Posts published in September 2007

On Wednesday, Idaho Senator Larry Craig's disorderly conduct case returns to a Minnesota courtroom; there, he is attempting to withdraw his plea of guilty, and service of his sentence, on the charge. Within a few days, the Northwest's senior senator (and its second most senior member of Congress) may - or may not - resign from the Senate. This the last of four essays considering the case, its causes and its effects.

Larry Craig

Senator Larry Craig has said he probably will resign after a court hearing on September 26, Wednesday, but by September 30, which is next Sunday; if he does what he and his spokesmen have said is probable, then you could imagine a formal announcement coming on Thursday or Friday, with resignation to take effect two days later. Shortly thereafter, within two or three days we imagine, Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter would appoint a replacement. (On Friday, maybe, if Craig announced on Thursday; but probably on a weekday, and we'd guess not on the same day.)

There's been no end of talk in Boise about who Otter might appoint, and a very long list of possibles - somewhere around 30 names, the last time we counted - has been released. The focus has been on Lieutenant Governor Jim Risch, who is broadly considered the single most likely prospect. When conversation moves (as it often does) to, "Well, what if it's not Risch?", then the name of Attorney General Lawrence Wasden tends to arise. And then, after that, a broader list.

We'll get to some of that in this post. Before we do, we thought we'd discuss for a bit a question hardly posed at all in any public venue: What qualities or qualifications should the next senator from Idaho have?

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On Wednesday, Idaho Senator Larry Craig's disorderly conduct case will return to a Minnesota courtroom; there, he is attempting to withdraw his plea of guilty, and service of his sentence, on the charge. Within a few days after that, the Northwest's senior senator (and its second most senior member of Congress) may - or may not - resign from the Senate. This the third of four essays considering the case, its causes and its effects.

Larry Craig

You'll see the question posted quite a bit, sometimes in the most unexpected place: What, exactly, was the offense here? What was it that Larry Craig did that was so horrifically wrong as to generate the kind of ferocious reaction, the nearly instant calls for resignation, that it has? And are they justified? What kind of response from Craig is warranted?

Don't jump to a conclusion. This is more complicated than it seems, and not only because so many people - when you pin them down - give so many different answers. It's because some of the answers may lie in the recesses of our souls, back in places few of us like to visit or even contemplate.

And some of the reasons have a good deal of validity, too.

One that makes no sense:

Being convicted of a misdemeanor. There's a reason you got your felonies and you got your misdemeanors: One is considerably more serious than the other, and one is taken as an indicator of a person really not to be trusted, while the other is simply a significant mistake. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell used Craig's misdemeanor conviction in Minnesota as rationale for why he should resign from the Senate. This is a complete crock: By that standard, the nation's president and vice president should be gone too. (Which many people might say should happen anyway, but not for that reason.) Get convicted of a felony, and you're out of the Senate, all right, but lesser offenses aren't, in and of themselves, quite so weighty.

But he pleaded guilty to a crime. Under the law, pleading guilty to a crime and then being convicted is really no different than pleading not guilty and being convicted anyway: Either way, you are formally determined by the law of the land to be guilty. There seems to be considerable difference between the two in the minds of some people, though why exactly is less clear. Is it that the guilty plea more or less removes all doubt that he actually did it? Except, of course, that he now is denying it anyway.

There's also a real question about the seriousness, though, of exactly what Craig did. If you point a gun at someone and demand their money, there's no question what were the specific things you did that violated the law. But tapping a foot on the floor - what's that? Is that a crime? Should it, could it be? What sort of innocent behavior might be snared into something like this? Who knows what's criminal?

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There's been some perplexed talk among Idaho Republicans about a string of decisions and initiatives on the part of Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter , a man long known as a lower-case libertarian - a person strongly disinclined to have government to anything that a private person or entity prospectively could do. And to oppose, as a general principle, anything like an expansion of government.

So what to make of many of Otter's recent decisions? There's the support for a new Ada-Canyon community college. Support for pursuing some kind of medical school for the state, prospectively a big investment. Support for public transportation initiatives. And some of these things quietly done.

Now comes the report that Otter is setting up a state Office of Energy Resources. Which may only add to libertarian wonderment . . .

On Wednesday, Idaho Senator Larry Craig's disorderly conduct case will return to a Minnesota courtroom; there, he is attempting to withdraw his plea of guilty, and service of his sentence, on the charge. Within a few days after that, the Northwest's senior senator (and its second most senior member of Congress) may - or may not - resign from the Senate. This the second of four essays considering the case, its causes and its effects.

Larry Craig

We've spoken over the years from time to time with Roll Call, the newspaper which covers Capitol Hill, about Northwest politics and politicians - members of Congress and their doings are Roll Call's subject matter. Vastly less well known than the Washington Post, it is much more focused, closer to - but still less known than - the Congressional Quarterly, but more immediate in its reports. it may be closest in feel to The Hill, also a newspaper focusing on Congress.

All of these publications are professional, solid and serious. They are not supermarket tabloids, and none of them are where you ordinarily would expect to see an expose about bathroom sex. Yet there it was, on August 27 - Roll Call breaking the political story of the week (month? season?). When it did, it did so not the way some others might: It arrived with police and court reports in hand. This was a story about a senator's run-in with the law, a run-in hidden from view for more than two months.

But the intersecting subjects of Idaho Senator Larry Craig, gay sex and news reporting has a long and varied history, fit for consideration in college journalism schools coast to coast. (College preferably, since some of the details probably are R-rated.) Eventually, and maybe not too far off, we'll all see lots of hand-wringing by the usual hand-wringers about how the Craig story was handled over the years, then days and hours after it hit. While events still are fresh, let's check off a report card on the rights and wrongs.

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