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Kind of in keeping with what I said above there is this great column by Mark Steyn:

The catchphrase of America’s famous cowboy humorist Will Rogers was “Never met a man I didn’t like.” Judging from the activities at the men’s room of the Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, many of the patrons of said facility evidently feel the same way. George Michael, the stubbly boy rocker of the Eighties, was arrested therein for attempting to play footsie with an undercover cop. “Guilty feet have got no rhythm,” as George famously observed on his hit song “Careless Whisper.” After pleading no contest, he subsequently made a rock video mocking the arresting officer, with George prancing around in police uniform twirling his night stick.

It is not clear if such an option is open to Senator Larry Craig who found himself in a similar situation in the men’s room at Minneapolis International Airport. True, the Idaho Republican was a member of the Singing Senators, the congressional barbershop quartet that also included John Ashcroft, Trent Lott, and Jim Jeffords, and he could, in theory, make a barbershop video mocking the arresting officer with, say, Senator Lott prancing around in police uniform twirling his night stick. But, absent that, Senator Craig has been reduced to the usual grim rituals of political career self-detonation, from the public statement with the tight-lipped wife standing loyally by her husband to the risible explanation (Craig’s foot brushed the Minneapolis officer’s shoe but only because, when using a bathroom stall, the senator has a “wide stance”). “I am not gay,” says Mr. Craig over and over, as somberly and emphatically as President Nixon’s famous insistence that he was not a crook. Any day now, the senator will announce O.J.-like that he’s redoubling his efforts to track down the real homosexual.

The human comedy is not to be disdained. Nonetheless, after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig’s interview with Sergeant Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger’s pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It’s a shame they both can’t lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men’s room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn’t go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. “Never go to a public lavatory in London,” warned Professor Jackson. “I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.”

Just so. Sergeant Karsnia is paid by the police department to sit in a stall in the men’s room all day, like a spider waiting for the flies. The Baron von Richthoven of the Minneapolis Bathroom Patrol has notched up a phenomenal number of kills and knows what to look for — the tapping foot in the adjoining stall, a hand signal under the divider. Did you know that tapping your foot in a bathroom was a recognized indicator that a criminal act is about to occur? Don’t take your i-Pod in with you! Or, if you do, make sure you’re listening to the Singing Senators: Hard to tap your foot to “Sweet Adeline,” and if you do it’s unlikely to be in a manner sufficiently frenzied to attract the attention of the adjoining constables.

What else is a giveaway that you’re a creep and a pervert seeking loveless anonymous sex? Well, according to Sergeant Karsnia, when the Senator entered the stall, he placed his wheelie bag against the door, which (according to the official complaint) “Sgt Karsnia’s experience has indicated is used to attempt to conceal sexual conduct by blocking the view from the front of the stall”.

No doubt. But, if you use the men’s room at the airport, where are you meant to put your carry-on? There’s not many other places in a bathroom stall other than against the door, unless Minneapolis is planning on mandating overhead bins in every cubicle. In happier times, one would have offered some cheery urchin sixpence to keep an eye on one’s bags. But today if you go to the airport bathroom and say to some lad, “Would you like to take care of my wheelie for five minutes?”, you’ll be looking at 30 years in the slammer.

I’ve no doubt Senator Craig went to that bathroom looking for sex. Listen to the tape of his encounter with Sergeant Karsnia and then imagine, as Jonah Goldberg suggested, how the conversation would go if Senators McCain or Webb had been in that stall and were accused of brushing shoes with the flatfoot. Not being privy to the codes of the privy, it would take ‘em 15 minutes even to figure out what Sarge was accusing ‘em of and, when it became clear, the conversation would erupt in a blizzard of asterisks and, shortly thereafter, fists. Instead, Senator Craig copped a plea. Because of that, he should disappear from public life as swiftly as possible and embrace full time the anonymity he cherishes in his sexual encounters. Not, as the left urges, on grounds of “hypocrisy” — because he’s a “family values” politician who opposes “gay marriage” yet trawls for rough trade in men’s rooms. A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It’s quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The Left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, “You’re right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill.” That’s the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the Left’s standards are that whatever’s your bag is cool — which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a “grown woman” free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed “moral standards”, all you have is the law. When it’s no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal.

And so we have the bizarre situation of a United States senator convicted of the crime of brushing his foot and placing his carry-on luggage in the only available space of a men’s room stall. Larry Craig feebly accused Sergeant Karsnia of “entrapping” him but, in fact, the officer didn’t even need to entrap him into anything other than an allegedly intrusive shoe movement. That’s a crime? On the tape, Craig sounds sad and pathetic, a prominent man cornered in a sordid transaction. Yet Karsnia sounds just as weird and creepy: a guy who’s paid to sit in a bathroom stall for hours on end observing adjoining ankles. I’d rather hand out traffic tickets.

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I don't care whether Craig (or anyone) is gay or straight, but trolling for sex in a public bathroom is disgusting.

And his "I am not gay" protestations ring as hollow as Nixon's "I am not a crook."

Incidentally, I passed through the Minneapolis - St. Paul Airport a couple of times over the weekend, but I didn't see any cops or politicians trolling for action.

And to think that he probably paid some consultant to assert that he adopted a wide stance.

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Jim Lesar wants Congress to act, I know.

He believes new work should be done to demonstrate the viability of the acoustics evidence. Of course, the acostics study if true is proof positive (well 95%) of a conspiracy.

Thanks for the information re Kevin Walsh, Stephen!

Tim,

If Lesar wants Congress to act now, how do you know? What does he say?

And whatever happened to the acoustic experts who were making a digital version of the acoustic evidence that Jeff Morley wrote about in the May 2005 issue of Readers Digest?

And what is Kevin Walsh up to these days?

BK

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I don't care whether Craig (or anyone) is gay or straight, but trolling for sex in a public bathroom is disgusting.

And his "I am not gay" protestations ring as hollow as Nixon's "I am not a crook."

Incidentally, I passed through the Minneapolis - St. Paul Airport a couple of times over the weekend, but I didn't see any cops or politicians trolling for action.

And to think that he probably paid some consultant to assert that he adopted a wide stance.

Thanks for your update on the Minneapolis airport Chris, I'm glad there's not an orgy going on.

But I think somebody ought to start a new thread on Craig and Walter Jenkins, as the old public restroom sting has been used at least three times.

BK

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I concur with Bill that we don't need another Congressional investigation or a JFK Truth Czar.

We need access to government-held data and documentation.

I certainly trust people like Larry Hancock to distill that type of information more than any committee that the Congress or President could assign to the task. We have already had a Presidential commission and a House committee investigation.

I confess ingnorance of the JFK Act, but I will search around to find a link and get up to speed on it.

Governmental refusal to open records on aged old crimes and other non-national security matters creates in me (perhaps as a result of being a lawyer) a strong, but potentially rebuttable presumption that it is significant and adverse to the party sitting on it.

By way of example, I recently read "The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul and the Murder that transfixed Los Angeles," by Donald H. Wolfe, which makes a compelling case of mob (Bugsy Segal) and media (the Chandler family) involvement in the case.

More troublesome, though, is the revelation that the LAPD is still sitting on the vast majority of evidence adduced in its investigation of the 60 year old murder.

Does the LAPD actually think that revealing any of the Black Dahlia info could result in someone having a worse opinion of it?

Get real.

Maybe I am too susceptible to CTs in general, but I distrust governmental secrecy on matters which don't involve national security; and, when a governmental body creates and enforces an unnecessary veil of secrecy, I get suspicious.

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I concur with Bill that we don't need another Congressional investigation or a JFK Truth Czar.

We need access to government-held data and documentation.

I certainly trust people like Larry Hancock to distill that type of information more than any committee that the Congress or President could assign to the task. We have already had a Presidential commission and a House committee investigation.

I confess ingnorance of the JFK Act, but I will search around to find a link and get up to speed on it.

Governmental refusal to open records on aged old crimes and other non-national security matters creates in me (perhaps as a result of being a lawyer) a strong, but potentially rebuttable presumption that it is significant and adverse to the party sitting on it......

Now that we have a pretty good handle - it took over a decade - on what the JFK Act released records actually say - it is really, really, necessary to get Congressional oversight hearings on the JFK Act.

That will focus attention on the records destroyed, missing and wrongfully with held.

As for the continuing inquiry into the JFK assassination itself, the records that remain with held are important to the next legal steps - witness despostions, new testimony under oath and convening of grand jury.

But the dominos are lined up in a certain order and you have to knock them down in the right order.

BK

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BK wrote:

But the dominos are lined up in a certain order and you have to knock them down in the right order.

Sorry, Bill, but I became disillusioned with the domino theory after we lost in Vietnam and India did not fall to the Communists.

As I have said before, there is at least one witness (and may be the only one), Carl Jenkins, who, if Gene Wheaton is to be believed, knows who shot JFK. Some of the shooters could arguably still be alive and brought to justice. But if we wait to go through another document production process (what did it take the AARB to go through the last batch. something like four years?) Jenkins may be dead and with his death may go the last chance to solve the case.

But the dominos are lined up in a certain order and you have to knock them down in the right order.

What is your basis for making this statement? Did a MC tell you this? Or is it, simply, your own political analysis? If the latter, what are your qualifications for making it?

Because in my opinion it makes no sense. If we were unaware of any witnesses that needed to be deposed, then your position might make sense. Then we could hope the documents to be produced might reveal the names of witnesses that should be called. But we don't need the document production to get to that point. We already know at least FOUR witnesses who ought to be called as soon as is possible.

I just fail to see your point. Not only are there witnesses that need to be deposed as soon as possible, there are scientific tests that need to be re-evaluated, to-wit, the NAA and thr HSCA acoustic study. If the HSCA acoustic study can be "rehabilitated", so to speak, it alone conclusively proves a conspiracy (absent the miniscule possibility of two lone nuts ending up in DP at the same time).

I am willing to listen to your argument if you can clarify it. To say we have to knock dominoes down in a certain order tells me absolutely nothing.

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BK wrote:

But the dominos are lined up in a certain order and you have to knock them down in the right order.

Sorry, Bill, but I became disillusioned with the domino theory after we lost in Vietnam and India did not fall to the Communists.

As I have said before, there is at least one witness (and may be the only one), Carl Jenkins, who, if Gene Wheaton is to be believed, knows who shot JFK. Some of the shooters could arguably still be alive and brought to justice. But if we wait to go through another document production process (what did it take the AARB to go through the last batch. something like four years?) Jenkins may be dead and with his death may go the last chance to solve the case.

But the dominos are lined up in a certain order and you have to knock them down in the right order.

What is your basis for making this statement? Did a MC tell you this? Or is it, simply, your own political analysis? If the latter, what are your qualifications for making it?

Because in my opinion it makes no sense. If we were unaware of any witnesses that needed to be deposed, then your position might make sense. Then we could hope the documents to be produced might reveal the names of witnesses that should be called. But we don't need the document production to get to that point. We already know at least FOUR witnesses who ought to be called as soon as is possible.

I just fail to see your point. Not only are there witnesses that need to be deposed as soon as possible, there are scientific tests that need to be re-evaluated, to-wit, the NAA and thr HSCA acoustic study. If the HSCA acoustic study can be "rehabilitated", so to speak, it alone conclusively proves a conspiracy (absent the miniscule possibility of two lone nuts ending up in DP at the same time).

I am willing to listen to your argument if you can clarify it. To say we have to knock dominoes down in a certain order tells me absolutely nothing.

TIM,

ALL I AM SAYING IS THAT IT IS EASIER TO GET CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT HEARINGS ON JFK ACT THAN TO GET AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION.

HEARINGS COULD LEAD TO FURTHER OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS.

THATS ALL.

AND ITS ONLY MY ANALYSIS, NOT WRITTEN IN STONE.

PROVE ME WRONG AND I WILL BE HAPPY.

BK

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I am so glad to hear that from you, Bill.

I think it will take a lot of thought by a lot of people and tremendous effort to get an investigation of some sort where witnesses can be interviewed. I have seen your petition for a grand jury proceeding, which would also accomplish what I want to see. But I do not see any of the Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys starting any grand juries. That is why I think we need to work for some type of proceeding authorized by Congress.

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I am so glad to hear that from you, Bill.

I think it will take a lot of thought by a lot of people and tremendous effort to get an investigation of some sort where witnesses can be interviewed. I have seen your petition for a grand jury proceeding, which would also accomplish what I want to see. But I do not see any of the Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys starting any grand juries. That is why I think we need to work for some type of proceeding authorized by Congress.

Tim,

The topic of this thread is U.S. Congress and the JFK Act.

If Congress does what they are suppose to do - mandated to do, Oversee the JFK Act of 1992, then there will be witenesses deposed under oath and testifying before the Waxman Committee or Clay Subcommitte on Information Policy, Census and National Archives. Possibly a joint hearing with members of the National Security subcommitee as well, since most of the postponements are due to "national security" concerns.

Please don't hijack this thread to promote any other possible investigation.

There's already a grand jury thread, and your statement regarding Bush appointed posecutors is unfounded, as they are, for the most part, whether appointed by Clinton or Bush, independent minded authorities who must respond to crime and cold cases evidence.

Congress is now back in session, and after they tackle a few other issues, the JFK Act will eventually be brought to the table, especially if people pester their representatives, not about solving the JFK assassination, but just releasing the records.

BK

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Bill wrote:

If Congress does what they are suppose[sic] to do - mandated to do, Oversee the JFK Act of 1992, then there will be witenesses [sic] deposed under oath and testifying before the Waxman Committee or Clay Subcommitte on Information Policy, Census and National Archives.

Kindly state the specific section of the JFK Records Review Act that "mandates" Congress to do any such thing.

Moreover, if you do not think Congress would authorize a new investigation, what makes you believe these committees will hold hearings and depose witnesses?

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Bill, can you tell us, with a straight face, that you think a committee reviewing compliance with the JFK Records Act of 1992 is going to decide to depose:

(1) Sam Cagnina

(2) Carl Jenkins

(3) Sylvia Odio

(4) Bernardo DeTorres

Frankly, I think it much more likely that when Elvis is next spotted he will be with LHO or Jack Ruby (take your pick) than that that will happen.

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Bill, can you tell us, with a straight face, that you think a committee reviewing compliance with the JFK Records Act of 1992 is going to decide to depose:

(1) Sam Cagnina

(2) Carl Jenkins

(3) Sylvia Odio

(4) Bernardo DeTorres

Frankly, I think it much more likely that when Elvis is next spotted he will be with LHO or Jack Ruby (take your pick) than that that will happen.

No, Tim,

It wouldn't have to.

Congressional hearings on the JFK Act would depose the Secret Service officials responsible for destroying the SS advance reports from Texas AFTER the JFK Act was approved, and similiar government officilas who destroyed records, can't locate documents known to exist and are wrongfully withholding records.

The others should be properly questioned by a grand jury.

I think, however legally qualified, you and Elvis should stay out of it.

BK

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But Bill while you are so busy trying to figure out why the Secret Service destroyed records (most probable reasons: 1. stupidity; 2. cover their derrieres) the men who know who REALLY shot JFK may die of natural causes.

I think the principal issue ought to be who shot JFK.

And let me bet you even three dollars to a doughnut, even if you could recover those documents, they would not tell you who shot JFK. But maybe (and it may be a NOG may be) Carl or Sam can.

BTW, why in the world should I "stay out of it"?

And your grand jury idea ain't going anywhere: 1. To get a grand jury you need a real, live SUSPECT. 2. US attorneys (who are appointed) couldn't care a mouse's tail if they get a petitioned signed by 200 people who don't even live in their district, so your petition is just a waste of time.I am sure you know that US attorneys are not elected anyway.

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Bill, we should really quit arguing and work together since I THINK we both want to see the case solved.

You wrote:

There's already a grand jury thread, and your statement regarding Bush appointed posecutors is unfounded, as they are, for the most part, whether appointed by Clinton or Bush, independent minded authorities who must respond to crime and cold cases evidence.

Well, the first thing that is wrong with that is that you totally disregard the long-established concept of prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors NEED NOT respond to ANYTHING; whether they do is a matter of the exercise of the discretion vested in them.

And re your peition to three or four US attorneys, I challenge you to cite a SINGLE case in the history of U.S. jurisprudence when a federal prosecutor has decided to take up a case because he or she was presented with a large number of signatures requesting they act. Certainly at least for federal, non-elected prosecutors, the degree of public support is (and should be) irrelevant.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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