Most Conservatives Screaming The Loudest About Hating Gays Are Repressed Homosexuals Or Self-Loathing Closet Cases

Who remembers Idaho Senator Larry Craig? He was elected to the House in 1980, was elected to the NRA's Board of Directors in 1983, the Senate in 1990, tried to seduce a humpy young undercover cop in a toilet in the Minneapolis Airport in 2007 and was forced to retire in 2009. Now he's a disgraced energy lobbyist. Craig was vehemently anti-gay but had spent his entire time in Washington orally copulating male prostitutes, many in public toilets, but some in his home. He likes rough trade.

The new issue of Scientific American includes a feature, Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals by Jeanna Bryner. "Homophobes," she wrote, "should consider a little self-reflection, suggests a new study finding those individuals who are most hostile toward gays and hold strong anti-gay views may themselves have same-sex desires, albeit undercover ones. The prejudice of homophobia may also stem from authoritarian parents, particularly those with homophobic views as well, the researchers added."

A friend of mine was just telling me about a flippy-floppy politician running for Congress in MI-06, a lobbyist who has helped finance Republican incumbent Fred Upton and is now running, as a conservative Democrat, for the nomination to run against Upton. He's a bit of a laughing stock.

"This study shows that if you are feeling that kind of visceral reaction to an out-group, ask yourself, 'Why?'" co-author Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said in a statement. "Those intense emotions should serve as a call to self-reflection."

The research, published in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reveals the nuances of prejudices like homophobia, which can ultimately have dire consequences.

"Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they 'doth protest too much,'" Ryan told LiveScience. "In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves."

Ryan cautioned, however, that this link is only one source of anti-gay sentiments.

In four studies, the researchers looked at the discrepancies between what people say about their sexual orientation and their implicit sexual orientation based on a reaction-time test. The studies involved college students from Germany and the United States.

For the implicit measure, students had to categorize words and pictures flashed onto a computer screen into "gay" or "straight" groups. Words included "gay," "straight," "homosexual" and "heterosexual," while the pictures showed straight and gay couples. Before each trial, participants were primed with the word "me" or "others" flashed momentarily onto a computer screen. The researchers said quicker reaction time for "me" and "gay," and a slower association of "me" with "straight" would indicate said an implicit gay orientation.

In another experiment, the researchers measured implicit sexual orientation by having participants choose to browse same-sex or opposite-sex photos on a computer screen.

Questionnaires also teased out the parenting style the participants were exposed to, with students asked how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as: "I felt controlled and pressured in certain ways;" and "I felt free to be who I am." To gauge homophobia in a household, students responded to items such as, "It would be upsetting for my mom to find out she was alone with a lesbian" or "My dad avoids gay men whenever possible."

Participants indicated their own level of homophobia, both overt and implicit; in word-completion tasks, students wrote down the first three words that came to mind when prompted with some of the words' letters. Students were primed at some point with the word "gay" to see how that impacted the amount of aggressive words used.

In all of the studies, participants who reported supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation, meaning it tended to jibe with their outward sexual orientation. Students who indicated they came from authoritarian homes showed the biggest discrepancy between the two measures of sexual orientation.

"In a predominately heterosexual society, 'know thyself' can be a challenge for many gay individuals," lead author Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom,said in a statement. "But in controlling and homophobic homes, embracing a minority sexual orientation can be terrifying."

Those participants who reported their heterosexuality despite having hidden same-sex desires were also the most likely to show hostility toward gay individuals, including self-reported anti-gay attitudes, endorsement of anti-gay policies and discrimination such as supporting harsher punishments for homosexuals.

The research may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes, the researchers note. People in denial about their own sexual orientation, perhaps a denial fostered by authoritarian and homophobic parents, may feel a threat from other gay and lesbian individuals. Lashing out may ultimately be an indicator of the person's own internal conflict with sexual orientation.

This inner conflict can be seen in some high-profile cases in which anti-gay public figures are caught engaging in same-sex acts, the researchers say. For instance, evangelical preacher and anti-gay-marriage advocate Ted Haggard was caught in a gay sex scandal in 2006. And in 2010, prominent anti-gay activist and co-founder of conservative Family Research Council George Rekers was reportedly spotted in 2010 with a male escort rented from Rentboy.com. According to news reports, the escort confirmed Rekers is gay.

"We laugh at or make fun of such blatant hypocrisy, but in a real way, these people may often themselves be victims of repression and experience exaggerated feelings of threat," Ryan said. "Homophobia is not a laughing matter. It can sometimes have tragic consequences," as was the case in the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man.

I really don't want to think that Wayne Shepard's most deranged and vicious posthumous tormenter, Virginia Foxx (R-NC), is a lesbian. These guys are talking about Larry Craig:

Springsteen's Cancellation In North Carolina Tonight Represents A Vital All-American Tradition

"If Woody Guthrie were alive today, he'd have a lot to write about: high times on Wall Street and hard times on Main Street," Springsteen told his Madison Square Garden audience in 2009 as he brought out Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello for a powerful rendition of "The Ghost of Tom Joad," a song Springsteen wrote in 1995. That's it above.

Tom Joad was a John Steinbeck character from The Grapes of Wrath (1939) about whom Woody Guthrie sang (below). There is a colossal battle for the soul of the Democratic Party raging right now. The music of Springsteen and Guthrie represents the progressive values of the 1930s and '40s, the anti-fascist values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt that built the American middle class and, for a while, slapped down the oligarchy and self-styled aristocrats of this country. That's the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/Alan Grayson/Donna Edwards wing of the Democratic Party. Hillary's wing, the Wall Street, "free" trade, professional class, Blue Dog/New Dem wing is more appropriately represented, musically, by Kanye West and Barbra Streisand.

Friday Snopes looked into news reports that Springsteen had cancelled his North Carolina concert that was scheduled for tonight in Greensboro as a protest to the anti-gay legislation the North Carolina legislature had passed and right-wing Governor Pat McCrory had rushed to immediately signed into law. That's a 6-figure loss for the Greensboro Coliseum but another p.r. black eye for North Carolina, it's government's obsessive homophobia also causing it to lose a new PayPal facility-- with hundreds of middle class jobs-- in Charlotte. Apple, Google, the NBA and American Airlines are reassessing their business relationships in the state as well. And I'll guess Springsteen won't be playing in Mississippi any time soon either.

Although DC Establishment groups and rich people posing as part of the grassroots LGBT equality movement have rallied behind Hillary-- despite an ugly homophobic record of flip flops and demagoguery-- front line gay activists overwhelmingly back Bernie. Yesterday, The Blade reported that he intends to challenge the North Carolina and Mississippi laws when he's in the White House.

The Democratic presidential candidate made the remarks during an appearance on The Viewwhen co-host Raven-Symoné asked what he would say to LGBT people in the aftermath of passage of those laws.

“Not only what I would say, as president of the United States, I would do everything I can to overturn these outrageous decisions by Mississippi and North Carolina, etc.,” Sanders said. “We have gone too far as a nation. God knows, we have seen so much discrimination in our history, right? Against the African-American community, against Latinos, against the Irish, the Italians, the Jews.”

Invoking the words of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., Sanders said, “You judge people on the character, not on the color of their skin, and I would add, too, not on their gender or their sexual orientation.”

Sanders also talked LGBT rights-- in particular his vote against the 1996 anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act-- when asked about controversial remarks he made earlier this week in which he said Clinton isn’t qualified to be president because of special interest money donated to her Super PAC.

Insisting those remarks were in response to comments she made about him “not being qualified,” Sanders said Clinton has made questionable judgements on things like her 2002 vote for the Iraq vote and her initial support for DOMA.

“She regrets a lot of things, and I don’t mean to be sarcastic,” Sanders said. “We all mistakes, but I regret less than she does because I had the courage to vote the right way even when it was not necessarily popular.”


Going into further detail on DOMA, Sanders drew attention to Clinton’s support for law through her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign and desire to repeal only Section 3 of the law during her 2008 presidential campaign. In 2013, Clinton came out for full marriage equality.

“Secretary Clinton supported DOMA, her husband supported DOMA, signed the bill as a matter of fact,” Sanders said. “I stood out against that. So the point is, sometimes you got to stand up even when it’s not necessarily popular.”

What Bernie isn't go to get into is the minutiae of the North Carolina and Mississippi debate over transgender bathroom use. It would be hard to imagine that a transgendered woman is anywhere near as likely to be guilty of misconduct in a public bathroom as a Republican legislator. In fact, Republican legislators are always getting caught in public toilets trying to have sex with people. The Daily Grind pointed out several a couple weeks ago. Daniela Costa wrote that stats show that no trans person has ever been arrested for sexual misconduct in a public bathroom-- never, not once, not in North Carolina, not in Mississippi, not anywhere in the U.S. I suppose those statistics would have to be revised if transgendered person started getting elected to office as Republicans. That's because, historically Republican elected officials have posed a threat to innocent bathroom goers in public places. Costa gave 3 high-profile examples of the dozens from recent years:

Jon Hinson, a Mississippi congressman, was arrested in 1981 for having oral sex in the House of Representatives’ bathroom with a Library of Congress clerk. It wasn’t his first brush with the law either. In 1976, he was arrested after exposing himself to an undercover agent at the Iwo Jima memorial. Still, he managed to get reelected in 1980 after blaming the incident on alcoholism. But after the bathroom mishap in 1981, he resigned. To his credit, Hinson came out as gay shortly after, living out the rest of his life as an LGBT activist. He passed away from AIDS-related illness at 53.

You couldn’t get away from this news story back in 2007. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican senator, was arrested for lewd conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Craig famously insisted he simply had a “wide stance” after an undercover officer accused him of trying to initiate a sexual liaison. Craig eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, but two months later he tried to withdraw his plea. What’s more, he reversed his decision to resign from the Senate. Craig would finish out his term before declining to run for re-election in 2008.

Apparently 2007 was a busy year. That’s the year Florida state Representative Bob Allen was arrested for allegedly agreeing to pay $20 so he could perform oral sex on an undercover cop. Where exactly? In the men’s room of a public park. Allen did resign later that year, but he insisted the only reason he was in the bathroom was because he was scared of the African-American men in the park. The arresting officer was one of these men. It just goes to show that for Republican politicians, it’s better to be thought of as a racist than as wanting to suck another man’s dick.

Republicans definitely have an issue with bathrooms, but it’s not the one they keep spouting off about.

And Canadian rock star Bryan Adams cancelled a show scheduled for this Thursday at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, citing state's pro-discrimination law. Remember when musicians stopped playing in South Africa over apartheid?

If only Sen. Mike Crapo, beset by so much tension, could have fixed himself a nice cup of herbal tea

Hey, here's some fun! One of these guys headed for Alexandria District Court on Friday is Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) -- can you guess which? (I got it wrong! If I were casting the role, I would have gone for the guy on the left. The guy on the right then could be, I don't know, maybe some hard-drinking bail bondsman? (The suit doesn't look cheap.) But no, the senator is the slug on the right. On closer look, I guess the briefcase is a tipoff that maybe the other guy is his lawyer. The washingtonpost.com caption doesn't mention him. (Actually, the article says: "The 61-year-old Idahoan, wearing a gray suit with a powder-blue tie, took a seat with a staffer and other traffic violation defendants at Alexandria District Court.") To score this quiz: If you got one right, you must be a Mike Crapo expert! If you got zero right, you maybe just don't like the shifty looks of that weird-looking dude on the right.

The attention on Crapo's arrest, in itself, validates the church's success "at trademarking clean living as part of what it means to be Mormon," said Patrick Mason, a professor of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California. "It speaks to the fact that people in America don't know much about Mormons, but they do know a couple of things, and one is that Mormons don't drink."

-- from "Sen. Mike Crapo pleads guilty to drunken
driving," in the Washington Post

by Ken

Well, thank you, Professor Mason. I guess. I mean, I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to think of it quite that way, but then, I'm not a professor of Mormon studies. I do follow the logic, though. The widespread surprise occasioned by that drunken bender of Senator Crapo (which the WaPo scribes helpfully tell us is pronounced "CRAY-poe") on the night of December 22, when he "climbed into a 1999 white Jeep and took a half-hour drive past the monuments and into Alexandria, where he ran a red light and then scored a 0.11 on a breath test" (and "his arresting officer noted bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and an odor of alcohol"), shows that Americans -- despite our general cluelessness about Mormons -- know about their trademarked clean living.

I wonder, though, whether I knew that Mormons don't drink, or smoke. I guess I would have said that some of them say they don't, but then, people say a lot of things. For example, WaPo reporters Jason Horowitz and Mary Pat Flaherty reference "the degree to which his crime clashed with the squeaky-clean image of Mormon politicians that Mitt Romney personified over the past year, adding parenthetically that Willard told People magazine: "I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once as a wayward teenager and never did it again." But if I heard about that, I probably didn't pay it much more attention than most of the other stuff he said during the campaign -- all filed under the heading of "stuff Willard says."

I certainly didn't know that Mormons, beyond not drinking or smoking, aren't allowed to drink hot beverages. WTF? No coffee, no tea, no hot chocolate? This may not be the craziest thing I've ever heard, but it makes an impression. As is so often the case with Mormon lore, the real entertainment value lies in the details.

The Mormon ban on alcohol stems from Section 89 of Doctrine and Covenants, one of the faith's holy scriptures. It documents the revelation, known as the "Word of Wisdom," that the religion's prophet Joseph Smith received in Kirtland, Ohio, on Feb. 27, 1833. (Church lore holds that Smith's wife, Emma, had been complaining about the brethren's smoking and drinking.) The revelation touts fruits and vegetables but reads that "inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good" and that "tobacco is not for the body" and that "hot drinks are not for the body or belly."

The ban has both theological and historical underpinnings. Mormons believe that God has a physical body, and thus the human body is not merely a vessel for the soul but a tabernacle to which it is forever bound. Professor Richard Bushman, a prominent Mormon historian, noted that the period during which Smith received his revelation coincided with temperance movements started in reaction to the era's rampant alcohol abuse.

For the first 100 years after the revelation, there was a great debate in the Mormon world about whether the revelation was a hard ban or simply an endorsement of moderation and clean living. (Smith himself writes of sipping wine in his journals.) During this time, bishops were known to take kegs of beer out hunting, high church leaders chomped on cigars and faithful members sipped morning coffee, Bushman said. That ended in the 1930s, when the hard-liners won the debate and abstinence became requisite for church membership. (The suitability of imbibing caffeine in non-hot drinks, however, long remained a sticking point.)

Are we to infer here that "the suitability of imbibing caffeine in non-hot drinks" was ixnay on the iced coffee? (By the way, "The historical uncertainty about the ban doesn't do Crapo much good. 'It does not absolve Crapo of his transgressions because nowadays Mormons would be shocked,' Bushman said." And nobody wants to tangle with, you know, shocked Mormons. Further by the way, "A spokesman for the Mormon church declined to comment on the Crapo incident.")
Senator Crapo has already begun the work of rehabilitating his reputation from his December wild ride.

In a nod to Mormon supporters, Crapo said Friday morning: "I will carry through on the appropriate measures for repentance." That means Crapo will meet with his local bishop and work to attain forgiveness. The church can refer members to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but increasingly its own social services wing treats substance abuse with a more scriptural approach. For a time Crapo will probably be asked to refrain from taking the sacrament at church, and his Temple Recommend, a physical card that faithful Mormons must present to gain admission to the sacred temples, will probably be temporarily revoked. It is unlikely that Crapo will have to appear before a church court, which is reserved for more serious transgressions such as adultery.

For the record, Crapo,

called before the judge, pleaded guilty to drunken driving and received a suspended sentence of 180 days in jail, a $250 fine, a year's suspension of his driver's license and enrollment in an alcohol safety program. The hearing lasted 10 minutes.

However, says the WaPo team, "Crapo's real punishment will last much longer, and it is linked less to the severity of his transgression" than to that "squeaky-clean image of Mormon politicians that Mitt Romney personified over the past year."

If Crapo has done himself lasting damage, it is most likely to be with Idaho voters, especially the quarter who are Mormon. They may question whether they know the man they have repeatedly elected, or whether the Potomac had poisoned their senator's principles. "He held himself up to be a certain kind of guy: straight cut, Eagle Scout, family man, former Mormon Bishop," said a Dec. 30 editorial in the Idaho State Journal. "Your reputation as a faithful Mormon conservative has been blown to smithereens."

The Crapman (which we know would be pronounced "CRAPE-man") was all over this on Friday. It's a little awkward because apparently he has in the past made quite a thing of his abstemiousness.

Crapo immediately tried to put such concerns to rest. "I have recently made personal choices that are at odds with who I am, who Idahoans rightly believe me to be and who I strive to be," Crapo said Friday in front of more than a dozen reporters, cameramen and photographers in a courtyard outside the courthouse.

In his long, blanket apology, he asked the forgiveness of voters, who he said justly held him to a higher standard. Then he got specific. "In recent months, and for less than a year, I have on occasion had alcoholic drinks in my apartment. It was a poor choice to use alcohol to relieve stress — and one at odds with my personally held religious beliefs." He declined to elaborate on the source of the stress and added that he hopped into the car because he had been "restless and could not sleep." ("I was alone during this drive and never left my vehicle," he clarified.)

The senator's interesting approach to stress relief brought forth this comment from a washingtonpost.com reader:

Well, sure, you or I might try to alleviate the stress with, say, a nice cup of tea, or maybe herbal tea. Chamomille, maybe? Or maybe some nice peppermint? We know, howeer, that this option of course wasn't open to Senator Crapo, though we also know that Joseph Smith might have knocked back a couple of glasses of wine.

The prevailing political sport in approaching the three-term senator's delicate situation is to compare and contrast with that of a certain other Idaho Republican senator of cherished memory.

Unlike the lewd-conduct arrest of Crapo's former Idaho colleague, Larry E. Craig, the ­drunken-driving incident is unlikely to have an impact on Crapo's reputation in the Senate, a chamber that is not particularly judgmental about the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

"His colleagues will probably view him with a certain degree of sympathy," said Jennifer Duffy, a Senate analyst at the Cook Political Report. "But this is not likely to impact his relationship with them in any negative way."

Sure enough, Senator Crapo's "good friend" (and fellow Mormon) UT Sen. Orrin Hatch oozed sympathy, declaring, "Even his wife can't understand why it happened."

Hatch described Crapo as being under tremendous stress leading up to the incident, saying that "the man has more on his plate than most senators," but he emphasized that Crapo "will make it right" and "I'll be there for him."

Now that's a good friend! It should be a source of comfort to Senator Crapo to reside in the bosom of his Senate colleagues. (Among whom he's just, you know, another rummy.)

#

A Stroll Down Memory Lane With Larry Craig-- When Will It Be Trent Franks' Turn?

Larry Craig & one of his lovers did not meet at a church social

A few weeks ago Sam Stein took a look at the post-senatorial careers of Larry Craig and other recent ex-Senators. Many, like Craig, are cashing in on their government contacts by peddling influence as lobbyists. You'll recall that the former hysterically and virulently homophobic right-wing extremist from Idaho was caught trying to perform fellatio on a handsome young police officer in a public toilet. He still claims "I am not gay." Craig is being paid to lobby for taking gray wolves off the endangered species list. Other defeated and retired senators from his class whoring themselves out as lobbyists are Wayne Allard (R-CO), John Warner (R-VA), Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR), John Sununu (R-NH), and Norm Coleman (R-MN).

Speaking of gray wolves and gay GOP hate-filled homophobic closet cases, I happened to get an e-mail the other day from an employee at one of the discreet establishments in DC that cater to closeted politicians of the homophobic persuasion who are addicted to boy flesh. Larry Craig was a regular client, and although the e-mail was about another Republican (who doesn't necessarily merit being outed at this time, at least not by me), he mentioned in passing some interesting points about then-Senator Craig and other mentally unbalanced Republicans. "I could have a field day writing about the Republican closet where even the straightest of the GOP know where to go to get serviced, as it were," he wrote. [WARNING: the links below are hard-core; if you're easily offended, DO NOT click on them.]

Craig's assistant used to bring in all the porn Craig would have him download to external drives (Eurocreme, anyone?). Seems he didn't want the discs around so they were put onto drives with boring congressional type names but they were full of Baitbus and Fratmen TV downloads, Eurocreme movies and Tiësto mixes! Can't indict Craig with the behavior of his assistant but the assistant stayed high and horny. His living room was a porn shrine (six monitors running 24/7 and a projection on the ceiling.) He was in the club at all hours and always fucked up. One just had to wonder what kind of boss would tolerate that shit...
 
...I remember a high up consultant on strategies in Iraq (a psychology specialist on the Iraqi mindset). He'd brag about his friendship with Reagan. He used to get all fucked up and try to lure boys to his home with drugs that he carried in a pouch. He left the pouch behind one night and it was loaded with everything from syringes, hashish and ketamine sealed in vials to coke, meth and viagra! An easy 15 years hard time's worth. That bastard actually called the next day looking for it! When he picked it up, someone here told him he might not want to travel with all that shit and definitely should not call around looking for it! He just laughed and said, "depends on who's in office!"

I thought it might be a good time to revisit this since Craig still insists he has never been gay and thinks he can get rich in DC by working his magic on his old Republican colleagues:

Caught in a public toilet (again) soliciting anonymous sex from a hunky young plainclothes policeman (right), Craig has been kicked to the curb by his right-wing allies. The far right blogosphere is demanding he resign this week. Mitt Romney fired him as head of his Idaho campaign and senatorial outreach program and has forbidden his son Josh to even travel to Boise. I don't hear any of Craig's barbershop quartet buddies-- like Trent Lott-- coming to his defense and I don't hear the other closeted Republican homophobes in the Congress-- like Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) or House members David Dreier (R-CA), Jim McCrery (R-LA), Phil English (R-PA), Denny Hastert (R-IL), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), or any of the others-- asking for understanding and sympathy.

...I think Larry Craig, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham should give a press conference on the steps of Capitol Hill today and tell the world that they're gay and that they're sorry for their homophobic behavior and that from now on they will lead lives just like ordinary Americans-- no more closets, no more furtive sex in public toilets, no more lying and cheating. Larry, Mitch, Lindsey, come out, be proud of who you are. Save yourselves from the misery and aguish. Congressman Bob Bauman (R-MD) was a far right GOP congressman and a founding member of both the Young Americans for Freedom and the Conservative Union (of which he was chairman). In 1980 the congressman was arrested for having sex from a 16 year old boy. He was defeated in his re-election bid and his wife, who was also a YAF member, had their marriage annulled. Bauman wrote a book which all elected Republicans should read, The Gentleman From Maryland. He wrote poignantly about how his secret double life was so stressful that it led to alcoholism. He finally admitted he was gay and became a bit of a gay activist, in a conservative way.

Senate Confronts The Aftermath Of The Larry Craig Scandal...

... with a new "How To" video for male evacuation etiquette. Too late for poor Larry Craig, who announced today he's not going to try to overturn his convictions of soliciting sex in a public toilet after all (too busy writing a book and setting up a consulting business), but perhaps in time to save the senatorial careers of Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Barrasso (R-WY). The House needs a copy urgently.

Homophobic Hysteria... Still Alive And Well In The Bronze Age Mentality

Remember Pat Boone... from the Bronze Age?

It's a shame Pat Boone couldn't have gotten Satan to loan him Anita Bryant for the occasion of his latest anti-gay tirade. Maybe he could have had her rotting corpse dug up for a photo-op. The washed up old performer-- who became a celebrity by brazenly stealing African-American musicians' work and homogenizing their songs for a mass audience-- claims gay people protesting religious fanatics and Mormon cultists' homophobic jihad is equivalent-- at least in his senile brain-- to the terrorist attack in Mumbai.

Boone asks the readers of neo-Nazi propaganda sheet, WorldNetDaily, if they have "not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what's happening right now in our cities? ...[T]here is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists. Hate is hate, no matter where it erupts. And by its very nature, if it's not held in check, it will escalate into acts vile, violent and destructive."

Perhaps Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) would, in a sense, agree with him today-- at least in terms of what he no doubt feels are the lawless streets of Minnesota. This morning the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied his request to withdraw his admission of guilt in a case involving a handsome young policeman in a public toilet in the Minneapolis-St Paul airport. Craig has been "admonished" by the Senate Ethics Committee for bringing discredit upon the institution. Nothing so far about David "Diapers" Vitter or Ted Stevens or Pete Domenici, though. Homosexuality, of course, has a very special place in the minds of the structurally conservative, frightened and insecure.

The cover story for the current Newsweek goes back a bit and looks for the Buy Bull's take on homophobia.

The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months-- since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it-- the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country's pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell-- and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher-- this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.

The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."

To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second... no sensible modern person wants marriage-- theirs or anyone else's-- to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other-- in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer-- in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married-- and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

Jesus never mentions homosexuality and marriage in the Buy Bull, after all, was always about "one man and as many women as he could pay for"-- and the chapters about Ozzie and Harriet never made it into the final version.

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course-- specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)." The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book The Arrogance of Nations, the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce-- and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.

If you tried-- and if you were intellectually honest-- you would have to explain this psalm that King David wrote at the death of friend Jonathan:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.

Marriage between same sex couples has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of dirty, furtive sex deranged Republicans like Larry Craig (R-ID), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) have with each other in toilet stalls. Demented, fearful conservatives like Pat Boone, Thomas Monson the Mormon and corrupt Republican Party leader Rob Hurtt can have all the titillating fantasies about gays and lesbians they'd like, but treating a whole segment of the population as second class citizens and pariahs just will not work. It's 2008, not the Bronze Age.

The Republican National Convention: McCain, Bob Dole and Larry Craig

McCain's VP surprise?

McCain won't be lonely-- after all, Bob Dole, the Republican he is most frequently compared too, will be there-- but he must be wondering why so many Republican elected officials are loudly declaring to media in their home states that they are too busy to bother showing up for his nomination in St Paul next month. Today vulnerable Republican rubber stamp Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), confirmed that she can't make it. She's busy. At the same time, Tom Cole (R-OK), chairman of the NRCC warned Republican candidates to stay away from what, if McCain's vicious, negative ad campaign is any indication, is bound to be seen as a controversial Hate Fest.

The NRCC chief discouraged candidates from attending the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, saying that spending days there would be a “waste of time,” and they would be better off campaigning.

McCain's outlandish, desperation politics:



But even if no one else wants to get anywhere near a "dishonest, disreputable and dishonorable" character like John McCain, there's nothing they can do to prevent the always frisky Idaho Senator Larry Craig from showing up-- something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime. Maybe that isn't fair. After all, his favorite type of arguments, the oral ones, will take place in Minneapolis just after the GOP Hate Fest wraps up. A three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals will consider Craig's appeal of his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after being caught soliciting a handsome young undercover copy in a public toilet, something he is notorious for doing in Washington, DC's Union Station.

With the damned gays mounting their fiendish assault on marriage, thank God it has defenders like Larry "Wide Stance" Craig and David "Diapers" Vitter

[With thanks to that peerless patriot, Jesus' General, General JC Christian, Patriot.]

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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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JOHN ENSIGN BLAMES LIKELY GOP LOSSES IN NOVEMBER ON REPUBLICAN SEX PERVERTS VITTER, CRAIG &... FOLEY

Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) is widely considered the worst chair in the entire history of the NRSC. Not only did she fail to gain any Republican senate seats, she wound up losing enough to switch majority control from the GOP to Democrats. She was unceremoniously sent packing back to North Carolina. Now her successor, Nevada rubber stamp John Ensign, is well on the way to accomplishing the impossible: doing even worse than Liddy.

Ensign has dropped the pretense of even talking about gaining back the majority, which could be accomplished with just one net gain and an easy flip from the junior senator from Connecticut. Instead, he's trying to frighten Republicans by pointing out that Democrats could win 10 seats and make the GOP minority superfluous. Today's CongressDaily says he's "using the specter of an almost filibuster-proof Democratic majority to motivate potential GOP supporters in November."

I just got back from Washington where the talk everywhere was about what it would take to make sure there is a filibuster-proof majority come January. I've long held that they key-- at least symbolically-- is replacing red state rubber stamp reactionaries Inhofe (OK), McConnell (KY), Dole (NC), and Cornyn (TX) with strong, principled progressive leaders Andrew Rice, Greg Fischer, Jim Neal and Rick Noriega. Those 4 are the key to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate-- and a progressive legislative agenda. The biggest obstacle to achieving that isn't the pathetic ensign, but, ironically, his Democratic Party counterpart the craven and powermad Chuck Schumer.

According to the CongressDaily piece Ensign's picture has deteriorated rapidly. "Despite having 23 Republican seats to defend this fall against 12 for Democrats, Ensign held out hope this year that it was possible for Republicans to pull off a huge upset and regain a majority. That was before a handful of promising Republican challengers withdrew from races. Ensign conceded in an interview with CongressDaily that it is virtually assured Republicans will not be in the majority in January 'unless something miraculous happens.'"

Ensign seems to be in full delusion mode and concludes that what Americans want from the Senate is obstructionism on everything, from health care to ending the Iraq occupation. He's going to be in for quite the shock in November. "While Republicans may be striving to limit the damage, Ensign is confident their legislative record during the 110th Congress will attract support." McConnell, who himself is highly unpopular in Kentucky uses obstructionist tactics to block one popular initiative after another. The GOP seems to think this is the winning formula.
     
"In the Senate, a strong minority can be very effective," Ensign said. And he's correct. If Americans want endless war in Iraq, no real plan for national security or homeland protection, no health care for vets, no health care for children, no health care for anyone but millionaires, if they want warrantless wiretaps, torture, retroactive immunity, outsourcing of American jobs to third world countries, offshoring to avoid paying taxes, and if they think corporations shouldn't be regulated but should have a free hand to rob banks, cheat families out of their homes, pollute the air and water... well, then Ensign and McConnell have an excellent case. "It's really motivating businesses" to support Republican candidates, Ensign said, "because they understand the consequence of it... It's becoming more of a 'getting our team excited,' and so I see momentum definitely building."

Whatever steam the Republicans can produce heading into the fall, the NRSC will still be hampered by its fundraising woes-- since May 2006, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has raised more every month than the NRSC.

That cash disadvantage means Republicans will have to be careful where they direct their funds, lest they be wasted. Ensign pointed to Republican Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire and Norm Coleman in Minnesota as races on which the NRSC will keep a close eye when making funding decisions.

Sununu faces a stiff challenge from former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who continues to lead the GOP incumbent in polls, while Coleman faces comedian and satirist Al Franken, whose national image has enabled him to raise money to make that race competitive.

...Money is not the only thing Republicans need to worry about.

Although they have put a few months between them and scandals involving Republican Sens. Larry Craig of Idaho, who was accused of soliciting sex in a men's bathroom in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and David Vitter of Louisiana, who was accused of using a Washington, D.C.-based escort service, Ensign cautioned against underestimating the collateral damage from scandals.

"I dropped 12 points because of [former Rep.] Mark Foley," Ensign said, referring to his own polling in the wake of disclosures in September 2006 that the Florida Republican House member had been sending sexually suggestive text messages to congressional pages.

"What did I have to do with Mark Foley? Nothing," said Ensign, and yet his campaign felt the impact.

UPDATE: HOUSE REPUBLICANS HAVE NOTHING TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT EITHER

Everything points to another dozen or more losses for them in November and 23 Democratic challengers outraised Republican incumbents in the quarter that just ended! Included in that total are 7 Blue America candidates: Vic Wulsin (D-OH), Joe Garcia (D-FL), Mark Schauer (D-MI), Eric Massa (D-NY), Darcy Burner (D-WA), Tom Perriello (D-VA), Debbie Cook (D-CA) plus two more we are talking about endorsing (Judy Feder in Virginia and Joshua Segall in Alabama).

SOME THINGS ARE BETTER OFF LEFT PRIVATE-- LIKE IDAHO REPUBLICAN POLITICS, FOR EXAMPLE

I've been mentioning that the Republicans have had so much trouble recruiting credible candidates to run that virtually their whole starting team for November is made up of misfits and self-funding vanity candidates. Idaho is trying to pick a successor to convicted Republican toilet troll Larry Craig-- he's not gay-- and the Democrats have already united behind Larry LaRocco. But can a Democrat win in deep blood red Idaho, home of the Aryan Nations? Last time Craig ran-- when his predilections and bizarre lifestyle were only rumors-- he took 65% of the vote. In 2004, the other extremist nutcase, Mike Crapo, won with 99% of the vote, The Democrats not even giving it a shot, The same year Bush took 68% of Idaho's vote, about the same as he did against Gore. At every level of government the extreme right dominates.

Still, even in Idaho, people don't like being lied to and Bush's job approval has been sinking. And there is a serious split in wingnutia. Yesterday we mentioned one loon who has changed his name from Mel Pro-Life Richardson to just the snappier Pro-Life (kind of like a Madonna or Prince move). Still, the Idaho GOP Establishment is firmly behind Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, who-- though a decade younger than John McCain-- is considered by some as too old to start a Senate career. In fact, another Republican, Rex Rammell has decided to run as an Independent, citing Risch's age as a reason he wants to jump in.

"It has become apparent to me, that too many people in the Idaho Republican Party no longer embrace the conservative principles of lower taxes, limited government and private property rights that I hold dear," said Rammell.

Rammell, campaigning to the right of Risch-- as is Pro-Life-- could siphon off enough votes to help LaRocco win the senate seat, especially if the size of the anti-GOP tsunami turns out to be as big as I think it will be.

Rammell also represents a very specific Idaho constituency: angry elk ranchers. And Risch had Rammell's elk herd killed after they escaped from the ranch in 2006. 160 elk were shot and it cost the state nearly $61,000. But he says he isn't running because of rancor over the elk. He says Risch's career is nearing its end, making '08 a bad time to run for the Senate. "Jim Risch is too old to become a U.S. senator. You don't become a U.S. senator in the sunset of your career. I am a member of the LDS church, which is a significant portion of the electorate."

And Risch is a Catholic. Rammell thinks he can unite the huge Mormon base behind him. And hunters; he breeds the elk for hunters to shoot. It's their own private Idaho.

GOP DEMANDS DEMOCRATS GIVE BACK THE MONEY SPITZER DONATED... LET'S LOOK AT VITTER'S, DOOLITTLE'S, STEVENS' AND SOME OTHER REPUBLICROOKS' CONTRIBUTIONS

Kirsten Gillibrand, not Heather Wilson or Susan Collins

I was skimming CongressDaily last this afternoon and I noticed a small article about Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and how she donated the two grand Eliot Spitzer had contributed to her re-election campaign to Catholic Charities of Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. Whatever. But then I saw something that interested me. "The Republican National Congressional Committee called on several New York Democrats, including Gillibrand, to return campaign contributions from Spitzer, who was linked by prosecutors to a prostitution ring this week."

I decided to do a little snooping around and see how many Republicans had returned the PAC money donated to their campaigns from some of the more notorious Republican crooks and perverts. Larry's Craig pleaded guilty after trying to have sex with a policeman in a public toilet and his appeal was rejected. His PAC is obviously a subterfuge for high living and of the $105,000 he collected in the current cycle, most of it went to catering ($65,472) and "consultants" ($41,617). But he did contribute $2,500 each to Susan Collins (R-ME), Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM), none of whom returned a cent.

OK, what about David Vitter's Louisiana Diaper Boy PAC? (Just kidding; his personal slush fund that spends almost all its income on dinners and Saints tickers is called the Louisiana Reform PAC.) Remember, Vitter admitted to the same crime as Spitzer, employing a prostitute. But neither Mitch McConnell (R-KY) nor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) returned the money. That's especially odd because McConnell did return the contribution from another crooked Republican, Ted Stevens (R-AK). Stevens' Northern Lights PAC collected almost a quarter million dollars so far this cycle and he's been giving out big chunks to his colleagues. Several returned the tainted money (McConnell, Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch. But most Republicans didn't return a cent. Stevens' home and office were raided by the FBI and he has been named in open court as the man behind the biggest corruption scandal in the history of Alaska. But John Sununu (R-NH) is holding on to his $7,500 and Gordon Smith (R-OR) is holding onto his $10,000 and Pat Roberts (R-KS) is holding on to his $5,000, and James Inhofe (R-OK) is holding on to his $4,000 and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) isn't giving up her $10,000 nor is John Cornyn giving back the $5,000 he got. And vulnerable Republican rubber stamps Susan Collins, Saxby Chambliss and Norm Coleman each got $10,000 of Stevens' dirty money-- and they're keeping it.

California Congressman John Doolittle was also visited by the FBI and, in all probability, going to prison for a good long stay-- or until Bush pardons him. He too had a Political Action Committee that was handing out money to other Republican members of Congress, much of it to losers like Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay, and Katherine Harris. But dozens of sitting congressmen are happily sitting on some of the ill-gotten money Doolittle spread around-- over $258,000 in the last cycle. Some of the Republicans who didn't return money they got from Doolittle: Heather Wilson (R-NM), Thelma Drake (R-VA), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Tom Reynolds (R-NY), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Robin Hayes (R-NC), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Adrain Smith (R-NE), Jon Porter (R-NV), Vito Fossella (R-NY), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Randy Kuhl (R-NY), and loads of others.

I know it's going out on a limb to say this, but my guess is that the single most corrupt man in the House is Jerry Lewis (R-CA). He has spent well over $1,000,000 in legal fees to one of the top Republican-connected law firms in the U.S. in order to keep from being indicted. He's still a money machine and has been handing out huge amounts of it to his grateful colleagues who are well aware of how he gets it. Among the Republican hypocrites happy to take money from Lewis this year have been Rudy Giuliani, Heather Wilson, Dave Reichert, Jon Porter, Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Robin Hayes, Sam Graves (R-MO), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Steve Chabot (R-OH)... and that just scratches the surface.

But Kirsten Gillibrand gave two thousand dollars to the nuns in upstate New York.

THAT WAS FAST! ELIOT SPITZER RESIGNED

Larry Craig & David Vitter: "Tap 2 times." Eliot Spitzer: "I have demanded that people-- regardless of their position or power-- take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less from myself"

I half wanted him to just get it over with fast and resign and I half wished he would have toughed it out and stayed. In right, though, when public officials break the law-- even idiotic laws-- they need to stop being public officials. Apparently the mainstream media agrees-- unless, of course, we're talking about Republicans. David "Diapers" Vitter (R-LA), also admitted having sex with prostitutes. When he came back to the Senate, after a few days in hiding, you'd have thought from the standing ovation he got that he had brought Osama bin-Laden's head back with him. And, convicted serial sex predator Larry Craig (R-ID) is still a senator, although he did get a teensy-weensy slap on the wrist from the mighty-- and still unreformed-- Senate "Ethics" Committee. And even indicted crooks-- as long as they're Republicrooks-- like Rick Renzi (R-AZ) and John Doolittle (R-CA)-- are still serving in Congress, still getting paid by the taxpayers, still dealing with lobbyists and wheeler-dealers.

But it looks like Spitzer made a deal with the Feds that he would give up the governorship to stay out of prison, perhaps pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. Much chastined, he resigned at 11:45 AM. Lt. Governor David Paterson, a legally blind former state Senator from Harlem, becomes Governor and Spizer's political nemesis, state Senator Joseph Bruno, the Republican Senate majority leader, becomes Lt. Governor. Unlike the Republicans in the U.S. Senate who cheered Vitter, Republicans in Albany started impeachment procedures against Spitzer.

RENZI REFUSES TO STEP DOWN DESPITE THE DESPERATE DEMANDS OF GOP LEADERS

GOP leaders inside the Beltway, embarrassed by the never ending exposure of Culture of Corruption Republicans, have been aggressively pressuring indicted congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ) to resign. Considering that the loudest requests for him to resign are coming from John Boehner, a low grade criminal who was handing out Big Tobacco lobbyist checks on the floor of the House not too many years ago, Renzi hasn't been taking their bleating all that seriously. Today's Tucson Citizen echoed the words of Minority Leader John Boehner when they called for Renzi to step down:

It is impossible to imagine that U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi can continue to effectively represent his constituents in Arizona's huge 1st Congressional District.

The best he can do now is to resign.

Renzi has already resigned from his committee positions and has announced he wouldn't be running for re-election but today he announced he's not going to step down and "take on the cloak of guilt." He did however resign as the co-chairman of John McCain For President. Some say he was unceremoniously pushed off the Double Talk Express by the lobbyists driving it while McCain was shedding crocodile tears for his family in public. Today's Congressional Quarterly paints a sordid picture of one of McCain's closest allies, another of his so-called "Men of Honor" he has chosen to surround himself with.

Prosecutors said Renzi, as a member of the Natural Resources Committee in 2005 and 2006, conditioned his support for approval of a federal lands exchange on whether the deal would include property Sandlin owned in Cochise County, Ariz.

The indictment quoted Renzi as saying, “No Sandlin property, no bill.” Renzi later directed a second group of investors to purchase the property and include it in their land exchange proposal, resulting in a $733,000 payment to Renzi from Sandlin in 2005, according to the indictment.

Because Renzi, 49, was facing financial troubles in 2005, he needed a “substantial infusion of funds” to keep his insurance business afloat and “maintain his personal lifestyle,” according to the 26-page indictment.

The Justice Department also has charged that Renzi and Beardall embezzled more than $400,000 in insurance premiums from the trust account of the Patriot Insurance Agency, Inc., a Renzi family-owned business and said the money helped fund Renzi’s first congressional campaign.

You want four more years of this? John McCain's your man.


UPDATE: SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADERS HAVE BEEN NO LESS SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING LARRY CRAIG TO GO AWAY

With the Republican Convention scheduled to be held in Minneapolis this year, almost every delegate will pass through the airport where Larry Craig was caught soliciting sex from a handsome young police officer in a public toilet, a public toilet that has since become a tourist attraction. Mitch McConnell, is has a very vested interest in getting people to stop thinking about hypocritical Republican closet queens, tried to get his home-girl to resign-- but with no success. Well... there were a lot of promises, of course, but Craig is still sashaying around the Senate, even if, as rumored, he's finally given up haunting the Union Station rest rooms. Meanwhile, the man who first brought Craig's bizarre hypocrisy to the attention of the public, Mike Rogers, sent me a job application today-- to work as a summer intern for... Larry Craig. Anyone interested? Suggestion: for safety's sake, only women should apply.

SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE: LARRY CRAIG IS A DIRTY, DIRTY BOY

The 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans who make up the Senate Ethics Committee (Barbara Boxer, chair, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, John Cornyn, Pat Roberts, and Johnny Isakson) agreed that Larry Craig is a liar and a sword swallower.

In a letter to the Republican senator, the ethics panel said Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after his arrest at a Minneapolis airport was an effort to evade legal consequences of his own actions.

Craig's actions constitute "improper conduct which has reflected discreditably on the Senate," the letter said.

...The six members of the committee-- three Democrats and three Republican-- told Craig they believed he "committed the offense to which you pled guilty" and that "you entered your plea knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently."

Craig said he disagrees with the finding. They also said he was wrong to use nearly a quarter million dollars in campaign money to defend against charges that he tried having sex with an undercover cop in the men's room at the Minneapolis Airport and wrong to try to intimidate the cop by brandishing his senate card in the cute undercover officer's face.

Republicans are nervous that everyone will be reminded about Craig's-- and the GOP's-- hypocrisy as they pass through the Minneapolis Airport, scene of his lecherous advances on Officer Karsnia, since almost everyone except the delegates from Minnesota will be flying in for their pointless convention to anoint John McCain the party's official sacrificial lamb this year. Imagine how embarrassing this whole episode is for other homophobic Republican closet queens like Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Adrian Smith (R-NE), David Dreier (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Jim McCrery (R-LA) and the rest of the party boys who have been so eager for some Minneapolis action. Craig spoiled it for everyone with his insatiable appetite and carelessness.

Neither Mark Foley nor Gloria Gaynor was asked to testify at the Ethics Committee hearings:



Oh... and what ever happened with David Diapers Vitter? Is the Senate Ethics Committee hoping that just goes away?

Creator David E. Kelley shows there's life yet in Boston Legal--as Denny Crane is "Larry Craig-ed"

Poor Denny faced a fate worse than, well, whatever
happened to him last week: people thinking he's gay!

Ooh, that David E. Kelley! Just when you're ready to write Boston Legal off as having turned completely into yet another of Kelley's oddballs 'n' freaks extravaganzas (the guy has this genius for creating interesting and involving characters, but that seems to bore him; the seeds of the eventual self-destruction can usually be seen in his shows at an eerily early stage), he stops you in your tracks. Last night he even brought back supercilious Paul (Rene Auberjonois) to manage the latest fine mess Denny Crane (William Shatner) has gotten Crane, Poole & Schmidt into.

Denny, in case you didn't see the episode, has been "Larry Craig-ed," as his inseparable sidekick Alan Shore (James Spader). Poor constipated Denny went into a courthouse men's room, carefully chose a stall, set down his briefcase, hummed to help with the--you know--business at hand, and was summarily ordered out of the stall and arrested by a trio of plainclothes cops for you-know-what.

Naturally it fell to the soon-on-the-spot Alan to steer Denny through the crisis, including flatly refusing to settle the matter quietly by having Denny plead guilty to a lesser charge and pay a fine. That sounded awfully like extortion, Alan pointed out, producing an indignant response from Officer Whistler and his men's-room SWAT team.

I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't watched the episode, which also had a fine plot line with Shirley (Candace Bergen) defending an old shock-jock pal played by Robert Wuhl, who's been fired for being, well, shocking on the air. Nevertheless, the episode gave us an extended glimpse of the screamingly obvious defense the hapless Larry Craig could have mounted if he hadn't been so terrified of the publicity of yet another taint of gayness.

Kelley's solid script--naturally he had the case tried before the single worst judge in the history of jurisprudence, Henry Gibson's daffy Judge Clark Brown (who you'll recall has had his own legal brush with gayness)--touched on all the things wrong with the kind of sting poor Larry and Denny were caught up in:

* the absence of any kind of crime, since even if the lads had been soliciting sex, that's simply not a crime

* the absence of any proof even of sexual solicitation, since the cops' idea that their "known" series of "signals" constitutes "definitive" proof couldn't possibly be taken seriously in any law-abiding American courtroom

* the failure of the prosecution even to hint that money was offered, let alone changed hands, which would at least elevate the activity to a possible crime--and never mind that meanwhile rampant real heterosexual prostitution in public places is routinely ignored by law-enforcement officials

Finally, with regard to homophobic Denny's revulsion at even a hint that he might be gay, in the best friends' ritual closing scene Alan actually got him to see the matter from a different angle. Why, it could be a whole new way to pick up women!

Thanks, David. I think I'm going to watch the episode again tonight.

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WIDE STANCE LARRY HAS A HISTORY OF SEX WITH MEN THAT STRETCHES BACK MANY YEARS-- YEARS HE SPENT WORKING AGAINST GAY PEOPLE

For over a year people have been telling me that Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman was working on a thorough investigative piece on a secret that had long been out in DC gay circles, that homophobic right-wing Republican Senator Larry Craig was addicted to sex with men. Some of the closeted gay Republicans on Capitol Hill occasionally-- rarely but occasionally-- get a pang of conscience about demonizing other gay people and will refrain from voting to destroy the lives of gay men and women and their families. But not Larry Craig. All the time he was out hunting for anonymous sex in toilets and gay bars he was part of the 100% crowd of hysterical anti-gay extremists. He strongly opposed prohibiting job discrimination against gays and lesbians. He strongly opposed expanding hate crimes legislation to include crimes perpetrated against gays and lesbians. He strongly supported legislation and even a constitutional amendment to prohibit same sex marriage. Every opportunity he's had to vote against gay people he's taken. And all the while, according to the "he-said, he-said" report in today's Idaho Statesman, he was sneaking around in the dark having sex with strange men.

Basically Popkey tells the well-known-- well known in Washington, but certainly not in Idaho-- stories of David Phillips, male prostitute Mike Jones (the guy who was bonking Rev. Ted Haggard), Greg Ruth and Tom Russell, 4 gay men who have admitted having sexual encounters with Idaho's senior homophobic senator. "A fifth gay man, who is from Boise but who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, offered a recent and telling account: He was in a men's restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider. Alarmed, the man said he waited outside the restroom and then identified the man in the adjoining stall as Craig, whom he had met in Idaho."

Craig has been denying he was having sex with men and boys at least since 1982 when he was suspected of having sex with underage congressional pages. Had the congressional leadership not swept it under the carpet, it is likely Mark Foley would have looked elsewhere to sate his sexual appetite over the years than the boys dorms at the Congressional Page School. But before anyone could even publicly accuse Craig, he issued a denial. Popkey points out that "Craig married a year later and adopted the three children of his wife, Suzanne. In 1990, the Idaho Statesman asked Craig about an allegation that he was gay made by an opponent in his first Senate race. 'Why don't you ask my wife?' Craig replied. Many older Republican gay men have taken wives to help cover up their gay double lives. Louisiana congressman Jim McCrery did the exact same thing after he was exposed, marrying his secretary and sending her to live in Louisiana. Look at all the Republican legislators caught this year trolling for sex in public restrooms-- all have two things in common: wives and virulently anti-gay voting records.

In October 2006, Craig directly denied the claims of a blogger [Mike Rogers of BlogActive] who reported he'd spoken with three anonymous sources who said they had sex with Craig. In May 2007, after hearing a tape of an accuser who said he and Craig had sex in two men's restrooms at Washington's Union Station rail depot, Craig said, "I am not gay."

And when he emphatically told Matt Lauer he was neither gay nor bisexual, Craig persuaded 28 percent of viewers to believe he had been wrongly charged in Minnesota, according to a survey of 606 viewers by HCD Research and Muhlenberg College.

Craig refused to be interviewed for the story by Popkey (in his state's only large newspaper). The conservative, staunchly Republican newspaper reviewed "travel and property records and background checks on all five men, found nothing to disprove the five new accounts. The men offer telling and sometimes similar details about what happened, or the senator's travel records place him in the city where sex is alleged to have occurred, or his accusers told credible witnesses at the time of the incident. Craig has said he hoped to keep his guilty plea secret. Only after news of the guilty plea broke Aug. 27 did he tell his wife, staff, colleagues and constituents. His admission of guilt, taken together with the three accounts published Aug. 28 and the five new statements, add weight to the evidence that Craig has been living a double life."

The details, both lurid and mundane, of the double life, if you want to read them, are here. But, speaking of lurid, perhaps you'd enjoy the little clip I made, an updated look at the Sex Pistols' classic, "God Save the Queen."