Ignorance is evidence of innocence

Senator Larry "restless leg" Craig: the season's biggest gift to the Stand-up comedy industry. Senator Bojangles Craig, his toes a tappin' and his lyin' lips a flappin' has got himself a lawyer to tell us all that his guilty plea was the result of stress from having been outed by an Idaho newspaper.

Billy Martin, advocate for the tap dancing Senator with the wide stance, assures us that photos of Craig in gay bars notwithstanding, a vehement denial "put to rest" all the evidence of gayness and so in order to assure everyone that he is not now and never has been a homosexual, he plead guilty to soliciting for gay sex in a toilet. Make sense? Ask a Republican like Arlen Spector.

Under Minnesota law, says Martin, a guilty plea can be overturned only if it was unknowing and unintelligent. Perhaps, if he can convince a judge that Craig is an idiot who doesn't know innocent from guilty he might have a chance. As Spector says, after all ". . . what Sen. Craig did was by no means intelligent."

If the "I'm not intelligent" defense works, just think of how soon we can empty the jails!

Cross posted at The Reaction

Conversations overheard

A TV was on in the doctor's waiting room and Creepy Craig's lawyer was on NBC telling us that Craig had a good chance of saying "never mind" to the Minnesota courts and getting off on the misdemeanor charges, but of course Congress was wrong, says he, to censure a Senator for a misdemeanor - that should be and always has been reserved for treason, high crimes and misdemeanors quoth he. Glossing over the obvious contradiction, let's go straight to lyin' Larry Craig's support of impeachment of Bill Clinton.

I really do like lawyers and the entertainment they provide. The idea of changing your mind and getting a re-trial not on the basis of new information but because some lawyer says he can get you off and getting off is "exoneration" is worth a real chuckle.

But speaking of chuckleheads, the news continued with Matt Lauer and Bill Clinton. The goon sitting next to me, wearing an "Army Dad" t-shirt began to explain to his wife that Bill was laughing at us. "here we threw him out of office and he's getting free medical care for life and a free office and a pension and police protection and you and I are paying for it - no wonder he's laughing." He had coasted right through the Larry Craig story. I didn't know Mars had an army.

Sitting at the Yacht Club on a recent Wednesday evening -- we don't usually talk about politics, but the town and the membership tend to be iron clad Republicans -- the fellow across the table began a joke about Bush and two other ex presidents. I tried to hide my cringe, thinking taxes and Monica and those damned liberals were about to be presented, but no, it turned out to be a joke about Bush's stupidity. Maybe Lincoln was right that you can't fool them all, all of the time.

The worst toilet in Minneapolis

Frankly I had forgotten about Barney Frank, the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, until the few remaining Republican apologists willing to attempt the usual accusatory remission of the sins of their fellows, resurrected a twenty year old story about a gay friend of Frank who was found to be running an escort service out of Franks' apartment when he was not home. Upon investigation, the House Ethics Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in this activity but he was censured in Congress for having associated with a male prostitute.

Frank is openly gay and usually wins re-election in Massachusetts's fourth congressional district by landslides of various magnitudes, but the comparison with Larry Craig, the man who made a career out of preaching family values, opposing civil rights for gay people and making remarks about "dirty, nasty" Bill Clinton; the man who was caught soliciting gay sex in a men's toilet, just smells worse than any public toilet in any third world country I've ever been in.

It's true that Republicans are tripping over their own wingtips while fleeing Craig's vicinity, but there are holdouts. Glenn McCoy, the political cartoonist whose scurrilous scribblings regularly appear in the New York Times, was quick to reply to the scandal by showing two donkeys, one telling the other, in response to the scandal to "make sure Barney Frank wasn't in the next stall."

Real humor always contains a nucleus of truth, otherwise it's just a smiling villain, ugliness with a foul grin. That's the kind of humor McCoy specializes in; the grotesque, perverted and dishonest humor designed for sewer dwelling troglodytes who would rather dredge something out of a cesspool and smear it on an undeserving victim rather than admit to any failing, any fault, any guilt, any shame or any hypocrisy.