Scrapbook

...Speaking of which: Just for the record, Mr...

...That "timeless wisdom" business is a particularly mordant touch, given that the quotation is timelessly bogus, as has been repeatedly pointed out on this page and elsewhere...

...Fake Tocqueville's Valedictory Lap On January 7 at Washington's Foundry United Methodist Church, Bill Clinton gave a short speech expressing his deepest, sincerest, most heartfelt gratitude to all us little people who've showered him with love and respect these past eight years...

...Anyone who employs it thus reveals himself an ignoramus...

...Kabbany replied that she'd seen news accounts in which he'd promised to make his files fully available to the media...

...The Scrap-book is not making this up—and apologizes for not passing it along sooner...

...Old-Time Tradition From a January 10 Associated Press dispatch: "President-elect Bush has decided not to include a poet at his inauguration...

...Kaus's answer: "Guess it's a tradition if a) Kennedy did it...

...Farinella frowned, and then said: "Very quickly, then...

...Farinella, for his part, contends that his files contain only materials already in "the public domain"—and that "if someone would like access to them, they can call me and I would be happy to provide it as long as the request is reasonable...

...To test this last proposition, last Thursday The Scrapbook sent reporter Jennifer Kabbany to PFAW, where she very politely asked for a peek at Farinel-la's stuff...

...No longer will potential enlistees receive an invitation to "be all that you can be" on the Army team...

...Can I Bring My Mom...

...Last week, top Army officials announced the first major change in their recruitment advertising since 1981...

...Farinella asked her what she was up to...

...Four minutes later, after Kabbany had fingered through a sheaf of photocopied news clippings about the marijuana-possession arrests of Ashcroft's nephew, Farinella returned to the room, clasped his hands, set his jaw, and shut her down...

...For many years now, the U.S...

...Today's youth want to feel empowered to make a difference individually and as a group...

...The story, James Riady now acknowledges, was true...

...I will always have wonderful memories of every occasion where we passed the peace—for all the people, young and old, who came up to me and said a kind word of welcome, to remind me that no matter what was going on in Washington, D.C., at the moment, there was a real world out there, with real people and real hearts and minds, reaffirming the timeless wisdom of de Tocqueville's observation so long ago: that America is great because America is good...

...The idea behind it," zoo director Maarten Frankenhuis explained at the time, "is to show that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon...

...What kind of minority, precisely...

...President, when you're referring to his family name, the non-author of your favorite non-aphorism is simply "Tocqueville," not "de Tocqueville...

...Five minutes...

...That's why, for example, the Army has always made its grunts wear indistinguishable uniforms and cut their hair really short...

...For it turns out that animal homosexuality is "usually temporary...

...Needless to say, Bill Clinton, who lies the way fish swim, has testified under oath that he has no "specific recollection" of either the talk with Riady or the "fact of the car ride...

...Police Blotter Lawyers for Indonesian businessman James Riady last week reached agreement with federal prosecutors on a plea bargain by which Riady will avoid serving time in prison...

...Artis, it turns out, boasts a lesbian chimpanzee, at least two geese in a long-term gay "marriage," and a flamingo lake stocked with birds who enjoy same-sex orgies...

...Sid's message referred addressees to those Farinella-file highlights that PFAW has posted on a special website, opposeashcroft.com...

...Scrapbook The Ashcroft Files A Democratic operative named Marc Farinella managed the late Missouri governor Mel Carnahan's successful bid to unseat then-senator John Ashcroft in last November's election...

...The story was that the two men met in the backseat of Riady's limousine to discuss the Indonesian's eventually successful plan to make $1 million in disguised, foreign contributions to Clinton's election effort...

...The Scrapbook would have thought the ideal recruit would want to feel empowered to kill his nation's enemies...

...A spokeswoman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, Natalie Rule, cited no reason for his decision...

...And what better way to cap off this bit of ersatz sen-timent—and his presidency—than with the ersatz quotation he has forever made his own...

...Farinella, with 15 to 20 fat file boxes, has taken up residence in the Washington offices of People for the American Way (PFAW), whom he is helping shop dirt on Ashcroft...

...Yes, Scrapbook devotees, it's Clinton's fake Tocqueville gambit, for the umpteenth time: "I thank you all for your prayers and your welcome to all of us in the storm and sunshine of these last eight years...

...But, of course, The Scrapbook is hopelessly old-fashioned...

...Also Thursday, White House hatchet man Sidney Blumenthal sent an e-mail message about John Ashcroft to his standard list of journalist buddies (see "Sid's List" in last week's Scrap-book...

...Instead, Riady will pay hefty fines and admit guilt in a scheme to make felonious financial contributions to the Democratic party during the 1992 presidential campaign...

...And visitors to his zoo quickly realize that "they themselves, or their sons or daughters, aren't peculiar, either—they just belong to a minority...

...As presumably they do...

...or c) the unconsciously-biased arts-lovin' Camelot-besotted liberal media elite wants it to be a tradition...

...Even Educated Fleas Do It Last August, Radio Netherlands reported that Amsterdam's Artis Zoo would begin conducting lectures and tours designed to "show off its homo- and bisexual beasts...

...As part of this bargain, federal prosecutors demanded that Riady confirm accounts of a conversation he was alleged to have had with his friend Bill Clinton that year...

...b) two Democrats do it...

...Frankenhuis unwittingly stepped on his own message...

...We're guessing that anyone who arrives at PFAW's offices and says "Blumenthal sent me" will be received rather differently than our reporter was...

...Well, reform is under way it seems, at least at the level of rhetoric...

...Now Farinella has made opposition research he collected in that campaign available to interest groups attempting to block Ashcroft's nomination to be George W. Bush's attorney general...

...The new slogan, Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera explains, emphasizes the "personal transformation" young men and women can achieve in the service...

...Frankenhuis, none of this is considered peculiar, because non-human species "only have to listen to the bible of nature...

...Allies of Ashcroft complain that any such "oppo" material properly belongs to the Carnahan campaign, not to Farinella, and that it is inappropriate and prejudicial for Sen...

...Carna-han responds that Farinella is acting on his own...

...Here Dr...

...Now they will be informed that it isn't really a team at all—that they can be "An Army of One" if they prefer...

...Army has enforced a highly successful "don't ask, don't tell" policy...

...To wit: The Army has long privately acknowledged —and accepted—the fact that some of its recruits are individual human beings, while officially and publicly discouraging the individualist lifestyle on grounds that it undermines the collective discipline and "unit cohesion" necessary in an effective fighting force...

...In other words, the lesson would seem to be: Gay people are like animals rejected as too weak or otherwise unattractive by their opposite-sex counterparts...

...In the animal kingdom, according to Dr...

...That can't be right, can it...

...Jean Carna-han—who will sit in judgment on the Ashcroft nomination—to have authorized her late husband's political documents to be used this way...

...As Mickey Kaus pointed out on his kausfiles.com site, "What kind of a 'tradition' is it if nobody followed it...

...John F. Kennedy started the tradition of having a poet speak at the inauguration in 1961 with Robert Frost, but no other president followed suit until President Clinton...

...As soon as young boy beasts "manage to become the dominant male in the group, they will then mate with females exclusively...