The word is out that toe-tapping Senator Larry Craig, our  favorite restroom aficionado, has  spent about $213,000 in legal fees to overturn his guilty plea for bathroom hijinks.  This is just about the median cost for a misdemeanor defense.  In my wildest dreams.

It must be awfully good to be a Senator from Idaho.  Granted, it’s Idaho, and some people will do anything to get off the potato farm, but still.  This is a lot of money to fight a conviction following a plea of guilty.  I have to assume that somebody told Larry that this isn’t going to be easy, and the chances were slim that he was going to beat the rap.

Is this a fight for principal?  It doesn’t have that smell, since the gist of Larry’s argument is that the underlying law is unconstitutional.  Whether or not it is, I have no idea.  I just haven’t spent the time to research and think about it since I’m not getting any piece of that big chunk of change. 

The problem is that a win doesn’t remove the taint of Larry Craig’s conduct, just the criminality of it.  While it may no longer be a violation of law should the law be held unconstitutional, he’s still going to find himself awfully lonely in the Senate bathroom, when the others keep their distance.

Nor is this going to alter the denial that he’s not gay, which would have done wonders for his reputation and made him a sympathetic figure as the victim of homophobic laws.  So either he’s a liar about his sexual preference, or seriously unstable.  This isn’t going away just because the law is bad.

But back to the legal fee.  The prosecution, according to the story, has spent about $28,500 to fend off the challenges of Team Craig.  To some, this might seem like a pretty expensive proposition for some misdemeanor bathroom toe-tapping, but to a Senator, this is lunch money.  These guys spend more than a billion dollars on a plane.  The light bulbs in the cockpit cost more than this. 

So what has Team Craig done to run up a bill over $200K?  So far, a motion to withdraw a guilty plea and an appeal.  Not to mention a bit of crisis management, I’m sure.  While this may make public defenders cringe, I can see it.  While definitely on the high side, if not very high side, it’s not totally outside the ballpark given the circumstances.

But it’s not money well spent.  My suggestion (other than Larry Craig giving me a call for some friendly advice), you would have done better to use the money as a downpayment on a potato farm.