1 Boring Old Man

Like the bad penny, the case of Senator Larry Craig just will not go away. Now, the left-wing bloggers are coming up with his strategies for him to get his  conviction  guilty plea reversed:

Jeralyn at Talk Left says:

I’m sticking by my earlier comments  that his guilty plea was defective for failing to advise him of his right to counsel and contain an acknowledgment by him that he understood the right and was waiving it. Minnesota law is very clear on that. His guilty plea form is here.

It shouldn’t even require a hearing. A Judge could grant the motion based on the paperwork. I won’t be surprised if the prosecutor confesses the motion. I also think Craig’s statement to McConnell is based on Billy Martin thinking there’s a good chance the Judge will rule on his motion to withdraw the plea within the next three weeks.

AMERICAblog links to the World Daily Net, "From WND’s Joseph Farah. Please let Craig try this one. Mitch McConnell will keel over."

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, didn’t have to plead guilty to sex charges stemming from a men’s room encounter with an undercover cop in Minnesota. All he had to do was hand the police officer a copy of the U.S. Constitution – the document the senator swore to uphold upon first taking office in Congress 27 years earlier.

There is little ambiguity in Article 1: Section 6, which clearly states no member of Congress can be arrested while traveling to or from official session. Craig was arrested just after 12 noon June 11. He cast a vote on a high-profile cloture motion on the Senate floor at 5:55 p.m. that same day.

So some judge in Minnesota is going to have to deal with a V.I.P. making a fuss over a routine Airport bathroom sweep for gay trollers, and the poor cop who stung Craig is going to have to be grilled about busting the guy for sexual solicitation by signalling him from the next toilet stall. What should the policeman have done? Had sex with the Senator to get a DNA sample? My guess is that they’ll find a way to harass them enough to get the plea withdrawn, and maybe get the case dismissed.  Apparently, Craig’s lawyer is also questioning whether the Senate Ethics investigation is legal, since he wasn’t in the Minnesota Airport bathroom on Senate business:

Craig Lawyers Ask Ethics Case Be Dropped

Lawyers for Sen. Larry Craig asked the Senate ethics committee Wednesday to reject a complaint based on the Idaho Republican’s guilty plea in a police undercover operation in an airport men’s room, saying the events were "wholly unrelated" to official duties.

"Assertion of jurisdiction over this matter by the committee would be literally unprecedented and would create deleterious consequences for the Senate as a whole," the lawyers wrote.