Tilting at Windmills

...The reason for the disparity is that Bell Atlantic took the business numbers out of the White Pages and put them in the Yellow Pages so you will have to read the ads...

...But the resolution would dispose of the matter quickly and spare the White House and the country from continuing to be distracted from the important issues of governance...

...As we reached the receiving line we saw Mrs...

...Because serious coverage of the executive branch requires such a background, they avoid it because they don’t want to risk revealing the depth of their ignorance...

...WHY NOT A WEST POINT FOR police...

...Although he was not photographed in a wheelchair, he was also not shown walking or even standing without the assistance of an aide’s arm, or something else, like a cane or a railing...

...LASTY EAR XEROX’CS EO, PAUL Allaire, was paid $16.6 million in salary and bonuses...

...Their conspiracy theories may not be as crazy as they seemed...

...WHAT ONE KNOWS OF HISTORY inspires doubt about history...

...Two dozen former mine owners actually admitted to the Courer-Journal that they had falsified tests...

...He’s been a member of a scholarship committee that looks not only at SAT scores but at high school grades, essays written by applicants, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, all of which you might expect, but also at the hardship the student might have overcome...

...I’ve repeatedly tried to warn the world of the White House’s ignorance of what is going on in the agencies and departments of the executive branch...

...What actually happened is that my wife threw out her shoulder, so usually we just dial 411 to get the number, which adds to Bell Atlantic revenue...

...There were more than 500 presidential electors plus their spouses and lots of kids like me...

...Finding out if that situation continues today should not involve more than a few phone calls, and it would have provided crucial help to the Post’s readers in forming their opinion of the bill...

...In the first 110 days of 1998,” writes Carl Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, “Congress met for only 30 legislative days, and it has only 59 more daily meetings scheduled in the 197 days before the November elections...

...Sounds a lot like good old Charlie Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan, doesn't it...

...HERE’AS TIMELY WARNING TO those who are sympathetic to legislation that would encourage the merger of banks and brokerage houses...

...About that matter, I’m indebted to Russell Baker for reminding me of what H.L...

...There was a reception for presidential electors, of whom he was one...

...FDRs birthday was an occasion for dances held throughout the country and sponsored by the March of Dimes with a slogan that went something like “Dance So They Can Walk!’ In 1937, my father took me to the White House...

...The paper exploded another myth about black lung: that strip miners don’t get it...

...Seventyfive of these hideous projects are mining coal now and would you believe that the Republican governor, Cecil Underwood, a former coal company executive who received $518,000 in campaign and inauguration contributions from his mining industry pals, is now trying to expand mountaintop removal...

...They worked hard, harder than any Congress in years...

...We the people can say we don’t like the president’s adolescent self-indulgence or his and her silly attempts to stonewall and cover up...

...Reading every possibility at its worst, I can only see her guilty of the most minor sins...

...The disability: “stress disorder...

...the District of Columbia Police Department...

...Consider David Bossie, Dan Burton’s chief investigator, who was recently fired for his role in editing the Webster Hubbell tapes...

...It says that a properly presented case could win...

...In the resulting ranking, the highest rated applicant was a young woman with an SAT of llS0...

...Hauling Susan McDougal around in chains, threatening to put her in jail a second time for essentially the same offense, threatening Webster Hubbell with more prison time for an offense that is rarely ever prosecuted all reek of prosecutors who have lost their sanity compass...

...And he has some experience to back him up...

...mdwest does all this for its passengers and still, according to Newmeek’s Daniel Pederson, “has turned a profit 11 years in a row while scoring top marks in national surveys for not losing luggage...

...And if you thought federal laws were protecting miners from black lung disease, you ought to read a recent series in the Louisville Courier-Journal that says as many as 3,600 working miners have black lung...

...area had vacancies and almost all charged less than $3,200...

...IF IT HAS SOMETIMES SEEMED TO you that the most reckless drivers on our roads and streets are the police who are supposed to be making them safe, I have a statistic to support your suspicions...

...Many of us had hoped that a future court would overturn the decision...

...IF SAT SCORES AS A MEASURE of human potential make you uneasy, columnist Carl Rowan shares your concern...

...The reason reporters love Lewinsky-type scandal is that it’s easy for them to deal with, requiring no background in the substantive issues of government...

...ANOTHER CLINTON STATEMENT that left me incredulous came in his radio address about the IRS when he said he was “outraged” by reports of what “seemed to be an unaccountable, downright tonedeaf agency...

...I RARELY AGREE WITH The Wall S~reetJournai’se ditorial writers, but I applaud their attack on Bill Clinton’s hypocrisy in threatening to veto vouchers for students from the poor families of the District of Columbia...

...A few liberals have been confused by the argument that the cigarette tax will fall most heavily on the poor...

...They should sell like hot cakes...

...Thev concealed the deteriorating cardiovascular condition that was to lead to FDR’s death...

...Why didn’t it occur to the reporter or his editor to find out if that statement is true...

...Mostly controlled by out-of-staters, they avoided paying anything like their fair share of taxes and their contempt for workers and the environment was seldom concealed...

...By the way, when our phone went out last month, the repairman didn’t come the next day as they used to do but three days, later...

...What I remember is that everyone knew he couldn’t walk unaided...

...Two approve any charity that spends at least 60 percent of its donations on the people it is supposed to help...

...All this took several years,” according to The Washington Post‘s Mike Causey, to whom I am indebted for this item...

...Clinton was covering up...

...The tag line reads, “It’s Not About Kids, It’s About Money...

...THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY front group recently ran an ad attacking the McCain bill’s tax on cigarettes...

...Tilting at Windmills By Charles Peters Hillaryi Billing Media Ignorance Mountaintop Removal The Armyi Art Specialist The President and the Nun THISIT EM IS DEDICATED TO Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal...

...The New York Times reports that the supply of low-rent apartments dropped by 900,000 in a recent four-year period, while the number of “very low income” families grew by 370,000...

...In 1965, the multiple was 44...

...When we asked about him, we were told he had been there in his wheelchair but had started to tire and had been taken away...

...You may wonder why the Army needs an art specialist or an arts and crafts center...

...What is, alas, more likely is that Midwest will be taken over by one of the giants whose hard-nosed management will decide that more profit can be made if service is reduced to the level of other airlines...

...But this year the fellows have lapsed...

...The brokers, according to Leslie Eaton of The New York Times, “also misled investors, many of whom were elderly people who had previously invested in federally guaranteed certificates of deposit, about the risks of investing” in bond funds that were not federally insured...

...In fact it has deprived this magazine of one of its weapons against greedy landlords...

...ONE REASON THE BAD apples were allowed to r&ain in the IRS is because it’s so hard to fire federal employees...

...The truth is that although long distance service is better these days, local service is worse and much costlier...

...We used to say, “If you raise the rent, we’ll move...

...This strikes me as a remarkable revelation of how much we’ve come to accept charities that devote disproportionate sums to fund-raising and executive salaries and perks...

...Those letters were usually favorable, whether about outstanding or merely average volunteers...

...I hope you recall that during most of this decade this magazine was almost alone in pointing out the possibility of repeating the prosperity of the ’50s and ’60s when practically everyone else was saying you couldn’t have growth without inflation...

...How can the Bill Clinton who sent Chelsea to Sidwell Friends oppose similar opportunities for the poor...

...But no one pays attention except when there is a scandal like the one at the IRS...

...But the disaster was not total...

...Roosevelt but not the president...

...So FDR’s paralysis was hardly a secret...

...ALTHOUGH I DISAGREED ON almost every issue with the Republican Congress that came to power with Newt Gingrich in 1995, there was one thing I admired about them...

...For coach fares that are competitive with those of the other airlines, Midwest gives you two-by-two seating in comfortable leather chairs and lots of legroom, plus free champagne with breakfast and Merlot or Chardonnay with the lunches and dinners that are served hot on real china with linen napkins and glasses that are made of glass instead of plastic...

...The company also announced plans to lay off 10 percent of its employees...

...The committee also listens to speeches by the applicants and questions them on the issues of the day...

...What one hopes is that Midwest’s example will inspire emulation by other airlines...

...A simple check of past Post stories would have turned up one that ran within the last two years that showed most Catholic schools in the D.C...

...a reader asks in response to last month‘s “Tilting” item about the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight, a.k.a...

...It is possible that public knowledge of his condition could have affected the results at both the 1944 conventions and elections...

...The reason is that the coal companies lie when they report the results of tests of air quality in their mines...

...Have they changed...

...But if, for example, the writer used the word “respect” as in, “I respect him” or, “She is widely respected,” a word was being used that people apparently avoid using unless they really mean it...

...Mencken said when the Kinsey Report came out in 1948: It just confirmed what he had always suspected, that everybody lies about his sex life...

...Pending the improbable arrival of that competition, I have an idea for enterprising entrepreneurs: build a special stand for the Yellow Pages like the ones for unabridged dictionaries...

...This year’s white pages, which contain only residential phone numbers, are even thinner - three-fourths of an inch at most...

...The Journal also reminded me that the president’s mother, Virginia, sent him to a Catholic school when the family moved to Little Rock...

...Last year I said I feared a hernia from trying to lift the Yellow Pages...

...Aside from a handful of reporters who regularly cover the Pentagon and the State Department, the rest of the government, meaning all the agencies dealing with domestic matters, is largely terra incognita to the press...

...As the big shots do better and better, the lot of the poor continues to head south...

...Here’s the background of objectivity he brought to that assignment: He started out with Citizens United, which Amy Waldman described in these pages in a May 1996 article as “an anti-Clinton interest group’’ that has “done more to shape media coverage of Whitewater than anyone else in Washington or Arkansas.’’ From there he went to a job that a Citizens United fund-raising letter described this way: “Our top investigator, David Bossie, is on the inside directing the probe as Special Assistant to U.S...

...You could actually find most of them on the floor or in their offices on Friday afternoon, and there were many sessions that lasted late into the evening...

...There are just too many important human qualities that are not revealed by the test scores...

...The reason for this, I suspect, is that the press itself is almost totally uninformed about the executive branch, with the exception of the White House and the office of the Independent Prosecutor...

...HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MIDwest Express Airlines...

...For me, the most fascinating aspect of Whitewater has been trying to figure out what Mrs...

...The Washington Post RECENTLY ran an article about pending legislation to provide vouchers for D.C...

...Nationsbank has been fined $7 million by the SEC for letting brokers work side by side with bankers and capitalizing “on the belief that bankers are more trustworthy than brokers...

...The Merit Systems Protection Board has issued a six-page single-spaced decision saying it can’t decide and is sending the case back to one of its regional offices to determine “whether the Army made reasonable efforts under the law to accomodate the employee and his disability...

...The third only requires 50 percent...

...Ken Starr and his crew Seem increasingly demented...

...GROWINUGP IN WESTV IRGINIA was a continuing lesson in the evils of the coal companies...

...The Army then appealed that decision...

...It seems clear now that Starr’s case will center on Clinton’s lies about Monica Lewinsky...

...In fact, people who work 20 years or more in strip mining have a 61 percent chance of getting black lung...

...WHENW EBSTERH UBBELL’S wife, Suzy, asked him if he overbilled and he replied, ‘Yes, I did...

...WE’RE RETURNING TO THE economy of the ’50s and ’60s - a remarkable, remarkable combination of strong growth without inflation,” the Council of Economic Advisers’Jeffrey A. Frankel recently told The New York Times...

...THERAER E THREE NATIONAL rating services that evaluate charities...

...Recently in West Virginia they’ve been trying to shift the burden of making up a $2.2 billion deficit in the state’s workers’ compensation fund from high-risk employers like themselves to lowrisk companies and to the taxpayer...

...I wanted him to have a good school,” she said, instead of “the inferior county school,” adding, “I will never forget the nuns for as long as I live for giving him such a good start...

...I remember when I worked at the Peace Corps we conducted a research project in which we looked through the files of outstanding volunteers trying to find predictors of success...

...Not a bit...

...He lost his first appeal, but won a second...

...Usually there was both the arm and the something else...

...Senate Whitewater Committee...

...What intrigued me about the Hubbell tapes is their suggestion that what Hillary Clinton feared the billing records would reveal was that she, like her partners, was not above overbilling...

...An example - see the review on page 48 of this issue - is the impression that people now seem to have that there was a cover-up of the fact that FDR’S legs were paralyzed...

...By contrast, an applicant who was ranked 122nd of 128 had an SAT score of 1420...

...But that hope took a bad hit in April when, in the first test of Buckley in 22 years, it was upheld by the U.S...

...He’s been in charge of it for five and a half years...

...CEOs are earning 209 times what they pay their average factory worker...

...And you may have seen the recent “Nightline” episode on ABC that showed how mountaintop removal is decapitating the state’s once-beautiful terrain...

...The Yellow Pages, which seemed to weigh a ton or so last year are now even heavier...

...Now we have to face the fact that reconnecting the phones, which used to cost $100 or so, socked us with a bill for $1,500 the last time we did it...

...It spends 86 cents of every dollar helping people...

...It was almost never applied to the average volunteers, and almost always used about the outstanding ones...

...Lauch Faircloth on the U.S...

...So does every lawyer in the country,” faithful readers of this column know that he was exaggerating only very slightly...

...Everybody does it” may not protect Bill or Hillary Clinton when they meet their maker, but it does suggest the inappropriateness of criminal trials or impeachment...

...Later on, in the 1940s, the White House was guilty of secrecy...

...Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit...

...And the problem wasn’t our fault but Bell Atlantic’s...

...This certainly captures the tobacco industry’s guiding principle: We don’t care about hds, we care about money...

...Furthermore, in the ’30s polio was known as infantile paralysis...

...The smart criminal knows he can get away with it because too many cops are too dumb, too lazy, or on the take...

...He sued to get his job back, saying he had stayed away because his boss made him nervous and that he was disabled...

...Faircloth, you will recall, is the senator who persuaded Judge David Sentelle to drop Robert Fiske and appoint Ken Starr in his place, later rewarding Sentelle with a job for his wife on the senator’s staff...

...MY NEW PHONE BOOKS JUST arrived...

...Finally after he’d been AWOL for seven months, he was fired...

...Paralysis meant paralysis...

...And because it was a major health problem - this was before Salk and Sabin - most people knew one or more victims of the disease...

...He drove a Ford that we were told was specially equipped with hand controls...

...There was no mystery...

...I can’t answer that for you, but I can tell you that this employee who, like other federal workers was entitled to 13 days of sick leave a year, stayed away for one month without being fired, then two, three, four, five, six months...

...KEN STARR AND HIS CREW SEEM increasingly demented...

...If you were there it’s sometimes hard to recognize the version of events that the historians give us...

...What’s wrong with that if it reduces the number of cigarettes they smoke or if the cost keeps kids from taking up cigarettes in the first place...

...At first, I dismissed the idea as wildly improbable, which of course it is...

...Buckley v. Vale0 IS THE STUpid decision the Supreme Court made in 1976 that equated spending money with free speech...

...But it’s also profound in that it dramatizes what needs to be done if we are to confront the twin problems of corruption and incompetence in the police forces of America...

...The Salvation Army offers a contrast by which the others should be judged...

...schools that contained the statement, “The $3,200 would be suffi cient to cover tuition at just a handful of area private schools and some crowded inner-city parochial schools, Democratic opponents of the bill said...

...According to Rusty Marks of the Charleston Gazette, in the last 18 months Charleston’s 45 police cars have been involved in 82 accidents, of which even the police concede they were at fault in 36...

...The message is important...

...What makes sense to me instead is something like the congressional resolution of rebuke that Trent Lott proposed a few months ago...

...Have you ever wondered what happened to the competition that deregulation was supposed to bring to local telephone service...

...One judge, Avern Cohn, noted in a concurring opinion: “It may be possible to develop a factual record to establish that the interest in freeing officeholders from the pressures of fund-raising so they can perform their duties, or the interest in preserving faith in our democracy, is compelling, and that campaign expenditure limits are a narrowly tailored means of serving such an interest!’ Don’t let the legal lingo put you to sleep...

...This was not a small, exclusive party...

...If you doubt me, consider the case of a Grade-7 “art specialist” at the Oakland Army Base’s Arts and Crafts Center...

...What we discovered was that better than any test score or other predictor was the use of certain words in the letters of recommendation...