A closeted gay Republican? I find that hard to believe.
Well, maybe the Senator was signaling for help because he was out of toilet paper. Ever think of that? Hmm?
Y’all are rushing to judgment.
Or tapping out Bible verses in Morse Code.
Why will no one read my post titles 
That is just not like you Bricker. Opining about a legal case you know nothing about. You think he did not have legal counsel to advise him on what success he could expect fighting the charges? Given the issue and how it plays to his constituency, if he had a hope in hell of beating the charges one would think he would have mounted an expensive defense. He didn’t. He plead guilty to one of the more heinous things people of his ilk can imagine. Sure we don’t have all the details. Sure what has been described thus far hardly amounts to criminal conduct. But to misuse a latin phrase, Res Ipsa Loquitur. The guilty plea speaks for itself. How the fuck can you know “he could have succesfully fought the charges”? You know more from a few vaguely worded newspaper articles than his defense team who actually, you know, reviewed the actual evidence? I wonder if his being a so called, though not apparently, conservative has anything to do with your rush to innocent judgment.
While the evidence is questionable, the guilty plea isn’t.
This guy is an idiot for
(A) soliciting sex in a public restroom;
(B) soliciting sex in public as a Senator;
© soliciting extramarital sex in public as a Senator;
(D) soliciting extramarital sex in public as a Republican Senator;
(E) soliciting gay sex in a public restroom as a Republican Senator;
(F) pleading guilty;
(G) all of the above.
Here’s his statements:
“At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions,” he said. “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
“At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct,” he said. “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”
I smell a motion to set aside guilty plea.
Can that be done post sentencing in Colorado?
I’ve been on the receiving end of one of these invitations, and there is no mistaking what it is. You may absently tap your foot, but I’m betting you do it in your own stall, no?
That would’ve been in the local papers for weeks though. A guilty plea means everything is over fast, and then he can claim that it was all a misunderstanding and hope that his supporters forget about it.
Umm…Bricker said he thought he was guilty. Indeed thats probably the conclusion that most people who read the details of the police report would think, which again is probably why he pled guilty, to get it out of the papers as quickly as possible. The actual penalty for breaking the law was probably pretty minor, its the court of public opinion that could cost him his job.
ETA: yea, the penalty was a minor fine and unspervised probabtion.
Also, of all the bathrooms to solicit sex in, why would people choose an airport restroom. Is there anyplace else with more bored security personnel then an American Airport.
Do you think his only thought was whether he would be convicted or not? If he fought it, he would have laid his life open to public exposure. I think he may well have gotten off given the evidence the links suggest. But my guess is that he thought he would have been outed had he fought the charges. I’m presuming his hope was that it would blow over if he paid the fine, or if it came out, he could make the kind of denials that he is making now.
It’s just truly sad that this is relevant for his political career. Not that him and his ilk haven’t made it so, and not that countless others don’t suffer way more than he is because of laws that he has supported.
Why Colorado?
Poorly worded on my part. What I was getting at is that it would be fine for Bricker to state that based on the evidence given in the papers that he could possibly have beaten the charges. I would agree. But Bricker is a lawyer and damn well knows that what is printed in newspapers rarely reflects the extent of the evidence. For him to barge in claiming the “respected” “gentleman” from Colorado could beat the charge is ludicrous. Maybe he could, none of us knows what evidence the state had. The senator did and he plead guilty. It is not like he is a babe in the woods. He had access to the best legal services this country has to offer. He chose to plead guilty. I understand that often people plead guilty to things of which they are innocent and I understand their motivation. I have seen it frequently, first hand. But in this case, for a bastion of the conservative party to plead guilty to this charge is tantamount to admitting to being worse than a murderer. Not that I think it is, but many of his constituents probably do. I just think it is funny to see yet another republican hoisted on his own petard.
Idaho, Colorado they all look alike…
Another closeted gay gay-bashing Pub gets in trouble? This is starting to get boring . . .
Craig’s is fairly boring by sex-scandal standards, but I love how the more conservative the more messed up the scandal usually. Not that it much matters since he’s no longer a senator, but if Santorum ever gets caught in a sex scandal- man, it’s probably going to involve chickens, dead hitchhikers, electrodes, and Cher wigs.
As I said before, I don’t think it matters much to him whether he is found guilty or innocent by the court (I’m sure he can cover the 500$ fine) as to whether he is perceived as being guilty by the voting public (though I seriously doubt even the most conservative of them think gay sex is worse then murder). And getting it off the papers makes it much less likely that people will read the fairly incriminating details, as well as encourage the press to delve deeper into his (presumably not completely heterosexual) sex life.
As to the rest of your post, I’ll let Bricker defend himself, but for what its worth my non-lawyer self agrees, he could’ve beaten the rap on this. It’s always possible there’s some huge incriminating detail the paper is leaving out, but the Roll Call article seemed to have posted most of the major points from the person who was basically the only witness (the cop), so I’m not sure what such a detail would look like.
This is the third Pub congressman, right? I’m loosing track.
You forgot to add
(F.5) soliciting gay extramarital sex in a public restroom as a Republican Senator just slightly over a year before his next reelection campaign.
But, of course, now I think Idaho might see a contest for an empty seat instead.
Neither one applies.
It happened here at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and it was a Hennepin County Judge who heard the plea and gave him a sentence (a pretty light one, actually). So any appeal would start here in Minnesota.
And he obviously pled guilty and took the sentence in the hope of getting through this undetected – without it becoming publicly known to his conservative voter base. (And that almost worked. Note that this happened back in early June – nearly 3 months ago, yet it’s just hitting the news now. Not that the conservative papers in his home state won’t ignore it for as long as they can, and then drop coverage as soon as they can. That’s what they did with the previous gay scandals by this guy.)
Damn straight. The thing that jumped out at me on this one is that it broke in Roll Call (then the Washington Post and now TIME) eight weeks after the event took place. In DC terms we call this ‘missed it by THAT much’ in terms of getting away with it.