CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER FAILURE CONTAINMENT TEAM SCHEME Fails in its 1st Effort

O'REILLY FACTOR, The New York Times | 12-22-01 | Mia T

[Mia T]

2-21-01

 

CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme Fails in its 1^st Effort

 

Bill O'Reilly Laughs Lanny Davis Off Stage

 

Calls "It's the economy, stupid" an Utter Absurdity Post-9/11

by Mia T

NEW YORK, Dec 21--Diehard clinton lackey, Lanny Davis tested the CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme in what the clintons likely regard their most difficult venue, "The O'Reilly Factor," The top-rated Fox News show demonstrated once again that its motto, "the no spin zone," is no spin.

The eponymous host swiftly stopped the spin (and the spin). O'Reilly debunked all the shameless clinton-directed revisionism spewed by Davis, exposing the absurdity of the CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme even as he underscored clinton's immutable legacy of depravity and failure.

 

December 21, 2001 Clinton and Aides Lay Plans to Repair a Battered Image By RICHARD L. BERKE ASHINGTON, Dec. 20 -- Even after Bill Clinton was elected president, his campaigning never seemed to stop. In the White House, he was always keenly attentive to polls and political calculations and presided over what became known as a "permanent campaign." Now, Mr. Clinton is trying to extend the permanent campaign even beyond his presidency. Frustrated that his image has been battered since he left office, Mr. Clinton summoned several of his aides and advisers on Wednesday to devise ways to remind the public of his accomplishments and defend his legacy against criticism on matters including his role in the current recession and his failure to strike a fatal blow against Osama bin Laden or his terrorist network after the embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998. Several participants at the meeting in Mr. Clinton's Harlem office said in interviews that they had agreed to compile a list of the Clinton administration's achievements that his supporters could have handy when defending the president. They hope to build a staff that will coordinate efforts to enlist former cabinet secretaries and other Clinton surrogates to appear on television talk shows and deliver speeches. And they are making plans to raise Mr. Clinton's profile on the lecture circuit, particularly before college audiences, which are most receptive. Participants in the session said Mr. Clinton was concerned that Democratic leaders had not sufficiently spoken up for his administration, especially his centrist policies on health care, welfare, crime and education. As part of the campaign to refurbish his image, Mr. Clinton wants to play a central role in setting an issue agenda for the Democrats and for the party's aspiring Congressional and presidential candidates, his advisers said. No modern president has ever mounted such an aggressive and organized drive to affect the agenda after leaving the White House. "It's important that the president's legacy not be squandered because his own people remain silent and scattered," said Bill Richardson, Mr. Clinton's energy secretary, who like many others took part through a telephone hookup. "It's important that the Democratic Party not turn away from Clinton's centrist legacy that brought us economic prosperity." Several participants said they did not want to discuss the meeting out of respect for Mr. Clinton's privacy. Others also acknowledged that they were worried that Mr. Clinton could be portrayed as preoccupied with his reputation and not conducting himself appropriately for a former president. "I feel very uncomfortable talking about these meetings," said Sandy Berger, Mr. Clinton's former national security adviser. "As far as I'm concerned, it was a private meeting, so I'm not going to say anything," said Al From, the executive director of the Democratic Leadership Council. Others, insisting they had nothing to hide, were not so reluctant. Rodney Slater, Mr. Clinton's transportation secretary, said an impetus for the meeting was to make sure that the former president's policies were still in the public discourse. "As much as anything, it was to recognize that we were part of something special," Mr. Slater said, "that there were still opportunities out there for us to express opinions about things and professional judgments." Douglas Sosnik, who was Mr. Clinton's political director and later one of his most senior aides, put it this way: "Under President Clinton's leadership, we accomplished a remarkable amount in the last eight years, and his friends feel we should be doing a better job of getting that out proactively. Since he left office, we've spent too much time on the defensive, reacting to stories." Gene Sperling, who was Mr. Clinton's top economic aide, said, "Most of the conversation was really about what kind of things he should be doing with his time, what his long- term service contributions should be." Julia Payne, Mr. Clinton's spokeswoman, said she would have no comment about "a private meeting." While Mr. Clinton had held meetings with advisers before, participants described this one as having a special urgency. Mr. Clinton dominated the session, which lasted nearly two hours, participants said. They said he was careful not to criticize President Bush. And they said that while he expressed concern that he was being blamed for not catching Osama bin Laden, most of the discussion was about how to raise his profile and press his case on domestic matters. Even during his presidency, Mr. Clinton was deeply interested in how he would be perceived by history. Now, the efforts to deploy surrogates to speak out for him are reminiscent of his vaunted war rooms in the White House, which were established for him to seize the political offensive on matters that included Whitewater and health care. "He basically said our legacy is being pummeled and we have to find ways to revive it," said one participant, who described it as if it were a meeting of the top lieutenants of a political campaign. "We concluded that the Clinton hard core were not on message, and we had to develop a center of gravity. We have to remind people of what we did on the economy, what we did with the crime bill, what we did with terrorism." He added, "They're trying to pin the bin Laden thing on us." Participants said that while some nice things were said about the Democratic leaders in Congress, Senator Tom Daschle and Representative Richard A. Gephardt, there was a view that they would only do so much to press the Clinton agenda. "The view was that House and Senate Democrats were too preoccupied with their own re-elections and their own deals," one participant said. Other participants included Maggie Williams, Mr. Clinton's current chief of staff; John D. Podesta, Mr. Clinton's former chief of staff; Bruce Lindsey, Mr. Clinton confidant; Eli J. Segal, the former head of Mr. Clinton's national service organization; Steve Richetti, who was a deputy chief of staff; Maria Echavesta, a former deputy chief of staff; and Cheryl Mills, a deputy White House counsel. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York did not take part, nor did former Vice President Al Gore or any of his advisers. Mr. Clinton's advisers said part of the discussion was over how active the former president should be in stumping for Democratic candidates next year. They said they had not reached a determination. "He does not want to appear to be upstaging Bush," said one participant. "But the alternative to that is to continue to see his legacy vanish. Clinton said he was getting more of a positive response about his legacy with younger people." Mr. Richardson, for one, said it was appropriate for Mr. Clinton to have a more public role. "I'm pleased that the president will be more active in ensuring his legacy," he said. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information

 

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The Placebo President (aided and abetted by the media myrmidons of the left) strikes again...

by Mia T

 

What is most interesting about clinton's revisionist leaks is that the impeached ex-president has decided that incompetency is a preferable legacy to idiocy or a sui generis narcissistic sedition.

The Covert Hunt for bin Laden
Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2001; Page A01

 

First of two articles

BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...clinton wanted to go after terrorists...BLAH BLAH...

TO BE CONTINUED...

compulsive clinton CYA-ing CONTINUES

(so does 4th-estate malfeasance)

Q ERTY6 REALITY CHECK!

 

 

 

hillary's head revisited:

hillary clinton's brain (such as it is) II

 by Mia T

The smartest woman in the world would relish "the raucous give and take of American democracy, " as Charles Kuralt once put it.

hillary clinton, by contrast, subsists on cozy clintonoid interviews of the Colmes kind...

In her new book, Political Fictions, Joan Didion indicts the fakery of access journalism practiced by vacant politicos like the clintons, whom she sees as "purveyors of fables of their own making, or worse, fables conceived by political strategists with designs on votes, not news."

(More Didion: "No one who ever passed through an American public high school could have watched William Jefferson Clinton running for office in 1992 and failed to recognize the familiar predatory sexuality of the provincial adolescent.")

 

 

Just look around this chamber. We have members from virtually every racial, ethnic, and religious background. And America is stronger for it. But as we have seen, these differences all too often spark hatred and division, even here at home. . . This is not the American way. We must draw the line. Without delay, we must pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

bill clinton, State of Union Speech, January 27, 2000

"I'm sorry, but the president is one of the crudest men I have ever encountered in government service," says one female agent. "He has no respect for women."

Among the comments clinton made in presence of Secret Service agents:

. Frequent speculation on the oral sex skills of women

the president saw or met in receiving lines;

. References to the size of a woman's breasts, legs or figure;

. Sexual jokes.

After the Monica Lewinsky story broke, however, clinton toned down his rhetoric and behavior in front of his Secret Service agents, but those who guarded the president say enough of them saw and heard things which could be damaging to clinton.

"It depends on who Ken Starr calls," says one ex-agent. "The people who are on the job today are not necessarily the ones who know the most."

Turnover In clinton's Secret Service Detail 'Highest That Anyone Can Remember'

In the months that follow, reporters drop the issue. Feminists say little or nothing. Rape crisis center workers acknowledge that Broaddrick's case, including her reluctance to come forward, is typical of victims of sexual assault. But they decline to speak against clinton. Some cite the federal funding they receive as a result of the Violence Against Women Act, which was signed into law by clinton.

Why does the press continue to ignore the Juanita Broaddrick story?

 

 

The Placebo President:

How a Rapist can be a Policy Feminist

 

placebo effect n.

A beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment

that arises from the patient's expectations concerning

the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.

 

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

----Sylvia Plath

 

The placebo effect immediately came to mind

as I listened to Shelby Steele,

a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,

debunk the following pernicious spin intended to save clinton.

To wit:

A proven felon and utter reprobate can remain president;

clinton can be a failed human being but a good president.

 

The error in these statements arises, says Steele,

from the belief that

virtuousness is separate from personal responsibility

so that one's virtuousness as an individual is determined by

one's political positions on issues rather than on

whether or not in one's personal life there is a

consistency and a responsibility.

 

Steele's contention is that this compartmentalization,

rather than being the amazing advantage

the clintons would have us believe,

in fact, spills toxicity into, corrupts, the culture.

 

If mere identification with good policies is what makes one virtuous

then those policies become, what Steele calls, iconographic,

that is to say they just represent virtuousness.

They don't necessarily do virtuous things.

 

If clinton's semantic parsing strips meaning from our words,

clinton's iconographic policies strip meaning from our society,

systematically deconstructing our society as a democracy. . .

 

I would take Shelby Steele's thesis one step further.

I maintain that iconographic policy functions like a placebo,

producing a real, physiological and social effects.

 

The placebo effect is, after all, the brain's triumph over reality.

Expectation alone can produce powerful physiological results.

The placebo effect was, at one time, an evolutionary advantage:

act now, think later

 

bill clinton is the paradigmatic Placebo President.

Placebo is Latin for "I shall please."

And please he does

doling out sham treatments, iconographs, with abandon.

To please, to placate, to numb, to deflect.

Ultimately to showcase his imagined virtue.

Or to confute his genuine vice.

 

clinton will dispense sugar pills (or bombs)

at the drop of a high-heeled shoe...

or at the hint of high treason...

 

clinton's charlatanry mimics that of primitive medicine.

Through the 1940s, doctors had little effective medicine to offer

so they deliberately attempted to induce the placebo response.

 

The efficaciousness of today's medicines

does not diminish the power of the placebo.

A recent review of placebo-controlled studies

found that placebos and genuine treatments

are often equally effective.

If you expect to get better, you will.

 

Which brings me back to the original question:

Can clinton be a failed human being but a good president?

 

Clearly he cannot.

These two propositions are mutually exclusive.

clinton's fundamental failure is a complete lack of integrity.

He has violated his covenant with the American people.

 

Because clinton has destroyed his moral authority as a leader,

he can no longer function even as a quack;

the placebo effect is gone.

And so the Placebo President must now go, too.

 

 

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize

 

 

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

 

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational.

Indeed, assessing the clinton presidency an abject failure is not inconsistent with commentary coming from the left, most recently the LA Times: "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize."

When the clintons left office, I predicted that the country would eventually learn--sadly, the hard way--that this depraved, self-absorbed and inept pair had placed America (and the world) in mortal danger. But I was thinking years, not months.

It is very significant that hillary clinton didn't deny clinton culpability for the terrorism. (Meet the Press, 12-09-01), notwithstanding tired tactics (if you can't pass the buck, spread the blame) and chronic self-exclusion. ("I knew nuttin'.")

If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.

And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.

It is critically important that hillary clinton fail in her grasp for power; read Peggy Noonan's little book, 'The Case Against Hillary Clinton' and Barbara Olson's two books; it is critical that the West de-clintonize, but that will be automatic once it is understood that the clintons risked civilization itself in order to gain and retain power.

It shouldn't take books, however, to see that a leader is a dangerous, self-absorbed sicko. People should be able to figure that out for themselves. The electorate must be taught to think, to reason. It must be able to spot spin, especially in this age of the electronic demagogue.

I am not hopeful. As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. "

Mia T, hillary clinton blames hubby for terrorism

(SHE knew nuttin')

Meet the Press, 12-09-01

 

 

A Fish Rots from the Head

Investor's Business Daily

 

 

Ijaz, an admitted Clinton supporter who helped negotiate these opportunities to nab bin Laden, said, "The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening."

 

Ijaz says that three months before bin Laden's men blew up the USS Cole in Yemen, he "brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings(in Tanzania and Kenya)... But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer."

 

Clinton's apparent boredom with vital information extended beyond Sudanese intelligence officers to his own intelligence officers. His first CIA director, James Woolsey, couldn't get a meeting with Clinton in the two years he served. Woolsey left the Clinton administration disgusted with

its slovenly approach to national security. ...

 

To hear Clinton now say "We must do more to reduce the pool of potential

terrorists" is thus beyond farce. He had numerous opportunities to reduce

that pool, and he blew it.

 

The pool, in fact, grew larger on Clinton's watch, as he spent his final days giving pardons to drug dealers, Puerto Rican terrorists and Marc Rich, a fugitive who topped America's most-wanted list.

 

In this light, Clinton's order to the CIA that it not use "unsavory characters" to collect information pushes irony to its outer limits.

---

12-20-01

YOO-HOO Washington Post / Barton Gellman

 

Delta Force pilot:

Bin Laden was "in our crosshairs" 3 times during Clinton years, but couldn't get kill order from higher up.

From the article...

Three times after Aug. 20, 1998, when Clinton ordered the only missile strike of his presidency against bin Laden's organization, the CIA came close enough to pinpointing bin Laden that Clinton authorized final preparations to launch. In each case, doubts about the intelligence aborted the mission...

More than once, advisers recall, Clinton sounded out Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the prospect of using Special Forces to surprise bin Laden's fighters on the ground. But Clinton declined to authorize the large-scale operation that Shelton said would be required, and he chose not to order a less ambitious option to which the general would have objected.

---

Amid all of the spin there are germs of truth...

I've been sitting on some info under the "loose lips" principle, but this article makes that no longer necessary. An Academy buddy of my cousin, himself a former Air Force pilot, is a Delta Force pilot. According to him, we had bin Laden "in our crosshairs" three times during the Clinton years, but couldn't get the kill order from higher up. His conclusion from the field was the reason for this failure was nothing more than a lack of the political will to get the job done.

Which leads, yet again, to the obvious question:

Would the attacks of 9/11 have happened, had President Clinton been up to the job with which he was entrusted?

7 posted on 12/18/01 10:12 PM Pacific by Sabertooth

---

I can't imagine that they would have happened if Clinton had done the job. 9/11 was the culmination of a series of increasingly brazen attacks on our interests, going all the way back to the original WTC bombing. As each attack happened, we were being watched by our enemies. They listened to what we said, but they really paid attention to what we did. And they eventually drew the conclusion that we were too weak and too soft to hit them back.

It's painfully clear now that we didn't do nearly enough. Clinton didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do what Bush is doing now. Why? There are probably a lot of reasons: his 60's mentality and its accompanying disdain for the military; his addiction to polls; his preoccupation with crushing his enemies; his pursuit of personal pleasure; or his lack of interest in foreign policy. But I think the biggest reason of all is this: Bill Clinton, at his most basic level, is a weak, soft man, afraid to put his precious self at risk, more given to talk than to action. He was weak and soft at a time when he needed to be strong and resolute, and 9/11 was the result. He deserves nothing but contempt.

Gee, I guess character does matter, after all.

53 posted on 12/19/01 10:23 PM Pacific by Rainbow Rising

Q ERTY3 BUMP! 

 

Delta Force pilot: [W]e had bin Laden "in our crosshairs" three times during the Clinton years, but couldn't get the kill order from higher up.--Sabertooth

 

Bill Clinton, at his most basic level, is a weak, soft man, afraid to put his precious self at risk--Rainbow Rising

COWARD

by Mia T

clinton is the quintessential coward. He is especially cowardly about acts physical, notwithstanding (or, more accurately, underscored by) an apparent facility in committing rapes, predations and willful, premeditated, opportunistic killings (e.g., the Sudan bombing, the Ricky Ray Rector execution). . .

clinton cowardice knows no geographic bounds. We saw clinton cowardice in the Balkans...

 

We saw clinton cowardice in Africa...

 

It was caught on videotape there. Remember? Remember the fear, the abject hatred on clinton's Mr.-Hyde-transmogrified face? (His real face!) Remember the angry screams directed to the (in fact pro-clinton) black crowd as they came too close to his podium?

I suspect clinton cowardice accounted for the cancellation of his trip to Greece, its streets teeming with anti-clinton demonstrators. (The Greeks, you may recall, were trying clinton in effigy for his wag-the-dog, desperately-seeking-a-legacy mass murders in the Balkans.)

The world has clinton figured out: He is small, a greasy character, a degenerate, a predatory adolescent, a backwoods buffoon, a delusional if opportunistic narcissist. (Let us not forget that he was Nobel-Peace-Prize lobbying (read "hiring $100G-a-pop PR even as he imperiled Israel and empowered the terrorists").

While it is debatable whether clinton is most defined by his depravity, his narcissism or his cowardice, that he is in fact a coward is not open to question. If he won't go to Greece, with all the protections of the presidency, where will he go when we are finally rid of him? (Will we ever be finally rid of him?)

(That the backwoods, backroom duo thought they could spin the world as they did Arkansas is a measure of their stupidity. They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiber-optic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.)

Poetic justice in the end: clinton--both clintons, in fact--will be prisoners, both Cartesian and Freudian, of their own depravity, imprisioned in the hermetic confines of an evil, narcissistic life. Their world will finally and fittingly become as small as they, themselves, are.

Also:

The Left is redolent with the peculiar stench of sinking-ship-jumping 'Rats

[AmericanInTokyo]

some interesting stuff. But just a quick rhetorical question here:

What if everybody on FR posted the way you do, with massive text and slow loading HTML? We'd be dead in the water.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Did you ask Clinton(spit) "Bill, what if every penisident...?" Don't fart in church. We have deacons to do that.

The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Elle Bee]

Perhaps Santa will bring you a 21st century processor

Have you been good ..... or have you been picking on Mia's artful body of work?

He knows who's been naughty and who's been nice

Merry Christmas

.

[mrsmith]

December 19, 1998: first elected president impeached for subverting the administration of justice.

December 19, 2001: The " dangerous, self-absorbed sicko... a delusional if opportunistic narcissist... " meets with his aides to devise ways to enhance his influence in politics.

Not one article mentioned the timing of the meeting.

Nice summary BTW!

[AmericanInTokyo]

:-) aw c'mon, you know what I was trying to get at.

[stlrocket]

Two of my favorites about Slick Willie.

IT JUST WON'T BILL!

BILLS CONTRIBUTION TO USA

[AmericanInTokyo]

LOL

[Teacher317]

Excellent point, and terrific memory! Bump.

[bmwcyle]

They will defend Bill no matter what he does or who he has killed.

[RobFromGa]

. "We concluded that the Clinton hard core were not on message, and we had to develop a center of gravity. We have to remind people of what we did on the economy, what we did with the crime bill, what we did with terrorism."

No we don't have to be reminded, we are WELL AWARE of what Clinton 'did'.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

If you're referring to "size" as represented in your browser then you're misguided.

If you're referring to Mia T's work then, too, you're misguided.

The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.

[bulldog905]

Clinton Contaiment Team

A far better "Clinton Contaiment" tactic, would have been if Mr. Blyth had worn a condom, while romancing the sleaze's mother.

[Mia T]

December 19, 1998: first elected president impeached for subverting the administration of justice.

December 19, 2001: The " dangerous, self-absorbed sicko... a delusional if opportunistic narcissist... " meets with his aides to devise ways to enhance his influence in politics.

Not one article mentioned the timing of the meeting...

7 posted on 12/22/01 5:59 AM Pacific by mrsmith

Q ERTY1 BUMP!

It's called SIN-chronicity... ;)

 

 

 

Well, with the help of the 100 corrupt and cowardly cullions, clinton

walked. The senators' justification for their acquittal votes requires

the suspension of rational thought (and, in the curious case of Arlen

Specter, national jurisdiction).

--Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted, Mia T

 

THE OTHER NIXON

by Mia T

 

 

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson, posthumously misappropriated.

 

Shameless pharisees in stark relief crowd the Capitol frieze:

 

Baucus, Biden, Bingaman, Breaux, Bryan, Byrd, Cohen, Conrad, Daschle, Dodd, Gore, Graham, Harkin, Hollings, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerrey, Kerry, Kohl, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Moynihan, Reid, Robb, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Schumer.

 

These are the 28 sitting Democratic senators, the current Vice President and Secretary of Defense -- clinton defenders all -- who, in 1989, voted to oust U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon for making "false or misleading statements to a grand jury."

 

In 1989 each and every one of these men insisted that perjury was an impeachable offense.

(What a difference a decade and a decadent Democrat make.)

 

Senator Herb Kohl (November 7, 1989):

"But Judge Nixon took an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth. As a grand jury witness, it was not for him to decide what would be material. That was for the grand jury to decide. Of all people, Federal Judge Walter Nixon certainly knew this.

 

"So I am going to vote 'guilty' on articles one and two. Judge Nixon lied to the grand jury. He misled the grand jury. These acts are indisputably criminal and warrant impeachment."

 

 

Senator Tom Daschle (November 3, 1989):

"This morning we impeached a judge from Mississippi for failing to tell the truth. Those decisions are always very difficult and certainly, in this case, it came after a great deal of concern and thoughtful analysis of the facts."

 

 

Congressman Charles Schumer (May 10, 1989):  

"Perjury, of course, is a very difficult, difficult thing to decide; but as we looked and examined all of the records and in fact found many things that were not in the record it became very clear to us that this impeachment was meritorious."

 

 

Senator Carl Levin (November 3, 1989):

"The record amply supports the finding in the criminal trial that Judge Nixon's statements to the grand jury were false and misleading and constituted perjury. Those are the statements cited in articles I and II, and it is on those articles that I vote to convict Judge Nixon and remove him from office."

 

* * * * *

 

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself," observed the philosopher Hannah Arendt. "What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

 

If hypocrisy is the vice of vices, then perjury is the crime of crimes, for

perjury provides the necessary cover for all other crimes.

 

David Lowenthal, professor emeritus of political science at Boston College makes the novel and compelling argument that perjury is "bribery consummate, using false words instead of money or other things of value to pervert the course of justice" and, thus, perjury is a constitutionally enumerated high crime.

 

The Democrats' defense of clinton's perjury -- and their own hypocrisy -- is

three-pronged.

 

ONE:

clinton's perjuries were "just about sex" and therefore "do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense."

 

This argument is spurious. The courts make no distinction between perjuries. Perjury is perjury. Perjury attacks the very essence of democracy. Perjury is bribery consummate.

 

Moreover, (the clinton spinners notwithstanding), clinton's perjury was not "just about sex." clinton's perjury was about clinton denying a citizen justice by lying in a civil rights-sexual harassment case about his sexual history with subordinates.

 

TWO:

Presidents and judges are held to different standards under the Constitution.

 

Because the Constitution stipulates that federal judges, who are appointed for life, "shall hold their offices during good behavior,'' and because there is no similar language concerning the popularly elected, term-limited president, it must have been perfectly agreeable to the Framers, so the (implicit) argument goes, to have a perjurious, justice-obstructing reprobate as president.

 

clinton's defenders ignore Federalist No. 57, and Hillary Rodham's constitutional treatise on impeachable acts -- written in 1974 when she wanted to impeach a president; both mention "bad conduct" as grounds for impeachment.

 

"Impeachment," wrote Rodham, "did not have to be for criminal offenses -- but only for a 'course of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a disregard for the office of the President of the United States...A person's 'course of conduct' while not particularly criminal could be of such a nature that it destroys trust, discourages allegiance, and demands action by the Congress...The office of the President is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

 

Hamilton (or Madison) discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue in Federalist 57. "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

 

(Contrast this with clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and feloniously subordinates the common good to his personal appetites.)

 

Because the Framers did not anticipate the demagogic efficiency of the electronic bully pulpit, they ruled out the possibility of an MTV mis-leader (and impeachment-thwarter!) like clinton. In Federalist No. 64, John Jay said: "There is reason to presume" the president would fall only to those "who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue." He

imagined that the electorate would not "be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle."

 

(If the clinton debacle teaches us anything, it is this: If we are to retain our democracy in this age of the electronic demagogue, we must recalibrate the constitutional balance of power.)

 

THREE:

The president can be prosecuted for his alleged felonies after he leaves office.

(Nota bene ROBERT RAY.)

 

This clinton-created censure contrivance -- borne out of what I have come to call the "Lieberman Paradigm" (clinton is an unfit president; therefore clinton must remain president) -- is nothing less than a postmodern deconstruction in which the Oval Office would serve for two years as a holding cell for the perjurer-obstructor.

 

Such indecorous, dual-purpose architectonics not only threatens the delicate

constitutional framework -- it disturbs the cultural aesthetic. The senators must, therefore, roundly reject this elliptic scheme.

In this postmodern Age of clinton, we may, from time to time, selectively stomach corruption. But we must never abide ugliness. Never.

 

 

 

[lawdude]

Slow loading ... 98% rant, 2% substance!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

What if everybody on FR posted the way you do, with massive text and slow loading HTML? We'd be dead in the water.

If everybody tried to sing like Caruso all the time, all we'd hear was dissonant cacophony. When a maestro sings it behooves us lesser mortals to be quiet and listen!