Jefferson aficionados know the Man of the Millennium only penned one book in his lifetime, Notes on the State of Virginia. Many of Jefferson’s observations in that volume still hold fascination today, and we recommend it to you.

For our part, with a bow to the Rotunda and a nod to Monticello, we will offer, from time to time, tidbits and comments in the Jeffersonian mold on the emerging campaign of 2008. Instead of our usual essays focused on one subject, we will range more widely on unconnected topics.

Here are Today’s Topics:

Time for the Real Election

Larry Craig Versus David Vitter

Iowa, God’s Country

The Good News Keeps Rolling for Senate Democrats

The Senatorial Geriatric Ward

MORE

The big breaking political news yesterday was that Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is reconsidering his decision not to seek re-election due to the toiletgate scandal. He’s fighting the charges and might not resign.

Republicans may cringe but, never fear, You Tube already has a proposed campaign song ready for him to use:

I wrote an article a couple days ago entitled,

Senator Larry Craig’s “Intent to Resign:” When An Apology Isn’t An Apology.

I saw the ‘fudging’ phrase “intent to resign” and copied it out in the post, because it seemed to follow his previous yes/no-yes/no patterns in conduct.

Now it appears I should have also given the post a sub-sub title: “When a Resignation Isn’t A Resignation.”

“Intent to Resign” is code in many quarters. Senator Craig’s seemed as Machiavelli advises: Make immanent resolves but not decisive ones; instead, stall for time to position oneself.

The latest reports tonight say Larry Craig’s adopted children, who are adults, have come home to hear his story, and that their findings indicate that he ought not resign. The focus appears to have shifted to ‘his legal case in Minn,” perhaps with the idea of whipping it down to a he said/he said situation; an old sidestep ploy that often only the naive think settles a matter. To plead entrapment is no political defense, though it may be a legal one.

In political situations at the highest level, in this case a Senate seat… and taking the advice of grown children, who presumably dearly love their adopted father, but who are also ’splashed’ by such contretemps, either way, seems an odd way to make a decision to ‘fight.’

More than any family counsel, most in his position lawyer up heavily. Perhaps he already has without mentioning it. But he mentions so much else. Larry Craig seems to have an repetitive split between saying and doing about three events that on a scale of 1-10 in terms of import, are all 11s:

1. Saying one thing in Congress about gays and GLBTs, but doing another thing privately.

2. Saying he didn’t do anything at all in the Minn. airport bathroom, but pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

3. Saying he intends to resign, but pulling back from his assertion, letting it be known a few days after broadcasting his intent everywhere… now, ‘maybe not.’

Perhaps this Yes/No whirligig in Senator Craig’s public pronouncements, is actually our suddenly clear look into old style political strategy. In our military family, we have a somewhat crude saying about such dodgy maneuvers: “Some politicos simply throw up a flag and see who throws up their flags in solidarity… and also to see who just simply throws up.”

I wish for the Senator the best possible outcome in his personal life. But, his political life may be at an end as a Senator, mainly because of lack of outcry from his comrades en masse to keep him seated.

If this were a Chekov play, I think we’d hear off stage left the sound of bookies sharpening their pencils. I wonder what odds they’s be giving, either way? Read the rest of this entry »

Jim McGreevey has published an Open Letter to Larry Craig in the Washington Post that begins as follows:

My gut wrenched when I read of Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom arrest. I remembered my own late-night encounter with the law at a Garden State Parkway rest stop following a political dinner in north Jersey.

I pulled into the rest stop, parked my car, flashed my headlights, which was “the signal,” and waited. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw a state trooper approaching. I desperately tried to convince the trooper of my innocence, showing him my former prosecutor’s badge, a gift from the office when I left. The trooper radioed his office and returned. “I never want to see you here again,” he said. I survived for another day.

I was in my late 20s. It would be another 25 years before my parallel lives collided and I was coerced out of the “closet.”

Why do grown men in their 20s, or their 60s, do such things? I can answer only for me.

MORE

MSNBC:

BOISE, Idaho - Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.

AP via Washington Post

A telephone call Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urging him to consider fighting for his seat is affecting Craig’s decision to reconsider his resignation, Smith said.

“It was a little more cut and dried a few days ago,” Smith said. “There weren’t many options. He was basically going to have to step aside. Now, there’s a little more to it.”

On Tuesday, Specter, senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Craig’s GOP colleagues who pressured him last week to resign should re-examine the facts surrounding his arrest June 11.

“The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” said Specter, a former prosecutor. If Craig had not pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” Specter said.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice columns from time to time reflecting additional takes on issues by people who aren’t regular TMV writers. The following is a column by conservative talk show host Michael Reagan, syndicated by Cagle News. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its co-writer.

The Craig Affair: Rampant Hypocrisy

by Michael Reagan

Listening to Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig proclaim in near-thundering terms that he is not gay and never has been gay, I couldn’t help but recall hearing Bill Clinton swear he “did not have sex with that woman.”

All Craig lacked to enforce the comparison was a finger wiggling at the camera. In his case, there was also no trace of bodily fluids on anyone’s dress to prove his guilt, but then there was that guilty plea admitting that he had engaged in disorderly conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, thereby avoiding admitting that he originally had been charged with soliciting a homosexual encounter with an undercover police officer.

Craig now says he pled guilty simply to get the matter out of the way, but surely as a lawmaker he had to know that he could easily have pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) without owning up to having been a bad boy and having that damning guilty plea on the record.

The media has jumped on this story as if the senator were Paris Hilton in drag. Aside from the ribald comments it has provoked, such as Jay Leno’s remark to Sen. John McCain — who had said that his colleagues don’t socialize with one another — that his lonely fellow senators could always find companionship in airport men’s rooms.

When they involve politics, scandals such as this one are certain to find partisanship rearing its head, and the Craig affair is no exception. Because Larry Craig is a staunch conservative from a staunchly conservative state, Democrats and their leftist allies are dancing in the streets over his embarrassment, busily reminding every sympathetic reporter who will listen to them that the Idaho Senator not only espouses family values, but has been a staunch foe of gay marriage.

Ergo, he’s not only a closet men’s room lothario, but a hypocrite as well. It’s a case of “don’t do as I do, do as I say.”

As tempting a target as Craig may be, however, it’s interesting how gingerly the overwhelmingly pro-gay media have approached the subject of his alleged homosexuality.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, we’re ALL mouthy. This item from The Hill, however, is more than a bit Chutzpadik!

Schumer: Dems can win Craig’s seat

Less than an hour after Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) announced his resignation on Saturday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats can win his seat next year.

Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called the bathroom incident that led to Craig’s political demise “a tragedy” and said the senator “did the right thing by stepping down.”

In his released statement, Schumer added, “Democrats can win in Idaho, and we intend to run a competitive race.”

There’s been a retelling of a huge sex scandal in Idaho 52 years ago. The two op ed writers, Seth Randal and Alan Virta, detail how in Boise on Halloween night in 1955, several men were rounded up who were accused of having sex with teenage boys.

But then the dragnet harrowed out of control, far, far further, arresting ‘hidden’ gay men, citizen businessmen of Boise, who were seemingly having consensual sex with adults. The writers note that this enormous scandal as recently as 2000, had some of its ramifications and allegations discussed at the Idaho Supreme Court.

The writers also note that when this scandal broke, Larry Craig was ten years old. Their import is that no young person in Idaho escaped learning how ‘bad’ it was to be gay. And how some who were accused, denied denied denied.

The NYT op ed is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/opinion/02randal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

addendum
I added the word ’seemingly’ to the second para, because in reading the op ed again, the outcome of charges against consensual adults is not stated definitively. It is clear in the op-ed that persons acting privately were called out publicly.

And then there are delusions…(but it’s hard to believe the delusions would have been there if it had been a member of a certain party with a “D” in front of it who he didn’t like).

Did your mother teach you how to make a proper apology when you were a little kid, otherwise you were grounded to your left ear for life? Me too. Did your mother or father tell you if you tried to weasel out, rather than telling the truth, it would go harder with you? Mine too.

In Western culture, an adequate apology, even for immigrants who have other ways of making recompense in their own cultures, is supposed to cover the entire ‘mea culpa’ territory and be direct, showing humility somehow, but not giving out a stilted high oratory, nor muffled as though gargling marbles.

Though most everyone carries ‘duck and cover’ as a survival instinct, public apology seems most effective when it is more along the lines of street talk, that is, down to earth, straightforward, heavy in nouns and verbs about the authentic issues and concerns… rather than vaguely stated without showing any gritty insight nor transparent accountability

Rather than carrying street cred though, Senator Larry Craig’s apology carries an odd vagary of language that a full and real apology would not. Instead of specificity in language, the limited lexicon used by the Senator gives the impression of trying to row around the huge dead elephant that washed up in his living room recently…

Senator Craig writes on his website: http://craig.senate.gov/keyportal.cfm

“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.
I have little control over what people choose to believe…”

*****The last sentence infers that what has occurred is not an issue of facts based on knowing, but a fantasy of people’s ‘beliefs.’ Beliefs are far different than knowings. Thus Senator Craig tells us how to understand all this: beliefs can be challenged.

However, contrary to the Senator’s seeming attempt to redefine the issues, certain factual matters of law and legalities, still remain.

Let’s move to the first sentence, which covers to whom the Senator is making the apology: Idahoans, staff, colleagues, wife, family…. and all those are proper to appeal to.

Yet, it leaves out many people and groups of people who seem to have been ill-affected by his decisions in life, and his countervalent votes in public life. It leaves out people in the US who are already mortified about the state of the GOP in recent months and years. It leaves out those who currently have ‘business’ with him, who have allied with him and whom he was working on projects with, and now, have to start all over lobbying someone else. Lots of dreams of his Senatorial support died this week.

In our family if you offended the whole family and only apologized to your mother, father, and one cousin but left all others out who were nonetheless affected, that’d be a deal-breaker about your sincerity. Back to the corner you’d go to think things through more rationally.

The second sentence: “I am deeply sorry,” line has to be taken in context with an earlier line: “I apologize for what I have caused.” I wouldn’t put a cynical, “Yeah, sure you’re sorry, you’re sorry for being caught.” But, I agree with Michelle Malkin, certainly in concept: She calls the Senator’s words being a “crapweasel”
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/28/the-larry-craig-mess/

She’s referring to the on again, off again, Finnegan that Senator Craig has been doing to explain himself; the dodging and seeming prevaricating with great huffing pomposity.

There is huge aversion going on, as most can see. My analytic training in reading lexicon and syntactical subtext, tells me that in Senator Craig’s letter, the syntax appears to be arranged specifically in order to avoid, rather than to explicate. In other words, to present in opaque, instead of in all transparency.

“What I caused” is an effort toward accountability, but is weakened greatly by not accounting, not explicating what occurred and how it came to be. The phrase makes an inference, instead, that the writer did little or nothing that would have set this mess into motion… that some minor error set off this torque.

I don’t say this to revile the Senator; no person on this earth, as we saw recently with Mother Teresa herself, is without flaws, foibles and failings. I am more inclined to have sympathy for people who are otherwise good or trying to be to the best of their current knowledge, but who fall into a fracturing dilemma… most of us are on earth trying to learn and are doing ok some days… some days we’re better than we’re capable of being, and on other days, less than we could be… and all shades in between.

So, I’d rather say it this way, generally, whether about priests who intrude on children, whether about Neil Bush (G. W.’s brother) and his Savings and Loan debacle that caused the collapse of the hard-earned savings of elderly people… also without repair… in all these cases and so many more, the people responsible for the ‘failure’ or damage or breakage, write in big red letters that they are sidestepping, falsifying, or outright telling falsehoods when they do not fulfill the most basic apology we teach to our own little children, when adults do not speak as we would expect a five year old to speak in making a full apology that we would accept and thus begin to re-normalize relationships again.

There’s a saying in my family: if you want to make people despise you, give them Read the rest of this entry »

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

VIDEO of Craig’s Resignation

UPDATE:

WP: Embattled Idaho Senator Announces Resignation

Idaho senator had been abandoned by Republican Party following his arrest, guilty plea in a police sex sting operation in an airport men’s room.

========================================================================

Permanent Guest Barista Radical Russ at Pam’s House Blend is a native Idahoan transplanted to Oregon who is making a new career in talk radio. His show today on Portland’s 620KPOJ.com just happens to overlap with Sen. Craig’s press conference and plans a live feed, no doubt with comments by Russ.

I often both agree and disagree with Russ but he is quite entertaining.

Tune in to KPOJ or listen live online from 9am-11am Pacific, Noon-2pm Eastern. Call in at 866-557-7377.

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is reportedly set to resign today. And it’s good thing for him and the GOP: the late night comics are having a ball — and so are posters at You Tube. Just watch this highly viewed song parody now all the rage on You Tube:

Rumored that he will be Senator Larry Craig’s replacement… On Lieutenant-Governor James E Risch’s page at the Governor’s website are the four or five Initiatives he stands for.

http://lgo.idaho.gov/

One is on helping Idahoan businesses verify that new employees are properly papered to work in the USA.

Alien Verification Initiative

The State of Idaho has made the decision to work as a partner with the federal government to fight illegal immigration. The tool that makes this possible is a federal program called S.A.V.E. (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements).

Simply put, the S.A.V.E. program provides employers like the State of Idaho and businesses of all sizes a no-cost way to confirm that the people they hire are indeed eligible to work in America. Participation in the program is voluntary and free.

In Idaho, the state is taking the lead by signing up for this program to make sure your tax dollars are not funneled into the pockets of illegal aliens. The state is also encouraging businesses across Idaho to follow this lead and sign up for this voluntary program.

Illegal immigration is a complex and difficult issue. But here in Idaho, we can do our part by making sure that illegal aliens aren’t rewarded with jobs for breaking our nation’s laws. Signing up for this alien verification program is quick, easy, and free. And most important, it’s the right thing to do.

How it Works

This federal program allows employers to verify the employment eligibility of their newly hired employees by verifying employment eligibility with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases via a Web-Based Access Method.

Participation in this program is voluntary, and is free to participating employers.

So far, some might think this sounds like a good thing. Perhaps. Except that the advertising for this ‘free’ service, sounds benign… but caveat emptor on agreements of any kind, always: better read the fine print.

Once you read the fine print of the agreement Idahoan businesses must sign to access this new service, you realize this service is not going to be ‘free’ … it will cost the employer a bag of cash to have at least one employee do all the paperwork ongoing, keep and submit all the records the Feds will now require, and should the Feds decide to make a sudden unannounced ‘audit’ at the business, to lose several employees’ days of work in the scramble to show and tell and find and catch and carry.

No, it’s not ‘free.’ And more so: it opens a business’s security to the many-eyed arms of Homeland Security, at will.

The agreement employers have to sign to get verification on employees with the Social Security Administration, includes also a legal agreement to carry and report to and through Homeland Security. There seem to be at least two if not three government agencies suddenly at one’s, not behest, but over one’s shoulder. The agreement’s ideal is that employers agree to just that: Government watching the very ones who presumably are trying to be within the current law. The business must agree as well to the fact that they will be sued by the Feds if they in any way do not keep the Government’s demands to the letter.

To me, this reads somewhat like a boilerplate publishing contract, where without an agent, the book contact is all geared to the benefit of the publisher rather than the author. Perhaps one would expect such tilted contracts to be offered in commerce, as some publishers are well known as ones who try to get away with all they can when the author is naive. But, maybe government representing ‘the people’ ought be different?

Read it yourself and see what you think. To have more solid boundaries to enforce the law, does there also have to be more regulation of business and answering to government with reports generated by business? Ought ‘less government’ ask a business to agree beforehand, in writing, to take on all legal liability, ad infinitum? That you surrender all confidentiality not only for Freedom of Info queries but for ‘advertising’ if the Government so deigns? If you were a lawyer, would you advise your client to sign this agreement, as is?

Because you have to pass through several screens and give info to get to it, at least I did, I put the agreement Idahoan businesses must sign in order to gain a ‘legal to work in USA check system’ via the Feds, on the next page.