Lott Should Seek Repentence as did Bill Clinton--(Cinton to receive weekly Spiritual Counseling )

"President Clinton will receive weekly spiritual counseling to hold him ``accountable for his behavior'' and resist ``temptations that have conquered him in the past,'' the White House and clergy members said.

The announcement Tuesday follows Clinton's soul-baring confession before a group of religious leaders at the White House last Friday, at which he repented for his affair with Monica Lewinsky and vowed to better himself.

``We want him to understand what went wrong with him personally that led to the tragic sins that have so marred his life and the office of the presidency,'' said Rev. Tony Campolo, an American Baptist pastor and professor of sociology at Eastern College in St. David's Pennsylvania.

``We want to provide all the help that we can to spiritually strengthen him against yielding to the temptations that have conquered him in the past,'' Campolo said in a statement.

The counseling comes as Clinton tries to steer a two-track strategy of public contrition and legal hardball to remain in office.

The president has repeatedly apologized for the affair with Lewinsky and asked the public for forgiveness. At the same time, he has dispatched his lawyers to vigorously rebut independent counsel Ken Starr's report on the affair and possible impeachable offenses committed by Clinton.

Several prominent religious critics of Clinton, including Paige Patterson, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Clinton's own denomination, have called on the president to resign.

Campolo, a liberal social activist, said he and Rev. Gordon MacDonald, of the Grace Chapel Protestant church in Lexington, Massachusetts had been asked by Clinton to provide counseling.

Both pastors have previously advised Clinton on religious matters. They said they would not further discuss the counseling sessions.

Campolo said Clinton had called him on Labor Day, Sept. 7 -- before Starr turned over his report to Congress -- and asked that he ``serve in a pastoral role to counsel him and hold him accountable for his behavior.''

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart confirmed the arrangement and said other pastors, who have not been publicly identified, also will take part.

MacDonald said in a sermon Sunday, which was posted on the church's Internet site, that ``as little as three'' pastors would be involved.

MacDonald said Clinton had twice read his book ``Rebuilding Your Broken World,'' about MacDonald's quest for redemption and return to the ministry after an extramarital affair. ''I am in a position to talk the language of repentance,'' McDonald said.

MacDonald said that after accepting the counseling role, he had been struck by Clinton's public expression of contrition at last Friday's prayer breakfast, which he accepted as genuine.

''No one could have been present and retained a disbelieving, a cynical, a hardened attitude toward this man who opened his heart and acknowledged his realization of his sin,'' he said.

He said he would not take any political stand on Clinton or impeachment, but said people of faith had an obligation to ''treat seriously any attempt by a self-proclaimed sinner who asks for forgiveness.''

``If the president's repentance is false or short-termed, that will show in time, and we will have to swallow hard and admit that we were taken in,'' he said.

The pastors said at least one of them would meet with Clinton weekly. MacDonald said funding for the sessions would come from ``private sources'' and the White House said no taxpayer funds would be involved.

MacDonald said it was ``no secret'' that most evangelical Christians have long disliked Clinton due to his stances on abortion and homosexuality, and said he was disturbed when such people talk about him ``in terms of hatred and vengeance.''

``It has been easy for some to say that God's judgment will be upon this president,'' he said. ``But will God's judgment not be upon a group of people who call themselves Biblically-oriented but who permit such rancor in their hearts?''

-Seattle Times
December 31, 1998
by John Hanchette
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - More than 150 theology professors and ethics scholars have published a withering protest of President Clinton's "manipulation of religion and debasing of moral language" during the national discussion about his impeachment.

The prominent ethicists and religion professors - many of them self-declared proponents of Clinton policies and from recognized bastions of liberal political thought - express doubt in President Clinton's "spiritual sincerity" in a "A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion."

Maxine,are you listening?

Precisely.
Only Republicans can out Lott. Are we going to allow ourselves to be blackmailed and follow the orders of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Democrats? Then we might as well just dissolve the Republican party and give up trying to turn the country around.

Whether you like Lott or not, he was elected by the Republicans in the Senate as majority leader. Are we going to let the piranhas and jackals hound him out of the office for a TRIVIAL, and yes, it was a trivial gaffe.

Remember he NEVER said anything about segregation, merely at the 100th birthday party of a guy tried to say something nice, "gee, the country would have been better off, if you got elected 50 YEARS ago". And how does anyone know that the country wouldn't have been better off? The big civil rights act didn't pass until 1964, it is not like it passed in 1948 or 1950 and MAYBE it wouldn't have, if Thurmond had been president. Am I getting the point across? We are dealing with HUGE maybes, nobody knows. And THAT is what all Republicans should come out and say over and over, just as Lott said in his very first apology. That while his statement was thoughtless, he never meant to promote nor endorse segregation, AND THAT people who read racism into it, are the ones who have a mind focused on racism.

Kind of like if a father kisses his daugther, just a simple father-daughter kiss, and some pervert comes around and accuses the father, that the simple kiss on the cheek means he is molesting his daughter, and start accusing the guy with incest. Now should we lock up the father and throw away the key based on some pervert's accusation? Maybe the father isn't your best friend, and you don't like him that much as a person, but do you think he should be punished, even if he didn't do anything wrong, just because a pervert is accusing him, you know he is not guilty, but don't like him that much. Is THIS fair? IMHO this is exactly what some Republicans want to do, when THEY get on the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton-Terry McAuliffe-Hillary bandwagon and demand that Lott step down.

If we, the Republicans and conservatives stand firm and tell the rest to just drop it and shut up, the jackals may scream howl for a while, but if they aren't getting anywhere, eventually it will disappear from the front pages and life goes on.

In the meantime let's get back to the business of the country -- isn't that what Clinton kept saying?!.

Let's focus on passing conservative judges, and President Bush's agenda.

It's time for some realism. We do not live in an ideal world, we don't get everything we want, we don't get all our favorites in all Senate and House leadership positions.

Right now what we got, is pretty good: we have Bush as president, and we have a Republican House and Senate. Are we going to blow it? Are we going to allow the Democrats to manipulate us into blowing it, so we can have more deadlock and NEVER get the judges passes? You all saw what was happening when the Democrats ruled.

I think we should support Lott forcefully, to send a signal to the Democrats that their shinanigans failed and it's time to move on. Whatever problems we may have with Lott, that is internal. Just because you are fighting with your spouse, you may even be contemplating a divorce, but when a burgler breaks in, you better fight the burgler, instead of being so busy fighting each other that the burgler will take everything you have.

As stated , too many double standards exist in the liberals attempt to hang Lott.

However Lott's attempts not to make waves and playing nicey nice with the democrats and the Black caucus and the union leaders and other liberal cohorts by originally postponing the administration's passage of bills till next year was just that.

But why he did not permit witnesses to testify,and by placing other obstacles in the way during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton ,[which would have more than likely resulted in Clinton been indicted,]is incomprehensible.

I have questioned the wisdom of many of Trent Lott's decisions and actions. This lynching of Senator Lott has caused me to re-examine my assumptions that he was a weak person and leader. I had not factored in the reality of what a majority leader does. They represent the positions and views of those senators who elected them. Just as the democrat senators expect Daschle to carry out their programs, so do the republican senators expect their leader to represent their positions. IMO it is probable that Lott was convinced to avoid the trap of getting Clinton thrown out because republicans would have had Gore to oust in the next election. It is also probable that Pres Bush has avoided the trap of going after Clinton for his crimes while in office because that would have dominated his presidency and nothing of the republican agenda would get done. It is interesting to me that Lott detractors are quite content to accept Pres Bush freely associating and compromising with democrats while governor of Texas, but Lott is condemned for acting in like manner. I recognize that Lott serves at the pleasure of the other republican senators. Why are we not lynching them for voting for Lott? Voting over and over for him. I've been a republican for a long time but still have to be reminded every now and again that assumptions need to be revisited and a person should not so quickly be judged without extensive thought.

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To get it LOTT will have to become a Democrat again.