What did he do, exactly?

I have been trying to ignore the news cycle - and blogging for that matter - over this long holiday weekend, but something about this whole Larry Craig l'affaire de restroom bugs me.

First, let me make it clear that I have little doubt that the man is a pervert who was looking to engage in public sex in an airport restroom. The description of his actions by the arresting officer makes it pretty clear that Craig was up to something.

With that said, the description of Craig's actions by the arresting officer - which can be read here - also seem a bit ambiguous and quite pedestrian, especially considering the sentence that went along with Craig's guilty plea.

The police report speaks of Craig peering into the officer's bathroom stall from three feet away. How big are the cracks between the door and the stall frame for goodness' sake? It's not as if Craig had his eyeball right up to the crack. The report speaks of Craig fidgeting with his hands, of tapping his foot in the stall, and sweeping his hand under the partition of the adjacent stall, and yes, at one point, Craig's tapping foot made contact with one of the officer's feet. Questionable behavior to be sure, but was this worth a $1,000 fine and ten days in jail (suspended)?

Common sense tells me that Craig was up to no good, but the standards of our legal system operate on a bit of a higher level than just gut instinct. Proof of a crime is also a very necessary component. Other than the slight contact with the officer's foot, what crime do we have? What worries me about this case goes beyond the strange sexual proclivities of one U.S. congressman. What worries me is an American legal system that, more and more, prosecutes and/or convicts people based on flimsy evidence. The Duke non-rape case is a perfect example. The biggest mistake Larry Craig made was to plead guilty to tapping his foot and fidgeting with his hands. I would like to have seen him force the state to prove that propositioning public sex was what he was really up to.

The next thing you know, I will be standing on a curb, away from any crosswalk, and after looking in both directions for no apparent reason, I will be cited for jaywalking because it looked like I was about to cross the street. That may or may not be a lame example of what I am trying to illustrate here, but I hope you see my point. I get very nervous thinking about what the government can start doing to you based on what you might do. It's just too bad that the example I have to use is Larry Craig's distasteful attempt at picking up someone in a public men's room.

Good Day to You, Sir