Scrapbook

...Tear the package and remove the condom...

...And you would think that columnists like Friedman and Rosenfeld would have a little more discretion than to condescend to a democratic electorate that has just participated in a reasonably civil and high-toned election campaign...

...RUBBER SOUL Wonder what a pan-European government might do...

...Even so, former governor George Deukmejian, who was along with Dole for the ride last week, dismissed CCRI as "not helpful...

...TOM FRIEDMAN, WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT Has any event ever been the subject of more blatantly biased news coverage than the Israeli elections...

...The bad news, though, is that such a ticket might run a campaign that does not have much that is distinctively Republican or conservative about it...

...Here's one suggestive example: The Eurocrats in Brussels have just released 50 pages of regulations to harmonize EU standards for . . . condoms...

...And these standards get plenty precise...

...Stephen Rosenfeld of the Washington Post argued that Israelis who voted for Likud are irrational and psychologically weak...

...Hadji Murad, One of his few great late works, a novel...

...Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times compared Netanyahu to Russian Communist candidate Gennadi Zyuganov because they are both representatives of the past and of fear...

...While President Clinton did recently declare his support for Rep...

...Even the most fervent Republican would have to wonder whether it is worth winning if the price of victory is the abandonment of an issue as central to conservative principle as the end of racial preferences...

...Unroll the condom ensuring that it is not excessively stretched in any direction...

...The regulations offer interesting diagrams of how exactly condoms were tested for durability and strength, as follows: Moreover, the standards are extremely helpful for those who are not able, without government direction, to open a condom package: "Move the condom inside the package such that it is away from the area where the package is to be torn...

...THE READING LIST With Boris Yeltsin trying hard to deal with the problem of Russia's imperialist domination of Chechnya, The Reading List is reminded of two Leo Tolstoy works that shed real light on the subject even though they are 100-plus years old: Anna Karenina, In which Levin rages against the Russian incursion into Turkey as an act of inappropriate nationalist fervor...

...Rosenfeld may prefer Labor, but is it really "irrational" to vote for Likud-a party that has governed Israel for 15 of the last 19 years and under whose aegis, after all, Israel gave the Sinai and its $3 billion a year worth of oil back to Egypt in exchange for paper guarantees of peace...

...Dole now does not mention the issue at all in his stump speeches...

...Jim Bunning's bill easing restrictions on interracial adoption, his administration is a late convert to the cause...

...In 1994, the Clinton administration tried but failed to prevent a vote on Metzenbaum's bill, but succeeded in inserting amendments making it permissible for adoption agencies to take account of race when placing children...

...puts at risk every outreach program . . . and puts the brakes on expanding opportunities for people who are in need...

...Opposed to the legislation altogether were Shalala allies such as Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, and the National Association of Black Social Workers, a Detroit outfit that has declared interracial adoption tantamount to "cultural genocide...

...Clinton does, now that she supposedly wants to adopt a child...

...it should win in November, and its potential for framing the debate in a way useful to Dole has been thought to offer Dole a real shot at winning California...

...And he conspicuously refused to mention the California Civil Rights Initiative-which he vigorously endorsed only a few months ago-in California last week...

...Ted Koppel said the Netanyahu win was "a devastating setback...

...And while Friedman may prefer Peres to Netanyahu, it is tasteless in the extreme to compare this American-educated, freely chosen leader of a party committed to democracy to a neo-Stalinist anti-Semite...

...The Times's Joseph Berger was among the many who treated a Likud victory as a return to medieval fundamentalism...

...Meanwhile, all during the campaign, the Peres camp was rhapsodized as the "peace" party by American journalists and headline writers...

...Insiders ascribe the campaign's sudden disdain for CCRI to Dole's desire to persuade Powell to join him on the ticket...

...Metzenbaum and adoption groups have pointed out that these amendments-which in private negotiations Shalala said had the support of the first lady and Edelman-gutted the intent of the bill...

...In a recent Bowie State University commencement address, Powell strongly defended affirmative-action programs and explicitly attacked CCRI as a "misguided" effort that "poses as an Equal Opportunity Initiative, but...

...The 50 pages are filled with prose like this: "Each lot shall be sampled in accordance with ISO 2859-1 general inspection level I, but utilising a minimum sample size and corresponding acceptance/rejection numbers equivalent to sample size code letter M." Furthermore, the air-flow-calibration test is to be conducted with "a volume flow rate at ambient temperature and pressure (Q) in cubic decimetres per second as follo Don't try that at home...

...Sources high in the Republican campaign say Dole is convinced Powell has not truly ruled out being on the ticket- especially if the themes of the Dole campaign are ones Powell is comfortable with...

...Dole apparently hopes to overcome Powell's reticence about the vice presidency by dropping racial preferences from his campaign...

...For example, Dole commented last week that he has asked his vice-presidential search team to look for candidates "outside of politics...

...When then-senator Howard Metzenbaum introduced legislation in 1993 to lift race-based barriers, the bill received a very cool reception from the Clinton administration, particularly from Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala...

...MORE ADOPTION NONSENSE In her recent interview with Time magazine, Hillary Clinton boasted that she had supported legislation facilitating interracial adoption...

...CCRI is the landmark effort seeking to end racial preferences on the part of California state government, and it is popular in polls...

...but where was she a couple of years ago...

...Maybe Mrs...

...What would this say about a Dole-Powell administration...

...Dole confirmed late last week that he intends to meet privately with Powell soon after departing the Senate at the end of this week...

...But you'd think foreign editors back home would insist on a tinge of balance when they send their reporters off to cover foreign elections...

...The standards raise the question, If European bureaucrats are so stupid that they have to be told to put on their glasses before looking at something, can they be trusted no matter how precise the regulations...

...So there may be a better chance of a Dole-Powell ticket than people thought-a ticket that does better in polls than any other...

...But the bulk of the document gives precise instructions on how bureacurats can evaluate the condoms that are sold in their jurisdiction: "Examine the condom visually under normal or corrected vision...

...The president and the first lady can me-too this issue all they like, but the truth is the truth...

...More telling (and disturbing), Dole has stopped talking about racial preferences on the campaign trail, despite his earlier sponsorship of legislation designed to do away with them in federal programs...

...Deukmejian is close to Dole and very close to Ken Khachigian, Dole's new California campaign director...

...The coverage was no surprise to anybody who has spent time around Western correspondents as they trade anti-Likud gossip in the bar of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem...