At the end of the day

All three Democratic presidential candidates -- Hillary, Edwards, and Obama -- support the death penalty "...as have virtually all leading Democrats running for office in the past 20 years.... Why so much longstanding support for capital punishment? It is the easiest way to combat the quadrennial charge that Democrats are 'soft on crime.' "

The NYT editorial board endorsed Hillary as their Democratic "primary choice." Is this a good thing when the Times publishes loony columnists Bill Kristol, David Brooks, and MoDo? They also endorsed McCain as their Repub "primary choice." Well, at least the NYT has Paul Krugman on board. Still...

Michigan and Florida delegates -- When the DNC objected to states moving their primary dates up, they decided to strip the states of their delegates. Edwards and Obama removed their names from the ballot in Michigan but Hillary and Kucinich did not. "Today, Hillary announced that she will demand the DNC seat Michigan's and Florida's delegates. Delegates that only she - in violation of DNC rules - competed for." Yellow Dog provided details. Via Deb-TUD, Josh Marshall had something to say about it, too.

Yesterday, Joe Conason indicated he's gotten some heat for not bashing Hillary enough. His response: "There's no taking sides" and concluded, "I perceive strengths and weaknesses in both of the leading Democrats. They're politicians and human beings, not angels or devils. I can certainly imagine voting for either of them in the general election." His favorite pick for president didn't run. Hmmm, I would guess that's Al Gore!

Mitt and McCain vie for who's the biggest tax cut whore of all! But, wait a minute... Rudy wants the coveted title.

FactCheck.org identified Repub falsehoods in last night's GOP debate in Boca Raton, FL. Mitt "misrepresented" Hillary's health care plan, plus note the Huckster's "FairTax fairy tale," "Giuliani's fables," and "McCain's tax evasion." Some are old lies, and some are new. Unsurprising, isn't it?

Atrios pointed out the Draft Bloomberg effort has recorded "a whopping 3136 signatures." At the time of this posting, the amount has catapulted to 3,375! Wheee-oooo. Are you feeling the "Mikementum"? His favorable rating is "Teh Suck".

The latest Florida poll, a national Gallup primary poll, and Mark Blumenthal discussed variations in SC polling.

Cernig at Newshogger posted an in-depth discourse on a "nuke policy blog tank." An excellent synopsis and worth the time to click the link (h/t to blogging goddess, Avedon).

Toe-tappin' Larry Craig sex sting -- "No one on the tight-lipped Senate committee will say how far along any investigation is or whether they expect it to yield any findings." CREW hasn't heard anything. Craig's lawyer remains silent. Is anything being investigated? "No one with the committee has asked to speak with anyone connected with Craig's arrest or asked for more information about it, said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport." McClatchy

Tortured silence -- Today during a press conference, AG Mike Mukasey wouldn't say if waterboarding is torture. "In a letter to Mr. Mukasey this week, all 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed him again for an answer to the question of whether waterboarding is torture and suggested it would be a focus of an oversight hearing next week at which the attorney general is scheduled to testify." Tomorrow's NYT

Bloody Iraq -- Today Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said "that Iraqi reinforcements have begun moving toward the northern city of Mosul for a 'decisive' battle with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda." Also in Mosul, "A provincial police chief was killed by a suicide bomber" on Thursday. "Duraid Kashmoula, the governor of Nineveh province, said the number of people killed in Wednesday's attack had increased from 15 to 38.... The revised death toll made Wednesday's bombing the deadliest in Iraq since mid-December. Kashmoula said 134 people had been wounded."

Pakistan -- SecDef Gates said the U.S. will send "troops to conduct joint combat operations with Pakistan's military against al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas."

Check out Corpus Juris' funny video post below. Hilarious! Our hyperbolic media stars... erupt!

[That's all...no more after the jump.]

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And Now For A Short Break

Larry Craig jokes never get old. Sometimes you just have to take a break to laugh.


This was Southern Strategy Group's Christmas card this year. The card simply wishes a very neutral "Happy Holidays."

What makes this so funny is the principals in the Tallahassee office are top Republicans associated with Jeb Bush!

More Larry Craig in YouTube (thanks to Stinkipete) after the jump...

Another funny at Larry Craig's expense:

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Wide Stance Court Stalls On The Law

The Court in Minnesota has issued it's decision denying Larry Craig's Motion To Withdraw Guilty Plea. It is certainly not unexpected, and I am not surprised in the least. Craig is not a sympathetic defendant here, and for good reason. I think that he was indeed doing exactly what he was accused of. I still think the decision, and indeed the initial charging of the crime, is, and was, legally wrong. While Craig's behavior in the bathroom absolutely could be viewed as consistent with the homosexual cruising lewd behavior he was accused of, it could also be consistent with harmless and innocuous behavior. I don't like Craig one bit, and good riddance to him, but I think it is questionable whether his conduct supported a charge, and see no way it could be seen as proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a fair court of law. Beyond that, I believe that Craig knew what he was doing in entering his plea, and was just hoping it would slide through the cracks; so, again, not much sympathy there. That being said however, I still think his plea was legally and Constitutionally deficient in it's advisement of right to counsel and factual basis for a finding of guilt on the charge he was found guilty of. These are technical legal arguments, and I do not expect most lay people to fully understand them or agree with them; but as a lawyer, I absolutely consider the plea to be so deficient that it should be set aside. I might also note that I do not even reach further technical arguments under local Minnesota statutes that I also think support the proposition that the plea was defective statutorily. Bottom line, I think it was wrong, but couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Despite what many people would believe, and the Court seems to accept, the fact that the cops advised Craig of Miranda, or the prosecutor made some comment in a note or phone call, is irrelevant to the argument I am describing. There are simply legal requirements as to what information, and how it is to be delineated, that must be contained within the four corners of the plea document and the official court record of the acceptance of the plea. There was no formal record, whether by court reporter transcription or audio recording, made in this case. In fact, there was no court proceeding, it was simply sent in by mail and considered done. The law should apply equally to those we don't like as those we do like; here, there is no question in my mind whatsoever that the plea proceeding was legally deficient. I fully understand why people either don't understand these arguments, or don't want to believe them, but I stand by them completely.

I understand that many, if not most, may disagree with me; but I still maintain that the plea was deficient as to containing a Constitutionally adequate waiver of counsel and proper factual basis. I also believe that the court improperly bootstrapped extraneous evidence from the police report as support in making it's predetermined decision. The police report was not made a formal part of the factual basis in the plea document (and it often is made a formal part on the record by verbal reference in the transcript, of which there is none here, or by words formally adopting and incorporating it in the actual plea document, again, none of which are present here). This is a very long memorandum authored by a line level county misdemeanor judge in an attempt to support a predetermined incorrect decision if you ask me. The plea form and process supplied by the prosecutor and court here is as lame and goofy as I have ever seen. I have never seen any as bad, in any court I have ever been in, even for a broken taillight petty offense traffic ticket. Oh well, no big deal, the Constitution and due process rule of law do not mean diddly squat anywhere in this country anymore; no reason it should here either I guess.

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Airport Stall Law

It should be noted that Sen. Larry Craig has filed his motion to set aside the plea agreement in Hennepin County. Here is Craig's Motion

It looks like a very strong motion to me. I would give at least 50:50 odds, if not a fair amount better, that Craig gets this plea withdrawn. That should make for an interesting pickle for the GOP leadership, especially Mitch McConnell in the Senate, who has his own gathering storm on the homosexual hypocrisy front.

My collegue, the Socratic Gadfly. has written "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." That sounds all flashy and everything, but that is just flat out wrong. Whether this is a crime or not is controlled completely by the authority of the Minnesota statutes which, quite frankly, speak for themselves.

I am not a fan of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Airport Stall), nor am I a fan of what he is accused of doing, nor even the belligerent conduct he has engaged in by the unequivocal facts to date. What I am an unmitigated fan of, however, is the orderly and proper rule of law pursuant to Constitutionally permitted legal and judicial process. With a plea form defective on it's face on the Constitutionally protected issue of right to counsel, with no proper record (audio or written), and with no proper factual basis for the plea accepted in this case; if one truly cares about the rule of law, it is hard to argue that this plea should stand. I predict it will not.

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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.

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Larry Craig's New Slogan -- In and Out

After my last post I had to put up a funny. Here is Steve Tatham's latest. He calls it Killer Blondes. I like my derivative title better.

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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.

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Mitch Trips Over Larry's Dick

Mark Nicholas at Bluegrass Report thinks Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has seriously screwed up over the Larry Craig mess.

Now that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) appears to be fighting to keep his job, it's hard not to wonder whether Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R) has badly botched the handling of this matter by overcompensating for the gross mishandling of the Mark Foley mess in the House.

(SNIP)

I love the fact that the Republicans are again finding themselves weighed-down by the scandal anchor, but the way McConnell has been handling the Craig matter has really rubbed me the wrong way. But more importantly, I think McConnell is killing his own caucus by botching this matter -- which now seems headed toward an intra-party collision with Craig staying and fighting -- at the worst possible time for Republicans: General Petraeus is days away from trying to save the GOP from the Iraq debacle.

UPDATE (5:26 PM): Apparently, McConnell has just flip-flopped on Craig, holding a press conference to announce Craig intends to stay in his Senate seat if he can get the charges dismissed. Amazing. So much for McConnell's earlier dismissal of any notion of a Craig return.

It would be too, too delicious if what brings down Mitch, who is widely believed in both Kentucky and D.C. to be gay himself, is a gay sex scandal that he mishandles because of his inability to deal directly and honestly with homosexuality among the GOP faithful.

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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.

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