US News
US senator announces resignation over bathroom incident (2nd Roundup)
Sep 1, 2007, 23:40 GMT
US Senator Larry Craig of Idaho makes his way to the podium with his wife Suzanne before addressing the media to announce his resignation from the Senate at the Boise Train Depot in Boise, Idaho, USA, 01 September 2007. Craig resigned over a men’s room sex sting, bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans worried about a scandal dimming their election prospects. EPA/Steve Conner
Washington - A US senator announced his resignation Saturday after pleading guilty to charges of disorderly conduct in a men's airport bathroom.
Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig said at a televised press conference in his home state that he would leave his position on September 30.
A number of politicians, including many from his own party, had been openly calling for Craig to resign since the details of his arrest at a Minneapolis airport emerged on Monday.
Craig, 62, was arrested in June in a police sting operation over lewd behaviour and sexual activity in one of the airport's public bathrooms.
He pleaded guilty in August to a lesser charge - disorderly conduct - and paid a 500-dollar fine, according to the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call, which broke the story. Craig was also sentenced to 10 days in jail, which were suspended, and given a year's probation.
'I chose to serve because I truly love Idaho. What is best for Idaho has always been the focus of my efforts, and it is no different today,' he said in his resignation speech. 'To the Idahoans I represent, to my staff, my Senate colleagues and, most importantly, my wife and our family, I apologize for what I have caused. I am deeply sorry.'
Craig, who was joined by his wife and children, apologized that the debacle had distracted him from his political duties, saying his decision to leave was in his constituents' best interest.
'These are serious times of war and conflict - times that deserve the Senate and our full nation's attention,' he said. 'There are many challenges facing Idaho that I'm currently engaged in, and the people of Idaho deserve a senator who can devote 100 per cent of his time and effort to critical state and national issues.'
He said that his legal problems would distract him from his job, prompting his decision to resign. His announcement brought jeers from the crowd, as well as a cry of 'We love you Larry' from one supporter.
Republican leaders on Wednesday stripped Craig of his committee posts in the Senate and had reportedly drafted a statement calling for him to resign, the Washington Post reported. The statement was held back because local Idaho Republicans warned it may have had the opposite effect of making his departure more difficult.
He had already resigned from a top post in Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's campaign.
The leaders of his party welcomed Craig's resignation.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said President George W Bush spoke with Craig after the announcement, telling the senator he knew it was difficult decision.
'Senator Craig made the right decision for himself, his family, his constituents and the US Senate,' Stanzel said.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said 'Senator Larry 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.'
Fellow Republican and senator from Idaho, Mike Crapo, lauded Craig's accomplishments during his 16 years in the Senate.
'It is my hope that as history judges Senator Craig, that his successes, accomplishments and strong leadership for Idaho in Congress are taken in totality, and that those he served so admirably in Congress for five terms in the US House of Representatives and three terms in the US Senate will recall the full measure of the man,' he said.
The state's Republican Governor CL Butch Otter will appoint a replacement to fill Craig's seat for the remainder of his term.
Craig on Tuesday made a public apology for bringing a 'cloud' over his home state, and said he regretted his guilty plea.
'I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport ... and I regret the decision to plead guilty,' Craig said Tuesday. 'I am not gay, I never have been gay.'
He did not address the allegations or his guilty plea again on Saturday and a statement on his Senate website referred questions on the matter to his lawyer.
Details of Craig's unsavoury episode dominated US news programmes, newspapers and websites, and pressure for him to step down only increased after an audio tape was released of Craig's interrogation by Minneapolis police.
Before entering the Senate in 1991, Craig served four two-year terms in the US House of Representatives and six years in the Idaho state Senate. He had served as the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and was known for his conservative positions, including his stance against gay marriage.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Bwahahahhahaaaahhaaahaa!
The stupid pervert didn't even have the common sense, and decency, to resign immediately. I wonder if he'll be on the Senate floor when the session opens next week? The least they should do is take away his Senate mens-room key!
if he did nothing wrong then why did he admit he did and pay a fine?
...and to think the president once had a co-ed living under his desk dispensing blow jobs! All this guy di was go to the bathroom, make some funny foot and hand signals and he loses his senate seat? Glad I don't live in Minesota!
Bush: Oh, g mornin senatah....why yes..I heard...unfortunate t say th least..whah this guy din't jes git a boyhfrind, ah'll nevah knnow, ya knoow? Ah mean...I still don't quite unnastan hoow footsie and hand gestyahs git ya arrested in Minnesota, but north is north an south is south, eh boyh!?
yes senatah, ah think th guvnah will be gitin anotha one forthwith suh! Noo, ah doubt he'll not be a nancy boy, fer sure...no senatah, nothin wrong with bein gay, until yur from Idaho I guiss...or Crawford maybeh...
ya knoow Hirry...ah gots me a humidor on m' desk full o cee gars! Now, normally, ah lahke cee gars, laurah really hates em, I don't unnastan whyah...., but this ol humidor was unna mah desk when I came inta office! That bein th case...ah jes havn't had th nerve ta light one o these gems up! ta bad too..cause they're all cubanoo specials!
why certainly senatah, I cin send em thire! yes suh, thats a thoughful gestyah,.... t the Clinton Library! Why, I cin even send em to that bowlegged wahfe o Bills...welll, maybeh not such a good idea...afta all, who's ta sy waht constitutes sex, eh boyh?
SP4. Clinton had it right and bush has it all wrong. Deal with it and take your nose out of bush's poop-chute.
'bathroom incident' / 'disorderly conduct' / 'lewd behaviour' - Unnecessarily politically correct, to the point that this article is not stating the key aspects of this story, which is a republican senator openly against gay rights was caught soliciting for sex in public toilets. This website is another example of republican backed media. The fact that he was a strong campaigner against gay rights is left as a footnote. If your seeking unbiased news then leave now.
Another example of hypocrisy running amok in the ranks of your so-called 'Christian Conservatives.' Practise what you preach seems to be a mantra they reserve for others, but not themselves. I wish Middle-America would wake up and realize their shiny white paragons of virtue are nothing but smoke and mirror BS artists and no better than a crack 'ho in Miami or a porn director in LA.
My main gripe with right-wing America is they wave their patriotic flags around like blind idiots without questioning anything but other people's activities. Activities they find objectionable because 'the bible told them so even though these activities are found in every country with a name, apparently the result of good ol' human nature.
Last time I looked the constitution it guaranteed an American the right to the pursuit of happiness. Of course to your right-wingers, that happiness is only allowed as long as THEY don't find it uncomfortable. Apparently in the red-states there are gangs of armed men forcing people into gay activities or watching porn or having abortions. How else could you account for the the hysterical fear since these are usually left to personal choice?
If they weren't such a bunch of hypocrites, this senator would have been out, nobody would have cared and a whole lot of this country wouldn't have the sticks up their butts whenever someone else is looking for a good time that ends in an orgasm, regardless of the gender of their partner. I have the feeling that those sticks are in place because there are so many people who succumbed to human nature and now they have to play the hypocrisy game because they think their play acting will hide their guilt from Jesus.
Exeunt Cesar and Jesus.
The far right, i.e. those guys we like to hide from everyone (the left flaunts their crazies), seem to think this guy is the antichrist.
The thing that pisses conservatives like me off is that, in the moment required, a sh-thead like Edwards, for a desperate political move, will invoke Dick Cheney's Daughters sex preference, a person totally outside the political spectrum, in order to further his career on national TV. Yep, the Breck girl, sensing his doom at the polls, went for the worst, cheapest, most desperate and disingenuous move he could muster, throwing this poor girl out to the media dogs, all in the blind hope of turning the tide on his loss...to none other than Dick Cheney! God, what a loss, to a person sooo hated!
Now tell me, i.e. the f--khead above, what makes your libnazi trophy boys one lick different than the worst, most pious, fish-on-the-back-of-the-f--king-car, bible toting, carrot-up-the-ass evangelist, when, in a moment of desperation, they will do EXACTLY what these bible toter's do?
Hypocrites? You have plenty on the left side of the aisle asshole.
Personally, I'd rather have the Senator from Idaho before I'd ever want Edwards!
Good thing SP4 isn't from Minnesota - he can't spell it! Once again, if you have a different opinion, you are called every name in the book - God has spoken - no, only SP4! Just because someone else got away with something, does it mean it lets everyone else off the hook? This situation isn't quite like Clinton. This is about another first class hypocrite, who is also stupid enough to think he can get away with it. And now I suppose I'll be called the next sh**head!
SP4,
The big difference here is,
Billy Clinton never said or campaigned against blow jobs,in fact he proved he was all for them,
on the other hand Larry Craig actively campaigned against something that he found rather tasty.
SP4 finds it tasty also. Is it me or did SP4 just have a rant?
more like a rage!
Sounds more like he got his knickers in a bunch!
Gentlemen:
Let go of your privates. Don't ry to impress me, you cannot.
Senator Spread Legs was convicted of being a hypocrite in the court of public opinion. So be it. We had a liberal Governor who diddled his kids 14 year old baysitter and had the liberal press gag it for 20(?) years. After all, no use outing the trophy boy, eh?
Liberals parade this Senator as the standard of hypocrisy, while they hide their own Southern Baptists and Catholics who are actually against gay behavior just as much as any so called conservative.
It is the politics if the patchwork quilt, but, after all, no sense in muddying the water now, huh? Never mind the hypocrisy of the Kennedy's and their phony environazi front, while they benefit from oil sales and stifle windmill farms on their own turf, or the Clintons and their Enron money, Gore burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel while he preaches a smaller co2 foot print, or my personal favorite, Ted Kennedy throwing a waitress onto a table at a DC resturaunt and then paying her off to be silent!
Hypocrites? God, the accusation would almost be an insult if I could just forget Sandy Berglar and his MC Hammer pants collection, or the little fag in the Clinton FBI records scandal answering the committee with '...Vince Foster did it'.
Yep, you're going to have to do better than one guy from Idaho, with a taste for guys in a bathroom to impress me. Besides, can any of you tell me exactly what is illegal about what he did? Why is it the Conservatives always have to point this out? Isn't there one liberal who will ask why?
Off with their heads I say - the whole world's corrupt!
SP4 apparently doesn't understand that Nazis were right-wing? Nazis openly hated liberals. Just like SP4!
dan
Not that I ever said any such thing, but one has to ask about the Nazi party's food, health care and child care assistance that was so popular among the German population, before they gained power. Then there were things like gun bans and camera bans, etc. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like social liberalism to me!
You see, at the end of the political spectrum, the ends meet i.e. they are the same, totalitarians, regardless of which end they are from.
Now I hear the good Senator may be reconsidering his resignation at the end of September after all! My thinking is that he wants to spend the month bending pages in the Congressional Library before making a decision. Mothers, do you know where your children are?
The travails of a U.S. SENATOR
Was the esteemed legislator just 'GAY'?
Tapping his foot in that seedy bathroom bay.
Or could he be 'Bi'?
Doing both sexes on the sly.
Visions of video-full colour exposed on YOU-TUBE
like some stupid REPUBLICANT IDAHO 'boob'.
Your supposedly being caught in semi -
'flagrente delecto'
could be the only reason to change the accepted status quo.
So you now have decided to 'bitch' and try
prove to all the 'rubes' that you ain't at least 'Bi'.
Here's an 'earmark' for you to settle this trivial dispute
nothing short of verified evidence earns a U.S. SENATOR any disrepute.
page: 1
Not a Good ideaSep 2nd, 2007 - 01:36:01
Who is so virgin in here? Nobody! so why care?
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