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Jewish World Review Jan. 26, 2001 / 3 Shevat, 5761

Dale McFeatters

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"Fifteen Minutes in December"

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE CLINTONS may have left the White House but they have left behind a stash of political whoopee cushions to emit periodic reminders of what their administration was like.

We now learn that on Dec. 27, in the 15 minutes it took independent counsel Robert Ray to outline the deal that would get the president off the hook for perjury, Clinton sat in absolute silence. Not a question. Not a comment. Not a word.

The 15 minutes have to be a record for our garrulous leader being quiet and also provide a title for a movie about his administration. John Kennedy's great crisis was called "Thirteen Days in October;" Bill Clinton's crisis could be titled "Fifteen Minutes in December."

That unusual one-way conversation took place in the White House Map Room, the same place where two years earlier the independent counsel had grilled Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. President Bush might want to think about honoring his predecessor by renaming it the Deposition Room.

The Map Room figured in another late-breaking blast from a whoopee cushion. That was where just five days earlier newly elected New York Sen. Hillary Clinton sat in on a meeting with a delegation of Hasidic Jews from New York who were seeking clemency for four of their number who had swindled the federal government out of $40 million. In November 1999, they were sentenced to terms of 30 to 78 months; Clinton commuted one sentence to 24 months, the others to 30.

Having the first lady present at a clemency discussion is delicately described as "unusual," but Sen. Clinton denies any political quid pro quo. "I did not play any role whatsoever. I had no opinion about it," she told reporters. (If that is true, there are two more Clinton family firsts.) This particular Hasidic sect voted for Hillary 1,400 to 12.

The new ex-president's explanation for his blizzard of last-minute pardons for various miscreants was they had "paid in full" for their crimes and had been "out long enough after their sentence to show that they're good citizens."

That's why gullible folk who take Clinton at his word were puzzled by his pardon of financier Marc Rich, who has never served time because he's never been convicted of anything. That's because he's been on the lam for the past 17 years. Among the many charges for which the feds would like to try Rich are $48 million in tax evasion.

Nonetheless Clinton granted the pardon. Perhaps there's something about that $40 million threshold that brings out the mercy in him. Or perhaps it had something to do with Rich's ex-wife, Denise, who has lobbied hard for the safe return of her ex-husband. She made a $120,000 soft money donation to Hillary's Senate campaign and gave $7,375 worth of furniture to the couple to start housekeeping in their new mansion. In September 1998, at one of the many low points in the Lewinsky affair, Rich hosted a lavish party for the Clintons. The president vowed "we'll never forget it." A $3 million fund-raiser will do that to you.

When not busy pardoning people, President Clinton was issuing scores of 11th hour regulations designed to put large expanses of the American landscape and American government off-limits to President Bush.

The new Bush team managed to block many of the regulations, but one final Clinton regulation eluded them. The federal standard for the minimum acceptable diameter of the holes in Swiss cheese has been reduced from eleven-sixteenths to six-sixteenths. It was published in Tuesday's Federal Register.

Talk about a legacy. America sleeps safer tonight.

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