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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 22 January 2001 | Vol. II #10 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 22 January 2001 | Vol. II #10 | ||
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The Liberty Committee, a work of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), is circulating a petition to withdraw the presidential signature from this dangerous treaty.
John R. Bolton of the Washington Post writes. " President Clinton's last-minute decision to authorize U.S. signing of the treaty creating an International Criminal Court (ICC) is as injurious as it is disingenuous."
Dr. James Hirsen wrote in NewsMax, " Place yourself in this situation. You are unexpectedly detained by the newly instituted International Criminal Court. You find yourself in front of a jury, but not an impartial jury of your peers. Rather, you are staring into the eyes of a panel of appointed bureaucrats.
"The judicial officials hail from remote parts of the world, countries such as Iraq, China, Cuba and North Korea. They share neither your country's system of governance nor its notion of civil liberties. Instead, you stand before a group that epitomizes the lowest common denominator of criminal justice.
"You are given no idea as to the length of time the process will take. The right to a speedy trial is not a consideration. After all, temporary tribunals, which were a preview of the ICC, arrested and imprisoned suspects for months and even years before any judicial proceedings began.
"If convicted, your only right to appeal will be to the very same court that has rendered the conviction. And double jeopardy? Being tried for the same offense twice? Protection against such violation is nonexistent. If for some reason the prosecution loses its case against you, it is free to try again.
"Will the court explain the nature of the charges? Will it conceal the identity of witnesses? It is within its province to do so. The fear inside you intensifies. It is warranted.
"Hopefully, no citizen of the United States, or any other country for that matter, will have to endure this kind of monumental legal nightmare. Secretary of Defense William Cohen is on record as opposing the treaty. Incoming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shares the sentiment. And now Senator Jesse Helms strives to rescue us from the misguided action of the Clinton administration when it signed the treaty. Senator Helms promises legislation to protect our citizens against global prosecution. He deserves our unqualified support and gratitude."
Please sign the petition on-line at http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/iccsummary.htm More information on the treaty is also available at this address.
A printable version is available at http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/icc_petition.htm
[ TCN ]
As one of his first acts as president of the United States, George W. Bush ordered a top-to-bottom scrub-down of the Oval Office complex where his predecessor carried on a messy affair with a 23-year-old White House intern.
Bush had a "SWAT team" of two dozen cleaners scour his future workplace, beginning just four minutes after he took the oath of office, the New York Daily News reported Sunday.
From 1995 through 1997 Monica Lewinsky and ex-President Clinton had sex in the hallway and annex just outside the Oval Office door and often left behind towels stained with lipstick and other substances for White House stewards to clean.
Even one of the president's naval valets, who had been summoned before the Starr grand jury, testified he and other attendants feared picking up tissues found around the Oval Office because of the presidential stains.
Other testimony indicated that Clinton sometimes used adjacent offices (Nancy Heinrich's comes to mind) and the Oval Office sink to finish the encounters in a satisfactory manner.
During a campaign appearance on "The Late Show" with David Letterman last fall, Bush joked that a post-Clinton office scrubbing would be a top priority - but never gave a hint that he actually intended to do it.
Besides the removal of whatever physical stains Clinton left behind, Bush ordered an immediate revamping of his office's decor - including the removal of almost every artifact from the Clinton era.
Among the items swept away by the Bush clean-up SWAT Team: Clinton's gold damask Oval Office drapes, his gaudy royal blue floor rug and couches upholstered in glitzy cherry red and cream silk.
Bush had movers resurrect the more elegant ivory and beige terra-cotta carpeting favored by Ronald Reagan and installed more sedate furniture.
The two dozen direct-call phone lines ordered by Clinton during his first week in the White House (a feature that allowed him to call Lewinsky for phone sex without detection by White House operators) have also been replaced.
The new president will have instead direct telephone links to his wife, Laura, Vice President Cheney and other senior White House staffers.
"By day's end, there was little to suggest Bill Clinton had ever been [in the Oval Office]," reported the News.
[ NewsMax ]
** Holder At Center of Clinton-Gore Justice Department Corruption
** Bob Novak: "(Holder's) retention by Bush, no matter how brief, is not a good sign."
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes public corruption, expressed "disbelief" that President George W. Bush is allowing Clinton-Gore Justice Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder to act as interim Attorney General until John Ashcroft is confirmed. Ultimate confirmation of Ashcroft by the full U.S. Senate will take several weeks, if not months. Respected columnist Robert Novak also criticized today the choice of Holder in his syndicated column. See "Bush's first challenges," Chicago Sun-Times, January 22, 2001.
As Janet Reno's Deputy, Eric Holder was responsible for much of the infamous corruption at the Clinton-Gore Justice Department, including the illegal and violent raid on the Gonzalez family home in Miami (for which he is one of the defendants in Judicial Watch's lawsuit on behalf of those beaten, gassed, and threatened in the raid), the suppression of Chinagate investigations (of which he was personally in charge), and Justice's coverup of the sale of Clinton-Gore Commerce Department trade mission seats in exchange for campaign contributions. Holder, in his confirmation hearings before Sen. Orrin Hatch, falsely denied, under oath, that he was involved in the Judicial Watch lawsuit which uncovered the Commerce Department trade mission scandal. In fact, he had personally signed many of the false pleadings presented to a federal court judge in the case. (This case also uncovered John Huang which, according to Fox News, "got the ball rolling" on Chinagate.)
"In addition to disinfecting the Oval Office, the Bush Administration should clean out the Justice Department by immediately firing every Clinton-Gore appointee, as well as those corrupted 'career' attorneys who participated in the on-going cover-ups," stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman. "When it comes to fighting corruption, the Bush team has been inexcusably AWOL. To allow Janet Reno's "hatchet man," Eric Holder, to remain at Justice is not only irresponsible and naive, but an affront to justice," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
[ Judicial Watch ]
By Joseph Curl
The former wife of Marc Rich, the fugitive commodities trader and tax evader pardoned by President Clinton in his final hours in office, donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes since 1992, including Bill Clinton's and Al Gore's presidential campaigns.
Mr. Rich fled to Switzerland in 1983 after the U.S. government indicted him on 65 counts of tax fraud, racketeering and tax evasion charges that carry a maximum 325 years in jail.
The billionaire trader, one of the world's richest men, was accused of evading more than $48 million in taxes and faced prosecution for violating U.S. sanctions by trading oil with Iran during the time Iran held American hostages.
Denise Rich, who now lives in New York, contributed nearly $1.3 million to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore's campaigns, the Democratic National Committee and various Democratic causes, including contributions to Hillary Rodham Clinton's New York Senate campaign. She also has donated to more than a dozen congressional campaigns.
Mrs. Rich, who identifies herself on federal contribution records as a "songwriter," "actress" or "philanthropist," also gave money to pro-choice and family-planning organizations with Democratic ties and a group called "Friends of Albert Gore, Jr. Inc."
She contributed as well to the campaigns of former Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland.
It was not clear if she was married to Mr. Rich when she made the contributions, but a January 1992 Fortune magazine article about her husband identified Mrs. Rich as his wife.
Mr. Rich's attorney, former Clinton White House counsel Jack Quinn, had been lobbying for a pardon for Mr. Rich. Asked yesterday about the pardon of Mr. Rich, Mr. Clinton said he had spent a lot of time considering the case.
"I spent a lot of personal time . . . because it's an unusual case, but Quinn made a strong case, and I was convinced he was right on the merits," said Mr. Clinton, speaking to reporters in suburban Chappaqua, N.Y., where he now lives.
"That's all I can say. Others might disagree, but I think Quinn made a very compelling case in the end."
[THE WASHINGTON TIMES - Full article http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200112222412.htm ]
TCN Comment: A very compelling ca$$$$e indeed.
New York most-special Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton missed her first vote as a U.S. senator a couple weeks back just after being sworn in. Yesterday, she again missed her first votes in the newly-installed George W. Bush administration ... votes to confirm seven of the president's cabinet nominees. Her highness was too busy traveling to New York with former (Gad, don't you love that word "former" in this context?) President Clinton to begin his official "retirement."
TCN Comment -- I guess that there is no surprise to most of us that Hillary has missed the first two votes in the Senate, they didn't have any bearing on her agenda. We don't expect her to be involved in much of the political process for the first two years unless it is headline grabbing legislation that she has introduced. She will start to be more prominent in the third year as she establishes her "exploratory committee" for a 2004 presidential bid.
Hillary has no interest in the Senate except as a springboard to the oval office. If the leftists can make the next few years rough enough for Bush, she will run in 2004. If Bush is able to pull out a successful first term, she will run in 2008.
"I wonder if we'll ever see,
A country that is Clinton-free,
A time when Hillary and Bill
Have left us and gone o'er the hill,
A time when they don't think they've meant,
Each one, to be our president,
To tell us all what's best for us,
Defy us then to make a fuss,
To insist they're meant to rule us,
Sure, as always, they can fool us,
A time when they at last have quit,
Their [drinking from] the public teat,
When Bill no longer wags his jaw,
Instead, goes home to Arkansas,
And Hillary no longer runs,
But takes to baking hot cross buns."
- Former Reagan adviser Lyn Nofziger from "Joy Skilmer"
"Is Jesse for Sale?" the Village Voice asked. "Of course he is," they wrote, answering their own question.
CounterPunch recalls a couple of blatant examples of the Rev. Jackson's availability to the highest bidder:
When a number of black GM auto dealers sued General Motors, claiming discrimination, Jackson showed up and announced that he was there to help them get what they were after. He then boldly colluded with the automaker in arranging a settlement that many of the dealers saw as nothing less than a sellout.
After making a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, marching around a Nike Factory for the benefit of CNN's cameras, and loudly protesting the shoemaker's personnel policies, he suddenly fell silent on the issue. Not long after, Nike began contributing to Jackson's Operation PUSH. Since then his Rainbow Sports organization has given an award to Nike's top PR executive, Vada Manager.
After what the Village Voice reported as Wall Street's arm-twisting, Jackson suddenly reversed his outrage over the alleged disenfranchisement of blacks in Florida and phoned the object of black complaints, President-elect (at that time) Bush to discuss "healing and reconciliation," leaving the so-called Counter Inauguration without a leader.
Despite all this, and the fact that Jackson reportedly gave Rainbow Coalition funds to his mistress to get her out of town, his Board of Directors acclaimed their confidence in the Rev. Jackson, retaining him as their commander in chief.
[ NewsMax ]
(Washington, DC) - The American Center for Law and Justice, an international public interest law firm, said this week that the testimony of Missouri Senator John Ashcroft before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee shows his dedication and commitment to bringing fairness and integrity to the Office of Attorney General. The ACLJ said support for the Ashcroft nomination continues to grow as more than 140,000 people have now signed a petition of support for Ashcroft.
"The testimony of John Ashcroft is off to a powerful start," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. "John Ashcroft is poised and prepared and is clearly articulating his commitment to enforcing the laws of the nation - even those laws he personally disagrees with. It is clear that John Ashcroft will be a strong defender of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law and do so in a way that is fair and equitable for all Americans."
Sekulow said a two-week-old petition campaign continues to generate support for Ashcroft as more than 140,000 people from across the nation have now added their names to the list. The ACLJ will continue to gather names until the U.S. Senate votes on the nomination. Results of the petition campaign will go to members of the U.S. Senate.
The American Center for Law and Justice is an international public interest law firm that focuses on constitutional issues. The ACLJ specializes in pro-family, pro-life, and pro-liberty issues. The Web site address is www.aclj.org.
[ ACLJ ]
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