Say, gang, don't you miss the days of daily Larry "Wide Stance" Craig jokes? Well, he's back, sort of, and it's Make Up Your Own Punchline Day at DWT!

"Retirement for me will probably be not quite retirement. I certainly plan to stay busy."

--Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), in an interview with Idaho station KTVB

Of course it's a bit unfair to refer to the senator being "back," since he never really went away, as much as a lot of his colleagues hoped desperately he would. But you remember the good old days, right? When every day brought what I once referred to in a DWT head as "another round of childish, tasteless Larry Craig-being-gay jokes" -- to which we were always happy to contribute our share. That was the day, actually, that I pictured the senator "Celebrating a Quarter-Century of People Gossiping About Me Being Gay (1982-2007)."

Maybe that quarter-century of denying that he's gay has gone to our Larry's head. Anyway, something seems to have. You have to wonder, does he listen to the stuff that comes out of his mouth?

"I certainly plan to stay busy"???

Okay, girls and boys, if that's the way the man wants to play this, he's fair game, don't you think? Let's get those punchlines rolling.

Actually, his impending busy-ness isn't the big news that Senator Larry is sharing. No, the big news, courtesy of the Washington Post's Ben Pershing in a "Capitol Briefing" blog entry last night, is that our Larry is (drum roll) writing a book!

"There'll be a bit of what happened in the last year and the way it evolved," Craig said in the interview. "I think that's important for Idaho and those outside Idaho [who] are interested to know."

While he's at it, Craig plans to address "the state of politics in Washington today and across America" and the "dysfunctional and hyperpartisan Senate" he will soon be leaving. (Follow-up questions that weren't asked: If the Senate is so awful, why didn't he resign when the scandal broke and his colleagues were practically begging him to quit? Why stick around for another year?)

The book is due out "around the middle of 2009," and while Ben suggests that he "make sure his book tour doesn't include a stop in Minneapolis," I say the tour should kick off right there where it all started, in the Minneapolis airport! Seat Senator Larry on the throne in the very stall, and have the line of book signees snake out the men's-room door into the corridor.

All in all, things seem to have worked out okay for the senator, don't you think? After all, it wasn't that long ago that, if he was known at all, it was for (1) that humiliating business of being one of the four Singing Senators and/or (2) being just another extreme-right-wing loon. Publishers don't often hand out book contracts for those, er, accomplishments.

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