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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 1 March 2001 | Vol. II #31 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 1 March 2001 | Vol. II #31 | ||
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Catch a great four-minute message from U.S. House Representative Dr. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) about the federal government's seizure of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. Call toll-free: (888) 322-1414.
[ GOP N&V ]
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a church-state dispute involving public school officials in Milford, N.Y., who refuse to let a religious club meet in a public school building after classes are dismissed for the day. The religious group, the Good News Club, claims its free-speech rights are being violated. The Rev. Stephen Fournier, who runs the club, said he's not asking the school to establish the Good News Club as its religion; nor is he asking for the school's support in any way. "I just want to use space that my tax dollars pay for," he said. But school officials say club meetings, which include prayers, singing, and Bible study, are like worship services, and therefore the meetings should not be allowed to take place in state-run schools. Fournier sued the Milford school system with the help of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative legal group. Both a federal judge and a federal appeals court have previously sided with the Milford school district, but other courts -- in other cases -- have upheld religious groups' rights to use public buildings for meetings.
[ CNS ]
Arguments in Microsoft's breakup appeal concluded Tuesday with federal appellate judges blasting the out-of-court behavior of the trial judge, at one point questioning whether the judge's conduct "violates the whole oath of office."
The tone of the proceedings sharply turned in Microsoft's favor, especially when discussing U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, prompting one legal observer to say that the government's chances of a breakup of the software giant are now sunk.
Jackson issued the historic order splitting Microsoft for antitrust violations, then was quoted in interviews as comparing chairman Bill Gates to Napoleon and the company to a drug-dealing street gang.
Microsoft's lawyers got a break from Monday's pointed questions, allowing them to give their prepared remarks almost completely unmolested. But the government's advocates got no respite.
"I'm not sure how you can ask us with a straight face" not to consider the appearance of bias, Judge David Sentelle asked John Roberts, speaking for the government. "What possible legitimate reason could you assign, unless the judge was biased against them?"
Added Judge David Tatel: "I don't see how you can get around the fact that the words he chose did convey to the average person bias."
Jackson granted some of the interviews on an embargoed basis before the antitrust trial ended last year with the expectation they would be published afterward - a fact singled out by some appeals judges.
"Had he not placed that embargo he would have been off that case in a minute," Judge A. Raymond Randolph said.
Harry Edwards, the chief judge of the appeals court in Washington, questioned whether Jackson violated his oath as a jurist.
"There are some who would say that (Jackson's behavior) violates the whole oath of office," Edwards said.
"The system would be a sham if all judges went around doing this," Edwards continued. "The public has something at stake, it's the integrity of the system."
Jackson declined comment Tuesday, his office said.
The appeals court must determine if Jackson's statements warrant removing him from further proceedings, taint his factual findings that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitve practices or are grounds for a retrial with a different judge.
A key question for the court is whether Jackson held his views about Microsoft before he began hearing the case.
Tatel told Microsoft lawyer Richard Urowsky there was no evidence "other than your own speculation that he had these views before the trial started."
Nonetheless, George Washington University law professor William Kovacic, who has followed the case, said the appeals judges' criticism of the trial judge was unusual.
"There are clearly some people on the court who would like to behead him," Kovacic said.
Microsoft lawyer Steven Holley said Jackson was "motivated by a desire to punish" the software giant, and that there was a "rush to judgment" without the opportunity for Microsoft to rebut government witnesses showing how a breakup could work.
The Justice Department's lawyers sought to keep the focus on what the trial court said was Microsoft's predatory efforts to hurt Web browser competitors like Netscape by packing its popular Windows operating system with Microsoft's own Web browser.
"This case is about using two arms to strangle a nascent competitor, using the applications arm to protect the operating system monopoly arm," government lawyer David Frederick argued.
The appeals judges also raised questions about flaws in Jackson's ruling. Edwards said "the district court made no finding of the appropriate market" for Internet browsers, which was crucial to whether Netscape was pushed out of the browser market.
That prompted Sentelle to question whether the case would need to be sent back. Kovacic said the judges' relentless attacks on Jackson's work and comments put the government's case in jeopardy.
"I don't think we're going to see a breakup," Kovacic said. "At the very worst, if there is a remedy, it will be remanded to a district court."
A decision in the appeal is not expected for several months, but at least three members of Congress, including Majority Leader Dick Armey, released statements calling for an end to the antitrust effort.
[ AP ]
TCN Comment: Microsoft is not our favorite software vendor, but this case has been nothing but harassment by the corrupt Clinton/Gore regime from the beginning. Gates was a big supporter of Republican candidates and Larry Ellison of Oracle, a leading competitor of MS, was a big supporter of Democrats. That is all that was required for Clinton to sic the dog (Reno) on Microsoft.
The idea that bundling Internet Explorer in Windows keeps people from using Netscape's browser is ludicrous, and the idea that anyone should be required by law to market another company's product, ie bundling Netscape with Windows too, is absolutely insane. It is equal to saying that Coke should be required to bundle a can of Lipton Iced Tea with every six pack of Coke.
Netscape lost the position as the number one web browser when they decided to charge for a tool that most other people were providing freely. They soon saw the error of their way, but many of those who had used only Netscape before had now become loyal Internet Explorer users. Netscape has not produced a browser since then that was able to draw those people back. The constant bickering over standardization is nothing but the ranting of a spoiled child insisting on having its own way. If Netscape can't compete on their own merits, they deserve to lose the market share.
"Some bureaucrats are up in arms over word that the Rev. Al Sharpton has been invited to deliver an address at Labor Department headquarters this week. 'The union membership strongly voted it down, but the union [leadership] said he is coming anyway. That's the way the union works,' says our union source in Labor."
[ John McCaslin's "Inside the Beltway" ]
** Clinton Corruption Plays Us for Fools-We Won't Forget
Some day soon, public interest in the Clinton administration's final disgrace will fade, and the former President-if not his wife, our junior Senator-will retreat from the headlines. Then, after an appropriate interval, we will start seeing phony photo ops and pious public pronouncements. Here and there, the Clintons will begin their latest rehabilitation: Here is the junior Senator, hugging inner-city children; there is the former President, lecturing his successor on the finer points of statecraft.
Just as surely as Richard Nixon began planning his comeback on the airplane that took him to San Clemente on Aug. 9, 1974, the Clintons even now are preparing their future public-relations assault on the nation's better nature. They assume-regrettably, not without reason-that the American public in general, and New York voters in particular, will forget about the pardons and the denials and the bald-faced lies that have sickened even their most stalwart apologists.
They assume that disgust will run its course, that salvation will be found in short attention spans, that the hyperactivity of the media age will continue to blur collective memory. And if that doesn't work, well, they figure they can rely on this heavily Democratic state to swallow whole their claims to political victimhood. If public memory cannot be manipulated, there's always the crass pandering that has served them so well in the past: The former President will walk the length of 125th Street to remind his putative neighbors that he was, after all, the first black President; the junior Senator will hold news conferences to denounce right-wing conspirators. This combination of cold-blooded racial politics and partisan hatemongering, the Clintons no doubt believe, will keep New York pliant. And New York is the key to it all: Without New York, there is no Senate seat, there is no imperial post-Presidency, there is no access to the courtiers who can, with words, actions and money, douse the dealings of grifters with the perfume of public service.
So the Clintons are playing New Yorkers for fools. Although they surely know by now that their actions and their words have offended even their own supporters in the state they laughingly call home, they see no reason to panic. Mrs. Clinton is in the first weeks of a six-year term of office; in 2006, they believe, who in New York will remember Marc Rich or Hugh Rodham? Who will remember the White House furniture that found its way to their living room in Chappaqua?
And so it will be up to New York, finally, to foil the calculations of this coarse and manipulative couple. New Yorkers now have an obligation, not only to themselves but to the nation: They must remember. They must remember exactly how they feel about the Clintons at this moment, exactly how they felt when their junior Senator claimed she didn't know that her own brother was bidding for pardons from her husband. They must remember how their stomachs turned when their junior Senator professed to be "heartbroken" about her brother's rancid involvement in the great pardon auction. They must remember their astonishment when Mrs. Clinton claimed to know nothing about the Rich pardon, even though his ex-wife Denise donated more than $100,000 to the former First Lady's Senate campaign-not to mention the $1.1 million that Ms. Rich has given the national Democratic Party, and the $450,000 she gave to the Clinton Presidential Library.
Mrs. Clinton is heartbroken? She's always either heartbroken or disappointed. What about her constituents? Doesn't she feel our shame? After all, her husband felt our pain. Does she not understand our embarrassment? With the nation and indeed the world watching, we entrusted her with the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert F. Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign. If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she'd be thrown out of office by springtime, the season of renewal.
Only two months ago, serious people believed that Mrs. Clinton would be a candidate for President in 2004. Even true believers-gathered in Manhattan's few remaining telephone booths-must admit that the plan to get Mrs. Clinton back into the White House must now be relegated to history's dustbin, where it will share space with the proceedings of the ClintonCare commission, canceled checks to the Whitewater Development Corporation and the billing records of the Rose Law Firm. Mrs. Clinton's political viability has come to an end after fewer than eight weeks in office.
Unlike the tawdry dealings that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment, the pardon scandal implicates Mrs. Clinton as much as, and perhaps even more than, her husband. After all, it was her brother, not his, who accepted $400,000 to lobby for pardons for a drug kingpin and a swindler. (Hugh Rodham says he'll give the money back-although he hasn't done it just yet. Even if he does, the restitution won't make everything right. Just ask a bank robber.) The Hasidic village in upstate New Square voted en masse for her, not him, last fall, after she met with the village's religious leader. The pardons for four felons from the village who bilked the federal government out of $40 million raise questions about her campaign, not his. It was her campaign treasurer, not his, who helped and advised two of those felons with their pardon applications.
Mrs. Clinton's press conference on Feb. 22 was a masterpiece of evasion-so much so that she deserves a new (if you'll forgive us) moniker: "Slick Hillie." She said she knew nothing about the pardons. She said she knew nothing of her brother's involvement. No, no-she didn't concern herself with these little matters, because she was very busy preparing to represent the people of New York. If we had any questions about the pardons, she said, we ought to ask him, the "him" in question being her husband.
A move worthy of the Big He himself.
The Clintons have spent the last eight years treating the American electorate with dismissive contempt. The rage unleashed in the last few weeks is that of an aggrieved partner who has wised up at last. The President's supporters in politics and the press understood all along that they were in a high-risk relationship, but they had persuaded themselves that, in his heart, Mr. Clinton loved what they loved. Their devotion only deepened when they were warned to be wary of him; his enemies were their enemies, too.
Now, with Mr. Clinton stripped of the power and protection of the Presidency, his supporters see him exactly as he is. And the image that presents itself is terrifyingly close to the caricature his enemies drew of him. They were right, after all. Mr. Clinton was, in fact, an untrustworthy low-life who used people for his own purposes and then discarded them. How could they have been fooled so badly?
Even now, some continue to delude themselves. They attack Mr. Clinton's actions, but they can't bring themselves to admit that Senator Hillary also is at fault. Most of us, however, now realize that she is an equally detestable partner in a scandal whose sleazy dealings finally have been brought to light.
Conservative critics of the Clintons have been amused to see the former President's friends writhing in agony on talk shows and in op-ed columns in recent weeks. They wonder why other Democrats and liberal commentators are so angry. It's not as though the Clintons have suddenly become something they're not; they've been selling their principles to the highest bidder for years. It's not as though they've betrayed their core values; what core values did they ever have?
What the critics-understandably satisfied to see their judgment confirmed yet again-miss is the amount of self-loathing in the Clinton pile-on. Pro-Clinton commentators and colleagues now realize just how much they compromised, just how much they excused, just how ridiculous they looked in their defense of this corrupt couple. The end of the Clinton Presidency and the beginning of another Bush era has inspired a round of reflection, and Clinton supporters find they can't look at themselves in the mirror.
They are ashamed of themselves, which is a good deal more than anybody can say of the Clintons. Indeed, they remain smug and self-righteous, certain that New York will forget the early weeks of 2001, certain that New York will embrace its junior Senator once again.
They have fooled the public before. They believe they can do so again.
[ NY Observer ]
Sen. Hillary Clinton's ego apparently hasn't taken much of a hit lately. According to aide to the Democratic Senate leadership, Mrs. Clinton has asked to give the next Democratic response to a Bush speech. "She understood she couldn't do the response to the State of the Union address," says the leadership aide with a straight face. "But she requested dibs on the one after that. I think it's safe to say that such a request, while being taken under advisement, isn't being taken seriously."
[ Washington Prowler ]
Despite having advanced copies of President George W. Bush's address to Congress, minority leaders Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt were both shocked by the speech's tone and the warm greeting their adversary received from Democratic colleagues before and after the speech. "They were absolutely stunned," says an aide to the Democratic House leadership. "The speech was great and they expected a warm reception for the president, but when they say people like [Democrat and Black Caucus member] Sheila Jackson Lee kissing him afterwards, they sensed something had happened." Daschle and Gephardt delayed their live response to the congressional address to insert several additional conciliatory lines about "wanting to work with the President."
"Both men thought Bush was going to just give this speech his usual treatment, and they anticipated being able to just hammer him in their own address -- they called themselves a tag-team. But after the speech, they held everyone off, regrouped and tried to put a warmer face on their own speech. They were devastated."
They felt even worse a little more than an hour later when initial DNC focus group numbers from surveys in Michigan, California, and Florida came in showing that better than 75 percent of those Democrats taking part liked what they heard from Bush's speech. "The numbers were awful. But we need to see what they look like a week from now. Still, Daschle and Gephardt are worried."
The Democratic leadership is concerned about Bush's seeming ability to build bridges. So much so that Gephardt and Daschle have asked aides to come up with a plausible way to enforce a ban on White House meetings with Democrats. "The leader doesn't want the atmosphere to be too friendly," says a Daschle aide. "But he doesn't want the press to spin it that Democrats are refusing meetings with the President. He just wants all those photo-ops of Bush meeting with us to go away. If some of our people actually buy into this era of good feeling, we're dead."
[ Washington Prowler ]
Jesse Jackson's Citizenship Education Fund may become the target of an Internal Revenue Service inquiry, following a complaint filed Wednesday by a public interest leagal group. The IRS complaint, filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, charges that Jackson's CEF "has engaged in conduct which appears to violate the (federal) Code," governing not-for-profit organizations. According to the complaint, the alleged "misconduct falls into three areas: non-exempt purpose, private inurement, and procedural non-compliance." The complaint to IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti argues that such "red-flags... justify the (Internal Revenue) Service initiating an investigation and/or audit," of Jackson's group, which could result in revoking its tax-exempt status. In filing the complaint, the NLPC cites reports in which Jackson's group lobbied on behalf of successful corporate mergers that had faced opposition among some civil rights groups, only to have those corporations make contributions to Jackson, which the complaint says gives the impression that Jackson's organization is acting "more like a fee-for-service consulting business rather than a charitable/educational organization." More to follow.
[ CNS ]
As he did in Florida two weeks ago, Bill Clinton again declined to accept questions from the audience after his speech in New York at the Variety/Credit Suisse First Boston media conference on Tuesday afternoon. Under Clinton's $100,000 speaker's agreement, he can decide whether or not to take questions, and he's made clear he will not. That's not to say he didn't want it to appear he didn't take questions. So his staff came up with two questions he was asked at the end of his New York speech. And boy, were they tough: "Do you support cameras in the courtrooms?" and "What do you think about violence on television?" "Notice how they didn't ask about 'sex and violence'?" noted an attendee.
While Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) did technically co-sponsor the media event, and did ostensibly split the cost of Clinton's fee, the international financial firm pulled all of its support from the event, even removing everything from the Grand Hyatt that bore the CSFB corporate logo. In fact, CSFB was poised to send out a press release on Monday afternoon announcing that due to client concern and opposition raised by employees over the Clinton speech, CSFB was withdrawing from the program. Drafts of the release were sent to Variety's parent company Cahners Publishing and to Clinton's offices. Immediately Clinton's people were on phone begging that the release not be made public. "That press release would have been the capper," says a Clinton aide. "It would have been devastating. The president just held the piece of paper and shook his head. I think he realized what that piece of paper would have done to his speaking fees and his marketability to speak at high-profile events."
According to a source who helped organize publicity for the event, Cahners Publishing agreed to cover all the expenses CSFB incurred in withdrawing and to cover Clinton's fee in full. In return, CSFB agreed not to make the press release public. "Once again Hollywood came to the aid of President Clinton. If he wasn't a subscriber to Variety before, he's going to be a paying subscriber now," says the PR agent
[ Washington Prowler ]
The Libertarian Party has weighed in on the latest controversies surrounding former President Bill Clinton, and they think the solution is hitting Clinton where it hurts: in the pockets.
"The best way for Americans to show their disapproval of Bill Clinton's questionable actions is by stripping him of his lavish presidential pension, which could total over $7.3 million during his lifetime," said Libertarian Party national director Steve Dasbach in Washington Tuesday.
"Pretty much everyone now agrees that Bill Clinton is a liar and a scoundrel. So why in the world should we allow him to spend the rest of his life as a wealthy, tax-subsidized liar and scoundrel? "
Even though several congressional investigations have begun to examine "Pardongate", Dasbach thinks such investigations will almost certainly fail to turn up any "smoking checkbook" that will allow Clinton to be prosecuted for illegally selling pardons.
Dasbach called on Congress to make sure that Clinton does not collect his pension so he "can't spend the rest of his life raking in additional pension loot from the taxpayers.
"Bill Clinton may have been a bad president, but he's an excellent crook. The fact is, presidents have wide latitude to pardon, and Clinton undoubtedly made sure there's no financial DNA evidence to convict him. The worst he will probably be accused of is influence peddling, which may be unethical but not illegal," Dasbach said.
Clinton's annual pension starts at $161,200 and the National Taxpayers Union recently compiled that if Clinton lives to be 82 years he would receive around $7.3 million in pension benefits.
Even if Clinton didn't receive his federal government pension, he could still survive, according to Dasbach.
"If the Clinton family needs money, they can make it the way they always have: Dubious book deals, futures trading, donations from Buddhist monks, pawning purloined White House furniture and cash from communist Chinese friends. Or perhaps Mr. Clinton can simply move overseas and live with his friend [actor] Alec Baldwin."
[ CNS ]
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