The Idaho Stateman’s Dan Popkey, who has been on the receiving end of serious ire from Larry Craig for daring to follow up with Mike Rogers’ stories about the senator’s long history of homosex trolling, calls the senator’s bluff by getting — on audio — descriptions on the record of their dailliances with Craig, including another airport bathroom cruising story, this time in Denver. Guess they’ll have to have a Craig Memorial Stall there too.
David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.David Phillips and Haggard escort Mike Jones surfaced before to tell their tales about Craig, but we have two more men who talked to Popkey and give their names:Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can’t be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.
They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig’s denials, including his famous statement, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.” Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.
Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d’Alene.There is a fifth man from Boise who won’t go on the record, but said thatTom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Bogus Basin in the early 1980s.
He was in a men’s restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider. Alarmed, the man said he waited outside the restroom and then identified the man in the adjoining stall as Craig, whom he had met in Idaho.How is the U.S. Senator from Idaho going to respond to these testimonies of men willing to go on the record about their sex encounters with him:
* David Phillips‘ (left, in 1986; photo courtesy of David Phillips) accounts to the Statesman about oral sex with Larry Craig in 1986 are here and here. [You can also hear an in-depth interview with Phillips from the Mike Signorile Show (see this Blend post with the audio). In that interview, Phillips recalled how paranoid and abusive Craig was when he took Phillips home with him, telling him “you were never here,” and tossed him out of the house after their encounter; he shoved a $20 bill at Phillips, and Craig said “I can buy and sell you a thousand times over.”]
* Mike Jones describes his encounter with Larry Craig.
* Greg Ruth recounts his experience with then-Rep. Larry Craig in a men’s room at a Republican convention in Coeur d’Alene in 1981.
There are more clips at the Statesman site. The ball’s in your court, Larry.
Popkey notes in a sidebar that conservative columnist Robert Novak doubts Craig’s telling the truth, since apparently few in-the-know inside the Beltway were surprised when the initial scandal broke:
Conservative columnist Robert Novak has raised doubts about Sen. Larry Craig’s truthfulness. In his syndicated column Sept. 3, Novak wrote that “several Republican senators and staffers were not a bit surprised” by Craig’s guilty plea in connection with a sex sting.The Freepi, as usual don’t know whether to think this is a liberal smear or to drop-kick Craig. The squirming is delicious. Click through for the fun.On Oct. 5, the day after Craig reversed his pledge to resign, Novak elaborated on Bloomberg Television, saying he’d spoken to several Senate sources about Craig.
“They knew about it,” Novak reported. “They knew he had this problem, and it was in the closet and it was not just a homosexual relationship, it was this weird, weird conduct.”
Actual Freeper Quotes
I want the Republican party to be known as the moral party, it won’t happen with men like Craig serving in the U.S. Senate.
Let the democrats have the Ted Kennedys, Barney Franks, Sheets Byrd, John Kerry etc. (The list is endless)
He was in a men’s restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man [Craig] in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider
Does this sort of thing only happen at airports? Some good boot-stompings of those hands would take care of the problem in no time.
How about we demand the KKK recruiter and murderer and traitor who lied to Congress and aided the enemy in a time of war all leave office too?
That is some standard to “let” the Democrats keep their vile SOBs with no national question of their character. 2 of those 3 were on the way to the presidency.
The denials began June 30, 1982, when CBS broke news of a scandal alleging gay sex between congressmen and underage pages. The following day, before any public allegation that he was involved, then-Rep. Craig issued a denial. Craig married a year later and adopted the three children of his wife, Suzanne. In 1990, the Idaho Statesman asked Craig about an allegation that he was gay made by an opponent in his first Senate race. “Why don’t you ask my wife?” Craig replied.
This is the caliber of man we have elected to represent us and to write our laws.
I don’t give a rat’s tail about Craig’s sex. He is an idiot. I am more disturbed by this guy who wrote the article masquerading as a journalist.
Perfect debate questions for the next liberal debate? Should there be a law against restroom toe tapping? Why shouldn’t liberals be defending Craig? Why is he being force by them to stay in the bathroom I mean closet?
He’s not being forced in the closet he’s being witchhunted out of office.
I don’t much want him in office, but I don’t live in that state. What concerns me more is that Barney Frank is allowed to stay.
Yes, logically one cannot disprove a negative. If people believe he is a homosexual, there is no way he can prove otherwise. Also, another example of where the righteous right hang their own for infractions of the moral code, but the opposition celebrates these infractions. Leaves our candidates open to personal destruction–especially over homosexuality, heterosexual affairs, divorce and so forth. There is nothing to suggest in life or Scripture that conservatives are immune from sin–including sexual sin. Homosexuals are doing their best to prove they are “normal.” What this means to them and the average heterosexual person are different. Want to excite the homosexual community? Simply have a conservative of any stripe or kind imply they are not “normal.” So let the righeous ones rant. Senator Craig will complete his term and the righeous will only discharge their considerable load of hostility.
No wonder Mitt dumped him right away, LOL.
There’s probably something to their tales. Craig is already toast so there’s nothing much to be gained by coming out and lying. Craig, go away!
According to the MSM: If one is a homosexual Marxist, Liberal or Democrat, one is good, moral, courageous, insightful, kind to animals . . . A homosexual Conservative is a low life form unworthy of elected office.
To borrow a phrase, they consider a homosexual conservative to be a “race traitor”. They don’t openly use that term but you will hear “Uncle Tom” used often in print for black conservatives. They’ve tried to extend this argument to class too. They say that “bigoted homophobes” consistently vote against their own “financial interests” because of religious superstition and moral judgements.
Enough already. He shags men.
I’m not sure where this reporter gets his facts, but I don’t believe Haggard ever confessed to having sex with Jones. He admitted a massage and buying meth, but denied he had sex.Hat tip, Rex.
35 Responses to “More men come forward with allegations about sex encounters with Larry Craig”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
This seems like a good place to mention this story which seeks to make every child afraid of being alone with an adult.
It’s not the adults that the kids have to be afraid of but the sanctimonious pedophiles that the catholic church contains.
It seems ridiculous on a few levels to now come up and ‘warn’ children about being alone with ‘adults’ which could cause long term trauma to so many children… Nice job, catholic church… It’s not being alone with an adult that kids need to fear.
Color me unsurprised.
I mean, you don’t just stumble into that level of hypocrisy, overcompensation, and self-loathing.
You have to work at it very hard for a long time.
An ironic aspect of this is that Craig’s statements that he is not gay could be true. He could be bi.
pinky–remember when man-on-dog Santorum blamed Boston for the scandals?
Also a good time to trot this one out–I’d never seen it until searching a few days ago:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0_Vs5570pKw
I’m wondering: what was the purpose of this article?
Virtually no one believes Senator Craig’s “wide stance” bovine feces, and almost everyone figures that he was cruising for some sort of homosexual activity in the Minneapolis airport. He’s apparently not going to resign his seat early, but won’t run for re-election next year. The odds that this article will persuade one person who was not persuaded previously that Mr Craig lied are vanishingly small.
And some of our friends on the left, in the Democratic Underground, have claimed that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a lesbian. Now The Sunday Times has not exactly reported that, but run a story about Dr ice bringing up such allegations from The National Enquirer, describing the Enquirer as “America’s bestselling weekly newspaper,” without ever mentioning that it’s just a sleazy tittilation tabloid, which makes Britain’s “Page Three” journalism look positively staid — except for the pictures, of course.
I could understand the “outing” of Senator Craig, since he voted in favor of traditional marriage and against adding homosexuality as a protected class in federal regulations, even though his votes were clearly consistent with the wishes of his constituents. But Dr Rice is in no way involved with the Administration’s social issues positions; her balliwick has been foreign policy exclusively. Whatever her personal life is, she has kept it private; why don’t people respect that?
Weak, Dana. We’ll explain the Condi Rice thing after you explain why you told Rush Limbaugh it was okay to abuse drugs. Your enthusiasm for being wrong and hanging out here making a fool out of yourself is pathological.
“According to the MSM: If one is a homosexual Marxist, Liberal or Democrat, one is good, moral, courageous, insightful, kind to animals . . . A homosexual Conservative is a low life form unworthy of elected office.”
That, and the similar sentiments surrounding it, is kinda revealing of how the right are misreading the issue. It’s not moral, queer is just normal, and closeted queers on the right are pilloried for lining up to say that it is a moral bigbadwrong and that they’re not just another normal queer person. Every crazy, closeted thing they do makes it more obvious that the out people on the left are the normal ones.
“Perfect debate questions for the next liberal debate? Should there be a law against restroom toe tapping? Why shouldn’t liberals be defending Craig? Why is he being force by them to stay in the bathroom I mean closet?”
Uh… isn’t he being disowned by his own kind? We Democrats just find all this terribly amusing considering the way we’re usually viewed and treated.
I don’t think we honestly want soliciting sex to be a crime.
“To borrow a phrase, they consider a homosexual conservative to be a “race traitor”. They don’t openly use that term but you will hear “Uncle Tom” used often in print for black conservatives. They’ve tried to extend this argument to class too. They say that “bigoted homophobes” consistently vote against their own “financial interests” because of religious superstition and moral judgements.”
The reason we see them as traitors is because they get up on their soapboxes and call us evil, but expect, when it turns out they have no room to talk, that we’ll just be all candy and flowers to them. No. When you work your entire life to limit the freedom and happiness of other human beings, you can’t expect those people to be there for you when it turns out you’re just as bad as you think we are.
I’m using a lot of “us” and “them” language, but of course there’s a lot more to all this. If the man were openly gay (or Bi, as libhomo points out) and fought for his right to live as such without reproach, there wouldn’t be an issue. But he claims group affiliation with people who want to burn homosexuals out of existence or at least deny them any right to live openly with any reasonable sense of security or happiness.
We liberals are amused at the irony that so many self-righteous culture warriors are hypocritical self-haters, but democrats, by and large, aren’t the ones using the legal system to exact punishment on him.
/preaching
Or, to put it another way, a homosexual liberal who campaigns for gay rights and human rights in general is a good person, while a homosexual conservative who seeks to oppress gay people and other minorities (despite the fact that he knows these people aren’t monsters because he’s one of them) is a bad person.
To put it even more simply, people who want to make life better for other people are good, and people who want to make life worse for other people are bad.
For some reason that makes sense to me.
Amanda, when did I tell Rush Limbaugh to take drugs? Have you ever seen me quote Mr Limbaugh or cite him as a source, either here or anywhere else?
(Being the nice guy that I am, I went ahead and did a search for “Limbaugh” on my site, and got twenty returns; not a single one of them used Mr Limbaugh as a source.)
Now waiting on you to explain why Dr Rice possibly being a lesbian makes the first bit of difference to you, given that she is in no way involved in social issue policies.
Or is it your position that if she’s part of the Bush Administration, her sex life (or lack thereof) must matter to you?
OT, but, does the “Marriage is Sacred” argument bother anyone else? It seems like a logical fallacy as an argument against* gay marriage. I thought that America law wasn’t sacred– every has due process, double jeopardy, etc. It seems to me more like an argument to have no marriages seen under the law because certain people can’t get one.
shorter version: no legal marriage since people can’t marry the same gender the same way straights can marry.
*alliteration for the win!
Now back to your regularly scheduled amazings.
“There is nothing to suggest in life or Scripture that conservatives are immune from sin–including sexual sin.”
Jesus, for all his faults, I believe tried to deconstruct the hierarchy of privilege and power which led to widespread hypocrisy, which kind of grated on him I guess.
I’m no Jesus follower, but I think most conservatives of the fundamentalist stripe are probably the most intellectually challenged and dishonest group I can think of in recent history.
Oh and I saw the picture of the present Phillips on the Wonkette site — yow! Good lord, I’d almost print that pic and post it on my wall!
Listening to his story of his encounter with Craig was painful, I think a lot of women can relate to the part of feeling used by powerful men, I know I can.
Phillips’ story is powerful in that it describes so well the power imbalance at play and how Craig used that to his advantage. Sickening.
Dana: I for one couldn’t give a fig about who Condi sleeps with.
Please breath deep, take a pill, go back to where you came from–whatever it takes, but just go away.
You know what Gandhi said about them, right?
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
More accurately, these particular ones today.
It is possible that Craig is a self-hating gay man. Perhaps he really does believe that he is a monster because he can’t control his urges. He certainly does seem to be self-destructive in his behavior.
It’s “Uncle Sully,” not “Uncle Tom” when it’s about us homers.
OT, but, does the “Marriage is Sacred” argument bother anyone else?
Um, yeah. Since when did the state start having sacraments?
That’s true.
If that’s the case, it would be sad if he were not in a position of power. I might even feel sorry for him.
But unfortunately, he is in a position of power that has enabled him to make life more difficult for gay people and in some cases more dangerous (his voting against revising hate crime laws to include gays, for example).
So I can’t get too upset that he’s sort of reaping what he’s helped to sow, which is an environment hostile to gay people. Craig oughtta know that a person can’t just snap their fingers and change their sexuality, and nobody should be punished for something that they’re unable to change.
Shorter Dana: I like men now.
Hey Dana!
I read a ton of liberal blogs, and your comment is the first I’ve heard of Dr Rice being gay. This is, in fact, the first I’ve heard of her sexuality at all. You outed her here! Congratulations!
Now, using your own argument: Why do you hate her so much? Don’t you realize that she doesn’t affect social policy of this kind? She deserves a private life! Why do you think this kind of thing is acceptable.
Considering the weakness of “his” arguments, I think “Dana” is a javascript.
Maybe they’re meant to be homeopathic arguments.
Dana: Now waiting on you to explain why Dr Rice possibly being a lesbian makes the first bit of difference to you, given that she is in no way involved in social issue policies.
Wow. Dana outs Condi Rice (but does not mention the false rumors being spread by conservatives about Hillary Clinton being a lesbian, because Dana is all for ignoring conservative wrongdoing) and then demands that Amanda should explain herself for… what?
Larry Craig, as a gay opponent of equal rights for LGBT people, is of interest, as any closeted LGBT opponent of equal rights is. Craig’s decision that as his party is disloyal to him he will reciprocate that disloyalty to them is the business of the Republican party: if they want to run as the party of homophobia, and evidently they do, they’ve got to find a better strategy of dealing with their gay membership. Or not. Their problem, either way.
I am pretty sure that I read here before– but likely enough, in the comments section– that Condalezza Rice had been househunting with her roommate (same sex and living together for over a decade). Probably after the story about how graciously she had handled swearing-in an appointee with public recognition of his same-sex partner.
Which was handled in a “might explain why she has a good attitude” way, not with the sense of mirth and outrage people have for people who’ve worked against gay rights who get caught doing sex crimes.
In short, Dana is accusing *us* of having a reaction none of us had, simply because someone elsewhere is treating her rather ordinary private life as scandalous, which it isn’t.
Dana, other people /= Amanda.
MM: Had you followed the links, you’d have seen that one was from the Democratic Underground (a far-left blog) while the other was from the mainstream Sunday Times, which took up a story from, of all places, The National Enquirer.
What concerns me about Condi Rice is the narrowness of her expertise in foreign policy, and her dismal performance as National Security Adviser.
To make allegations about her sex life, or to make allegations about alleged smears of Ms Rice, is, IMO, a convenient red herring so that the real problems of Ms Rice are not discussed.
Ms Rice’s job performance, btw, is infinitely more crucial to the country than one Sen. Craig.
J, the Hillary Clinton and her aide story wasn’t one I ever addressed. Last I heard it was probably faked.
Dana: , the Hillary Clinton and her aide story wasn’t one I ever addressed.
Wow, you’ve got chutzpah! Obviously you’ve never addressed it - it’s a story about conservatives spreading what they think of as a damaging rumor about the front-runner Presidential candidate.
But the hell. You bloviate about how you’re “waiting on Amanda” to “explain why” - irrelevantly, double-irrelevantly, yet for some reason this doesn’t apply to you? Why Amanda hasn’t banned you from trolling Pandagon yet is a mystery: I suppose you provide amusement value, at least.
Samantha: In short, Dana is accusing *us* of having a reaction none of us had, simply because someone elsewhere is treating her rather ordinary private life as scandalous, which it isn’t.
Yep. And of course Dana isn’t going to respond to that point, being just bright enough to see he’d better not.
Dana, if somebody unaffiliated with Pandagon is insinuating or flat out stating that Condi is gay on Democratic Underground, and this bothers you, it would seem to make sense for you to take it up with them on Democratic Underground.
This particular thread is about Larry Craig, specifically the new information that’s come to light, and you’ve got a forum (literally) to talk about the Condi thing elsewhere.
Dana, the purpose of the article was expressed entirely in the title, “More men come forward with allegations about sex encounters with Larry Craig”. Even you should be able to figure that one out.
Why do you feel so defensive about the Craig scandal that you would circulate links to *a different site* to discuss its passing of rumors about a completely different person unrelated to this story?
Thanks for letting me know about the Rice sexuality issue though. Last I heard she thought Bush was her husband.
Bush is a shape-shifting lizard from a race of reptiles that lives behind the moon. They are originally from a nother galaxy, but are infiltrating human affairs. I would provide the link, but it’s hard to link to “The One-Half Cherokee Speed Freak Biker Dude I Met at a Dallas Dive Bar Called the Goat in 2002.” Most ominous thing, he assured me that my (not-there-at-the-time) girlfiend would know exactly what he meant, as she was nominally Sufi and this was the fulfillment of an arcane Sufi prophecy. (When I mentioned it, all she said was, Don’t take your shirt off in the bedroom, it stinks like 300 ashtrays.)
Well, link or no link, methinks Amanda has some serious splainin’ to do.
Oops, girlfriend. I swear it wasn’t a Freudian slip.
Craig isn’t gay. He just has sex with men now and again. Totally different. Craig’s much like the guy who wrote to Dan Savage, signing his name “200% Straight,” who wondered whether it was at all problematic that he’d been going to a male masseuse every week for the last six months, and the masseuse blew him at the end of each session. (Maybe one has to be 400% Straight to not get blown by a male masseuse weekly?) The human capacity for rationalization knows no bounds.
Craig isn’t gay. He just has sex with men now and again. Totally different
True. I mean, if he’s
* getting blown, not giving the BJ
* the top, not the bottom
* doesn’t kiss the guy he’s having sex with
* doesn’t engage in cuddling or extended foreplay
he’s straight, that’s obvious.
Right?
[the * are just some of the rationalizations I’ve heard over the years]