SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook NEWT'S LABOR PAINS One month ago, House speaker Newt Gingrich responded to the National Right to Work Committee's questionnaire for congressional candidates. The first question was:...
...What we have here, it appears, is a phony inquiry, a lot of rigmarole, and a cover-up...
...The events of that violation took no more than a few hours...
...When James Dob-son of Focus on the Family came to Washington and leaned on congressional Republicans, they quickly knuckled under and agreed to take up a series of bills favored by social conservatives, some of which have no chance of passage...
...It simply wants a recorded vote so it can target those who back compulsory unionism...
...Yet the Pentagon's investigation is now entering its fifth month...
...What does he get for the child-care bill...
...And the right-to-work committee is influential with the party's conservative base...
...Well, July 9 came and went, and still the Pentagon's inspector general had issued no report...
...Of course, fast track won't pass and IMF funds are iffy...
...SHOWBIZ MCCAIN Among Republican presidential candidates, John McCain looks to have the inside lane for winning the support of that scarce but highly sought after constituency, the Hollywood celebrity Republican...
...The answer is that Gingrich and GOP leaders meekly respond to pressure, and the National Right to Work Committee hasn't yet exerted as much as Dobson and the business community...
...Just last week she told the Washington Post that she would be happy to "give the president [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal...
...And slowly it dawned on me as I walked away: He found me attractive...
...I felt incandescent...
...The event, which The Scrapbook sadly was unable to attend, was scheduled to be held on Sunday, July 12, at the Los Angeles home of Connie Stevens, whose many TV and screen credits include dragstrip Riot, Hawaiian Eye, Love's Savage Fury, and (SCRAPBOOK'S personal fave) Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis...
...You won't have to have an inquiry or rigmarole or anything else...
...MARGARET CARLSON'S COMPETTTTON "Sex wasn't on my mind when I sat down across from the president," writes the reporter Nina Burleigh in an article in this month's Mirabella magazine...
...By July 9," came the reply...
...And when business groups landed on Republicans for slighting their agenda, Gingrich hastily promised to push for a capital-gains tax cut, most-favored-nation trading status for China, renewed IMF funding, and fast-track trade legislation...
...So we wait for answers...
...As we noted back in May, Bill Clinton, in his first press conference as president-elect, responded forcefully to the Bush administration's misuse of confidential records: "If I catch anybody doing it, I will fire them the next day...
...Notwithstanding the implausibility of these words—who can sit across from the president these days and not think about sex?—her words have earned her eternal fame in the annals of Washington journalism...
...Gingrich said "yes...
...It soon may, however...
...By the time the middle of June rolled around, Congress had gotten restless...
...When, on July 10, Solomon demanded an explanation, he got a onesentence middle finger in the face: "The inquiry is ongoing and a report will be issued at the time it is completed...
...Gerald Solomon, chairman of the House Rules Committee, demanded to know when the Pentagon report would be issued...
...Solomon was not pleased, and he vowed to take up the issue immediately with defense secretary Bill Cohen...
...The committee has collected 550,000 signatures on a petition demanding a vote on the bill, and it's planning TV ads...
...It's hard to see why Republicans are so worried...
...The invitation helpfully notes that any leftover contributions to the McCain for Senate '98 Committee "may be transferred to the McCain for President 2000 Committee...
...And wait...
...In that vein, he suggested a solution to the right-to-workers...
...Let her tell the tale: "When I got up and shook his hand at the end of the game, his eyes wandered over my bike-wrecked, naked legs...
...As much as he likes the legislation, Gingrich declared, it "does not have the support necessary to pass in the House, and it would be foolish to schedule a vote that is sure to fail...
...It's also adept at flooding Congress with telephone calls from right-to-work advocates...
...The committee has no illusions about winning a vote this year...
...THE SCRAPBOOK is in receipt of an invitation to "an intimate gathering with a real, live American Hero, Senator John McCain," who "with our help will be our next president...
...What's going on here...
...So why the double standard...
...Why not a vote...
...Some of them are moderate Republicans, whom Gingrich and Armey would like to protect...
...Nina (having read her article, The Scrapbook feels we're on a first-name basis) is a former White House correspondent for Time magazine, and her Mirabella article describes a game of hearts (literally and metaphorically) that she played with Bill Clinton on Air Force One...
...THE TRIPP FILES Long ago, in March, the Pentagon promised a report on its disclosure of information from Linda Tripp's confidential security file to the media...
...Wow...
...The first question was: Would he "co-sponsor and seek roll-call votes on legislation to repeal the provisions in federal laws which authorize compulsory union dues...
...It certainly wasn't the can't-pass litmus test that prompted Gingrich—and Majority Leader Dick Armey—to refuse to bring the right-to-work bill to the floor...
...Armey wants their votes in his race to succeed Gingrich as speaker...
...Livingston is Armey's chief rival for speaker and doesn't want to alienate moderates either...
...But, a few days later Newt said just the opposite in a letter...
...It was riveting to know that the President had appreciated my legs, scarred as they were...
...Get Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston to attach the bill to a spending measure...
...Linda Tripp's privacy was violated in a flagrant, inexcusable, and—most to the point—illegal way...
...The issue—banning coercive union membership and dues—is a popular one...
...Actually, Nina hasn't yet shaken that "intoxicated state...
...It took several hours and a few drinks in the steaming and now somehow romantic Arkansas night to shake the intoxicated state in which I had been quite willing to let myself be ravished by the President, should he have but asked...
...If he had asked me to continue the game of hearts back in his room at the Holiday Inn, I would have been happy to go there and see what happened...
Vol. 3 • July 1998 • No. 43
