11/04/00 10:30 a.m.
The Fabiani Connection
Evidence links a key Gore aide to the man who outed Bush’s DUI arrest.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

om Connolly, the lawyer who revealed George W. Bush's DUI arrest on Thursday, knew Gore communications director Mark Fabiani in the late 1970s as a college-student debater, NR has learned.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Fabiani and Connolly were well acquainted," said a source who faced both men in college debates.

On Friday, Fabiani denied that he knows Connolly.

Yet Fabiani and Connolly participated in at least four college debates together, and probably many others.

"The debate community is a very tight-knit community," says Mark Gidley, a former University of Kansas debater. "You spend 40 to 60 hours a week on it, going to tournaments 16 times a year that run from Thursday to Sunday, and you do this for a couple of years. You see the same people over and over."

Fabiani attended the University of Redlands in southern California, while Connolly attended Bates College in Maine.

Fabiani and Connolly participated in the National Debate Tournament in 1978, at Metropolitan State College in Denver. In 1979, they were together again at the National Debate Tournament, held at the University of Kentucky, and where Fabiani was named First Speaker â€" the best debater in the country. Both men also particpated in the "Heart of America" debate tournament at the University of Kansas in 1978 and 1979. In 1979, their teams made it to the prestigious elimination round.

"I believe they would have debated each other as college students," says Allan Louden, the director of the debate team at Wake Forest. "But I have no reason to believe they're friends."

Quindlen Alert
Speaking of stupidity, connoiseurs of Anna Quindlen's columns will not want to miss her latest, in which she attacks Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Her argument proceeds unimpeded, of course, by any knowledge of the actual judicial philosophies of either justice. Scalia is a bad guy because he uses "pejoratives" such as "irrational," "smug," "preposterous," and a "lawyer-trained elite."

Ummm, shouldn't it matter whether Scalia's characterizations are correct? Perhaps Quindlen is picking out these words from his opinions because they're the ones she understands. There's nothing wrong with non-lawyers writing about the Supreme Court; the Constitution isn't the property of lawyers (or, for that matter, of the Court). The trouble with Quindlen's writing about the Court is that — forgive us the pejorative, and the ungallantry — she's an idiot.