Give Idaho Sen. Larry Craig credit for reaching across the aisle, if not under a bathroom stall.
After being told definitively by Hennepin County Judge Charles A. Porter Jr. on Thursday that guilty means guilty, Craig said he would remain in the Senate until the end of his term. The vow had to have Democratic stalwarts chortling with glee. What better chance could they have of picking up a seat in Republican-dominated Idaho than to have Craig sitting in it through the 2008 election?
Craig, who has something of a civil libertarian streak, seemed more concerned with looking out for No. 1 than in resigning to allow a GOP appointee to replace him to help the party put the scandal behind them.
"I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that," he said in a statement. "As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively."
He certainly is an individualist on that last point.
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For the good of his party and the decency of the Senate -- not to mention the closer-to-home benefit of getting Minnesota airport bathrooms off front pages -- Craig should resign. If not in August when his foot-tapping led to disorderly conduct charges, then certainly now with a judge's ruling that his conviction was "supported by the evidence."
