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To: nathanbedford
I am inclined to agree with you in regard to vice laws and their enforcement by a state that is skirting the boundaries of its own Constitutional mandate in even addressing them in the first place. However, there are in my view certain overweening issues involved with this particular case.

The first involves the business of the state in prohibiting public sex. There are serious public health issues involved here that in my estimation do fall within the Constitutional purview of the state. Whether this may be extended to solicitiation of sex in public is highly debatable. However, in practice is isn't only solicitation that goes on in these places, it's the act itself, hence the interest of the state in preventing it by discouraging its precursor. I can see both sides of this but am tempted to conclude that were solicitation the only thing involved it shouldn't be illegal. But that brings us to the second point.

It was illegal. Whether this was by virtue of malum in se as the moralists (and the hygienists) would have it, or merely malum prohibitum, the fact is that it was illegal and Mr. Craig was a professional in the business of making law for others. One might or might not support such a law as the one he pleaded guilty to breaking, but the fact of the matter is that as a public servant he is, in my estimation, absolutely obligated to obey it. The rest of us are. If it is a bad law we should review it, but in the meantime it is the law.

One of the most corrosive actions possible with regard to controlling the size of government is to exempt those making the laws from following them. In the Kennedy, Studds, and Frank cases (among many, many others) we already have this sort of de facto exemption in place. That does not mean we should expand it to be "fair", it means we should contract it by applying the law across the board. In practice we have a long way to go to effect this, but that does not mean we should abandon it.

The legal verdict already is in in this case - a guilty plea. The moral verdict will have to wait until Craig stands before his Maker. The professional verdict, however, is strictly between Craig and his employers, the citizens of Idaho, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what that verdict would have been were he to have stood for re-election.

43 posted on 08/31/2007 4:28:56 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill
Thank you for articulating is so well, in fact better than I did, my observations about Craig's hypocrisy, especially as a lawmaker.


52 posted on 08/31/2007 4:42:54 PM PDT by nathanbedford ("I like to legislate. I feel I've done a lot of good." Sen. Robert Byrd)
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To: Billthedrill
There are serious public health issues involved here that in my estimation do fall within the Constitutional purview of the state.

Those public health issues (which are real) are IDENTICAL in the privacy of one's own home.

The real issue is that what Senator Craig was doing was disgusting and perverted. I'm not sure the law offers a solution in our time.

I'm certain the public health law doesn't.

65 posted on 08/31/2007 5:00:57 PM PDT by Jim Noble (Trails of troubles, roads of battle, paths of victory we shall walk.)
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