Scrapbook

...Herrington's defense of quoting Martin Luther King...

...Well, the Democrats "reached out" to their guests— many of them impoverished monks and nuns—by shoving $5,000 cash into their hands and asking them to write checks in that amount to the DNC (five grand being the maximum contribution allowed by law...

...But another American behaved in a genuinely praiseworthy fashion in the walkup to the Nicaraguan election: the State Department's usually diplomatic spokesman, Nicholas Burns...

...Maybe the Nicaraguan people should vote on whether they ever want to see Carter and Pastor in their country again...

...What's more, it barely trails among black and Hispanic voters...

...Said Gore to the gentlefolk at National Public Radio, "I did not know at the time...

...The people with me did not...

...Carter and Pastor take credit for bringing "reconciliation" to Nicaragua, but all they've brought is misery...

...When he was asked whether the U.S...

...With Dole trailing by 20 points in California and various Republican officials down-ballot endangered, the state Republican party is now trying to hitch a ride on CCRI— having utterly neglected it early on when resources for CCRI were scarce...

...Carter, who had been photographed laughing and smiling with Ortega before the vote, legitimized Ortega's ludicrous complaint by calling for a reexamination of the ballot count...

...Its centerpiece was a clip of Martin Luther King—a boneheaded idea, one that was opposed by the CCRI campaign itself and that offered the entire affirmative-action establishment an opportunity to wax indignant about this misappropriation of King's legacy...

...government believed Daniel Ortega was a democrat, Burns replied that he would not use the word "democrat" to describe Ortega...

...Bob Dole is to give a major speech on CCRI early this week...

...When Ortega was voted out of power in a 1990 landslide, Carter and his assistant Robert Pastor brokered a deal that allowed Daniel's brother to keep the army under Sandinista control...

...with charges of campaign-finance malfeasance and the promotion of the interests of an Indonesian bank you once worked for hovering around, you'd disappear too...

...Bravo...

...A few years later, Blum turned his attention to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and he charged—incorrectly—that BCCI was the "original banker" for Oliver North's arms network...

...Of course, this silly defen-siveness wouldn't have been necessary if he hadn't insisted on a foolish ad in the first place...

...In 1979, Carter helped Ortega fight his way into power and establish a Communist dictatorship worse than the Somoza tyranny tScrapbook that preceded it...

...We remember anti-American acts...

...And so, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Ortega still has never had to accept the results of a democratic election...

...Carter Plays with Nicaragua Again Jimmy Carter is at it again, making his best effort to muddy and confuse things in Nicaragua by coming to Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega's assistance for the third time in less than two decades...

...Meanwhile, efforts to get the Republican party simply to finance the successful, upbeat, and positive equal-opportunity message that had been devised by CCRI's chief strategist, Arnie Steinberg, were rebuffed...

...The proposition is receiving strong support not only from Republicans and conservatives, but also from Democrats and liberals...

...Blum's testimony last week discounted the links between the CIA, the contras, and an innercity drug network, which does him credit, but he also used the occasion to try and boost the reelection prospects of his former boss, Massachusetts senator John Kerry...

...And so there were several days of press stories about disarray around CCRI as California state GOP chairman John Herrington waffled on which ads would air and what they would say...

...The latest Los Angeles Times poll has the anti-quota initiative ahead, 54 to 31 percent...

...Judging by the hapless first ad party leaders cut, they would be better served if they kept their hands off the initiative...

...I am not trying to make it a racist-type thing...

...The Return of Jack Blum Last week's Senate hearing on the alleged links between the CIA, the contras, and drug-dealing in inner-city Los Angeles saw the return of one of Washington's peskiest, and most partisan, investigators: Jack Blum...

...Blum charged that Kerry's opponent, William Weld, was responsible for the Justice Department's "absolute stonewall" of investigations into CIA-contra links when he was deputy attorney general during the Reagan years...

...Al Gore, In Denial Again As we stand in awe at Bill Clinton's shamelessness, we should not overlook the prowess of his vice president, next to whom the president can seem positively refreshing...

...We only hope he makes the principled case against preferences and thereby helps the cause of the proposition rather than damaging it...

...The evening's take was $140,000, not a tremendous sum by Indo-Lippo-Clinton standards, but the DNC has no intention of returning it...

...I don't believe if you took a survey of the American people that 99.8 percent of our population would describe him as a good democrat—not with friends like Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein...

...His investigation was distinguished by a single-minded focus on the contras, with little attention given to charges that Sandinista leaders were part of a drug-distribution network...

...He proved very undiplomatic, indeed...

...Last week, Al Gore denied that he had the slightest inkling that fund-raising—fund-raising of all things!—was going on during an event at a Buddhist temple out in California in April...

...There is, apparently, nothing people like Blum will not say, given the chance, and there is no excuse for such a discredited investigator's getting to spend hours before a Senate committee trying to revive yet another leftist conspiracy theory from the 1980s...

...The ad also linked CCRI to the 1994 anti-immigration initiative Proposition 187, thus endangering Hispanic support...

...Even when you open yourself to the charge that you are lying through your teeth...

...we remember outrages against the American people...

...Herrington adds: "The main thing is our intentions are kind...

...Really, Mr...

...He thought that Democratic National Committee operative John Huang had arranged a simple "community outreach event," "not billed as a fund-raiser...

...Pressed further by the shocked gathering of journalists, Burns went on to say that the American people "remember the 1970s and '80s...

...We think we know how that vote would turn out, too...

...Obviously, somebody didn't handle it right...

...Huang, by the way, seems to have "disappeared," his whereabouts unknown like a character in a bad Washington spy novel...

...But the ham-handed efforts of the California Republican party to capitalize on CCRI's strength has some CCRI supporters worried...

...He also claimed—again incorrectly—that the Federal Reserve was covering up evidence of BCCI bribes paid to American officials...

...Described by the New York Times a few years ago as a "doggedly liberal Democratic muckraker," Blum first made a name for himself while serving as a special counsel to the Foreign Relations Committee, investigating drug smuggling and money laundering in Nicaragua...

...Ortega was buried in yet another landslide last week, and like the Communist he is, he refused to concede his defeat and complained of fraud...

...But not to worry: "I trust people to see the truth of the situation...

...But now the California GOP intends to advertise on its behalf...

...A couple of people have said, 'Would Martin Luther King support quotas?' I don't know...

...Indeed, prominent California Republicans spent quite a bit of time a couple of months ago distancing themselves from CCRI...

...Vice President...