 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
End |
Reviews |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
End |
Reviews |
|
|
|
. . . CAPITAL PUNISHMENT see "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for related links Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged. --Hilaire Belloc (18701953) British poet, essayist, historian, and novelist. "Epitaph on the Politician Himself" ^ Alexander Blackwell (17091749) British adventurer. Sentenced to be decapitated, Blackwell came to the block and laid his head on the wrong side. The executioner pointed out his mistake. Blackwell moved around to the correct side, observing that he was sorry for the mistake, but this was the first time that he had been beheaded. --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford. --John Bradford (15101555) English Protestant martyr. While observing several criminals being taken to execution in _The Writings of John Bradford_ [1853]. Shortly thereafter, Bradford was charged with sedition and heresy, and burned at the stake. The Americans are a good-natured people, kindly, helpful to one another, disposed to take a charitable view even of wrongdoers... Even a mob lynching a horse thief in the West has consideration for the criminal, and will give him a good drink of whiskey before he is strung up. --James Bryce (18381922) British politician, diplomat, and historian; ambassador to the U.S. [19071913]. _The American Commonwealth_ [1888] How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? French fries. --James French (19361966) American convict. Electrocuted in Oklahoma [1966]. I did not get my Spaghetti-O's, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this. --Thomas J. Grasso, a convicted killer who was executed March 20, 1995 in Oklahoma, commenting on his last meal's falling short of his expectations. - To execute a murderer is simply to adopt his point of view. --Sydney J. Harris (19171986) American journalist. _Pieces of Eight_ [1982] One of the oldest Russian proverbs remains as inexorably true in modern America: 'No one is hanged who has money in his pocket.' Or, one might say, capital punishment is only for those without capital. --Sydney J. Harris (19171986) American journalist.In his sydicated column "Chicago Daily News" [April 1971]. - Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] "19 September 1777". In that case, if we are to abolish the death penalty, let the murderers take the first step. --Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (18081890) French novelist and journalist. In "Les Guκpes" [January 1849]. - The sentry who is inattentive will be killed. The arrow-messenger who gets drunk will be killed. Anyone who harbors a fugitive will be killed. The warrior who unlawfully appropriates booty for himself will be killed. The leader who is incompetent will be killed. --Laws, late 12th and early 13th centuries; in Michael Hoang _Genghis Khan_ [1988]. - Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. 1. The king must never appear in public except when the occasion is extremely important and unavoidable ... 2. Only the king and the prime minister Tlacaelel may wear sandals within the palace ... 7. The commoners will not be allowed to wear cotton clothing, under pain of death ... 8. Only great noblemen and valiant warriors are given licence to build a house with a second storey; for disobeying this law a person receives the death sentence ... 14. There is to be a rigorous law regarding adulterers. They are to be stoned and thrown into rivers or to the buzzards. --Montezuma I (c.13981469) Emperor of the Mexican people from 1440-1468. In Michael E. Smith _The Aztecs_ [1996], p. 52. First of all, then, Solon repealed all Draco's laws because of their harshness and the excessively heavy penalties they carried; the only exceptions were the laws relating to homicide. Under the Draconian code almost any offence was liable to the death penalty, so that even those convicted of idleness were executed, and those who stole fruit or vegetables suffered the same punishment as those who committed sacrilege or murder. This is the reason why, in later times, Demades became famous for his remark that Draco's code was written not in ink but in blood. Draco himself, when he was once asked why he had decreed the death penalty for the great majority of offenses, replied that he considered the minor ones deserved it, and so for the major ones no heavier punishment was left. --Plutarch (A.D. 46?119?) Greek philosopher and biographer. _Parallel Lives_ "Solon" In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004]. 'Tis a sharp remedy, but a sure one for all ills. --Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 15521618) English explorer and courtier. (On feeling the edge of the axe prior to his execution,) in D. Hume _History of Great Britain_ [1754]. TOPICAL Since executions [in the United States] were resumed in 1977: * Someone who kills a white is ten times more likely to be executed than someone who kills a black. * A black who kills a white is about five times more likely to be executed than a white who kills a white. * A black who kills a white is about sixty times more likely to be executed than a black who kills a black. * And the most telling fact of all: Though there have been well over 2,500 white on black homicides nationally since 1977 [through 1987], not a single state has yet put to death a white who killed a black. --Carl Siciliano and Meg Hyre "Racism, Silence, and the Subversion of Justice" _Catholic Worker_ [December 1988]  . . see "THE HUMAN RACE" for related links - The left has mastered the dark art of conducting a class-warfare campaign. First and foremost, you must dispel any notion that those who are rich actually got that way through hard work. Americans at all income levels admire hard work and almost universally believe that those who work hard should be rewarded. To make the class-warfare efforts bear fruit, the left must convince the middle and lower-income Americans that they are the only ones who are really working for their income. This is why you constantly hear Democrats refer to lower and middle-income earners as "working people" or "working families." The unspoken premise here is that if you are in the upper-income levels, you don't work. You're not one of the "working people." To the class warrior, the only true work is work that is done with muscle. Working with your brain isn't work. Former House Minority Leader now, presidential candidate Richard Gephardt reinforces this "the rich don't work" idea with his reference to high-achievers as "those who won life's lottery." The message is clear: The rich didn't earn their wealth, they were just lucky. They put down their dollar, just like everyone else, and the machine gave them the winning numbers. None other than CBS's Dan Rather is now bandying about this "won life's lottery" idea. Remember, though, there is no leftist bias in the mainstream media. [...] In a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution column in opposition to the Bush economic plan, Dean Baker wrote "Bush wants to take $650 billion from the public and give the bulk of it to the richest 1 percent of the country." Note, please, the two key words there: "Take" and "give." The Republicans want to "take" your money and "give" it to the rich. Here's where that inconceivable economic ignorance nurtured by our government schools comes into play. A tax cut is a cut in tax rates. When payday arrives, the employer takes less money out of the worker's check for federal taxes. No money is being taken from anyone. The money is simply staying in the pocket of the person who earned it. Then we have the most powerful rhetorical weapon in the class warrior's arsenal. It's the old "richest 1 percent" phrase-grenade. Now far be it from me to meddle with the freedom of the press, but maybe we need a law which says that every time a newspaper or magazine uses that "richest 1 percent" line it also include a paragraph stating that these top 1 percent of income earners actually pay close to 38 percent of all federal income taxes, yet only earn about 17 percent of the income. Only a mind turned to gray goo by years of government education could fail to understand those who pay the most income taxes should gain the most from an income tax cut. --Neal Boortz, "Class warfare: The evil rich, the glorious poor" - You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. Quoted in _Point International_ [1 November 1976]. The true way to overcome the evil of class distinctions is not to denounce them as revolutionists denounce them, but to ignore them as children ignore them. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his copper and pocket a shilling. --Ebenezer Elliott (17811849) English poet. ...when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement. --Eric Hoffer (19021983) American longshoreman, philosopher, and author who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy. --Paul Johnson (1928 ) British historian. _The Recovery of Freedom _ [1980] - I heard an author on C-SPAN-2 Saturday afternoon talking about this very thing: "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." His general point: It isn't actually true, you know. The poor also get richer. Consider: A century or so ago, the rich man had a horsedrawn carriage, the poor man walked. Big difference in how far and how fast one traveled. Today, the rich man may drive a Rolls, while the poor man drives a Ford. Not as much difference, they both get where they need to go just as fast. A century ago, the rich man lived to 65 or so, the poor man died at 45. Today, the rich man lives to 80, the poor man to 75. Not such a big difference. A century ago, the rich man had servants running to bring him hot and cold water, and remove his thundermug, while the poor man went to the well himself, and the outhouse. Today, the only difference is in the cost of the fixtures at the end of the plumbing, and the kind of decor in the room around the plumbing. Not such a difference. Then, a rich man was patron to professionals who entertained him when he wished, while the poor either stood outside and listened, or entertained themselves. Today, we all listen to the same professional entertainment over the same electronic media, and if the rich have a bigger room with more powerful speakers and a bigger screen, it is still not such a big difference. This was much paraphrased from memory, since I couldn't transcribe his talk, and I didn't write down his name....This comparison could be extended many other places, the exercise is left to the student. Yes, there are differences in income between people. There always will be. Get over it! If you really want it bad enough to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY, you can place yourself anywhere you wish along that line. Those people at the upper end of that line did so. Whether you are so willing, or not, stop asking me to contribute part of my effort to reduce your effort. My effort is directed at placing myself where I want on that line. --David Kiefer, alt.quotations - - All educational work in the Soviet Republic of workers and peasants, in the field of political education in general and in the field of art in particular, should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat for the successful achievement of the aims of its dictatorship. --V.I. Lenin (18701924) Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (19171924). [8 October 1920] Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice. We repudiate all morality which proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas which are outside the class conception. In our opinion, morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of the class war. Everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting order and for uniting the proletariat. Our morality consists solely in close discipline and conscious warfare against the exploiters. --V.I. Lenin (18701924) Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (19171924). - In a very short time ... several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. --Mao Zedong (18931976) Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's communist revolution. Perhaps the fiercest of the young progressives making headlines in February 1906 was a socialist. Upton Sinclair, a bony, driven twenty- seven-year-old, proclaimed himself as dedicated to the equalization of wealth. Yet in the past year, he had managed to sell the same novel to four different publishers, an achievement any capitalist might envy. --Edmund Morris (1940 ) Kenyan-born American biographer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. _Theodore Rex_ Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other. The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves, or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer. From the point of view of the law, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of the masters. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], pt. 2, ch. 9 When I put a queston to [Lenin] about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, "and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree ha!ha!ha!" His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. Referring to a 1920 interview in Moscow, "Eminent Men I Have Known," _Unpopular Essays_ [1950]. - Now we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks, eliminate them as a class ... It is ridiculous and foolish to discourse at length on dekulakization. When the head is off one does not mourn for the hair. --Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18791953), Soviet Communist leader and head of the USSR from the death of V. I. Lenin (1924) until his own death. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 737. Cohan & Major note: The kulaks, the richer peasants, were now seen as the enemy of the state and the most serious obstacle to socialization of the economy. & see The 'kulak' child was loathsome, the young 'kulak' girl was lower than a louse. They looked on the so called 'kulaks' as cattle, swine, loathsome, repulsive. They had no souls; they stank; they all had venereal diseases; they were enemies of the people and exploited the labor of others. --Vasily Grossman _Forever Flowing_ [1972] - To get rid of the report [that he had ordered the fire of Rome], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace ... An immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of arson, as of hatred of the human race. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames. These served to illuminate the night when daylight failed. --Tacitus [or Publius Cornelius Tacitus or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus] (c.55c.117), Roman orator, lawyer, senator, and historian. _Annals_ (1942 edn.), bk. 15.44.  CLINTON (BILL) . . William Jefferson Clinton (1946- ) American Democratic statesman and president [1993-2001] see "POLITICS" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. If the--if he--if "is" means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. --Bill Clinton Grand jury testimony [17 August 1998] Bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war was virtuallly ignored by the American media, an omission not unnoticed by bin Laden himself. To correct this oversight, he began giving interviews to Arab and Western journalists from his hideout in Afghanistan. In each interview he was careful to repeat his avowed threats to attack the United States. Then, on February 23, 1998, he issued a new _fatwa_ calling for Muslims to kill Americans and Jews everywhere in the world. This time his declarations were noticed by the CIA which sent a memorandum to Congress warning that bin Laden was authorizing terrorist attacks on Americans throughout the world. Inside the government there was growing awareness that bin Laden was a very dangerous person, ready to unleash death and destruction wherever he could. The only question was when and where. --Steven Emerson, _American Jihad - the Terrorists Living Among Us_ pages 148-149 Now let's see if I understand this correctly. President Clinton has ordered our forces to engage an entrenched, politically motivated enemy, backed by the Russians, on their home ground, in a foreign civil war, in difficult terrain, with limited military objectives, with bombing restrictions, boundary and operational restrictions, queasy allies, far across an ocean, with uncertain goals, without prior consultation with Congress, having the potential for escalation, while limiting the forces at his disposal, and while the majority of Americans are opposed to, or are at best uncertain about, the value of the action being worth American lives. So, what was it that Clinton was opposed to during Vietnam? --Lt. Gen. Tom Griffin USA (retired) on the Kosovo crisis Reality always makes itself felt---even in the form of the President's nose growing when he lied to a jury and held the law in contempt. The reality of this man, his presidency, his legacy, his treason, is so awful, so morally damning that it is likely to leave an indelible stain on the nation's body politic. Why did the American people surrender their inherent decency and common sense to this creature? The principle reason, I believe, is because they have become imbued with the false notion that morality, integrity, courage and a sense of honor are private matters that have no bearing on character or matters of leadership. --James Henry, _The New Australian_ No. 120, 24-30 [May 1999] ^ It's a golden age of scientific discovery, David Goodstein, distinguished physicist and assistant provost at Caltech, home of so many Nobel Prize winners, was telling me in Pasadena, California. "Week by week we learn things that are astonishing and exciting. But the profession of science, which is quite different from the discovery of science, is going through a very long, extended, and difficult period. We haven't figured out how to rearrange that. Something's gone awry with the country, too. We've allowed this to happen. They are symptoms of the fact that having won the Cold War and being left without any of the traditional problems, we don't know what to do with ourselves now. We're trying to figure out what our national goal is." Then Goodstein expressed a theme that applies perfectly to the promise - and problems - of Technotimes. "This is the era of Pax Americana," he said. "We have it all in our lap. We can do anything we want, but we're not doing it." Those were private remarks, made on the West Coast at the end of the Nineties. About the same time, on the East Coast, another national leader in science and technology made similar remarks in a public address. The setting for them was Capitol Hill; the occasion, the National Summit on High Technology and the testimony of the president of MIT, Charles M. Vest, the only university representative to appear. Vest came to Washington to deliver an urgent message and a blunt warning - to the senators gathered to hear him. In words that sounded eerily like those that Vannevar Bush addressed to Truman so long ago, MIT's president reminded the senators that America's future prosperity rests upon developing new knowledge and then educating and training people to apply that knowledge practically and use it for further innovation. "The knowledge driving today's industries," he said, "has been accumulated during the last forty years of federal and industrial support of long-term research." Economists generally agree, he told them, "that more than half of our economic growth since World War II is due to technological innovation, largely through federally sponsored research in our universities." Then he got to the heart of his message: Are we doing the right things to generate the knowledge that will drive future economic success? he asked, then quickly answered his own question. "No. We are reducing our investments. We are going in the wrong direction. " For more than a decade, he said, federal expenditure for research and development had been decreasing by about 2.6 percent per year. More troubling, between 1993 and 1997, peak years of the boom, funding for basic and applied research dropped precipitously, falling 12 percent as a share of the nation's gross economic product. The MIT president was scathing in describing other national failings. The nation's public education system from kindergarten through twelfth grade was "a disgrace." American eighth-grade students ranked behind fifteen other countries in having access to computers in their homes. The nation was failing to attract sufficient numbers of bright young men and women into science, engineering, and mathematics.* A joint study by Harvard and MIT showed the United States falling behind other countries in producing technological innovation. While the United States still ranked near the top, "the gap with other nations is becoming increasingly small" and within six years America's position will likely "drop below several other countries." Nor was the steady reduction in federal support for research the only problem. At the same time, major U.S. corporations were also cutting back "very substantially on fundamental long-term research. Why? Because it is not clear that the benefits of such research will likely accrue directly to the performing company." In other words, they would not generate immediate profits. None of this bodes well for future American innovation, Vest warned. As America enters the new millennium, it may be "living off historical assets that are not being renewed." The strong message he hoped to deliver was: "What is missing is a sense of urgency." If Vest succeeded in conveying that sense of urgency to the senators, it was not passed on to the public. Not a line about his testimony appeared in next morning's New York Times or Washington Post. But why should that be surprising? During the boom, Americans and their media had many other diversions to claim their attention. *He could have made his case even stronger by citing other findings, such as that U.S. students rank eighteenth worldwide in math and physics. In a major international study comparing the knowledge of high school seniors in math and science in twenty-one countries, only two nations ranked lower than the United States - Cyprus and South Africa. In 1998, U.S. colleges and universities awarded only 12,500 bachelor of science degrees in electrical engineering- less than half those awarded a decade before. Congress contributed greatly to the severe shortage of U.S. physicists by cutting the budget for basic research in physics every year since the 1970s and compounded that situation by accelerating those cuts in the 1990s. This contributed to the sharp decline in the number of students-cut in half-in graduate programs from the peaks of the 1960s. Increasingly, those students are foreign-born. Now, half the entering graduate students are foreign compared to 20 percent in the 1960s. --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] ^ ^ One of the most surprising results to emerge from the accumulating official data - surprising, given the breathless media accounts of successes of the boom in the closing years of the Nineties - is the almost startling disparity in incomes that has been developing. By the end of 1999, according to data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office, four out of five American households, or about 217 million people, were taking home a thinner slice of the economic pie than in 1977. At the same time, more than 90 percent of the increase in national family income was going to the richest 1 percent of households. Incomes of the richest Americans were rising twice as fast as those of the middle class. Even more startling are the figures for the rewards gained by business leaders. In 1980, heads of American corporations were earning over forty times more than their workers. By the early Nineties, just as the boom was getting under way, they were earning more than ninety times more than their workers. By the end of the Nineties, the gap between top and bottom had widened even more astoundingly. Then, heads of American corporations were earning 419 times as much as industrial workers! This figure prompted the Economist to call it the greatest peacetime transfer of wealth in history, a sober assessment given the dimensions of the extraordinary shift in economic wealth and power. --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] ^ Lauer: Let me take your husband out of this for a second .... If an American president had an adulterous liaison in the White House and lied to cover it up, should the American people ask for his resignation? Hillary: Well, they should certainly be concerned about it. Lauer: Should they ask for his resignation? Hillary: Well, I think if all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense. That is not going to be proven true. --Matt Lauer interviewing Hillary Clinton on the _Today_ show [27 January 1998], in, Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] p. 148 - [Clinton & Lewinsky]: Here is no grand passion, no great love affair. No Tolstoy will find in it material to fashion the story of a doomed or tragic relationship. It is a self-indulgent, selfish, and, yes, consensual affair that viewed in context is both sad and pitiable on both sides. It hardly can even be considered to be "an affair." Its most striking aspect is its furtive, fleeting, fumbling nature. Sex, at its rawest and most mechanical, being performed in a bathroom, he standing, she kneeling, with no real fulfillment - or love, or tenderness - on either side. They never have intercourse, though the intern pleads with the president to do so, saying she deserves experiencing that with him at least once out of fairness to herself. Over a two-year span, Monica performs oral sex on the president nine times. On two of those occasions, he's on the phone. Perhaps the most astonishing fact, the one most revealing of the president's breathtaking recklessness and that seems almost incredible given the location of their sexual encounters just off the Oval Office, is that in *every single one of them* the door is always ajar about a foot or less. Is the president so filled with hubris that he actually believes he could never be caught? Or is he actually courting detection in some internal psychodrama beyond comprehension? Nor is this the end of the reckless acts. They exchange some fifty or more personal phone calls, of which logs exist to document their conversations, the hour, the place, and the date. Even more potentially destructive are the fifteen or so times they engage in phone sex, usually late at night or early in the morning. Devastating personally and politically as revelation of those conversations would be, the president's recklessness in making them raises an even grimmer prospect: that he could be subject to blackmail or other form of intimidation by enemies, whether personal enemies, or foreign ones. He himself clearly recognizes that risk. At one point, he warns Monica that he suspects his phone is being tapped by "an unnamed foreign embassy." Then he comes up with "the ruse" that if Monica is ever questioned about their conversations she could say they were friends and 'just doing it to give people a run for their money.' --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] pp. 333-334 - [T]he great boom of the Nineties vastly widened the income gap between America's richest and poorest families. In figures compiled by two respected non-profit and nonpartisan Washington think tanks, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, and made public early in 2000, earnings for the poorest fifth of American families rose less than 1 percent during the decade. At the same time, income for the richest fifth of U.S. families soared 15 percent. It hardly needs to be said that this provides more hard evidence that for all its benefits, the boom was leaving the nation's poor farther behind economically. --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] p. 465 - Only days after commenting generally favorably about him, under the heading PARDONS ON THE SLY, the New York Times observed: "Anger over Bill Clinton's abuse of the pardoning process mounted yesterday, as well it should." Then it said: "A broader look at Mr. Clinton's final pardon list makes clear that the outrage extends well beyond the undeserved leniency for Mr. Rich." The paper cited Clinton's commutation of the sentences for "four Hasidic men from New Square, N.Y., who were in prison for defrauding the government by inventing a fictitious religious school and using it to attract millions in government aid. The commutations were granted after Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, met privately in December with supporters of the men, whose politically active sect had overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton in her victorious Senate campaign." Embarrassment for Hillary grew more intense when it was later revealed that her brother, Hugh Rodham, had been paid $400,000 for his help in a pardon and a commutation granted by his brother-in-law for two convicted felons, one a cocaine dealer whose jail sentence was commuted, the other a Miami businessman pardoned after being accused of perjury and mail fraud. Hillary said she was "heartbroken" when she learned of her brother's role; he returned the money after both Clintons insisted he do so. Outrage over presidential pardons was only part of the latest controversy to swirl around Bill Clinton as he exited the public stage. Another list, also made public in the closing moments of his administration, ignited at least as much, if not more, criticism. This time, it engulfed both Bill and Hillary. They were leaving the White House, it was revealed, and taking with them an unprecedented $190,027 in gifts - china, silver, oriental rugs, furniture, art - accumulated over the last eight years. As far as could be determined, the Washington Post commented in a lead editorial sardonically titled COUNT THE SPOONS, "No previous president appears to have accepted parting gifts of such magnitude .... The list makes it seem as if the Clintons registered for wedding gifts." [ . . . ] Then, in what amounted to a final plague-on-both-their-houses judgment, the Post said witheringly: "The list demonstrates again the Clintons' defining characteristic: They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it justice." [ . . . ] Nor was that the only closing act of Clinton's that strained public patience. Along with the pardons and the gifts, the nation learned their former president sought to lease the top floor of a skyscraper atop Carnegie Hall in midtown Manhattan for his government-paid offices. Annual price to the public: $800,000, a sum so out of scale, so fitting for a potentate rather than a retired civil servant, that the resulting indignant public reaction forced him to seek less lavish - and less expensive - office space in Harlem. As the VVashington Post observed, What a way to leave. --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] pp. 545-546 & 549 - "Where Bush assigns absolute priority on fighting the war on terror, Clinton could never give anything such unique emphasis. "Nor were Clinton's foreign policy advisers much better. With the sole exception of Richard Holbrooke, they were an elitist crew determined to keep foreign policy in the hands of professionals. Even such amateurs as former trade lawyer Sandy Berger, Clinton's second-term National Security Advisor, were admitted to the exclusive club of foreign affairs gurus only if they shed themselves of the tendency to be unduly influenced by the emotions of the common people in the formulation of American foreign policy. "While voters identified terrorism, Iran and North Korea as their top foreign affairs concerns, diplomats like Warren Christopher and Tony Lake were determined to keep things in what they regarded as the proper perspective. They deeply distrusted any excessive zeal in prosecuting Iraq, North Korea, or even al Qaeda as pandering to electoral needs.... "My first brush with the arrogance of his foreign-affairs people came as I helped the president prepare his Memorial Day remarks to be delivered at Arlington Cemetary in 1995. I had prepared a draft speech that branded Iraq, Iran, and other nations as international outlaws, linking them to our prior adversaries.... But I was confronted with an angry aide from the Pentagon who told me, bluntly, that if I persisted in pushing my speech draft there would be press leaks that Clinton's political aides were attempting to interfere with the president's remarks on this soleemn day of national consecration. Scared off by the threat, Clinton killed my speech draft. [Clinton had been bedeviled by leaks from his staff prior to that time.] "Daunted by the fear that his foreign policy would be perceived as "political," Clinton instructed me never to offer him advice on foreign or military policy matters unless we were alone. Indeed, every week at our strategy meetings in the East Wing, I would bide my time at the end of the meeting until the room was emptied of the others who attended so that I could then sit with Clinton for an hour more discussing international issues.... "Between the ever-shifting foreign-policy priorities of Tony Lake and Warren Christopher, which blocked decisive action against Iraq and North Korea, and the civil liberties worries of Janet Reno and George Stephanopoulos, which inhibited efforts to stop domestic terror, it seemed as if the entire White House was focused on keeping the president from acting clearly and forcefully to deal with terrorism. "However, none of their efforts would have succeeded, but for the fears, worries, and phobias that raged inside Bill Clinton's mind: fear that if he led American troops into a battle with casualties, his own draft record would return to bite him politically... hesitation in the face of European intransigence and worry that his own foreign-policy experts would leak that he was incompetent and too political... unwillingness to go to war with Saddam Hussein... and finally, a morally relativist refusal to see Saddam, al Qaeda, or Kim Jong Il as forces of evil. "These factors more than any advice from his advisers, paralyzed Bill Clinton's efforts to stem the forces of terror. "By the second half of Clinton's second term, it was too late to focus on terrorism with the intensity the issue required. Disgraced by the Lewinsky scandal, distrusted for lying about his relationship with that intern, hounded by the Republicans durng impeachment, Bill Clinton lacked the political and moral authority to stand up to international terror. "Not that he wanted to. As 1998, 1999, and then 2000 brought more and more evidence of an international terrorist conspiracy against America, he became more obsessed with his twin political goals: surviving impeachment and putting his wife in the U.S. Senate. "The White House became a campaign headquarters for Hillary. Bill Clinton had the worst of both worlds--the eroded power of a lame-duck president about to leave office and the timidity of a man focused on the next election.... "Bill Clinton looked a lot better in the White House than he does in the years since. We assumed that he had North Korea under control. He didn't. We let Clinton distract us from Saddam's warlike preparations. We shouldn't have. And we didn't give Osama bin Laden much thought. Big mistake. "In hindsight, Clinton left us naked and unprepared for the perils of terrorism. "For all Cinton's accomplishments (welfare reform, crime reduction, the balanced budget, prosperity, and free trade), and for all his failures (impeachment, Lewinsky, Paula Jones, the FBI files, Whitewater, and the pardons), it may well be his failure to fight terrorism that will dominate his legacy. "And it should." --Dick Morris, "APRΘS MOI, LE DELUGE: How Clinton left ticking Terror Time Bombs for Bush to Discover", _Off with Their Heads_, New York: ReganBooks HarperCollins, 2003, pp 124 ff. - Clinton has vindicated the anti-Vietnam, draft-dodging, drug-taking behavior of the sixties. ... The Silent Majority was a reaction to that moral decay, but who's going to do it now? The Clintons are going to be our moral symbols for four years, maybe eight. Four years, and maybe we can recover. Eight, and the damage will be irreparable. --Richard Nixon (1913-1994) American Republican statesman, President [1969-1974]; election night [1992] Does it make sense that everybody else is lying, except a man with a history of lying? That mountains of circumstantial evidence are just coincidences? That a man with a lifelong reputation for honourable behaviour -- Kenneth Starr-- is now behaving dishonourably, in order to fabricate a case, while a man with no sense of honour is the innocent victim? --Thomas Sowell (1930- ) American economist and author The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep. --George Stephanopolous, Clinton's aide speaking on "Larry King Live" Your President, President Clinton, he is a great communicator. The trouble is he has absolutely nothing to communicate. --Margaret Thatcher (1925- ) British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979-1990], _Memories of Maggie._ - We are particularly troubled by the numerous instances in which Mr. Clinton granted pardons or commutations without proper consultation with federal prosecutors, often to reward friends or political allies or gain future political advantage. --The "New York Times," editorial Leave it to Bill Clinton to close out his presidency with one last helping of his signature dish: a pungent stew of campaign contributions, ethical shortcuts and what- the-hell disregard for likely consequences. --"Newsday," editorial What seems to be happening now is the liberals' realization that in fact the Clintons don't give a damn what anyone thinks, including them. Very hard on them, poor souls. ... This fact came home hard to liberal commentators when the Clintons finally abandoned all pretense to style, which was very important to his enablers, for a lot of whom the most important warring values are not those of good vs. evil, but tacky vs. stylish.... Something about the spectacle of the former charmer and his wife so nakedly doing what they wanted to do just because they could do it--without disguising any of it as political acts aimed at the right--got to be just too much for his progressive sympathizers. --"The Wall Street Journal," editorial The list [of items stripped from the White House] demonstrates again the Clintons' defining characteristic: They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it justice. --The "Washington Post," editorial -- What President Clinton Didn't Do . . . by Richard Miniter _The Wall Street Journal_ [27 September 2006] Bill Clinton's outburst on Fox News was something of a public service, launching a debate about the antiterror policies of his administration. This is important because every George W. Bush policy that arouses the ire of Democrats -- the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, pre-emptive war -- is a departure from his predecessor. Where policies overlap -- air attacks on infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, freezing bank accounts, using police to arrest terror suspects -- there is little friction. The question, then, is whether America should return to Mr. Clinton's policies or soldier on with Mr. Bush's. It is vital that this debate be honest, but so far this has not been the case. Both Mr. Clinton's outrage at Chris Wallace's questioning and the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11" are attempts to polarize the nation's memory. While this divisiveness may be good for Mr. Clinton's reputation, it is ultimately unhealthy for the country. What we need, instead, is a cold-eyed look at what works against terrorists and what does not. The policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations ought to be put to the same iron test. With that in mind, let us examine Mr. Clinton's war on terror. Some 38 days after he was sworn in, al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center. He did not visit the twin towers that year, even though four days after the attack he was just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, talking about job training. He made no attempt to rally the public against terrorism. His only public speech on the bombing was a few paragraphs inserted into a radio address mostly devoted an economic stimulus package. Those stray paragraphs were limited to reassuring the public and thanking the rescuers, the kinds of things governors say after hurricanes. He did not even vow to bring the bombers to justice. Instead, he turned the first terrorist attack on American soil over to the FBI. In his Fox interview, Mr. Clinton said "no one knew that al Qaeda existed" in October 1993, during the tragic events in Somalia. But his national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he first learned of bin Laden "sometime in 1993," when he was thought of as a terror financier. U.S. Army Capt. James Francis Yacone, a black hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crews firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali, suggesting the work of bin Laden's agents (who spoke Arabic), not warlord Farah Aideed's men (who did not). CIA and DIA reports also placed al Qaeda operatives in Somalia at the time. By the end of Mr. Clinton's first year, al Qaeda had apparently attacked twice. The attacks would continue for every one of the Clinton years. In 1994, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who would later plan the 9/11 attacks) launched "Operation Bojinka" to down 11 U.S. planes simultaneously over the Pacific. A sharp-eyed Filipina police officer foiled the plot. The sole American response: increased law-enforcement cooperation with the Philippines. In 1995, al Qaeda detonated a 220-pound car bomb outside the Office of Program Manager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans and wounding 60 more. The FBI was sent in. In 1996, al Qaeda bombed the barracks of American pilots patrolling the "no-fly zones" over Iraq, killing 19. Again, the FBI responded. In 1997, al Qaeda consolidated its position in Afghanistan and bin Laden repeatedly declared war on the U.S. In February, bin Laden told an Arab TV network: "If someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters." No response from the Clinton administration. In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224, including 12 U.S. diplomats. Mr. Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan in response. Here Mr. Clinton's critics are wrong: The president was right to retaliate when America was attacked, irrespective of the Monica Lewinsky case. Still, "Operation Infinite Reach" was weakened by Clintonian compromise. The State Department feared that Pakistan might spot the American missiles in its air space and misinterpret it as an Indian attack. So Mr. Clinton told Gen. Joe Ralston, vice chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to notify Pakistan's army minutes before the Tomahawks passed over Pakistan. Given Pakistan's links to jihadis at the time, it is not surprising that bin Laden was tipped off, fleeing some 45 minutes before the missiles arrived. In 1999, the Clinton administration disrupted al Qaeda's Millennium plots, a series of bombings stretching from Amman to Los Angeles. This shining success was mostly the work of Richard Clarke, a NSC senior director who forced agencies to work together. But the Millennium approach was shortlived. Over Mr. Clarke's objections, policy reverted to the status quo. In January 2000, al Qaeda tried and failed to attack the U.S.S. The Sullivans off Yemen. (Their boat sank before they could reach their target.) But in October 2000, an al Qaeda bomb ripped a hole in the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding another 39. When Mr. Clarke presented a plan to launch a massive cruise missile strike on al Qaeda and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan, the Clinton cabinet voted against it. After the meeting, a State Department counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan, sought out Mr. Clarke. Both told me that they were stunned. Mr. Sheehan asked Mr. Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?" There is much more to Mr. Clinton's record -- how Predator drones, which spotted bin Laden three times in 1999 and 2000, were grounded by bureaucratic infighting; how a petty dispute with an Arizona senator stopped the CIA from hiring more Arabic translators. While it is easy to look back in hindsight and blame Bill Clinton, the full scale and nature of the terrorist threat was not widely appreciated until 9/11. Still: Bill Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war. Nor did he intuit that war requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force. That is a hard lesson. But it is better to learn it from studying the Clinton years than reliving them. Mr. Miniter, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is author of "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror" (Regnery, 2005). ;void(0)) CLINTON (HILLARY) . . see "POLITICS" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -- is a congenital liar. --William Safire (1929- ) Journalist; winner of the 1978 Pulitzer for commentary, opening paragraph, _Blizzard of Lies_, "New York Times" [8 January 1996] - Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year... Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters -- some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend -- to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress. "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/ archive/2004/06/28/politics2039EDT0165.DTL&type=printable end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
||