"I want to hurry this process
along -- huh? -- whaddya mean
Blumenthal's on the way?" 
June 2, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- The press seems to have unanimously anointed the decision by Clinton's attorneys to drop an appeal of Judge Norma Holloway Johnson's decision on executive privilege to be another victory for Ken Starr.
We think they have it all wrong -- in fact, once they stop and think the situation through, they may realize that Starr, who decided to attempt a bypass of the appellate process as a clearly calculated publicity move, may well turn out to be the big loser.
The simple and straightforward reason: we think that Blumenthal has nothing to hide, nothing to reveal! "Sooner rather than later" has now started.
There is no doubt the President's legal team made the decision in part to quash the "get Clinton" crowd's successful advance of the unfair and illogical comparison of Clinton and whateveritisthisweekgate to Nixon and Watergate -- through a press which has abandoned critical reasoning for ratings by acquiescing to this foolishness.
A secondary result of this decision is that it will mute some of the strident and vapid accusations by the President's critics of foot dragging.
The fact is, President Clinton has not been "foot dragging," but working with his team to champion and preserve the dignity, prestige and rights of the Presidency itself, an institution which has been under siege by Kenneth Starr.
Starr's mission: "take down" Clinton via a campaign of abuse in the guise of an investigation of the Whitewater land deal -- a witch hunt Starr has slowly expanded into the President's private life.
Starr has not "gotten" Clinton -- in fact, he has contributed to the President's high approval numbers and consolidated Clinton's supporters as never before.
This rogue "independent" counsel has been accused in some circles of multiple conflicts of interest. We say it goes well beyond that.
His behavior -- involving collusion by with golddigger Paula Jones' cabal of attorneys, a pattern of his office selectively leaking information to operatives in the press, and accepting in principal a "payoff" from billionaire paranoid Clinton-hater Richard Mellon Scaife in the form of a deanship at party school Pepperdine University -- merits a criminal investigation.
Starr has already done damage to the institution of the Presidency with his unrelenting attacks on Clinton's rights to legal representation, personal privacy, and unimpeded Secret Service protection.
And is it honestly any surprise that no President has made such a concerted effort to protect the Presidency in modern times? Even before Clinton became President, he was under organized siege by political enemies during the 1992 campaign -- an assault aided and abetted by the press buying rumors of Clinton wrongdoing in the Whitewater mess hook, line and sinker.
Never in the history of this country -- not even during the Nixon era -- has such an organized and systematic assault on not merely the man but the office been waged. The biggest shame is that the press has never stepped back to take a careful and unbiased look at the nature of the attack coming from hate radio, rabid conservative magazines like American Spectator and Policy Review, to see this effort to advance an extreme right-wing agenda and an Imperial Congress led by Emperor Newt.
As the situation stands now, Ken Starr's prolonged investigation is under pressure to "wrap up." Some in the GOP assume that any damage that can be done to Clinton before November might help to shore up the clearly crumbling Republican majority in the House.
But Starr's sudden change in tactics is bound to backfire. One can only question Starr's judgment in what White House Counsel Charles Ruff referred to as a ploy to "leapfrog" the time-proven appellate process. The White House decision to allow Blumenthal to testify leaves Ken Starr looking desperate, overshadowing the eleven "victories" on mostly minor legal matters that Starr's propogandists love to flout.
Starr still has two crucial "showdowns" to resolve, one with the President's attorneys over the President's attorney-client privilege, the other with the Secret Service and Justice Department on getting agents to testify. Stay tuned.
-- Dave "Doctor" Gonzo
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"JK, a client, a friend, and one of the keenest minds in American politics, told me one afternoon: 'A good place to begin thinking critically about American and Western European democracies to ask yourself: What kind of man or woman would choose to run for public office? Think about that.' - I did."
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