Correspondence
Slick Willy Re Jeffrey Gedmin's review of My Life in Politics, by Willy Brandt (TAS, January 1993): Has anyone looked into the possibility that Willy Brandt was a KGB mole? There can be no doubt...
...When the unrepentant dove heard about this, he "did not look happy at all," a counterintelligence expert told Der Spiegel...
...Kimberly L. Hyatt Washington, D.C...
...As I wrote, she disputed the Evans and Novak account in a mere subordinate clause...
...Stephen Wermiel Associate Professor of Law Georgia State University College of Law Atlanta, Georgia Terry Eastland replies: Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote that Justice Kennedy changed his conference vote in Casey...
...I finally realized that my long-sought pastafazool must have been some routine, regional 1930s corruption of pasta e fagiole (pronounced past' eh fah-ZHO-leh and meaning pastaand-peas or, more broadly, pasta with vegetables...
...the problem is that he is not the Supreme Court justice that Eastland and others wanted...
...Her life is, indeed, as shallow as her poetry...
...Their names are nowhere to be found...
...Margate, Florida I just received my first issue . . . and wanted to tell you that reading John Meroney's "The Real Maya Angelou" was worth the price of the whole year's subscription...
...And there is much to be said for Poe's attitude to the literary lions of his day: Can you imagine spending an evening with Longfellow telling you to go (in bad Latin): "Excelsior...
...Same reason for his appeal to "adolescents...
...The View From Amontillado It should have been a warning note to Erik Rieselbach that if Poe maintains his appeal to adolescents, there may be something to him that is due more than grudging respect (Book Reviews, TAS, March 1993...
...Eliot envied Poe, quoting "one of the most beautiful lines in our language...
...The man has "grown"—which perhaps explains Kennedy's appeal to Wermiel, who I understand is writing a biography of that gifted but most activist of recent justices, William Brennan...
...My argument is more complex than Wermiel allows...
...The crux of the case, as Emerson notes, is that Sick parlayed the veneer of credibility he gained as a run-of-the-mill Carter NSC staffer into "effectively accusing" distinguished public servants like Bill Casey, George Bush, Dick Allen—and, by extension, Ronald Reagan—of "treason...
...Eastland is unwilling to come to grips with the fact that after Robert Bork was defeated, the Justice Department of which Eastland was a part engaged in a nearly irrational search for a nominee who would pass muster on pro-life and other grounds...
...Julie Cave Altman Arlington, Virginia Justice Is Served I read with interest Terry Eastland's speculation ("The Tempting of Justice Kennedy," TAS, February 1993) about what occurred with respect to Justice Anthony Kennedy inside the Supreme Court in the abortion case...
...There can be no doubt that his words and actions were consistent with the role...
...Eliot hardly "envied" Poe...
...In a 1980 ruling in favor of the discharge of gay Navy personnel, Kennedy had briefly observed that some such government regulation of homosexual conduct might face constitutional hurdles and cited liberal Harvard Law School Prof...
...Baudelaire and Mallartn6 saw in Poe what they wanted to see, as I suppose Mr...
...Why were Baudelaite and the finer poet, Mallarme, so taken by Poe...
...Obviously, we differ on that...
...Just as we differ on the nature of Kennedy's career on the Court...
...Are we to take it that personal behavior is the yardstick, rather than political position...
...I wonder if it is quoted in the two biographies reviewed...
...One day in the last two or three years I found myself staring, unfocused for several long seconds, at a listing on a restaurant menu...
...Not only did I know that the sex act—even when perpetrated by Madonna—must occur in a certain, natural order, but I had also deduced—undoubtedly from my years of exposure to Hollywood's depiction of real life—that opening statements must precede the recalling of witnesses in a murder trial...
...However, I found the essay more polemical than enlightening...
...If there are people like John Meroney attending America's colleges and universities, there's some hope for us after all...
...We will also be interested to learn whether any other university will be willing to accept Mr...
...Plans were scrapped, though, in the early 1980s, when it was determined that Genscher did not pursue goals that ran counter to GDR interests...
...The manager of the theater even had trouble believing me when I brought the problem to her attention, because "we've been showing the movie all day and no one else has complained...
...Of course, Kennedy had not changed one bit throughout this process...
...Pleszczynski's remarks about the "unrepentant self-righteousness" of certain individuals, including President Clinton, consider these words of Jesus Christ: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged...
...I'm a reference book freak anyway, so I spent the intervening decades trying to find the word(s) and a definition...
...They had the excuse of not knowing English well...
...Any Which Way Movie critic James Bowman described as preposterousness Madonna's latest cinematic offering, Body of Evidence ("Alive and Dead," TAS, March 1993...
...That this is a cheap shot at Greenhouse is self-evident from Eastland's article...
...True, neither Evans and Novak nor Greenhouse names their sources...
...I agree with one point in Wermiel's tendentious account of the decision to nominate Kennedy: the then Ninth Circuit judge was hardly the first choice of ,many Justice Department officials, myself included...
...T.S...
...Regarding the unmasking of master spy Gunter Guillaume in 1974—the scandal that forced Brandt's resignation—Wolf told a German interviewer, "It was not a part of our plan to topple Brandt . . . on the contrary, the policy of détente begun by him was in line with our ideas...
...Pleszczynski as well as any person who has the unmitigated nerve to try to confine Jesus Christ to the "religious right" and their corresponding positions and tactics, of a few words from the Holy Bible...
...It is that when appointed to the Court, Kennedy already had activist tendencies that in the environment of Washington have become more prominent, as indicated especially by his work in Casey...
...Indeed, a short time later he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he believed in the existence of a constitutional right to privacy...
...It's refreshing to know, too, that a senior from any university even knows who Robert Frost is, let alone that JFK featured him at his inaugural...
...There is ample evidence that the Anthony Kennedy who sits today on the Supreme Court is the same person he has always been...
...But as I indicated, my central problem with Greenhouse's journalism was its cryptic manner (which Stephen Wermiel does not defend...
...His willingness to have this article appear in your pages over his signature, despite his status as a senior at Wake Forest, should be applauded as an act of consummate heroism...
...And I very much appreciate The American Spectator's continuing willingness to expose the truth on important political issues of the day...
...Austin does...
...This of course prompted another colossal waste of taxpayers' money on congressional investigations to disprove the negative...
...Jerry Dorbin Santa Fe, New Mexico Does This Mean We Have to Be Kind to Clinton...
...Occasionally I asked someone familiar with the northeastern U.S...
...Italian idiom...
...I was absolutely astounded at John Meroney's courageous, and perhaps foolhardy, publication of "The Real Maya Angelou" (TAS, March 1993), describing the questionable employment of Ms...
...My singer must have been goomba to Daily News columnist Reel's fanoosher...
...Meroney as a transfer student to complete his degree requirements, despite his obvious political incorrectness...
...He would have been treated to an all-too-real-life example of the gullibility of the American people...
...Whose Wake...
...Genscher was born in Halle and left the GDR in 1952, but during his career regularly visited friends in his old hometown...
...Laurence Tribe for support...
...Anthony Kennedy, then a federal circuit judge, was knocked out of contention because some Reagan administration aides feared that he might favor constitutional recognition of a right to privacy...
...I am not aware of any evidence that could lead one to conclude that Brandt was a KGB mole...
...Moreover, the original report by Evans and Novak named no sources, as is the custom of the two columnists...
...The theater showed the movie's reels in the wrong order, and my companion and I were the only ones who noticed...
...of Planned Parenthood v. Casey...
...As for whether Kennedy is today "the same person" he was then (and before), Judge Kennedy never wrote an opinion so intellectually vacuous as Justice Kennedy's contribution to the joint opinion in Casey...
...I never got anything but an uncomprehending shrug, although I admit to having spent as little time as absolutely necessary in the northeastern U.S...
...Please keep us advised as to how many days after your publication date Mr...
...It is not the Morals, nor the Politics, nor the Economy...
...It is entirely another matter to suggest that he may have been a traitor...
...Where, one might ask, is the identification of Eastland's sources...
...The dig is for failing to identify her sources for a story that disputed the theory of columnists Evans and Novak that Justice Kennedy changed his mind at the last minute in Casey and voted to reaffirm the 1973 abortion decision, Roe v. Wade...
...it was only the politically correct view of his 1980 opinion that had changed...
...Rieselbach diddles on and on about Poe's personal life, but nothing about his poetry nor his short stories...
...If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar...
...Steve Emerson's contributions to the case in the form of genuine, persistent, and thorough investigative research (as opposed to Sick's shoddy, casual, and willful manipulation of the facts) are laudable...
...You must be mistaken...
...It may have been a spoken interjection during a jazz vocal by one of the Italian-American musicians of the era...
...This fear that Kennedy might not be a true believer was enough to knock out his nomination, at least until after President Reagan's unsuccessful attempt to nominate Judge Douglas Ginsburg...
...He holds this movie up as an example of Hollywood's neglect of the truth of life...
...Janice L. Molnar Upland, California My Word Edward Conlon's Fanoosh story in the February issue ("Fight to the Fanoosh") reminded me of a similar lexicographic investigation of my own, but one which took fifty years to solve...
...Angelou by Wake Forest University...
...Guy Bowman Glendale, Colorado Steve's Wonder Thank you for bringing to light—finally—the unvarnished truth about Gary Sick and the so-called October Surprise conspiracy theory ("Gary Sick's Bald-Faced Lies" by Steven Emerson, TAS, March 1993...
...In my view, this matter deserved at least one complete sentence if not several paragraphs, whatever the nature of the sourcing employed (and on a story like this, as Wermiel knows, sources are quite reluctant to be named...
...see his essay "From Poe to Valery...
...Linda Greenhouse wrote that this was not the Case...
...Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye...
...In response to Wladyslaw Pleszczynski's remarks about Billy Graham's Inaugural prayer in your March issue, remarks that at first seemed to support those "principles" of "Holy Scripture," may I simply remind Mr...
...The same applies to Germany's former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher...
...Austin notices, I was reviewing biographies, hence the emphasis on Poe's personal life...
...Matthew 7:1,3) Let me suggest that all of us who espouse the cause of Christ should be very careful that we don't get in the way and misrepresent His life, His truth, and His love for all the world...
...The article takes a pointed dig at New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse...
...If only Mr...
...The Soviets didn't need to corrupt Brandt...
...There is a larger complaint with the article, besides the cheap shot...
...As for the Greenhouse Effect, I explained what the term, as coined by Thomas Sowell, means: "the impact activist Court reporters . . . can have upon the decision making of judges like Kennedy...
...I know why, but I won't tell you...
...Ogmundson Victoria, British Columbia Jeffrey Gedmin replies: It is one thing to have been vehemently at odds with Willy Brandt's coddling of East German and other Communists—and I was...
...Thankfully (and only after a large investment of time and effort by the accused), the truth emerged...
...Meroney remained as a student at Wake Forest before his expulsion...
...I was not mistaken...
...When the Ginsburg nomination went up in smoke, these same aides decided that Kennedy might be all right after all...
...Stasi files reveal early considerations to manipulate—or if necessary even discredit—Genscher as a secret police collaborator...
...As for Greenhouse, if she deserves even a fraction of the credit (blame) she is now receiving for reshaping the Supreme Court, perhaps the legal history books should refer to the period from 1981 to 1993 as the Greenhouse era, not the Reagan-Bush era...
...Sometime, it must have been around1940, I heard the term pastafazool...
...Wermiel, a former colleague of Greenhouse's who until recently covered the Supreme Court for the Wall Street Journal, scoffs at the idea...
...Consider the declaration by Markus Wolf, the former head of East Germany's espionage service, some six months after the Berlin Wall fell...
...The next line after the dig says, "But my own sources advise...
...I John 4:20) Likewise, in response to Mr...
...Leonard W. Fromm, Jr...
...Gabriel Austin New York, New York Erik Rieselbach replies: As Mr...
...The problem is not that the news media and Washington establishment have changed him...
...Bowman had been in the theater when I watched Body of Evidence...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
