Shots in the Dark

The Wall Street Journal has called for Larry Craig’s resignation.

Senator Craig was elected by the people of Idaho, and it is properly a matter between them and him whether he should finish his term. We agree, however, with those in his party who want the Senator to forgo re-election next year. The Republican Party needs to get its house in order. It is a mess. And that cleanup should include the living room, the library, the front porch and, we daresay, the restroom.

Ouch.

Did someone say sweep? The Yankees beat the Red Sox, again, and cut Boston’s lead to five.

The New Zealanders again show the environmental commitment typical of that nation. They post this on their home page:

Crowded House have teamed up with non-profit environmental group Reverb to descrease their carbon footprint while on tour. As well as working with Reverb to minimise and offset all of the estimated CO2 emissions on their tour, Crowded House are using B20 BioDiesel on their tour busses.

Fans can do their bit too by offsetting the impact of their own travel to the shows. “Time to Change” stickers, available at merchandise booths at the shows for a $5 donation, include a carbon credit equivalent to 150 miles of driving to help towards neutralising the CO2 your journey to the concert created. Click here for more details, and to find out what you can do to combat climate change.

Good on ya, mates.

Here’s an idea: Why don’t the Democratic presidential candidates, who with their private jets leave a considerable carbon footprint, do the same?

Yale president Rick Levin is considering adding some 200 students a year to Yale’s freshman classes, Bloomberg’s Brian Sullivan reports.

“The principal reason for moving up is that we are turning down so many great kids,” Levin said. “The applicant pool is so much larger, and selectivity is so much greater.”

… Harvard isn’t considering adding undergraduates, spokesman Robert Mitchell said.

But that’s not really true, is it? Isn’t boosting undergraduates one option of the Allston plan?

The good news: A Chinese scientist spotted and filmed a baji, or river dolphin, proving that there is at least one left.

The bad news: It won’t make any difference. Whether there are one or a few, there aren’t enough to save the species.

“We have to accept the fact, that the Baiji is functionally extinct. It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world,” said August Pfluger, a noted Baiji expert and head of baiji.org, a group that seeks to protect the dolphin.

While the New York Times reports that fellow Republicans think Larry Craig should resign, the Washington Post takes us deep inside the anonymous world of bathroom sex.

While the Craig case has created another political scandal, with two Republican senators yesterday calling for his resignation, it has also pulled back the curtain on a sexual practice that takes place furtively, in the most public of places, and on the police stings designed to rout it.

The article gives new meaning to the three-second rule, which most people would probably associate with the amount of time you can leave dropped food on the floor and still eat it….

Meanwhile, the Times says that Craig has been stripped of his committee seniority, meaning he’s now basically in his first week as a senator, in terms of seniority. Read that as an attempt to embarrass him into resigning.

Also, it is my completely unscientific sense that the phrase “wide stance” has entered the lexicon as a source of considerable humor.

Here, for example, the New York Post, in its “Are You a Gay Senator” test*, asks, “Do you take a ‘wide stance’ in public bathrooms?”

Will Craig resign?

My guess? Yes, on the day and time indicated above.

Will the Republican Party use this sad story as an opportunity to reconsider its hateful positions towards gay people, many of whom happen to be Republican?

Not a chance.
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“Man, at that age, I’ll be cutting grass in my backyard.”
—David Ortiz on the 45-year-old Roger Clemens, as the Yankees beat the Red Sox! the Yankees beat the Red Sox! again.

I don’t go around anywhere hitting on men, and by God, if I did, I wouldn’t do it in Boise, Idaho! Jiminy!

—Larry Craig, yesterday

Larry Craig: Still Not Gay
—The Washington Post

Despite a published report that he once fellated a man in a bathroom in Washington’s Union Station, Larry Craig insisted yesterday that he isn’t gay.

“I’m not gay,” he said.

This despite the fact that in 1999, during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Craig said—and I promise, I’m not making this up—

It’s a, ‘Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You’re a naughty boy.’ The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

Um…senator? You’re gay.

“Put on a nice outfit and some makeup and you’re the bomb.”
—Maria Sharapova