Patrick’s Rants

So you remember, Larry (I’m not gay) Craig. He’s the guy who used the words, “I’m not gay,” way too much in his “I’m resigning” speech. We learn that he isn’t actually resigning, but that it’s his “intent to resign” according to a misfired voice mail. That and he’s going to try to have the guilty plea reversed.

The original story is that he went into a men’s room that was being watched due to it being gay meetup joint. You know, walk in, sit right down play a little footsie under the partition and wave at the guy in the stall next to you. But he’s not gay. He didn’t tell his wife or even his own lawyer but he’s not gay. Instead it’s all a mistake, a vast conspiracy by the “liberal media”.

Now that we have that out of the way… let’s read the latest on CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, mistakenly pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct because he was under stress from a newspaper investigation into claims that he is gay, according to court papers filed Monday.

Mistakenly? Mistakenly!? How do you mistakenly plead guilty to a lesser charge (to hide it from the newspapers, your wife, your family and your constituents)? How?

Here’s how:

According to papers filed in Hennepin County, Minnesota, District Court, Craig was in a “state of intense anxiety” following his arrest and “felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer.” The senator pleaded guilty in hopes the matter would not be made public, the court documents said.

Intense anxiety, that’s how.

The arrest, combined with Craig’s interview with the Idaho Statesman, sparked the lawmaker to panic that the newspaper would use the restroom incident to bolster its allegations, the court papers said.

I don’t see how they could use something as innocuous as an accidental game of footsie and waving at the cop under the stall partition against Craig. And in no way could they use that to bolster an allegation that the Senator is gay - because he’s not.

The response from the prosecutor,

“We do feel we have a strong case, and he’s already made his plea, and it’s been accepted by the court,” Hogan told the AP. “From our standpoint, this is already a done deal. Mr. Craig was arrested and signed a guilty plea, and from our standpoint, this case is already over.”

Billy Martin is Craig’s attorney and he had this to say,

Martin said that the lawmaker’s plea “was not knowing and intelligent and therefore was in violation of his constitutional rights” when he was arrested.

I have to let this next section run on its own:

In a CNN interview Sunday, one of Craig’s Senate colleagues compared the guilty plea to a motorist paying an undeserved parking ticket. Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Craig should stay in the Senate and fight to overturn his conviction.

“He thought that this matter would not be publicly disclosed, and that was very foolish,” Specter said. “Now look here, you have 27 years in the Congress, you have his reputation, you have his whole life on the line. I think he’s entitled to his day in court. Maybe he will be convicted, but I doubt it.”

Specter said Minnesota law allows a defendant to withdraw a guilty plea “if there is manifest injustice, and that is defined that a plea can be withdrawn if it was not intelligently made,” Specter said. “And what Sen. Craig did was by no means intelligent.”

So. The Republicans, who were ready to run him out of town on a rail for being gay, have no problem keeping him in the Senate if he’s just plain stupid. But I have just one question, if a lawmaker cannot be asked to understand his legal rights and make an intelligent decision regarding himself, how can he be asked to write laws that affect the rest of us?