Here are some observations on a couple of this week's big news stories.
Senator Craig
You may have heard that Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho, got busted in June in an airport in St. Paul, Minn., for "interference with privacy" and "disorderly conduct."
According to the cop report, there were several complaints about lewd conduct in airport bathrooms, and airport cops busted a few people and were running a bit of a sting operation.
Wrong place, wrong time for Sen. Craig.
So the airport cop sits in a stall in the bathroom and Craig shows up. Craig lurks outside the stall for a couple minutes, looking in at the cop a few times. Enough times for the cop to note that Craig has blues eyes.
Then Craig gets in the stall next door to the cop and starts playing footsy and running his hand along the bottom of the stall where the cop can see it. He touches the cop's foot with his.
The cop, having been in this situation before, recognizes this as the behavior of a man who wants to hook up in the restroom. The officer shows his ID under the stall and asks Craig to exit where the arrest is made.
Craig showed the cop his U.S. Senator ID and asked, "What do you think of that?"
The cop must not have thought much of it because Craig pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor "disorderly conduct" charge on Aug. 8.
When the guilty plea became public, a firestorm of controversy erupted in the U.S. Senate.
Craig's been stripped of all his leadership positions and legions of his fellow Republican Senators are calling for him to resign.
He's supposed to announce today whether he'll listen to them.
Amazingly and conversely, Democrats aren't calling for him to resign. They're saying, "Hey, it's just a misdemeanor. Let the voters decide."
My guess is the bizarre politics involved in this is driven by the fact that the cop was a male.
It has the whole gay vibe, even though Craig - a big proponent of family values and a big opponent of gay marriage - emphatically denies being gay. (He's not a gay man, he just plays one in airport restrooms.)
The whole incident makes Craig - and the GOP - look more than just a little hypocritical, so off with his head.
But wait. There was a Republican Senator from Louisiana whose name appeared in the little black book owned by the D.C. madam.
Sen. David Vitter publicly apologized for being linked to the D.C. madam's ring of hookers in Washington.
And if that's not enough, another madam outed him as a client at a high-priced brothel in New Orleans.
Vitter told his Senate colleagues he was sorry and that he and his wife went to counseling.
That very week, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told USA Today that "Vitter got a warm response from GOP colleagues when he addressed them during the party's weekly luncheon."
Aw, that's so nice. They're all supportive of their Senate buddy. You know - boys will be boys, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Meanwhile, Demos wanted Vitter's head on a stick.
So let's review the political dynamics:
If you're a Republican U.S. Senator and you cavort with hookers, you'll be embraced by Republicans and castigated by Democrats.
But if you're a Republican U.S. Senator and you cavort with a would-be gay guy, you'll be castigated by Republicans and embraced by Democrats.
I would guess the converse of this phenomenon is true, I just don't have any examples.
But given the current state of affairs in the U.S. Senate, it probably won't be long before I do.
Why can't anybody see that all these disgusting guys need to resign?
Katrina Anniversary
I will concede the response to Hurricane Katrina by the Federal Emergency Management agency two years ago wasn't all it could have been.
But then, I don't think anyone could have anticipated the level of destruction, either.
And to make political hay out of it seems a bit absurd. Do you suppose things would have went a whole lot better if John Kerry would have been president?
But that's the way politics is these days. It's as partisan and divisive as I have seen it in my lifetime.
When there is a natural disaster of Katrina's magnitude, I think it pretty much outstrips the governments ability to respond properly.
What do you suppose will happen when "the big one" hits California? I say when - not if - because that's what all the seismologists say. I know what will happen. There will be an inadequate response and whatever party is in charge will get ripped to shreds by the other party.
The government has spent or set aside about $127 billion for the five states hit by the hurricanes in 2005. Around 80 percent has been disbursed. More will be sought to rebuild and upgrade levees around New Orleans.
Let's put this in perspective.
If, for example, the government would have deposited the money into the bank accounts of all 300,000 residents of New Orleans, each would have received $425,000.
In Mississippi - I couldn't find the number for Louisiana - the government spent $23.5 billion.
The Bioloxi Sun-Herald notes that would be enough to buy two average-size houses for each of the 65,000 families who lost their homes in Mississippi.
"And there would be enough left over to buy each family a brand-new Honda Accord to drive between their two $166,000 houses. That's the Ex-L, V-6 model will all the extras, not the base model."
Even so, there are still tons of people who can't return to their homes and tons of work remains to be done.
Basically, the Katrina recovery has been fraught with fraud and waste, but that's because it's being driven by politics.
When you're getting hammered on to do something - anything - by your political opponents, you do something - even if it's wrong. If the polls say you need to do more, you do more, without regard for results.
You throw money at the problem, whether it's efficient or not.
Whatever you say about the Katrina relief effort, you can't say it's been cheap.
Alberto Gonzales
I think it was past time for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to go.
I just couldn't perceive him as an honest, upstanding guy.
The attorney general is supposed to uphold the laws, not interpret and rewrite them. The firing of the federal prosecutors, the torture-is-OK doctrine and the justification of warrantless wire tapping was all unsettling enough. But when the guy and his department came up with the idea that the Constitution doesn't really guarantee habeas corpus, that was a bit much for me to take.
And his performance during the Senate hearings when he tried to explain away the firings of those prosecutors was absolutely pathetic.
I think his problem was he was too easily swayed by the administration.
I think people in the administration were pushing pretty hard for this stuff and Gonzales, feeling the need to stand behind his longtime friend - W - acquiesced.
He just couldn't bring himself to do the right thing.
