Thanks for acknowledging that am a straight shooter on these stories. I apologize for painting you with the same brush as jlallen who remains shut up in in tower of ignorance and won't come down.
As for your argument about Starr being chosen with the approval of the independent Supreme Court, let's be clear, Chief Justice Rehnquist doesn't have any role whatsoever in choosing Starr. He chose Starr's choosers. And, if I may honestly state my opinion, Rehnquist (a former Nixon Justice official) picked in Sentelle, one of the most conservative judges on the federal bench today. Sentelle is clearly a Helms crony which is no sin, except that he showed incredibly poor judgment in having lunch with Helms and Faircloth a few days before he fired Robert Fiske and hired Starr. Even the American Bar Association said that that had the appearance of impropriety. Sentelle then said that he Faircloth and Helms did not discuss anything with regard to Fiske and instead had a chat among ol' friends about prostates. TALK ABOUT A LIE. Even the supervisory judge (who is a colleague of Sentelle's on the DC bench) didn't believe that pack of lies. He basically said that it was OK for Sentelle to have consulted Helms and Faircloth about OIC matters--and pointedly did not buy the story that their get-together was a friendly thing. Now why is it so important that Sentelle consulted Faircloth and Helms. First of all, Sentelle owes a lot to these two. Helms recommended him to the bench and Faircloth even employs Sentelle's wife in his government office. So immediately alarms should be going off that these two partisan senators should not be talking to the man who supervises the OIC. We all know about Helms and his hate for Clinton (remember his statement that Clinton better not come down to NC because he might get shot), but it is less well-know how the junior senator from NC is deep in this conspiracy to nail Clinton. Faircloth was the most strident attacker of Clinton in the Senate Whitewater hearings; he and his minion David Bossie dug up tons of dirt about the Clintons in Little Rock. If anyone watched those hearings on TV, I think you would agree that Faircloth was such an atrocity that he even made Al D'Amato look like an levelheaded statesmen in comparison. Bossie, who later became a consultant to Dan Burton on the House Fundraising hearings, was previously employed by Floyd Brown (?) as a private investigator down in Little Rock digging up dirt. Brown in addition to financing Bossie's digging was the publisher of the ultra conservative rag, the American Spectator. The American Spectator was the first to identify a woman named Paula who was allegedly propositioned by then Governor Bill Clinton. And she of course turned out to be Paula Jones. You want more connections, you got'em: The American Spectator's other big donor is none other than a family foundation of Richard Mellon Scaiffe, a Mellon heir who spreads his money around for conservative causes. He gave money specifically to the American Spectator so they could fund articles about Clinton. (The American Spectator's editor recently resigned in protest of having his magazine coopted by the conservative financiers who wanted to pay for dirt on Clinton). He's also the man who gave the money to Pepperdine University for them to found a public policy school committed to conservative thought. And who was going to be the FIRST DEAN OF PEPPERDINE'S SCHOOL--KEN STARR. It's all an intriguing web isn't it? After you've heard all that, you could believe it's a conspiracy couldn't you? Well, let me surprise you and be even-handed. While I think there is a conspiracy out there to get Clinton and his friends, I don't think Starr is a willing co-conspirator. He's not one of the true-believers (indeed, he was going to run for Senate against Ollie North as a sensible alternative). But he is, with his complicity or not, the focal point of this conspiracy--he was chosen to replace Fiske because he was more likely to go along with what Republicans wanted; he was given a cushy job offer by Richard Mellon Scaiffe to keep him in the conservative fold; he has benefitted from and used indiscriminately the information and dirt that has been dug up by Republican operatives. You can only go so long with this whole thing without realizing that you're a tool of this right wing conspiracy. For everyone's sake he should wrap this up now and let us get on with our lives. |
