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Jewish World Review /Jan. 27, 1999 /10 Shevat, 5759
Walter Williams
Absurdity, brazenness and hypocrisy reigns
(JWR) ----(http://www.jewishworldreview.com) A YEAR'S WORTH OF PRESIDENTIAL SCANDAL proves at least two things about us:
our weakened ability to think and political hypocrisy.
The president's defenders and pundits constantly preach that removing
Clinton from office will "overturn the 1996 elections." I'm wondering
whether they want Americans to believe, and whether Americans actually
believe, that removing Clinton from office means that Bob Dole and Jack
Kemp, defeated in the 1996 presidential elections, will assume the
presidency and vice presidency. It doesn't.
If the Senate were to convict Clinton, Vice President Gore, who was elected
in 1996, becomes president. So what's this business about "overturning the
1996 elections?"
How much ignorance abounds in the land is debatable. What's not debatable
is our heightened immunity to paternalistic insults. Some evidence of this
is Clinton's Buffalo speech where he made a pitch for using the budget
surplus to save Social Security rather than the tax cuts Republicans want.
Clinton told a cheering crowd, "We could give (the surplus) back to you and
hope you spend it right." Then he advised, "If you don't spend it right,"
Social Security shortfalls will surface "just 14 years away."
Elites have always felt they've had wisdom superior to the masses and an
ordained duty to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. What's
surprising is Clinton's audacity to articulate that sentiment. What's even
more surprising is our acceptance of his paternalistic insult. By the way,
Social Security's $10 trillion debt demonstrates that Washington's
retirement management isn't that great.
Clinton's impeachment has also amply demonstrated gross political
hypocrisy. One member of Congress after another has argued that we should
adhere to Framer intent behind Article II, Section 4 (the Constitution's
impeachment clause).
Clinton supporters in Congress and out, including law professors, talk
about the words of George Mason, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
They've searched the "Federalist Papers" and other writings to discover
Framer intent about impeachment. I say great, but let's not restrict this
new found "respect" for what the Framers had to say about impeachment.
How much respect do you think congressmen and lawyers of the Alan
Dershowitz ilk have for these words of James Madison, "I cannot undertake to
lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to
Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their
constituents."? Or, would these constitutional hypocrites be enthusiastic
about Federalist Paper 28 that says "that the state governments will in all
possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the
public liberty by the national authority (Washington)."
There's no stone that will go unturned to save Clinton's hide. The
president's strategists felt it necessary to argue that Clinton's perjurious
testimony and justice obstruction in the Paula Jones case didn't violate her
civil rights. Who better to present that defense than a black woman?
That was Deputy White House Counsel Cheryl Mills' qualification for making
that case to the Senate; but she had another qualification. Last September,
the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform wrote to the Justice
Department requesting that Mills be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction
for lying under oath and concealing subpoenaed documents -- no word yet from
the Justice Department.
The subpoenaed documents were ultimately handed over when other White House
lawyers looked into Mills' files and discovered them hidden there. The
bottom line is who's better to defend the president against charges of
perjury and obstruction of justice than a person with personal experience in
that area?
Clinton has exhausted all shams; now it's the Senate's
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