Larry Craig maintains his innocence and now his kids are joining the chorus:

All three of Craig’s adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father’s assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest.

Jay Craig, 33, told The Associated Press that he, his brother, Michael Craig, 38, and his sister, Shae Howell, 36, spoke candidly with their father about the June 11 arrest.

“Our conclusion was there was no wrongdoing there,” Jay Craig said. “We understood the direction he was taking (by pleading guilty) and there was nothing illegal that happened there that would even convince somebody what he was doing was illegal. He was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time when this sting operation was going on.”
There are several facts that fly into the face of this defense.

1. I have read twenty or so homosexual web sites and none of them suggests that Craig’s behavior should be considered innocent or inconsistent with homosexual cruising patterns.
2. Have you ever been sitting on a public toilet and decided to pick up a scrap of toilet paper lying beside your toilet? Me neither.
3. The tape of Craig’s interrogation at the police station shows quite obviously that Craig is a liar so bold, so slimy, so pathological, he could run for Congress. Oh, wait . . .

Certainly he could beat the rap if it goes to court. Plenty of guilty people beat raps every day in our court system. The standard of proof there is much higher than in the world of common sense. But in the court of common sense, it is quite obvious to any informed observer that Craig was soliciting sex in a public washroom, and such behavior is rightly proscribed by law.

I just got back from Texas where I preached a funeral and visited with my sister for a few days. My brother-in law, Joel Butts, died two weeks ago. They only recently discovered that he had heart problems. After surgery and horrible complications, he’d finally made a complete recovery and was feeling fine, going to his construction job every day. Then he woke up one night with chest pain, collapsed in the driveway, and died quickly at the hospital. We don’t know what went wrong.

As you can see from the recent picture, he was a big ol’ guy and only fifty five years old. He was good to me. He was good to everybody. It hurts to see him go. I wish I knew more people like him.

I heard a story once about a man who came into a country store and asked “Where’s Earl?” and the worker behind the counter answered “Earl don’t work here no more.” So the man then asked “Well, who’s filling his vacancy?” and the answer came back “Earl didn’t leave no vacancy.”

Joel left a big ol’ vacancy. He had no enemies and his friends loved him dearly — but none so much as my sister. She’ll recover one day, but for now she’s overwhelmed by grief.

Bloggers are currently covering the Internet with writings about Senator Larry Craig (R-ID). The charges against him and his denials are well known, so I’ll skip all that and just proceed.

Back when I was just a little right-wing extremist, Larry Craig was one of my heroes. We’re talking 1983-86 here. I knew nothing about him personally. I only knew that he voted the way I wished all legislators would vote. To my knowledge, he has continued to vote that way.

But a public servant has a position of leadership and responsibility that goes beyond the way he votes. As a representative, he stands in the place of his constituents. That’s why we have ethics committees in the House and Senate. Soliciting sex in a washroom is not consistent with public office.

I never knew Craig as a moral example, nor did I know him to go around telling others how immoral they are. He voted in ways that are good for America, even if he lived in a way that wasn’t. He is a liar (for denying it), but I don’t see him as a hypocrite. Still, he needs to be out of office, along with a slew of others who are just like him or worse.

Ron Paul is the most consistent conservative running. He articulates his principles here. There are other good men in the race, such as Duncan Hunter, but none understands constitutionalism so well as Paul, nor does any have the will to be as consistent. And none is so slandered and misquoted.

Zimbabwe has become something of a weekly sitcom with Mugabe as the leading clown. According to Telegraph.co.uk, Mugabe’s government has printed so much worthless money, the inflation rate is 4,500%. This means, of course, that someone holding a loaf of bread on his store shelf has to charge forty-five times more than he used to in order to keep pace. But since a worker’s salary hasn’t yet been raised to forty-five times what it used to be, the rising prices are a hardship.

This governmental method of stealing (counterfeiting money) is as old as money itself. First Mugabe drove off or murdered the white farmers and put their land into the hands of nonwhite incompetents, then the resulting mismanagement caused widespread poverty which Mugabe addressed by printing up truckloads of money. Having inflated the economy with the counterfeit money, Mugabe has now blamed the storekeepers for the resultant rising prices and has mandated price controls.

Price controls always, without fail, produce shortages of goods and services, which in turn produces hoarding and black markets, which then evoke police repression and violence. Any ninth-grader can follow the logic in this economic chain of cause and effect.

But that doesn’t stop folks like Mugabe from waddling around and blaming it on shopkeepers who are working to foment civil unrest as part of a British plot to topple him.

So I wake up on my birthday and what do I see in the weather forecast? “Thunderstorms possible.” What a revolting development!

We’ve had a drought in Memphis this year. There was almost no rain in May, and not much to speak of before that. But the last couple of weeks in June saw it rain “right smart” now and then, so things are looking up. (“Right smart” is an expression I learned in the woods of northeast Mississippi.)

Who likes thunderstorms? Well, farmers do. You know, the guys who make it possible for us to eat and not starve to death.

Therefore, on the day when we customarily look back and ask “How did my life turn out this way and will it ever change?” I have to acknowledge that the forecast is, indeed, possible thunderstorms. They’re ugly, they’re sometimes dangerous, but they’re the only way to stay alive. So bring ’em on.

It’s true. I am now a network engineer.

The lesson for us all, do not flush your underwear down the toilet.

Yesterday I received more details about the theft of the air conditioning units at my church. It was only six units that they hit, and they didn’t take the entire unit, but only the coils in it (scrap copper). What’s left behind is worthless, though.

The estimate for the replacement costs was in the neighborhood of $26,000.

Last night they came back and hit the remaining units. That’s probably about $45,000 more in replacement costs, but that’s just my guess right now. (They were different sizes than the first ones.)

Our property is covered with security cameras, so we have video footage of the thieves coming and going. You’ve seen such images on, say, news coverage of a bank robbery. You can clearly see that the suspect has two arms, two legs, one head, etc.

It’s Monday and I am reminded of one of my favorite one-panel cartoons. Two old black men wearing overalls are sitting on the front porch of a house in the country, guitars across their laps, and one holds up a tiny object and complains to the other, “It’s this *&^% Prozac. I ain’t had the blues in weeks!”

I’ve never understood “blue Mondays” or other excuses for being miserable. Oh, I understand being miserable all right. I used to do it whenever possible as a teenager. I wore sunglasses, even at night. I slumped. I wrote sad stories and I played sad songs. “Poor me.” One day I realized that nobody cared that I was so miserable. I thought that they should see me, feel my pain, commiserate, pet me, and admire my nonconformity. Instead they just went on about their lives and I found myself ignored. What a revolting development.

So I grew up, and I find that it’s much better up here. Now I wake up happy that I have another day to live in, and on Monday I’m happy that I get to start another week. Even though the week began yesterday, I have the same clock in my brain as everyone else and I tend to “start” on Monday. Who feels bad on Monday? I can’t understand it.

The morning’s work and study are done. A French-pressed cup of High Point coffee is smoking on the computer desk, and I’m about to hit the road and solve plumbing problems for people who need it badly. (That’s a tautology. By definition, if you need a plumber, you need him badly.) And they even pay me money. The temperature in Memphis was 72 degrees this morning and it’s 73 now. The air was ionized by some front that came through last night. It’s close to paradise.

Except for one thing: thieves came and stole the air condtioning units at our church last night. As I remember, we have about twelve. Well, we had about twelve. We’re at zero presently, and today is the first day of summer school at our K-12 Christian school. I guess if I were over there, I wouldn’t be in such a good mood. Those big honkers cost oh, $3,000 apiece, plus labor (I’m guessing). But that’s how the world has always been. Wherever anyone has been happy, he has been near others who were suffering.