Scrapbook

...Not so fast...

...As all of you know," the president said, "I opposed publicly and strongly [Prop.] 209...

...And I am eager to get their recommendation...

...in 1979 and by President Carter in 1980, but was prudently never sent to the Senate...

...And the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Marshall's extended cooperation with the FBI appears in hindsight to have been pragmatic," for "Hoover . . . appears to have steered his seek-and-destroy mission away from the NAACP and Marshall and on to more enticing targets like Martin Luther King, Jr...

...And so on...

...With breathtaking arrogance and Orwellian hostility to the plain meaning of words, Henderson ruled that CCRI might violate the "equal protection" clause of the U.S...

...For all the talk of animal rights, the real mission of PETA is to ensure that no one— at least, no human being—takes any pleasure in anything remotely related to animals, and success follows success...

...The next day, International Human Rights Day, the president tried to beef up his human-rights reputation by giving some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the deservedly dormant United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women...

...CCRI mandates that in state employment, contracting, and education, California treat all people alike—no matter their color and no matter whether they are men or women...

...King and Thurgood Marshall with the FBI did not work in life and will not work in death...

...Thurgood, We Hardly Knew Ye . . . When USA Today broke the news earlier this month that Thurgood Marshall, while lawyering for the NAACP had cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, elite opinion first gulped, then sputtered, then . . . sputtered some more...

...tell it to the federal judiciary...

...Now, presumably, they look ecstatic, back on their farm in the Shenandoah Valley...

...Well, we'll be having no more of that...

...More Mush from the Wimp What a confusing week for human rights activists...

...On December 10, he took the occasion of remarks naming a new director of the Voice of America to say, more or less, that his administration is about to jump in head first and land like a ton of bricks on the side of Judge Henderson and his pet litigants, and against the voters of California...

...Enter President Clinton, who weighed in, sort of, in a most curious way...

...Jesse Jackson admonished, "The attempts to discredit Dr...

...The reason: Quinn chafed because he wasn't in control of the most important legal work being done at the White House, namely running the defense of the Clintons in various scandals...

...I thought it was bad policy for the people of California, and a bad example for America...

...President, tell it to your Justice Department...

...That job was handled by Harold Ickes, who was the de facto boss of Mark Fabiani and Jane Sherburne, the two lawyers on Quinn's staff who dealt with the press on Whitewater and the rest...

...The treaty was approved by the U.N...

...and the human, political, and civil rights of the people should be respected...

...In other words, no more "affirmative action" racial and gender preferences in state and state-funded activities...

...Marshall's son, Thurgood Marshall, Jr., an aide to Vice President Gore, should have the last word...

...The reality is [get ready for some Jacksonian alliteration], contact is not cooperation...

...and then try telling it, with a straight face, to the free people of California...

...Mere seconds later, a reporter asked a seemingly unrelated question about what message the president would like to send to the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who—how best to put this?— opposed publicly and strongly the victory of his political enemies in local elections last month, which victory he thought was bad policy for the people of Yugoslavia and a bad example for Greater Serbia...

...Marshall's reputation will survive this latest bit of intelligence—for some, enhanced...

...What context...

...Let's see . . . UNCEAFDAW...

...The New York Times hurried to instruct that the "controversy" over the "newly released ...files, indicating that [Marshall] gave the Bureau information on Communists . . . shows the great danger of assessing history out of context...

...Rather than an actual human-rights treaty, the document is the National Organization for Women's blueprint for utopia...

...Before the month was out (as detailed last week by Matthew Rees), Thelton E. Henderson, one of Jimmy Carter's federal judges, put the new law on ice at the behest of the usual liberal litigants (the ACLU, et al...

...So he nullified it...

...Under pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the highly annoying group of busybod-ies that pursues its mission under the banner of "animal rights," the National Park Service has removed nine deer from the Pageant of Peace on the Washington Mall's Ellipse, behind the White House...

...It was remarkable to witness the confusion of the opinion-makers—What is the line, now?—and to observe the rush to protect a liberal icon from the apparendy unbearable charge that he worked with the country's chief crime investigator to prevent his civil-rights organization from being subverted and overtaken by men loyal to Joseph Stalin...

...He described the relationship between Hoover and his father as an "ironic twist" and allowed, "He [Thurgood Sr.] seemed to rely [on the Bureau] a lot...

...Despite the departure of Ickes, Fabiani, and Sherburne before Clinton's second term begins, Quinn discovered little would change...

...The latest to leave is Jack Quinn, who quit abruptly on December 11...

...Said the San Francisco Chronicle, "It would be premature to make much of [these] revelations...

...Marshall may have cooperated with the FBI, but he did not do so as Hoover's stooge...

...Chi Haotian, the Tiananmen trigger-man, dropped by the White House for a romp...

...Whether it is unconstitutional is a different question, and our people are working very hard [at the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office] to work through the legal and constitutional issues to give me a recommendation about what we should do and how we should do it...

...Each Christmas, from time immemorial, the deer have been trucked in to graze in a 20-by-30-foot pen as a tribute to Santa's reindeer...

...And while you're at it, Mr...

...Hear, hear...

...On Monday, December 9, President Clinton played Tickle-Me Bill when China's defense minister, Gen...

...And it also afforded the president the opportunity to scold the Senate, especially those nasty Republicans, by calling their failure to ratify the treaty an "embarrassment...

...Tis the Season...

...Constitution (to which clause, it can fairly be argued, CCRI is more faithful than federal law and federal judges...

...As one animal rights-er noted to the Washington Post, the deer looked "sad...

...It mandates complete sex equality in the military, the overthrow of market wages and implementation of "comparable worth" pay scales, rigid gender quotas, abortion on demand, and federally mandated child care...

...Clinton's resurrection of it will certainly please human rights activists (at least those on the left) miffed by Monday's heart-to-heart with Chi...

...Said President Clinton to President Milosevic: "Elections should be respected and the voice of the people should be heard...

...There's a good reason why every Senate since 1979, Republican and Democratic, has let this sleeping dog lie...

...The only embarrassment here is that of seeing the president capitulate, on successive days, to the Tyranny of Tiananmen and the Tyranny of Estrogen...

...Our sympathies are always with free people who are struggling to express their freedom and want to have the integrity of their elections respected...

...The Not-So-Mtghty Qutnn For good reason, the biggest turnover in the Clinton White House occurs in the post of chief counsel...

...A nice touch, you might think, and a delight for the kids...

...So he quit for "personal reasons...