Craig Against the Machine
Bitter is bitter to see Craig go. Radley doubles down in the typical Balko fashion of making up facts to suit his agenda, in this case, falsely claiming the peeping charges were “thrown out” by the court rather than pleaded out by Craig himself. Beldar charitably describes this misstatement as “confusion.” I’m a bit more cynical myself, given Balko’s long history of systematically “confusing” matters in a way that just happens to help his side of the argument.
As to I say, if Craig’s initial comments had been half as conciliatory as his withdrawal speech, he’d still be in and he’d deserve our support. It’s not like he was accused of robbing a bank or anything. He didn’t do anything untoward in the Senate’s equivalent of the Oval Office, so unless your idea of exalted public institutions includes the “throne” in every stall at MSP, he didn’t even commit an offense analogous to Clinton’s. Besides, even Clinton’s actions shouldn’t have gotten him impeached if it only been about adultery, and not about committing and suborning perjury to cover it up afterward. But when Craig blamed a newspaper for his own actions and called on his fellow citizens to avoid “rushing” to a judgment that had already been entered, that was just lame. Not lame enough to warrant forcible expulsion from a body that doesn’t consider perjury and obstruction of justice impeachable offenses, mind you, but lame nonetheless. By pleading guilty to a minor offense and then refusing to take his lumps for it, Craig went from being a prized asset of the GOP to a liability. He needed to go.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 am
I believe that Radley has the “legalese” right this time. A conviction, whether by finding or plea, is an acquittal of all other crimes which could be charged in that transaction. Beldar seems to imply that a plea of guilty is an admission to every allegation in the police report and every piece of evidence the prosecution might present but the law says the exact opposite. Only those facts which support the elements of the offense to which the defendant pleaded guilty are deemed admitted and the rest are for legal purposes “never happened”.
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:47 pm
There is no “legalese” excuse for the fact that Radley claimed that the peeping charges were “thrown” out rather than bargained away before trial. If a judge had thrown the charge out, that would indicate that there was something genuinely wrong with it. In fact, it was just another bargaining chip, and a useful one to the prosecution at that.
As to your legal theory, it sounds like you are confusing res judicata with the double jeopardy rule. I’m not aware of any legal doctrine standing for the proposition that a conviction for X entails an acquittal for ~X. That’s also beside the point, as no one is arguing that Craig can/should be prosecuted peeping - unless, of course, he succeeds in getting his guilty plea set aside, only to learn to his and Radley’s horror that the peeping charge was never really “thrown” out, after all.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:29 am
These comparisons between Craig and Vitter are kind of annoying. Anyone should be able to see the difference between past, private behavior and on-going, public behavior.