Craig and Cable News

It seems that Larry Craig is not resigning:

Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, defying the wishes of many in his own Republican Party, said Thursday that he would remain in the Senate through next year despite a court ruling against him in Minnesota, where he had sought to rescind his guilty plea stemming from an undercover sex sting.

Shortly after a judge denied his request to withdraw the August plea admitting to disorderly conduct, Mr. Craig said he had reversed his previously announced decision to leave the Senate if he could not get the plea thrown out. He said he would instead serve out his third term, which expires in January 2009. He said he would not run for a fourth.

I have little to add to what everyone else has said about this. Of course Craig is a vile hypocrite who doesn't really merit much sympathy. Of course it is absurd that tapping your foot in a public restroom, even for the purpose of soliciting sex, is enough to get you arrested. And of course the reason the GOP dropped the hammer on Craig while standing by Mark Vitter was that Idaho is a solidly Republican state, while Louisiana has a history of sending Democrats to the Congress.

However, this new development does provide another illustration of just how ridiculous cable news has become. You see, most of the cable news reporters and all of the pundits on the evening chat shows declared in no uncertain terms that when Craig released his statement on September first he was announcing his resignation for the Senate. More than once I saw the headline “Craig Resigns” at the base of the screen.

But he hadn't resigned. The headlines were false. He had merely announced his intention to resign at the end of the month. This was too subtle for the brain-dead legions of cable news. Which goes to show you can not even count on them to get the basic facts of a situation right.

A similar example occurred after a recent Democratic candidates debate. The candidates were asked if they would commit to having all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term in 2013. All of the major candidates said that they would not absolutely commit to such a thing, since it was impossible to anticipate every eventuality that might occur between now and then and it would be foolish to cut-off options unnecessarily. That notwithstanding, the goal would certianly be to have our troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible.

Yes, of course. What other answer was possible? But then I turned on Chris Matthews that night, only to hear that Hillary Clinton had committed our troops to Iraq through 2013.

Creationists could learn a thing or two from such people.

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Re Larry Craig

1. The fact of the matter is that toe tapping is not the only thing that Senator Craig did. He also spent a period of 2 minutes staring into the stall the police officer was occupying. This charge of lewd behavior was dropped as a part of the plea bargain. Had the case gone to trial, it would not have been dropped.

2. On many blogs, people have been complaining about alleged entrapment and asking why the police officer was stationed in that location. The fact of the matter is that a number of complaints had been made about men, including teenagers being propositioned in that restroom in addition to other lewd behavior. What was the police department supposed to do, ignore the complaints?

Have a uniformed officer patrol it every half hour or so.