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really shouldn't let Democrats from the Northeast walk around in
the August sun; they get delusions of grandeur, and that produces
an excess of drool. The chief slobberers are those Dems actively
running for president, like Joe Lieberman. When his leader, Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle, announced that he probably wouldn't
enrage the American people by trying to undo the tax cut, Lieberman
said "don't be so fast." Joe can't win the nomination
without the hard Left, and the hard Left's view of tax cuts is like
the Pope's take on abortion. So Lieberman, who's never met an issue
he couldn't both embrace and reject within minutes, produced his
first summer drool.
But Lieberman
trails other Democrats in the championship competition. Thus far,
the frontrunner for biggest drooler of the month is Sen. Patrick
Leahy. Just a few days ago, Leahy attracted attention by refusing
to use the final clause "so help me God" while swearing
in a government official. This sort of thing is reserved for the
severely demented, who either think that America is peopled with
atheists (when in fact we are the most religious people in the world),
or never outgrew some adolescent irritation with the Almighty. Leahy
is the Chairthing of the Judiciary Committee, and thus sits in judgment
on nominees for the Justice Department, and for federal courts.
He is probably one of those silly Democrats who thinks that "separation
of church and state" is somewhere in the Constitution, and
was written there by Thomas Jefferson to save schoolchildren from
the predations of the Religious Right. Maybe he should be forced
to memorize the First Amendment before Congress reconvenes later
this month.
Leahy's antireligious
gesture was just a warm-up for his world-class drool over the weekend,
when he unloaded on the FBI, and its late director, Louis Freeh.
Harking back to the Ruby Ridge affair, in which an FBI sharpshooter
killed the wife of an FBI target, Leahy bemoaned the presence of
an "old boy network" inside the Bureau, which, he said,
protected top officials when they acted improperly.
I'm all for
punishing malefactors, but Leahy's choice of target shows the nation
a feeble mind at ease. Of all the top officials during the recent
unpleasantness, Freeh was one of the most virtuous (a truly endangered
species in those dark years), and the bravest. He called for the
nomination of a special prosecutor for illegal campaign contributions,
an investigation that would have imperiled the president and First
Lady. He was turned down flat by the real leader of the "old
boy network," the corrupt Janet Reno, who never met a Democrat
scandal she couldn't ignore. No doubt the FBI became corrupt during
the dark years, as did the rest of official Washington, but to blame
Freeh for it is like blaming the little Dutch boy for the rising
tide outside his dike.
Nonetheless,
Leahy drones on. And since he's in a mood to talk about corruption,
and the need for steely-eyed oversight, let's ask him a few questions
about his own performance during Louis Freeh's tenure. Let's ask
the senator why he didn't demand punishment for the Ruby Ridge killing
at the time it happened, when his party controlled the Senate and
the White House. Let's ask him why he failed to support Freeh in
the matter of electoral corruption. Let's ask him why he didn't
demand an investigation of Freeh's boss, the attorney general. And
while we're at it, let's ask him why he, the very archetype of Democrat
justice, didn't vote to impeach a perjured president.
Sen. Leahy
can address these fascinating matters when he receives his Drooler
of the Month trophy.
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