many people in D.C. (Or Albany or Downtown Schenectady) that really think about the people that they serve anymore.