Republicans stripped Sen. Larry Craig of his leadership posts today.

A statement by the Senate Republican leadership said Mr. Craig “has agreed to comply” with a request to step down as the top Republican on the Veterans Affairs Committee, the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior and the Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on public lands and forests.

“This is not a decision we take lightly, but we believe this is in the best interest of the Senate until this situation is resolved by the Ethics Committee,” the statement said.

Senators John McCain and Norm Coleman, and Rep. Pete Hoeckstra have called for his resignation.

Craig, in his statement yesterday, said he is now seeking legal advice about his Minnesota conviction for disorderly conduct. As LNILR opined earlier today, that's not likely to do him much good.

If he's really sure he isn't gay and that he never had encounters with men in public restrooms, he might be better off hiring Lin Wood (Richard Jewell and John and Patsy Ramseys' attorney) to bring a libel suit against the media outlets that alleged otherwise. While a settlement or favorable ruling is unlikely to be timely enough to end the calls for his resignation, if he won, he'd get his good name back.

What does it say if he doesn't bring a libel suit? That no lawyer would take it or that he's pulling our leg with his denials?

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers announced today the committee will hold a hearing on FISA on September 5, 2007.

"Warrantless Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): The Role of Checks and Balances in Protecting Americans’ Privacy Rights." The hearing will be held on Wednesday, September 5, at 10:15 a.m. in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had asked for the hearing in an August 4 letter.

Tonight, the House passed S. 1927, a bill approved by the Senate yesterday, which is an interim response to the Administration's request for changes in FISA, and which was sought to fill an intelligence gap which is asserted to exist. Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken.

Accordingly, I request that your committees send to the House, as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes, legislation which responds comprehensively to the Administration's proposal while addressing the many deficiencies in S. 1927.

In June, I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it. Because of that, I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed.

Does he want a trial? Can he win a trial? I don't think so.

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So Craig says today in his press conference. Personally, I do not care. But I think Glenn Greenwald exposes the problem Republicans face on this matter - they hate gay persons.

The evidence seems pretty clear that Craig is in fact gay. And now Republicans have to deal with this reality, even in the face of Craig's denials.

In The American Prospect, Ron Brownstein reviews Matt Bai's book on the Democratic Party and the battles ongoing within it - battles on policies and political strategy. Brownstein is a very good reporter and observer, but it seems to me he accepts some conclusions that are faulty. In particular, he often mixes what was (at least I thought it WAS) a good understanding in the Democratic base and the Netroots that policy is beholden to politics. You can't enact a progressive agenda unless you can elect progressive representatives. Brownstein reserves that understanding to the "savvy" like himself:

Bai's plea for a more ambitious, transformative Democratic agenda, also seems disconnected in another key respect. Visionary ideas detached from a strategy to move them into law are like balloons without strings. (As John F. Kennedy once put it when an aide urged him to promote a policy he knew he could not pass through Congress, "That's vanity … not politics.")

I can't imagine there are many thinking persons who care about politics that do not understand this. The Argument, as it were, in the Democratic Party, has been two fold - whether a substantively progressive agenda can be enacted in the United States; and how to get such an agenda enacted. Most in the Netroots (me included) believe that it can but that it must occur through the Democratic Party. That means transforming the Democratic Party - most particularly in its political strategy and style. More.

McJoan at Daily Kos has the backstory to the Idaho Statesman investigation of Sen. Larry Craig.

The Statesman published the report of its five month investigation today.

In an interview on May 14, Craig told the Idaho Statesman he'd never engaged in sex with a man or solicited sex with a man. The Craig interview was the culmination of a Statesman investigation that began after a blogger accused Craig of homosexual sex in October. Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.

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ABC News has the plea disposition document from the Minnesota Court in Sen. Larry Craig's bathroom arrest. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct (Section 609.72.1) and a second charge of invasion of privacy was dismissed. Here's the statute (via Lexis):

609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT Subdivision 1. Crime.

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:

(1) Engages in brawling or fighting; or
(2) Disturbs an assembly or meeting, not unlawful in its character; or
(3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

A person does not violate this section if the person's disorderly conduct was caused by an epileptic seizure.

Seems like Subsection 3 is the applicable one. Parsing the words, I think you have to forego boisterous or noisy. That leaves the charge that tapping the floor with his foot, putting his hand under the bathroom stall and tapping the foot of the occupant in the next stall is offensive, obscene or abusive.

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In its Tuesday editorial, the New York Times does a good job of summing up in two paragraphs what Alberto Gonzales did wrong as Attorney General:

[H]e did not stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, as an attorney general must. This administration has illegally spied on Americans, detained suspects indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” run roughshod over the Geneva Conventions, violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on injecting politics into government and defied Congressional subpoenas. In each case, Mr. Gonzales gave every indication of being on the side of the lawbreakers, not the law.

Mr. Gonzales signed off on the administration’s repugnant, and disastrous, torture policy when he was the White House counsel. He later helped stampede Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed illegal C.I.A. prisons where detainees may be tortured and established kangaroo courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to keep detained foreigners in custody essentially for life. He helped cover up and perpetuate Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping programs, both in the counsel’s job and as attorney general. The F.B.I. under his stewardship abused powers it was given after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the name of enhanced national security.

In other words, Goodbye and good riddance.

Update: Talking Points has the actual arrest report. The incident was on July 11, the report was entered on July 12 by someone other than the arresting officer, and then edited by the arresting officer on June 26. I wonder whether he just blacked out stuff or made changes. Since Craig pleaded guilty, he has no ability to quiz the officer on cross-examination.

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Roll Call has the details from the officer's report concerning Idaho Senator Larry Craig's arrest in June on lewd conduct charges stemming from an incident in the men's bathroom at a Minnesota airport.

Sen. Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct without counsel in August. He paid a fine and was put on a year's probation.

Why did he plead guilty? Was he trying to keep it from the press?

My first impression: The whole encounter sounds fishy to me. From the cop's statement that the bathroom had so many complaints it was necessary to go undercover to the ambiguous hand movements the cop ascribes to Craig. I'm having a hard time even picturing what the cop thought Craig was up to given the configuration of bathroom stalls and the cop's statement they weren't in the same one.

At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot...

Really strange story.

Bush wouldn't dare, right? Josh Marshall says don't be surprised if Bush uses a recess appointment to name the next Attorney General, bypassing the need for Senate confirmation.

My take: Of course he would. What's he got to lose? He's already a lame duck. The Republicans didn't stand up for Gonzales, why should Bush care whether they catch flak over a recess appointment when 2008 comes around?

All this talk by Schumer and others about appointing a non-political Attorney General who will uphold the rule of law, as I said earlier, is just more verbiage. It sounds good but it will never happen so long as Bush is in office.

One of the perks of being President is getting to name your cabinet members. Bush isn't going to let anyone stand in his way. He might sound the Dems out on his replacement pick, but if they say no, I think he'll just go ahead by way of recess appointment. He hasn't cared what the Dems think about anything else, why would he start now?

As I head off to the jail to see two federal clients in pre-trial detention whose cases won't be affected one whit by Gonzales' resignation, I thought I'd reprint what I wrote in April:

What will change with Gonzales gone? Bush will appoint another one of his loyal faves to replace him. The war on drugs, war on civil liberties and trend towards draconian sentences will continue. Say what you want about Gonzales, he's nowhere near the threat to constitutional rights that John Ashcroft was. He's continued Ashcroft's policies, but he seems to be more of a follower than a take-charge innovator of new ways to deprive people of their freedom.

As for the fired U.S. Attorneys, they all got the job in the first place because they had connections ... either to their state's Senators or to someone in the Bush Administration. None of them got the job because they were the most skilled litigators in their respective jurisdictions. Once installed in the top position, they all put people in jail, including non-violent drug offenders. They're prosecutors, that's what they do.

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Michael Chertoff, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security

Robert S. Meuller III, Director, FBI

Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism

Readers can see their bios at the above links.

My take: