For the Record

Budget fallout: In New York Times, “New Democrat” Robert Shapiro cheers that “Washington’s reputation for fiscal sense is slowly recovering, and activist government is returning.” Shapiro, a critic of corporate welfare, has been nominated to work in Commerce Department. . . . Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation agrees that activist government is returning: “While Republicans were hung up on balancing the budget, the liberals were looking at what could be accomplished strategically.” . . . Newt Gingrich, as quoted in Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on the tobacco settlement: “Some liberals have this mythology that they can tax [the industry] out of business and they will still make payments.”

In The New Yorker, the Rev. Jesse Jackson tells Henry Louis Gates Jr. “that the conservative posturing over Paula Jones has merely provided an occasion for an aggressive form of voyeurism. There is an obsession: they want him to drop his pants in public. . . . It is a very sick attack” (italics in original). . . . Jackson also criticizes Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R., N.C.) for curbing D.C. “home rule”: “Faircloth essentially raped the democracy.” Faircloth spokesman Peter Hans responds, “Sen. Faircloth is not backing off his belief that Washington, D.C., needs professional management. It’s too bad that Rev. Jackson and Marion Barry don’t put as much effort in cleaning up the nation’s capital as they do in planning protests.” Patrick Buchanan writes that “by stripping [Barry] of powers conferred in a free election, Mr. Clinton and Congress are saying—no matter how loudly they deny it—that the people of Washington are unprepared for democracy and just not ready for home rule. . . . Where is the American Caesar, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, when we really need him?”

Featured Tags

Budget fallout: In New York Times, “New Democrat” Robert Shapiro cheers that “Washington’s reputation for fiscal sense is slowly recovering, and activist government is returning.” Shapiro, a critic of corporate welfare, has been nominated to work in Commerce Department. . . . Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation agrees that activist government is returning: “While Republicans were hung up on balancing the budget, the liberals were looking at what could be accomplished strategically.” . . . Newt Gingrich, as quoted in Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on the tobacco settlement: “Some liberals have this mythology that they can tax [the industry] out of business and they will still make payments.”

In The New Yorker, the Rev. Jesse Jackson tells Henry Louis Gates Jr. “that the conservative posturing over Paula Jones has merely provided an occasion for an aggressive form of voyeurism. There is an obsession: they want him to drop his pants in public. . . . It is a very sick attack” (italics in original). . . . Jackson also criticizes Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R., N.C.) for curbing D.C. “home rule”: “Faircloth essentially raped the democracy.” Faircloth spokesman Peter Hans responds, “Sen. Faircloth is not backing off his belief that Washington, D.C., needs professional management. It’s too bad that Rev. Jackson and Marion Barry don’t put as much effort in cleaning up the nation’s capital as they do in planning protests.” Patrick Buchanan writes that “by stripping [Barry] of powers conferred in a free election, Mr. Clinton and Congress are saying—no matter how loudly they deny it—that the people of Washington are unprepared for democracy and just not ready for home rule. . . . Where is the American Caesar, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, when we really need him?”