Having just read about Larry Craig's resignation, and listened carefully to the audio of his extended argument with the arresting officer (transcript here), I'm once again struck by the man's astounding stupidity in not having had the common sense to get a lawyer. No jury would have convicted him.

But does that matter?

Let's assume he'd hired a lawyer and gone to trial. Wouldn't it have been a huge media event -- possibly even bigger than this one? Wouldn't there have been the same calls for his resignation, even if he'd been acquitted?

I don't know, but I think there might have been nearly identical calls for him to resign -- to "spare the country the embarrassment of a trial."

As it is, there appears to have been no crime committed, and that doesn't seem to matter, because he pleaded guilty.

That might not have mattered either. (Did Mark Foley ever plead guilty? To anything?)

In politics, an accusation seems to be enough.

(Especially when Republicans are accused.)

MORE: Craig is toast, so his career in the Senate is no longer the point here. But after listening to that recording, I find myself left with a very unsettling feeling that this case simply does not make sense. Not only did nothing illegal happen on the face of these facts, but there was no underlying criminal charge which could have been brought. Yet a three-term United States Senator pleaded guilty.

Why? Unless he is a moron or insane, he had to know this was a career-ending move. For the life of me, I cannot understand it.

I am not alone in my suspicions. Here's a police officer posting at FreeRepublic.com:

I listened to the tape of Senator Craig being interviewed by Officer Karsnia and I've got to tell you that in over a decade in Law Enforcement I've never been so ashamed....

Of an officer.

This kid should be suspended for making a false arrest. There is absolutely no probable cause, not a lick of evidence outside this kid's feelings, or enthusiasm for arrest stats.

Unbelievable. Craig may be gay and might even visit rest rooms on occasions but this is a REALLY raw deal he got here. If I were this kid's superior I stick him on the desk pending an IA.

So the allegations wouldn't support the arrest, even if a charge was theoretically possible. (It is not a crime in Minnesota to signal a willingness to have sex, but even if it was, there's no clear evidence of a signal.)

Were I a paranoid sort, I might wonder whether this was some kind of political setup, and Craig was made to go along with it. (There's no way to know.)

UPDATE: Via Glenn Reynolds, here's Mark Steyn's reaction to hearing the tape:

after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig's interview with police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger's pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It's a shame they both can't lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men's room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn't go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. "Never go to a public lavatory in London," warned Professor Jackson. "I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him."

But wouldn't the mere accusation have been enough?

Styen doesn't think the "hypocrisy" is quite as sinful as so many people seem to think, and neither do I.

But I have to admit, I have a bit of a problem in seeing the immorality of exchanging signals. At most, that's what happened here.

For the umpteenth time, where's the sex?

Or don't things like that matter anymore? It seems to me that to condemn Craig for public sex, there has to be more than a feeling of a signaling. And more than just a signal for a sexual proposition, but a signal for a proposition to engage in public sex. I say this as someone who has been propositioned repeatedly, and asked to go somewhere in private. If someone winked at me in a bathroom, or tapped me on the foot, even if I thought the person was cruising, I wouldn't necessarily assume it meant here and now. A signal of willingness to have sex is not public sex.

And what, precisely, is a signal? A tap of the foot? A wink of the eye? A crooking of the finger? A nod of the head? This is not trivial nitpicking if people are to be arrested for signals.

But this is all academic. (In that regard, I will state now that the bathrooms at UC Berkeley, where I attended college, were notorious for T-room trade, and I never had sex in them. Does that make me a moral conservative?)

AND ANOTHER WHAT IF: Suppose that a man wanted to have sex with a sexily-attired woman, who turned out to be working undercover as police officer. Would a "signal" (even a tap on the foot or finger-crooking) be enough to make an arrest? I don't work as a vice officer, but I doubt it. My memory is that there has to be a clear proposition to do something illegal.

Otherwise, the arrested "Johns" would be irate.

(Even though they're "guilty.")