The Jeff Gannon Affair drew our attention to the fact that a male prostitute can sleep over at the White House on multiple occasions. The Tom Foley Affair alerted us to the phenomenon of conservative Republican lawmakers' passion for teenage pageboys. The Ted Haggard Scandal showed us that conservative Republican preachers who sermonize against gay rights can smolder with lust for man-to-man action. The arrest of Republican Florida State Rep. Bob Allen at a park in Central Florida, showed us that the coauthor of a recent public lewdness bill can lewdly solicit sex from an undercover male cop. And now, the Larry Craig Scandal draws our attention to the phenomenon of conservative Republican lawmakers firmly opposed to gay rights getting off on impersonal anonymous homo-sex in men's room toilet stalls.

It looks like two more conservative "family values" Republican senators may be "outed" soon, by Mike Rogers, the same blogger who originally fingered Craig. The gay activist claims that South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham is gay. More interestingly, he claims that, "Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's quick expulsion from the Army--for fondling a private's privates--is finally being discussed in Kentucky." He notes that McConnell, discharged after just 10 days in the Army in 1967, "has consistently prevented anyone from seeing his military discharge papers" but a Freedom of Information suit may bring them to light. (After the revelation of Craig's arrest and confession, McConnell cosigned a statement with other top Republican legislators stating, "This is a serious matter" and indicating he is examining "other aspects of the case to determine if additional action is required.")

The demise of mountain state Republican Senator Larry Craig amuses those of us who enjoy watching right-wing heroes crash to the ground, spiked on their own hypocrisy. It further confirms my theory: prick any conservative and the kink oozes out. The rockier the rib, the more likely you'll find pink lingerie under the trousers or a bullwhip and manacles in the bedside drawer. You can bet those Beltway dominatrices, madams and escorts (gay and straight) have been able to buy second homes -- maybe even in Sun Valley! -- with their haul during W's reign.

However, because we are people of compassion, we should also feel a little horrified by this tortured man's sad, humiliating demise. He's obviously lived his whole life afflicted by the religious psychobabble and outright bigotry of people who say homosexuality is a sickness and a lifestyle decision instead of an innate state of being that has nothing to do with illness or choice.

The sickness, of course, is in the suppression, which is why closeted men seek love in rank public bathroom stalls.

Idaho voters could have a say in whether Mr. Craig continues in office, since his term is up next year. He has not yet announced whether he will run for reelection. But some in the Republican Party can't seem to push him under a bus fast enough. Maybe that's because the affair is another nightmare of hypocrisy come true: Once again, the party that embraces a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and blocks laws that would stop discrimination against homosexuals finds itself with a loyal foot soldier who votes one way and allegedly acts another. Mr. Craig voted for the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] in 1996. He voted for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004. Last year, he supported an Idaho constitutional amendment that prohibits gay marriage and civil unions. Mr. Craig is yet another willing accomplice in the machinery of intolerance that has stunted the lives of many gay men and lesbians. Maybe even his own.

Chris Hansen to Stake Out Airport Bathrooms

But even as NBC trumpeted its latest “Dateline” spin-off, industry insiders wondered whether there would be an adequate supply of sex-crazed senators to keep the program going for more than a few episodes.

For his part, Mr. Capus brushed off such concerns, telling reporters, “As long as there are Republican senators out there who oppose gay marriage, there will always be plenty of pervs.”

Jackie and Dunlap on Larry Craig, corn cobs, and Stall Duty.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureaucracy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.