Sen. Larry Craig arrested in airport bathroom for lewd conduct

YOU'VE GOT TO BE FREAKIN' KIDDING ME! Are Republicans trying to lose every election for the next 20 years? Roll Call is reporting that Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was arrested earlier this summer in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport by an undercover officer investigating complaints about sexual activity. The Capitol Hill newspaper says it obtained the arrest report. So far, CNN and several blogs are reporting the news. On Aug. 8 Craig pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. A 10-day sentence was stayed, but he received a year probation and paid more than $500 in fines and fees, Roll Call writes. A spokesman for Craig described the June 11 incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the senator's office would release a fuller statement later today. He said/he said misunderstanding... that has all the marks of an Onion news piece... But don't stop reading now... It only gets better... [...] After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states. I'd be saying that that makes him a bigger loser than George Michael. [...] “At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states. Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.” Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it. “With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.” A caller to Hugh Hewitt's show made the excellent point that if Craig was doing this at high noon and knew all the signals, that this probably wasn't his first time getting busy in a bathroom. What the hell are Republican elected officials doing? Unbelievable...

California state employees' pensions are funding terrorists

Beyond the fact that their pensions will eventually bankrupt the state, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) system invests in companies that do business with terrorists. Double trouble... The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund, and the state teachers' fund would have to unload shares in companies including BNP Paribas of France, Siemens AG of Germany and Eni SpA of Italy. ``Who's funding terrorism? It sure as hell shouldn't be our public employees,'' said Joel Anderson, a Republican assemblyman from El Cajon who introduced the measure. ``When you're looking at the war on terrorists, this is one of the best weapons we have -- just defunding them.'' Anderson estimated his legislation would affect $24 billion worth of investments. [...] Calpers and the California State Teachers' Retirement System control $388 billion in investments. The legislation would affect overseas-based companies, since U.S. businesses are already mostly barred from trading with the countries on the State Department list: Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and Syria. Some might say these companies can't be that bad, can they? BNP Paribas has current investments in Iran valued over $2 billion including directly lending cash to the Iranian government (and they still can't seem to pay back the Russians for their nuclear technology). And on top of that BNP was probed by British intelligence for its involvement in the Iraq Oil for Food scandal. Siemens AG is a leading telecommunications company that has done billions on dollars of work in Iran on their cell phone and fixed line networks. They also did business with Saddam's regime in Iraq selling him devices called lithotripters. These devices were designed for medical purposes but their electric switches can be used as nuclear detonators (think that will come up in the Plame hearings?). Eni SpA, an energy company, currently has $4 billion in investments in Iran with stakes in Iran's oil fields of up to 60%. They continue to help Iran develop their extnesive oil reserves. There are some 400 companies that do business with nations that sponsor terrorism. The Center for Security Policy has a list of the 12 worst offenders. Siemens AG is #1 on that list; BNP Paribas is #4 and Eni SpA is # 6. Other companies you may have heard of that are on their Dirty Dozen list are Alcatel SA, Statoil ASA, Stolt Nielsen, Technip Coflexip, Hyundai, Total SA, Lundin Petroleum, Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., and PetroChina. Considering all this CalPERS and CalSTRS representatives currently have no position other than to say that they don't invest directly in Iran. That's brilliant. I'm still in shock that Saddam was sold technology that could easily be used as triggers for a nuclear weapon...

Illiegal immigrants helping build the border fence

Doesn't get much more ironic than that... [ed. note - I actually had this post ready last Friday, just never got around to posting it. My bad...] SAN DIEGO -- A Southern California fence-building company and two executives pleaded guilty Thursday to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and agreed to pay a combined penalty of $5 million. The executives could also go to prison. The penalty is one of the biggest fines ever imposed in an immigration case, and the case represents a rare instance in which prosecutors brought criminal charges over the hiring of illegal immigrants. Golden State Fence Co. will pay $4.7 million. Mel Kay, 64, the company's founder, chairman and president, will forfeit $200,000, and Michael McLaughlin, 42, a manager in the company's Oceanside office, will pay $100,000. Illegal immigrants building a fence to keep illegal immigrants out of US... I guess you really can hire illegals for any job... literally... any job. What the article doesn't mention is that this is the fourth time this company has been cited for hiring illegal immigrants, so I'm not sure what's worse... that the company had to be fined 4 times or that the government hired them knowing they already been fined 3 other times.

Iraq Commission Report

Between work and all things associated with the great Baby Countdown of 2006, I haven't had a lot of time to blog (not even a fantasy football update... I'm in the playoffs and won the first round game...). But I still wanted to put up a post on the Iraq Commission Report and what I though would be just another useless bureaucratic report. But then there's this piece by the esteemed Michael Ledeen who's thoughts are that the report made some good points, even if they were 180 degrees opposite of what they should have recommended. At first I, too, thought the Iraq Surrender Commission Report was a total downer. But I’m more and more convinced that it was a great blessing. Not that they intended it to work out this way, but the Wise Men (and the token Lady) have elevated Iran to its rightful place in our national squabble over the war: dead center. The Surrender Commission Report underlines the basic truth about the war, which is that we cannot possibly win it by fighting defensively in Iraq alone. So long as Iran and Syria have a free shot at us and our Iraqi allies, they can trump most any military tactics we adopt, at most any imaginable level of troops. Until the publication of the report this was the dirty secret buried under years of misleading rhetoric from our leaders; now it is front and center. Either deal effectively with Iran, or suffer a humiliating defeat, repeating the terrible humiliation of Lebanon in the Eighties when Iran and Syria bombed us out of the country (thereby providing the template for the terror war in Iraq). The Surrender Commission members do not shrink from humiliation. They want American troops out of Iraq, and therefore they advocate appeasing the Syrians and Iranians. But a considerable number of Americans don’t want to be humiliated by the clerical fascists in Tehran, and I think it’s fair to say the recommendations have largely bombed, despite the flattering photos in Vogue, and the fawning attention from the MSM, including Time’s respectful parroting of (what they must know is) mullah disinformation, and reporting, with an obvious tone of sadness, that the Baker/Hamilton call for talks is more popular in Tehran than in America. Read the rest of the article. Ledeen's always worth it. Who'd have thunk they'd get it right but totally the wrong way... I guess that kinda falls under the 12 monkeys, with 12 typewriters, theory on luck in writing...

Riverside county to add more toll roads to IE freeways

What a bunch of CRAP! $2 billion and we can't get any regular freeway lanes on the 15 and 91?! WTF! In what members hailed as a "monumental" and "breakthrough" decision, the Riverside County Transportation Commission voted 22-0 to approve a multifaceted project list that will draw money from a variety of sources to pay for the improvements. Those sources range from developer fees to sales tax revenues raised through voter-approved Measure A to funds made available through a recently passed state transportation bond. The commission also voted 21-1, with county Supervisor Bob Buster casting the dissenting vote, to endorse the idea of building toll lanes in two places: on a portion of Highway 91 that would connect with the Orange County Transportation Authority's toll lanes to the west and on Interstate 15 from Highway 74 to the border with San Bernardino County to the north. Traffic on those freeways is shit! And there's plenty of room to add lanes, and they're going to waste it making toll roads! Bureaucratic IDIOTS! What... they don't steal enough from us in taxes that they've got to hit us with toll roads if we'd like to go 20 miles in less than 2 hours? Bob Buster seems to be the only one with any minute amount on sense on that committee... Friggin' toll roads... Morons.