Specter: "Larry Craig Should Fight Bathroom Arrest"

I’m inclined to agree, but not for the reasons Senator Specter puts forth.

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg)—Senator Arlen Specter said Idaho Republican Larry Craig should try to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in connection with an incident in an airport men’s room and fight the case.

``I think he could be vindicated,’’ Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the ``Fox News Sunday’’ program.

Specter, of Pennsylvania, said that Craig ``hasn’t resigned’’ from the Senate, only that he ``intends to resign’’ as of Sept. 30. That gives Craig a month to fight the case in court, Specter said. If the case went to trial, Specter said Craig ``wouldn’t be convicted of anything.’’

I don’t think Craig should fight his conviction so that he can remain in the Senate. It’s pretty obvious that he went into that bathroom looking for sex, and that means he was being unfaithful to his wife. Both of those things are conduct unbecoming a US Senator, and because of that he should resign.

But he should fight the conviction in order to challenge Minnesota’s current laws which allow someone to be arrested ostensibly for engaging in lewd conduct in public before they ever actually did anything lewd. As I’ve said over and over again since this scandal broke, Senator Craig may be guilty of looking for homosexual love in a bathroom and cheating on his wife, but he didn’t do anything worthy of arrest.

“Conspiring to do something lewd in public,” which is essentially what Craig did though he eventually plead guilty to a vaguely-written “disorderly conduct” catch-all law, just isn’t a crime in my book.

Certainly the state of Minnesota’s tax dollars (along with the tax dollars of a lot of other places) could be better spent on something other than undercover vice cops lurking in bathroom stalls.