posted on September 1, 2007 07:54:44 PM new
Uh, please note the REASONS given for Republicans wanting him to step down....NOTHING to do with morals or ethics !
Sen. Craig Resigns Over Sex Sting
Updated 8:58 PM ET September 1, 2007
By JOHN MILLER
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - 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 backdrop. \"I am deeply sorry.\"
Craig, 62, said he would resign effective Sept. 30, ending a career in Congress spanning a quarter-century.
Making no specific mention of the incident that triggered his disgrace in his remarks, he spoke for under 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 on to 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 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 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.
\"Senator 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 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.
Craig represented Idaho in Congress for more than a quarter-century, including 17 years in the Senate. He was up for re-election next year.
Republicans, worried about the scandal\'s effect on next year\'s election, suffered a further setback Friday when veteran Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia announced he will retire rather than seek a sixth term. Democrats captured Virginia\'s other Senate seat from the GOP in the 2006 election.
Craig opposes gay marriage and has a strong record against gay rights. He was a leading voice in the Senate on gun issues and Western lands. Craig chaired the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and was a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, where he was adept at securing federal money for Idaho projects.
A fiscal and social conservative, Craig sometimes broke with his party, notably on immigration, where he pushed changes that many in his party said offered \"amnesty\" to illegal immigrants. Much of the impetus behind Craig\'s push to ease bureaucratic hurdles to immigrant farm workers stemmed from his background as a rancher and the state\'s large rural, farming community.
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Deb Riechmann in Washington, D.C., and Todd Dvorak in Boise contributed to this report.
posted on September 3, 2007 08:29:56 PM new
More stuff about that "family values" REPUBLICAN criminal. Seems it really wasn't such a surprise to find out his proclivities
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Senator Larry Craig.... What's with the gay bashing?
Since the Mark Foley scandal broke earlier this month, increasing attention has been paid to the hypocrisy of Republican leaders. Every election year, these party leaders make what many of us see as anti-gay appeals to religious conservative voters who object to what they disparagingly call the "homosexual lifestyle." What these party leaders don't tell these voters is how many of them actually lead secret lives which include sexual encounters with members of the same sex. Recent stories in USA Today, National Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have discussed this GOP messaging problem. As readers know, my work is bipartisan. The recent use of gays by the Republican Party during this election makes it necessary to focus on the Party and how it facilitates keeping gay men closeted.
My tactics at blogACTIVE have taken a new path from those of the past. Reporting on hypocrisy within the gay community has been going on for years.
My goal with this site and my companion site, Proud Of Who We Are, is to take that message further. To educate not just gays and lesbians about these homophobes, but to educate the greater electorate at large. Because of this, I find myself in the odd position of being one of the few people who seems to be willing to tell religious conservatives, who don't approve of people like me, just how many conservative political leaders are like me.
I have been calling on gay Republican representatives, senators, and high-level staffers to stand up and be proud of who they are, to level with voters about the truth, and to let people decide on their politicians based on truth, honesty and openness.
As this message is posted, I have apppeared on the Ed Schultz Show, a nationally syndicated radio program broadcast in more than 100 cities and on Sirius Satellite. On the show I have called on Senator Larry Craig to end his years of hypocrisy by leveling with Idahoans about who he really is. I am also calling upon several prominent Idaho social conservative leaders to ask them how they square their anti-gay positions with their support for this leader.
I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid.
Larry Craig being mentioned as possibly connected to Congressional scandals is nothing new. Check out these video clips from 1982 when he preemptively denied his involvement in a Congressional sex and drug scandal. (I love what he says about unmarried people back then and how often do politicians issue preemptive denials based on rumors?)
Senator Craig has consistently relied on the support of Idaho's "values voters," but he has not been honest with them about his own conduct. Conservatives and liberals are both standing up and recognizing the hypocrisy of elected officials like Senator Larry Craig. The time for treating Americans one way and behaving in another is over.
posted on September 4, 2007 09:56:14 AM new
By Doug Patton
Since the details of Idaho's Senator Larry Craig’s disgusting restroom antics came to light, comparisons and contrasts of scandals involving Republicans versus Democrats have been made by almost every pundit with a political ax to grind.
Liberal commentators love to characterize Craig’s tormented secret life and his traditional positions on issues such as same sex marriage as “hypocrisy,” while conservatives point out that Craig has a right to take those positions regardless of his personal proclivities.
These views miss the point. While conservative Republicans have to live and die politically by the moral standards most Americans believe to be a reasonable code of personal behavior, Democrats have no standards for personal conduct. The litany of Dems who have thumbed their noses at decency in the name of political survival is long indeed.
President Bill Clinton refused to resign from office, and he served out the remainder of his term despite his crimes.
Sen. Ted Kennedy has been elected to seven more six-year terms since driving off that bridge at Chappaquiddick in a drunken stupor and leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown.
Rep. Gerry Studs, the first openly homosexual member of Congress, had sex with male pages and then defiantly stayed in the House with the approval of his constituents and his Democrat colleagues.
Rep. Barney Frank hired a male prostitute with public funds, then looked the other way while his “aide” turned the congressman’s home into a male brothel. Frank is now chairman of the powerful House Banking Committee.
Rep. Mel Reynolds was pardoned by his fellow deviant Bill Clinton after having sex with female pages.
The list goes on and on and on. And that doesn’t even take into account the Democrat financial scandals that have plagued that party for decades. Remember Congressman William Jefferson, D-La.? The FBI found $90,000 in cash in his freezer last year. He’s still in Congress.
Remember the videotape of Congressman Jack Murtha, D-Pa, discussing a future bribe during the 1980 ABSCAM sting? He’s still in Congress.
Remember Chicago Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee? Eighteen terms, seventeen indictments, yet the Dems let him serve right up to the moment the authorities hauled him off to jail.
But there is no hypocrisy here. How can there be, if they have no standards?
Republicans, on the other hand, are held to a higher benchmark, and rightly so. It is one we who believe in decency and traditional values have set for them, and one to which we should continue to hold them. Is it fair that Larry Craig is forced to resign from the Senate on the strength of such flimsy evidence? Not when held up to the Democrats’ non-standard, but that is not our measure.
Should Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy be wearing orange jump suits at the Massachusetts state prison instead of attempting to destroy the Constitution on a daily basis in the U.S. Congress? Of course, but as your mother probably told you, if you are looking for fairness in this world, son, you are likely to be disappointed.
Democrat constituents apparently don’t care what their elected officials do. As long as the goals of big government are served, sleaze and slime are just fine.
Republicans do care. We don’t want those representing us soliciting men for sex in bathrooms. We think there are lines over which we will not allow our public officials to cross. Going clear back to Watergate, Sen. Barry Goldwater led the Republican delegation to the White House to inform President Richard Nixon that he had to resign. From then until last week, when Republican leaders told Larry Craig there was no room for his behavior in the U.S. Senate, the GOP has been policing its own.
By contrast, we all remember Democrat congressional leaders circling the wagons around Bill Clinton as he lied through his teeth (to the public and under oath) about his disgusting behavior.
Quite simply, being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on September 4, 2007 10:19:23 AM new
From Bear's DENIAL post:
""Republicans do care.""
LLLLLLLLOLOL!!!!!
Ya forgot to read the OP, bear!
Oh , the repugs CARE alright...about their chances of getting elected which is REALITY not some pie-in-the-sky blather about higher morals....they've PROVEN their morals are NO different than anyone else's.
Having Tom DeLIE as their spokesperson says it all !
posted on September 4, 2007 10:50:34 AM new
"Democrat constituents apparently don’t care what their elected officials do. As long as the goals of big government are served, sleaze and slime are just fine."
THAT is hitting the nail on it's head. It is EXACTLY how liberals/progressives/socialists operate in the US today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on September 4, 2007 02:12:39 PM new
[i]Having Tom DeLIE as their spokesperson says it all !
[/i]
Last I looked, Tom hasnt been found guilty of anything, unlike a former President who;s wife is now running for Pres, was disbarred and gave up his law license for committing perjury while under oath.
Thats denial craw.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on September 4, 2007 11:38:53 PM new Not so moral afterall
: Craig Reconsiders Decision to Resign
Updated 1:52 AM ET September 5, 2007
By JOHN MILLER
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - 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 Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, said he would resign if he 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.
McConnell's spokesman and the senatorial campaign committee had no immediate comment on Craig reconsidering his decision to resign.
A former Craig aide said his decision to reconsider fits his personality.
"This doesn't surprise me," said John Keenan, who was Craig's senior legislative director in the 1980s when Craig was in the U.S. House. "He's a fighter, he's very credible and he's a man of integrity."
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 the Minneapolis 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.
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on September 4, 2007 11:44:26 PM new
Oh and BTW , bear, you fathead, Kennedy wasn't found guilty of anything
However:
The real scandal of Tom DeLay
Monday, May 9, 2005 Posted: 12:14 PM EDT (1614 GMT)
RELATED
• Betting on American Indians
• Time.com: Jack in a box
• Bush shows support for DeLay
• Lobbyist's activities questioned
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Creators Syndicate) -- Forget the freebie trips across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Forget the casinos and the allegedly illicit contributions -- they represent only degrees of avarice.
To grasp the moral bankruptcy of the public Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, you only have to know about Frank Murkowski and Saipan.
Today, Frank Murkowki is the governor of Alaska, but from 1980 to 2002, he was a conservative Republican senator from Alaska.
How conservative? His voting record earned him zero ratings from organized labor's AFL-CIO and the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, and perfect 100s from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Conservative Union.
But as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski became furious at the abusive sweatshop conditions endured by workers, overwhelmingly immigrants, in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, of which Saipan is the capital.
Because they were produced in a territory of the United States, garments traveled tariff-free and quota-free to the profitable U.S. market and were entitled to display the coveted "Made in the USA" label.
Among the manufacturers that had profited from the un-free labor market on the island were Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne.
Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.
So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.
But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.
According to law firm records recently made public, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, paid millions to stop reform and keep the status quo, met personally at least two dozen times with DeLay on the subject in one two-year period. The DeLay staff was often in daily contact with Abramoff.
DeLay traveled with his family and staff over New Year's of 1997 on an Abramoff scholarship endowed by his client, the government of the territory, to the Marianas, where golf and snorkeling were enjoyed.
DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan's salute to the owners and Abramoff's government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system"
Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island."
Contrast that with what then-Sen. Murkowski told me in a 1998 interview: "The last time we heard a justification that economic advances would be jeopardized if workers were treated properly was shortly before Appomattox."
The "Made in the USA" label means standards of quality and standards of conduct.
But more important than how a product is made is how the people who make that product are treated -- as human beings with innate dignity -- who are free to organize and entitled to a living wage. """
posted on September 5, 2007 08:16:44 AM new
"Last I looked, Tom hasnt been found guilty of anything, unlike a former President who;s wife is now running for Pres, was disbarred and gave up his law license for committing perjury while under oath."
lol Sybil doesn't care...she has it set in HER mind [lol] that he's guilty - FACTS will never matter to her. And the guilty one [clinton] is innocent. lol
That's just her twisted mind-think. Up is down - right is left - black is white. etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on September 5, 2007 08:26:57 AM new
LOLLLLLLL!
linduh-the-lonely-old-buffoon drools:
""lol Sybil doesn't care...she has it set in HER mind [lol] that he's guilty - FACTS will never matter to her. And the guilty one [clinton] is innocent. lol
That's just her twisted mind-think. Up is down - right is left - black is white. etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Babbling, babbling, babbling down the River!!!!
NO FACTS just insults from linduh...
The coward just can't face the FACTS in my posts !!!!
AND I never said Clinton was innocent...so that's just ANOTHER lie like the one where she said she doesn't respond to my posts LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!
