SCRAPBOOK
INTERNET AL, DOWN ON THE FARM You probably thought you knew Al Gore’s life story by now. As told in the New Yorker a few years back, the outlines are these: “Gore was a son of politics, a child of...
...As he wrote in his letter of Feb...
...DEMOCRATIC DEFECTORS Whatever clout the Clinton administration once had with congressional Democrats seems to have vanished...
...Too bad the Clinton administration seems determined to sully it along with everything else...
...This would then open the door to state-sanctioned killing...
...Well said...
...Bryant further mused that a court could order the state to provide “reasonable accommodation that would enable the disabled to avail themselves of the Act’s provisions...
...That got the attention of state senator Neil Bryant, who asked deputy attorney general David Schuman for his opinion...
...First, Democrats proposed two meaningless amendments to the Cochran-Inouye bill related to funding and a pledge to seek continued reductions in Russia’s nuclear forces...
...How preposterous...
...Then, when Democratic senator Richard Durbin continued to speak out against the bill during floor debate, he was needled by fellow Democrat Charles Schumer as “Neville Durbin...
...Real farmers, even poor ones, have been hiring bulldozers to clear land since before Al Gore was born, or at least using chainsaws...
...He taught me how to clean out hog waste with a shovel and a hose...
...Even Ted Kennedy voted for the bill...
...As for the mules, it occurs to THE SCRAPBOOK that maybe one of them kicked young Al in the head...
...In the end, Durbin was one of just three die-hard liberals to oppose a missile defense...
...Although the Post was mute, the New York Times did note, deep in its story, that the event was “more political than usual...
...In the fine print of an education report Bush released this week lies this instruction: ‘Public reporting and release of [the education report] shall be apolitical.’ But Wednesday, on a trip that included a $2,500-aplate fund-raiser, the president released . . .” Lately, though, the Post doesn’t seem nearly as vigilant...
...Schuman doesn’t say...
...According to Senate sources, the Democrats’ mutiny stemmed from a belief that carrying the administration’s water was risky—and that, in any case, it was likely the president would change course sometime next year in order to benefit Al Gore’s presidential campaign...
...Indeed, Joseph Biden recently told Newsday, “I don’t think there is a real rogue-state threat...
...But if someone has a legal right to be dead and can’t do the job himself, what other option is there...
...This produced an amusing spectacle on the Senate floor last week...
...Congressional Republicans are suddenly more optimistic about the next two years...
...Republicans refused...
...Well, the vice president’s life has been vastly more interesting than you thought...
...The chairman of the board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Mark D. Musick, noted this, too, and has lodged a complaint with the commissioner of education statistics...
...It turns out that, before being elected to Congress and inventing the Internet, Al Gore was also the son of a sharecropper in Tennessee...
...The administration continued to oppose the Cochran- Inouye bill this year, and Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, obediently told his fellow Democrats a few weeks ago that the party position would once again be to keep the bill from even being debated on the Senate floor...
...What might that accommodation be...
...THE SLOPE IS SLIPPERY When Oregon made “assisted suicide” legal, opponents predicted the law would one day be declared discriminatory against disabled people, because it required self-administration of lethal drugs...
...Yet some Democrats were so paralyzed with fear over having to vote on the bill—it is strongly opposed by liberal arms-controllers— that Biden offered to withdraw the amendments if Republicans would allow the bill to be approved by voice vote...
...A state obligation to kill disabled citizens who ask may be just a lawsuit away in Oregon...
...In fact, it hasn’t even noticed that Al Gore is now doing the same thing...
...But at a recent Democratic caucus meeting, the bottom dropped out...
...You’d think a guy who could raise tobacco, slop hogs, invent the Internet and inspire a best-selling novel and movie—all by the time he was 28—could afford to give more than $353 a year to charity...
...Even when he tries to slum, Gore betrays his blue-blood upbringing...
...Gore left without taking questions from the press...
...you don’t want your topsoil to get washed away...
...Albans, on the grounds of the Washington Cathedral...
...Not to mention, no responsible farmer since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s has plowed a steep hillside...
...It was later still that he and Tipper inspired the romance novel and movie Love Story...
...Well, that day is just about here...
...He taught me how to take up hay all day long in the hot sun...
...Only a hobbyist would use an ax...
...young Al walked across the street every morning to the Cosmos Club, where a bus picked him up for the ride to Washington’s most elite prep school, St...
...The goal...
...On the national level, NAEP is one of the few education success stories...
...WHAT GOES AROUND Seven years ago, when President George Bush tried to make political hay out of the release of national education statistics, a Washington Post story carried this snippy lead: “Maybe President Bush doesn’t read enough...
...That led to a brief investigation by the Coos County district attorney, Paul Burgett, who declared that Matheny’s death conformed to Oregon law, and who further opined that it would be “unlawful” if terminally ill disabled people such as Matheny were unable to “accomplish their objectives...
...18, unless NAEP results are insulated from politics, “people won’t believe them...
...He taught me how to clear land with a double-bladed ax...
...The Democratic posture had been that missile defenses are costly and unnecessary...
...The family residence was an apartment in the elegant Fairfax Hotel, which was owned by a Gore cousin...
...So his brother-in-law, Joe Hayes, had to “help” Matheny die, as he recently told the press...
...Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson has, needless to say, been making hay out of all this...
...In February, the commissioner of education statistics was all set to announce the latest national reading scores at a long-planned press conference, when Gore hijacked the event, packing the auditorium with education lobbyists and bureaucrats, inviting a first-grade teacher from Fairfax, Va., to make some remarks, and urging Congress to “enact the Clinton-Gore education agenda...
...He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules...
...One of Nicholson’s many Gore-related press releases last week managed to combine just about every Gore affectation of the last decade into one magnificent soundbite: “I suppose the vice president’s hog-raising career came after his tobacco-growing ventures and some time before he went into high-tech,” said Nicholson...
...This was made abundantly clear during last week’s Senate debate and near-unanimous vote to finally deploy a national defense against ballistic missiles...
...The precise details, Hayes said, were “too personal...
...As told in the New Yorker a few years back, the outlines are these: “Gore was a son of politics, a child of Washington, where his father served for thirty-two years as a congressman and a senator...
...When Patrick Matheny, dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, decided to take the lethal drugs he had received under Oregon law, he could barely swallow...
...Yes, Schuman wrote to Bryant in a letter dated March 15, 1999, a court could indeed find that Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act discriminated against disabled persons, either under the state constitution or, ironically, the Americans with Disabilities Act...
...To provide an excuse for dropping their opposition to the bill...
...An array of senators, ranging from Bob Kerrey and Dianne Feinstein to freshmen Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, said they weren’t going to toe the administration’s line any longer...
...Or at least that’s how it sounded in Gore’s March 16 interview with the Des Moines Register: “I’ll tell you something else [my father] taught me,” said Gore...
...In fact, when senators Thad Cochran and Daniel Inouye tried to get a vote on their bill last year, they couldn’t even get it scheduled because they lacked 60 votes...
Vol. 4 • March 1999 • No. 27
