Sen. Larry Craig comes out swinging. In a public appearance in Boise, Craig says he is not and never has been gay, and blames the Idaho Statesman for what he called vicious attacks against him, referring to the long investigation by the paper of rumors that Craig was gay, for his decision to plead guilty. Of course the paper didn’t publish the results of that investigation until today–after news of Craig’s June arrest and August guilty plea broke.

Back in the Impeachment days in 1999, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) wouldn’t stand for a censure of President Clinton. The People of Idaho, Craig told Meet the Press, would only settle for impeachment of such a “nasty boy.”

Late Update: Greg Sargent noted this quote yesterday over at Election Central.

John McCain’s cash-strapped campaign qualifies for federal funding — but if he accepts, he won’t be able to spend much in the crucial early states. That and other political news of the day in today’s Happy Hour Roundup.

Senate Republicans call for Ethics Investigation of Sen. Craig (R).

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Hmmm (from the Idaho Statesman) …

Meanwhile, newly released police records of the bathroom incident that led to Craig’s arrest show that Craig revisited the Minneapolis airport 11 days later to complain about how he had been treated by police. He said he wanted information so his lawyer could speak to someone, according to a police report.

…

After his June 11 arrest, Craig revisited the Minneapolis airport June 22 to complain about how he had been treated by police. His spokesman said he was on his way to Idaho from Washington D.C., a trip he takes through the Minneapolis airport most Fridays when Congress is in session.

He stopped at the police operations center and told the on-duty officer, Adam Snedker, that it had been over a week since his arrest and no one had contacted him. According to the police, the senator told the officer that ”he was involved in an incident where he was “drug down to this office” where he was handcuffed, fingerprinted and interviewed.”

He wanted information about who to contact so that his lawyer could speak with someone, according to the report.

The on-duty officer patched him through to the officer who had arrested him, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who told Craig the name, phone number and prosecutor assigned to the case.

“It should be noted that contrary to what Craig stated to Officer Snedker, I did not handcuff Craig on the date of the offense even though he was under arrest,” Karsnia wrote in his report.

Snedker said in his report that “even though I did the best to answer his questions,” Craig was not friendly and “appeared agitated and demeaning.”

You get the sense there’s a bit more to the narrative we haven’t heard yet. And what lawyer would that be? Presumably this was just a imaginary ‘lawyer’ Craig was referring to get contact info for the prosecutor. But maybe not. I’ve always found it a little iffy that Craig really consulted no lawyer about this since he had two months to mull it over.

From TPM Reader TB …

Dear Editors (here specifically David, and Josh):

Fine coverage, as always. I very much enjoy and appreciate your site.

Regarding Larry Craig’s bathroom actions and American public sex in general: there are two comments I’d like to add to the discussion. First, male-male sex in public bathrooms has been going on in America for at least 100 years…probably since the invention of the public bathroom. Our culture’s lack of understanding of sexuality, and our gender-segregated bathrooms, created an environment where males naturally happen upon each other in stages of undress (much like the locker room). Such scandalous behavior has been uncovered at YMCAs (originally built as boarding houses for World War I soldiers), park restrooms, and transit station restrooms since the early 20th century. Typically, men who had sex with each other in these restrooms were caught by plainclothes investigators who pretended to accept their suitors’ advances (and, in some cases, were quite passionate about their … investigations) before booking them. Long prison terms, psychiatric “treatment”, and public humiliation were common outcomes of these investigations. For most of the 20th century, there were very, very few public places in most of America for men to meet each other. There was certainly no public space friendlier to gays in Boise, Idaho, than the library and park bathrooms when Sen. Craig was a young man. I call them preliminaries because they preface more intricate coded behavior that can indicate a variety of things: whose stall the contact will happen; what activities are amenable to either party; whether money will change hands; whether there is a lookout; whether the place itself is safe; and much more. “Tearooms,” as these bathrooms are called, established an entire non-verbal dialectic to facilitate sexual union between American men. They are as enshrined in gay culture as Sunday afternoon “tea dances,” or Bette Midler singing at the baths, or Stonewall, or, currently, Internet dating. Even for me, as a young gay man from Wisconsin curious about gay sex in the mid-1980s, the park restrooms were the place where it all happened. The restrooms were not just an urban legend: they were living history — noisy, confusing, heady, stinky, and nervewracking places for a sexual — and cultural — initiation. The codes that Craig and his arresting officer used (looking through the stall door; tapping one’s foot; touching your stall neighbor’s foot) are historical preliminaries to sexual contact.

Which leads me to this: we do not live in the 1930s anymore, or even the 1980s. One can make the distinction now between furtive behavior and discreet behavior. There are lots of ways by which and places where men can meet other men to wine, dine, kiss, screw, get married, or just civilly unionize. It doesn’t have to happen in the bathroom, unless that is what you choose. I feel some fondness for tearooms, where men would look at me, then just 18, like I was Ganymede come back to earth. There is an excitement and danger and kink to public sex that I still enjoy, in empty cemeteries on moonless nights with someone I like, offending only the dead. There are so many ways to meet someone and approximate the thrill of the tearooms. We could say that Sen. Craig was just unimaginative, or wouldn’t have it any other way; I think he hadn’t caught up with the ways gay culture has changed, and he didn’t know how.

But it’s never too late: if I were him, I’d be on Craig’s list with a crotch shot and a “married, discreet” tag.

Palm Beach Post columnist: bathroom mishaps “serve as a cautionary tale on the importance of guy bathroom etiquette for the rest of us.”

GOP political consultant Scott Reed, reacting to the Larry Craig debacle:

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

Welcome to the reality-based community, Scott.