Airport Toilets, Suitcases, Homosexual Signals and the Law

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, www.bannerofliberty.com

August 29, 2007

Destroying political enemies in the USA today with sexual innuendoes and accusations has become not only a popular method of getting elected, especially if one is a Democrat, but it also is surprisingly easy to do. In the past 24 hours the public at large has learned, certainly to the surprise of most of us that according to Minneapolis Airport policeman David Karsnia it is an illegal, lewd homosexual "signal", to block the door of a toilet stall you are using with your suitcase.

Let's think about that for a minute. I've certainly been in airports where I have gone to the toilet and blocked the door of the stall with my rolling suitcase. Since the airports demand that passengers "never let your bag out of your sight" where else WOULD you put your suitcase while in a toilet stall? You certainly can't leave it OUTSIDE the stall, especially if you don't want it stolen or snatched up and blown up for fear it contains a bomb. Inside a toilet stall there is no place to put a suitcase, EXCEPT in front of the door. I suspect that just about everyone who travels by air has done the same thing. Where is it written that doing such a thing is lewd behavior and contrary to some law?

We are going to destroy a man's reputation, and his career for blocking the door of a public toilet with his suitcase?

Apparently, the answer to that question is, yes, we are. Sgt. David Karsnia, who handled cart enforcement for the Minneapolis Metropolitan Airport Police in 2006, apparently had been assigned in 2007 to monitor the Airport men's toilets for homosexuals on the prowl. Karsnia stated in his report that "My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,"

Karsnia went on to report that he observed "the shoes and ankles of Craig seated (in the stall) to the left of me. He was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes. At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct."

Just as not everyone who takes a suitcase inside a toilet stall and places it in front of the door - which is the ONLY place it CAN be put is a homosexual on the prowl, not everyone who taps their foot is "wishing to engage in lewd conduct." On the other hand, I think I WOULD be suspicious of someone who was studying my shoes and pants from another toilet stall.

According to Sen. Craig he picked up a piece of paper from the floor and according to Karsnia the senator "swiped his hand under the stall divider. Two minutes later Karsnia put his identification under the divider and ordered Sen. Craig out of the toilet. The Senator at that point spoke saying "No!" I think that is exactly what I would have said also. I would naturally have assumed that the person in the next stall was probably showing a false ID and that there was something really fishy going on.

This is not the first time that Karsnia has been involved in an incident with a traveler in which a law seems to have been made up on the spot. On September 6, 2006, he and two other Metropolitan Airport policemen roughed up, tased and arrested Stephen Orsak, a professional violinist who travels extensively to perform with various orchestras and attend music conferences. His crime, according to the police, was riding his bicycle out of the airport.

Although there were signs prohibiting pedestrians, no signs prohibited bicycles, so the policemen involved in Orsak's arrest, including Karsnia, invented a "law" on the spot that made a bicyclist a pedestrian. As Karsnia put it in his report of the incident the officers "observed that traffic was particularly heavy on the Outbound Roadway and determined that the Defendant's travel by bicycle was unsafe." Orsak describes what happened as being "accosted, assaulted with battery, and tased at Minneapolis St Paul international airport, simply for leaving the airport by bicycle. I had broken NO laws."

Months later, on July 15, 2007 his version of the encounter was supported by a judge and jury when they declared him "Not Guilty" of five of the six charges that Karsnia and the other airport police charged him with. Orsak is appealing the sixth charge, "failure to comply with a lawful order" since the orders he was given by the officers were not "lawful" in the first place.

I suggest to those Republicans who have already declared Senator Larry Craig "guilty" and are calling for his resignation to look at the timing of this incident and compare it with the timing of a similar sex-smear of Mark Foley in the 2006 election. In neither of these "incidents" did any actual sexual act take place - yet Mark Foley was deftly destroyed by the howling of…homosexuals, their friends and self-righteous Republicans who ignored the facts and believed the media hype. It was the page, not the Congressman, that was writing sexually suggestive e-mail.

That was so easy for the Democrats to do that I think it is being tried again in an effort to take out a proven, family oriented Republican conservative Senator in the 2008 election to allow the Democrats to retain control of Congress, in spite of their dismal approval rating. .

Senator Craig has consistently voted in favor of traditional marriage and family issues. He is up for re-election in 2008. Since he is a rancher, not a lawyer, it certainly was unwise for him to plead guilty to a contrived and publicly undefined "misdemeanor" after his absurd arrest in June by Sgt. Karsnia. The senator should have taken immediate objection to the whole affair, as did Stephen Orsak,who won in a court of law.