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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JBL who wrote (27808)	1/14/1999 2:28:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

G.O.P. Senators Meet Secretly With Prosecutors on Witnesses nytimes.com And it's all a subtle effort by the White House to poison the debate, right, JBL? A small group of Senate Republicans has met secretly with the House impeachment prosecutors to devise criteria for determining whether witnesses would be called at the Senate trial, even as prosecutors this week approached Monica S. Lewinsky and Kathleen E. Willey about their possible testimony. The question of calling witnesses to testify before the Senate has divided Democrats and Republicans as they set procedures for the trial. After a rare bipartisan meeting last Friday, all 100 senators agreed to vote this month on whether to call witnesses. Such a vote would take place after opening arguments from the House managers and the White House, which begin on Thursday. At the time of the agreement, Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, announced that Democrats and Republicans had agreed to having a bipartisan group of four senators begin meeting immediately to try to hash out how the Senate would deal with the witness issue later. But that group did not materialize, nor was its creation part of the official impeachment measure passed by the Senate unanimously. Senator Lott then quietly went ahead on his own and appointed three Senate Republicans who have said publicly that they favor calling witnesses -- Jon Kyl of Arizona, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Jeff Sessions of Alabama -- to work with Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the lead manager, and other prosecutors. Senate Democrats were belatedly invited to a meeting of the new group on Monday, but Senator Tom Daschle, the minority leader, rejected the offer. "Senator Daschle's position is that we voted on an unanimous bipartisan level to put off the question of witnesses, so it would not be in keeping with that agreement to start a discussion about whether to call witnesses," said Ranit Schmelzer, a spokeswoman for Mr. Daschle. As far as the White House knowing they will lose the case, I think your view on that is pretty much what Newt thought about dumping the porno Starr report and "secret" Grand Jury deposition on an unsuspecting public. As someone who's more entertained by the political theater of the absurd than anything else at this point, whatever happens is fine with me. Kathleen Willey has several contrasting versions of her story out there, you think she's going to turn the tide, you're whistling past the graveyard.

To: JBL who wrote (27808)	1/14/1999 2:40:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Lott, and Shadow of a Pro-White Group nytimes.com Just to poison the debate a little more, we have this piece. Larry Flynt may or may not have something on Lott, but it appears that Lott has something else in common with Henry Hyde's House Hotheads sideman Bob Barr. If, as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has insisted for a month, he has "no first-hand knowledge" of the views of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which calls itself pro-white, it comes as news to a lot of people back home, including his Uncle Arnie. "Trent is an honorary member," said Arnie Watson, a former state senator, tax assessor and currently a member of the council's executive board. "He's spoken at meetings," added Watson, whom Lott once fondly recalled as his "favorite uncle" from the days during Lott's youth when his grandfather and uncles gathered to talk politics on the porch. But after a month of questioning and scrutiny about his relationship with the group, Lott issued a statement Wednesday night, saying: "I have made my condemnation of the white supremacist and racist view of this group, or any group, clear. Any use of my name to publicize their view is not only unauthorized, it's wrong." It would be difficult for any conservative politician here -- Democrat or Republican -- to remain ignorant of the Council of Conservative Citizens. There are 34 members of the Mississippi Legislature among its roughly 5,000 members in the state, said William Lord, the state coordinator, and prominent politicians, including Gov. Kirk Fordice, a fellow Republican, regularly speak at its meetings and rallies, which are festooned with the Confederate flag. The council embraces a range of conservative causes, including opposition to unfettered immigration and busing for school desegregation, and promotes "Southern cultural issues." It held its semiannual national convention here in Jackson just after the November elections, with Fordice as the keynote speaker. The governor and the roughly 300 people present stood and sang along as "Dixie" was performed, but found their seats during "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." People at the meeting matter-of-factly told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger that Lott was a member, and the state's largest newspaper printed this without objection from the senator's office. Oh what a tangled web we weave. . . That's your typical statesmanlike southern Republican, I guess. Political integrity and all that. Non-partisan and professional to the end. No one gets out of here alive. Both men insisted, in telephone interviews, that the group was not "racist," but concerned with a range of conservative issues. But nearly every column or article in its quarterly newspaper, The Citizens Informer, is concerned with race. For example, "No one can deny the importance of the question of miscegenation or race-mixing," Robert B. (Tutt) Patterson, a founder of the original white Citizens Council and a regular columnist, wrote in last fall's issue. "Its very essence involves the preservation of the white race as well as the Negro race. It is a matter of racial survival. Compared with the future interest we have at stake in this issue, all other matters fade into insignificance." "Western civilization, with all its might and glory, would never have achieved its greatness without the directing hand of God and the creative genius of the white race," Patterson wrote. "Any effort to destroy the race by a mixture of black blood is an effort to destroy Western civilization itself. To deny this is to deny all history." Hey, I thought the destruction of Western civilization was all Clinton's fault. These guys are going off topic.