Entrapment

Republican Senator Larry Craig, who was arrested for soliciting sex in a men's room but pleaded down to a lewd behavior charge to which he pleaded guilty, initially planned to resign from the Senate, but has decided to rescind his resignation.

Craig is despicable. He is an anti-gay homosexual. He likes a little cock now and then but loathes men who are liberated from the constraints of last-century norms that required him to marry a woman. He can't live with his sexual feelings for men, so he torments and abuses men who are comfortable with those feelings.

The New York Times published an article about his recent decision. Craig Says He’ll Stay in Senate, Defying G.O.P. Wishes

What happened to Craig in a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is as despicable as the man himself.

Police entrapment of men soliciting sex with other men is as old as law enforcement itself. My experience is that it is usually the result of a corrupt prosecutor's office.

Having grown-up in Boston, I watched the antics of Garrett Byrne, the District Attorney of Suffolk County for over forty years. Each election year, Byrne would stage one fantastic bust after another, at which the media happily "reported" the heinous crimes of the alleged criminals. He prosecuted William Burroughs for "Naked Lunch," he busted the plays "O! Calcutta" and "Hair" for nudity. He created crime where there was controversy and he entrapped people whose lives were sometimes destroyed by his actions.

Sex was a favorite scandal for him, and in 1977, his fabricated "Revere Sex Ring" which resulted in the arrest and media-provided public humiliation of 24 men, was his undoing. When progressive media and community activists exposed Byrne's shenanigans, he lost his re-election bid.

An article about the sex scandal (that includes some inaccuracies) can be found at Free Market News.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office was taken over by one of Byrne's senior assistants, Newman Flanagan, who tried to continue his predecessor's antics the following year with a series of arrests in the men's room of the Boston Public Library. I became involved in the defense and support of some of the men arrested in this episode, and the police were more than just a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Publicity of the event went against the D.A., and eventually charges were reduced dramatically or dropped altogether. And old-fashioned entrapment (like the methods used against Larry Craig) fell out of fashion in Boston law enforcement circles.

This sort of entrapment is reprehensible, uncalled for, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. Though I loathe Senator Larry Craig, as I hope everyone will, it is not because he likes to suck a little cock now and then, it is because he is a neo-conservative opportunist who will crush those most marginalized in our society for his own personal gain. He is a scumbag.

But he was entrapped, and that is a different conversation that we have to have.

Is it OK for police to sit in toilets looking for men who are looking for men, and arrest them? Is this the sort of enforcement of the law that taxpayers think makes the world a safer place? I don't think so.

The police might better serve America by arresting men who beat women and rape children and steal large sums of money and deregulate industry.

Entrapment like that that snared Larry Craig is not intended to make the world safer; it are intended to increase arrest numbers and garner publicity for prosecutors and police chiefs. It is politically motivated, and despicable.

And the ACLU thinks it is unconstitutional.

ACLU Says Secret Sting Operation Used to Arrest Senator Larry Craig Was Likely Unconstitutional (9/17/2007)

No matter what you think of neo-conservative senators, entrapment is worse.

And in this day and age, should be non-existent.

Speak-out against entrapment.



Dick Mac Recommends:

The Boston Sex Scandal
Mitzel