People, he really didn't do anything wrong

So Senator Craig's lawyer went on Hardball to explain how the Senator might stay in the Senate even if he can't retract the guilty plea, saying: "I know they say they have the right to discipline people for bringing discredit on the Senate. That's a vague standard. That's well beyond where we are in 2007. I can't imagine that 99 other senators want to be judged by that standard." Which Chris Matthews agreed with, saying "Yes, you wonder about all the traffic violations and other kinds of problems [the other senators] would be facing."

Now some people seem to think Sen. Craig's conduct should not be equated with a traffic violation, that it is far more reprehensible and he should be thrown out of the Senate immediately, since he hasn't the decency to resign when he said he maybe would. Personally, I wonder what exactly they think he did. According to a cop in Minnesota, tapping your foot and running your hand along the bottom of a stall wall is grounds for arrest, and I don't doubt the cop knows the signals for "I want to fuck in the bathroom", but hi! It is not illegal to tap your foot, or run your hand, or even to ask a cop if he wants to fuck, or to have sex, even if it's with a man and even if you're married (ok adultery is still technically illegal in some states but it hasn't been challenged since Lawrence so shut up).

Having sex in public is illegal, yes, but it seems that would be rather difficult to prove that was his intent (I don't exactly know the standards describing "conduct which [he] knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment of others, which conduct was physical (versus verbal) in nature”, but that's all they got, which is certainly a long way from sex in a bathroom), and he really shouldn't have pled guilty, but if you listen to the tape you can totally hear the cop convincing him to plea, like cops do, and Christ, people, this is not that fucking big of a deal! Nobody ever died from watching people have sex in a bathroom, whereas quite a few have from being hit by someone who ran a red light or a stop sign or some other garden variety traffic infraction, so what exactly shouldn't be equated with what, here? (Answer: fucking in bathrooms, running red lights.)