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by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo

Saturday, August 15, 1999 --- New York (APJP) -- Just when you thought things couldn't get worse -- or funnier...

Dateline: NEW YORK -- Whoops!

Maybe Rudy Giuliani and his staff were too preoccupied with his recent carpetbagging tour of Arkansas.  Maybe they were too busy trying to find an Arkansas state flag that was just the right size to match the other flags that fly over his barricaded, fortress-like City Hall.  Maybe he was just wrapped up in Chrystine Lategano... er, make that meetings with Chrystine Lategano.

It seems Team Rudy really screwed up a big fundraising event!  His "unofficial" (yeah, right) campaign for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Pat Moynihan committed a mondo huge-o fundraising snafu -- and his exploratory committee has had to return about half of the take from a $100,000 fund-raiser.

The five-digit gaffe happened at another carpetbagging event -- a New Jersey fund-raiser held by Charles Kushner.  Many of the attendees made $2,000 contributions, the limit for personal contributions to campaigns for federal office -- but most of the donors failed to designate $1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general election, making the donations technically illegal!

And The Doc hasn't even mentioned the matter of that check from one Phillip Castellano -- the son of slain mafia kingpin "Big Paul" Castellano.

Now, we know that Rudy has protection from the U.S. Marshall's Service because of his involvement in a number of high-profile mob cases.  A shame he can't get similar protection for his campaign bank accounts -- because this is one "hit" that has his whole campaign team red-faced!

Dateline -- LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas -- Chalk up another loss for the conspirawacko set.

On Monday, a federal jury awarded more than half a million dollars to two Pulaski County sheriff's lieutenants, Jay Campbell and Kirk Lane, after unanimously finding California filmmaker Patrick Matrisciana had defamed and libeled them in his 1996 documentary, Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection.  Matrisciana had accused Campbell, Lane, and four other law enforcement officials of murder.

Campbell and Lane, through Little Rock attorneys Darren O'Quinn and Jim Rhodes, had persuasively demonstrated that Matrisciana and his collaborators stated as fact a piece of unfounded gossip that had been spread years earlier by a Dan Harmon, a prosecutor the deputies were investigating -- and who is now serving hard time in prison on federal drug and racketeering convictions.

Matrisciana is particularly famous among the conspirawacko set for his ridiculous 1994 film The Clinton Chronicles -- a film so full of spin, half-truths, now-discredited theories and misinformation that the only thing missing is a laugh track.  You probably heard about the flick from Jerry Falwell, Oliver North, Rush Limbaugh and other Clinton-hating bottom-feeders who plugged this film nearly half a decade ago.

In the wake of the Arkansas jury's verdict and award, one cannot help but assume that Matrisciana used the same "rigorous" standards in both films.

And Matrisciana tried to spin the verdicts: "They think I'm such a big, rich Hollywood film producer, but I have six employees. ... We're a little mom and pop operation. ... We don't have the money. I live in a mobile home in the desert."

Puh-leeeeze.  I've seen parts of the sloppily-produced, poorly edited, lo-fi Clinton Chronicles.  Nobody -- perhaps with the exception of your below-average Bob Grant Show  listener -- would confuse you with a "big, rich Hollywood producer" -- let alone a cut-rate free-lance video producer!

Dateline -- SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Say it loud, straight and proud?

Seems that our favorite recording artist, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, is doing some emphatic back-pedalling these days.  Seems ol' zany Orrin told fellow
Republicans at their state convention a couple months back that they should be proud of their party because "we don't have the gays and lesbians with us,"  or something to that effect.

This week, he issued a little "clarification," saying he didn't intend for the comment to sound prejudicial, and that he was merely "pointing out" that gays and lesbians, by and large, are very intelligent, highly educated, high-earning people, who support mainly Democrats, according to a story in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune.

He added that he "resents" any implication that he is intolerant in his "David Letterman-style list" of reasons that Utah Republicans should be proud of their party, including, "We don't have the gays and lesbians with us."

Well, Orrin, that's not the reason gays and lesbians resent you -- a simple review of your voting record will more than suffice.  If anything, they're glad you opened your yap so that your true colors would show!

Dateline -- ALEXANDRIA, Virginia -- Ever heard of Judge Claude Hilton?

In case you are not familiar with the name, allow The Doc to elucidate.  Earlier this week, Judge Hilton rebuffed Julie Hiatt Steele's request that the government reimburse her for attorneys' fees -- thousands upon thousands of dollars she incurred during allegedly Independent Kenneth Starr's attempt to railroad her for throwing a monkey wrench in his persecution of President Clinton.  Starr's office charged Steele with lying -- and the press largely played into Starr's hand in their reportage, practically refusing to mention the fact that Steele's attorney Nancy Luque utterly destroyed the credibility of Starr's case, Starr's witnesses, and Starr's staff.

I digress... but only slightly.

In his ruling, Judge Hilton claimed -- catch this -- that "the evidence was sufficient for a reasonable trier of fact to find the defendant guilty."

"Reasonable trier of fact?"  The jury was HUNG.  Yes, it was hung 9-3 in favor of conviction -- but you may not know that the foreman of the jury was reportedly a "lurker" on the FreeRepublic web site.  That's right -- the Clinton-hating site filled with death threats against the First Family and all form of lies about Steele.  The Doc won't burder you with the preponderance of ties FreeRepublic has to ultra-right organizations and causes -- but will remind you that such conservative stalwarts as Lucianne Goldberg and Matt Drudge have severed relations with the site in recent months.

But I digress...

"Reasonable?"  What would be reasonable, Judge Hilton, is an investigation of the jury foreman and his conduct.

However, we're not surprised at all at the "reasonable" Hilton upon learning the following tidbit.  A tip of the Gonzo hat to APJ reader Norma, who passed along this "fun fact" about Judge Claude Hilton: a couple years back, this judicial genius told the court, in the case of Kahn v. Xerox (96-622-A U.S. Dist. Court Va.), that it is ok to allow the disabled to suffer because "everyone feels pain."

'Nuff said.

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