TEARS FOR LARRY SINCLAIR

Larry Sinclair claims he did drugs and had gay sex with Barack Obama, and has accused Obama of being involved in a murder. A lie detector test has confirmed the obvious: he's lying. So, how should we feel after reading about Sinclair's incredibly long rap sheet and learning that he was arrested at his D.C. press conference yesterday?

Well, according to one right-wing blogger, we should feel terrible:

... There are several problems with [Sinclair's] story, and, while I consider it certainly possible to have happened, I don't think it's likely at all.

Earlier today, Sinclair appeared at the National Press Club to tell his tale and was arrested afterwards by officers from Washington, D.C. police, apparently as a result of U.S. Marshals showing up with a warrant.

The question then becomes, why wasn't he arrested before? Has he been in hiding, or were they just trying to send a message? And, what sort of people would celebrate the arrest of someone who makes inflammatory and almost certainly false charges against a political candidate? Barack Obama supporters, that's who. See the comments here or at firedoglake.com/2008/06/18/larry-sinclair-arrested-at-press-club.

Larry Sinclair is hardly a political prisoner, but the arrest at the press conference has quite a political flavor to it....

I see that the right has an interesting new attitude toward the coddling of career criminals. Let's run down that rap sheet:

...He was first arrested on a larceny charge in 1981 in Denver, according to his Colorado arrest record, as filed in federal court. In 1985, he was convicted of theft and of forging a check in Florida, and sentenced to a year in jail, according to Florida records filed in federal court.

After the Florida episode, according to the records, he returned to Colorado, where he faced check fraud and credit card charges in 1986. Then, in 1987, he was convicted in Colorado on more serious forgery charges, and sentenced to 16 years in jail.

In prison, according to state records filed in federal court, Sinclair was disciplined 97 times for infractions including assault, threats, drug possession, intimidation, and verbal abuse, most recently in 1996.

...The Pueblo County Sheriff's website, which pictures Sinclair under the word "Wanted," cites felony theft and forgery charges.

Sinclair was also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in South Carolina last September, according to state records filed in federal court....

And, in fact, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant from Delaware.

But ignore all that. He's a victim of The Man! Call Amnesty International! Call Human Rights Watch!

Why are some of us happy that Sinclair has been arrested? Gosh, I can't imagine. Maybe because we wander over to the right blogosphere and read that Sinclair's preposterous story seems "certainly possible to have happened"? Because we live in a country where the percentage of people who think Barack Obama is a Muslim is in the double digits, as is the percentage of people who think Saddam was behind 9/11, and a disturbing number of people actually believe that Michelle Obama used the term "whitey," a word no black person ever uses?

Yeah, I'm happy. I'm ecstatic.