Third Time...?

I was truly hoping that there would be a Karl Rove revelation to complete our humiliating outing trilogy but the Larry Craig story is good enough for me. Kos has the best coverage so far. Apparently, this goes way back.

One man, who was considering pledging with Craig's fraternity at the U of I in 1967, said Craig took him to his room and made what the man said he took to be an invitation to sex. Responding to that allegation in May, Craig said, "I don't hit on any men."

Another man said that in November 1994 Craig "cruised" him at the REI store in Boise. The man, who is gay, told the Statesman that Craig stared at him in a sexually inviting way and followed him around for a half-hour. Said Craig: "Once again, I'm not gay, and I don't cruise, and I don't hit on men. I have no idea how he drew that conclusion. A smile? Here is one thing I do out in public: I make eye contact, I smile at people, they recognize me, they say, ‘Oh, hi, Senator.' Or, ‘Do I know you?'

"I've been in this business 27 years in the public eye here. I don't go around anywhere hitting on men, and by God, if I did, I wouldn't do it in Boise, Idaho! Jiminy!"...

Josh Marshall has the arrest report here. He makes a pretty valid point concerning discrepancy between the actual reported incident and the fallout

The rubbed shoe (see police report) seems unambiguous to me. With that assumption, it's still clear that the whole thing didn't get far enough for Craig to 'do' anything lewd. But I'm not sure that matters since obviously you can get hauled off to jail for agreeing to purchase sex from a prostitute even before things get freaky.

Given what's described, it seems quite possible that, with a good lawyer, Craig could have beaten the rap.

But had he tried, it would have become public and it would have been pretty clear -- clear enough to doom him politically -- that Craig is gay and that he gets sex in public restrooms.

Josh is right. Craig didn't actually DO anything as blatant as offering oral sex to the cop. The actions reported in the police report are pretty flimsy and seem designed to ferret out gays before they actually have sex in public places. Which makes this incident even more ironic, homophobic law practices contributing to the outing a closeted homophobic politician