HILLARY Clinton LEADS the COWARDLY DEMOCRATS on the "Flag Burning Amendment" FARCE....

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton were "part of the establishment" when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Of course they became even more "part of the establishment" when Bill Clinton became President following his successful 1992 campaign for that office. And it is true that a large part of the Clinton's problems stemmed from their naiveté when they swept into Washington DC in early 1993, thinking that at the very least the Democratic power structure would embrace them with open arms after 12 years of Republican rule in Washington. (Ever since Ronald Reagan won two terms by first defeating President Jimmy Carter in 1980.)

Actually, just the mention of the words "President Carter" demonstrates that it was political foolishness, not just "naiveté," to underestimate DC establishment and Dem. Party resistance to even a Democrat "outsider" president; Carter was seen as so aloof, imperial, and out of touch that he couldn't get much done in Washington with a Democratic House and Senate majorities to work with!

So the Clintons sweeping into Washington with a new administration and the powers of the presidency, unprepared and unawares of the pitfalls and minefields that loomed in official DC just waiting to trim them down a notch or two, was somewhere between "naive" and outright foolish.

The Clintons selected friend and fellow Arkansan lawyer Vince Foster to be their White House Counsel (president's lawyer), and the pressures and ferocity of the DC fishbowl (populated with piranhas, sharks, oscars and sacrificial goldfish) soon led Foster to shoot himself in a fit of depression or despair.

On retrospect, HOW STUPID CAN ONE BE? If you are defending your company in a case about corporate issues you don't hire a divorce lawyer. If you are defending yourself from a criminal indictment you don't hire a corporate tax lawyer. And if you are a new president in Washington DC, you want to hire THE MOST EXPERIENCED, smoothest, most battle-tested but connected insider that you can find. (For example, in the 2000 Florida voting presidential recount debacle, insider, former Secretary of State, and financially connected lawyer James Baker for the Bush team made MINCEMEAT out of soft-spoken former Secretary of State Warren Christopher working for the Gore team. Baker's smooth talents put the Bush-Republican Party back in control of BILLONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars of federal spending - with a little help from the craven Scalia "ain't nobody got the right to vote unless I says so!" Supreme Court.)

Clearly, in selecting Vince Foster as their presidential counsel the Clintons ERRED in their judgement, a shortcoming that would be devastating to the Clinton and Foster families. The suicide of Vince Foster would provide the second major fissure for the Clinton's right-wing opponents to POUND AWAY at the Clintons for an entire decade to come. (The first fissure was the one that led to Foster's suicide, his feeling of impotence re official Washington's hounding the Clintons on "issues" from womanizing and draft-dodging to "Travel-officegate," "file-gate," and other made-up scandals.)

What is important to understand is that the Right-Wing DID NOT HATE Bill Clinton because he was a womanizer or because he was 'a rube' from Arkansas - the Right-Wing hated the Clintons for embracing the CIVIL RIGHTS and VOTING RIGHTS of the 1960s and progressive era.

To begin with, as everyone knows, in "Bubba," redneck, rural, or "NASCAR" culture, complete fidelity to one's spouse may be admirable, but certainly far from universal. Or, to put it more bluntly, right-wing icon Strom Thurmond was widely KNOWN to grope women - on Capitol Hill, in front of witnesses! - yet it only ADDED to his appeal. And while Karl Rove and the Bush campaign smeared Sen. John McCain in a 2000 "push poll" in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary by asking voters, "Did you know John McCain fathered a black child?"; it was Strom Thurmond who REALLY DID father a black child, out of wedlock, with his family's maid, who at the time was under the age of consent! (i.e. statutory rape.) Yet none of these inconvenient facts did anything to dispell the affection the Right-Wing had for Senator Thurmond, who in 1948 led the "Dixiecrat" split from the Democratic Party of President Harry Truman, Thurmond and the Dixiecrats campaigning on ONE issue and one issue alone, the CONTINUED SEGREGATION of Black voters from voting rights and civil rights in the Deep South, in ABJECT DEFIANCE of the 15th Amendment, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

ABRIDGING the right to vote of citizens of race and color is EXACTLY what Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat Party were all about! And the "Dixiecrat" Party of 1948 is, today, the solidly-white REPUBLICAN Party. Former Chief Justice William Rhenquist (now deceased) got his start in politics INTIMIDATING and DISENFRANCHISING minority voters in Arizona as a "poll watcher," and US Supreme Court "Justice" Antonin Scalia, appointed by a Republican President, is on the record as stating that the US Constitution DOES NOT GUARANTEE ANYONE the right to vote for president, 15th and 20th Amendments be damned!

So, long before Bill Clinton arrived on the scene, "Dixiecrat" Right-Wing citizens and voters DESPISED the modern Democratic Party, and Democratic presidents, for siding with African-Americans on issues of race and equal rights. From Truman to Kennedy to Johnson to Carter, a huge backlash was building in the Deep South against Democratic Presidents. Truman left the White House with appallingly low approval numbers, brought about by the Korean war and resentment against his INTEGRATION of the US military following Thurmond's "Dixiecrat" defection from the Democratic Party. Kennedy was assassinated in the Deep South, and only Lyndon Johnson's war against Communism in Vietnam, and Johnson's immense experience, political talents, and energy re his long career there in the Deep South Texas politics, allowed him to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (of 1965 and 1964, respectively) passed, Johnson effectively using the powerful image of a president gunned down in office (Kennedy) to steamroll the monstrously powerful Southern filibuster to do so.

Johnson may have been hounded out of office by the Vietnam War, a war he did not want but realized he had to fight to prevent Democrats from being labelled "Soft on Communism!"; but he predicted that his support and leadership of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts would make it impossible for the Democratic Party to win in the south for decades. Jimmy Carter was able to break that spell, but only for a single term, because he was, #1. a highly trained Naval nuclear-submarine officer trained at the US Naval Academy; #2. a successful Georgia businessman and former governor; #3. and an Evangelical Baptist. The US Naval Academy is possibly one of the most right-wing institutions in America; military officers of course one of the most 'conservative' elements in American society to begin with (the heart and soul of the US Revolution and Civil War Confederacy, for example), and it is widely remarked that the "old school legacy/pedigree' of Navy families is even more upper crust than the legacy or pedigree of Army generals, (generals who became presidents excluded), if only because an admiral at sea is absolute lord and master over all he surveys or some other crusty naval white-glove traditions. (And for generations, the Royal Navy, upon which the US Navy had been modelled, had survived only by "impressing" seaman - a practice not even 1/2 step removed from outright slavery. The US Navy may not have impressed its sailors, but the tradition never lay far from its heritage.)

All this to point out that while White Southern resentment of Democratic Presidents was building from the time of President Roosevelt on through to President Carter, various disasters (Kennedy assassination, Korea and Vietnam Wars, Iran hostage crisis and the 'loss' of Iran) had conspired to rob White Southerners of the target they desired to vent their fury at the changes wrought in their otherwise closed society by the Civil RIghts era, by Moderates and moderate Republicans in general, and TURNCOAT Democrats in particular.

And then along came Bill Clinton. With an ENTIRE caravan of baggage looming over his record. Not only did Clinton side with those who advocated leaving Vietnam... not only was Clinton non-military, but had sought to avoid the draft, and actively opposed that war. Not only was Clinton a womanizer, but he was a successful YOUNG womanizer (a formula guaranteed to inspire envy or resentment through the ages); not only was Clinton an "n___ lover," but he was the successful young GOVERNOR of a Deep South state who EMBRACED n___-loving politics!

It was into this minefield that the Clintons stumbled in 1993, having miraculously won the election of 1992 despite Clinton's extensive baggage and President George W. Bush's phenomenal approval ratings after the successful conclusion of the Iraq war (Gulf War 1 against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait). As mentioned above, the DC "establishment" had practically run the aloof Jimmy Carter out of town despite his "establishment" credentials as an Evangelical, Naval Academy graduate, military officer in the nuclear service; Deep South Governor, and former DNC Chair.
(Read Carter's impressive bio here at http://www.cartercenter.org/aboutus/bio2.htm)

But mere naiveté of the Clintons for the wicked, shark-like ways of official DC was not their major shortcoming: it was their abject failure to appreciate THE DEPTHS of right-wing hatred for "n___-loving" Civil Rights era politics.

There was neither genius nor a perfect 'master plan' driving the "Get Clinton at all costs!" right-wing lynch mob. It was, as most predatory hunts are, an opportunistic pursuit, driven by gobs of right-wing money and a bottomless loathing of "n___-loving" politics. First President Bush (Sr.) unleashed the attack dogs on Clinton's "character", then all three Repub. presidential candidates - George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and George H.W. Bush - made "character" the centerpiece of their campaigns, despite each Repub. candidate's own far-from-perfect "character" records.

Next it was time for Washington insiders to chime in, especially the WASHINGTON POST, whose editors and writers were by then closely tied to (as "sources," friends, and business partners) Republicans who had controlled all branches of executive Washington for the previous 12 years. Then it was the turn of the right-wing muckraking press to join the tag-team, for example Scaife's "American Spectator" magazine which went "trolling" through Arkansas looking for "trailer trash" who would amplify the Gennifer Flowers story (of an affair with Bill Clinton). This led to Paula Jone's lawsuit against Bill Clinton, based on Jones' claim of "sex discrimination in the workplace," a lawsuit entirely financed by Republican "elves", lawyers working the Paula Jones case as a means of "getting" Bill Clinton. (This is where lawyer Ann Coulter, shudder, first 'graced' America's 'news' and media with her black-widowesque "compassion.")

The NEW YORK TIMES chimed in (looking for a belated "Watergate scandal" to call their own) with ATROCIOUS reporting that led to the "Whitewater" non-scandal getting more news coverage than the TRILLION DOLLAR Savings & Loan scandals of the Reagan and Bush administration, which was terrific, free PR for the Republican Party. The Times and Post's ATROCIOUS reporting allowed right-wing Republican Senators Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth (both of NC) and r-w Republican judge David Sentelle to demand the OUSTER of independent prosecutor Robert Fiske from the newly created "Whitewater" investigation. Fiske was a moderate Republican, but he had had the temerity to close the Vince Foster suicide investigation without any accusations against the Clinton White House, so Helms, Faircloth, and Sentelle arranged for right-wing ally Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rhenquist (the same Rhenquist who got his start in politics intimidating minority voters) to demand Fiske's recall, and it was hack judge Sentelle who got the honors to appoint Ken Starr as "independent" (NOT!) counsel.

Taking his lead from the New York Times, American Spectator, and other atrocious reporting, Starr came up with *zero* against the Clintons despite spending $50 million+ in taxpayer funds for his Whitewater financial investigation - despite entire teams of FBI investigators, prosecutors, field agents, and accountants trying to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING! to hang the Clintons on. But Starr did prosecute the Clinton's investment partner, Jim McDougal, for fraud re McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings and Loan, which lost some $22 million in various investment failures, including the Whitewater real estate development flop. Starr also won a felony conviction against another Clinton friend, Webster Hubbel, another law partner from the same Rose Law firm that Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton had worked at. Amazingly, looking back from an era (today) where Don Rumsfeld pleads "Ignorance!" of torture and missing BILLIONS from Iraq war contracts; from an era where Dick Cheney demands absolute SECRECY re his Energy Task force of 2001 and his role in awarding multi-billion dollar Halliburton contracts today (and maintains a pall of secrecy re his own investment stake in Halliburton); and in an era where President George W. Bush has been able to DOWPLAY his own LINKS with convicted Enron fraudsters Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and convicted Congressional lobbyist Jack Abramoff - - - - well, Webster Hubbell was convicted of felony fraud for... "OVERBILLING" his clients and law partners??!!!!!!!

In private law practice, "overbilling" one's own clients" is about the same level of offense as as tipping a maitre'd for a good table selection and service - if the clients (or partners) aren't happy, THEY will complain about it! THERE IS NO CRIME in "overbilling" one's own customers, unless a Republican lynch-mob is in town. By comparison, we can't even keep track of HOW MANY BILLIONS are "missing" from Iraq and Katrina reconstruction contracts - much less the $320 billion spent to date in combat and equipment contracts!

But in LYNCH-MOB AMERICA, Republicans are able to hound an "outsider" lawyer to suicide, create great scandals out of thin air, and hound the popular vote-winner from the 2000 election from Washington, tarred and feathered by the false "White House Trashing" 'scandal." (That would be the clueless Al Gore, even more naive and disliked by the local establishment than either of the Clintons ever were.)

(recap: "travel-office-gate, "file-gate," "Whitewater," "Lincoln bedroom," and "White House trashing!", "Democratic fraud in Florida voting!" when it was Republicans who broke dozens of election laws; and most recently, the Republican JIHAD against the press-media for daring to REPORT that the government is SPYING - on EVERY phone-call, financial transaction, and electronic-communication in America - these are a small portion of the "scandals" and ATTACKS that Republicans use to DEFINE the political atmosphere and DISTRACT from the issues that are truly important to the hoi poli, the millions of American voters out there in America-land.)

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THIS ABOVE LONG, LENTHY RECITATION of the Right-Wing JIHAD against liberal and progressive Democrats is the history that Hillary Clinton has either FORGOTTEN, or she is willing to SIGN ON TO, in her vote calling FOR the CRIMINALIZATION of FLAG BURNING!

The contrast could not be more stark: Hillary PRETENDS TO IGNORE the Republican JIHAD against the New York Times (one of the senator's own constituents in New York), WHILE SIGNING ON TO, and LEADING!, another Republican psuedo-morality JIHAD against... FLAG BURNING?????

Like Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Joe Lieberman in both elections, Hillary Clinton is demonstrating that she is ENTIRELY UNQUALIFIED to become president - AT BEST she is CLUELESS as to the roots and consequences of right-wing skulldullgery and lynch-mob tactics (though she has undoubtably been a victim), at worst she is aware of these tactics but PERFECTLY WILLING TO SIGN ON TO THEM it it will get her a few moments of media attention and polling points, as she helps the Right-Wing continue to sell American rights and freedoms DOWN THE RIVER on a tide of psuedo-morality "Moral Values" issues.



(Note: Most of the above history of the "Get Clinton!" white-collar lynch-mob can be found in Joe Conason and Gene Lyon's book, "The Hunting of the President." For a brief explanation of the nexis of how the Right-Wing installed Ken Starr as their personal inquisition for a Democrat president, google "David Sentelle, Robert Fiske, Ken Starr, Jesse Helms, Lauch Faircloth, Willam Rhenquist" or some combination of those persons. For an understanding of how Right-Wing morality can forgive Strom Thurmond, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other right-wing personalities of their moral shortcomings, while venting so much fury at Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other Democrats for similar or even lesser character flaws, see "Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics" by Michael Lind - the most imporant book in America for this decade.
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/03/20_lind.html)




Senate Rejects Flag Desecration Amendment
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; A01

The Senate rejected by a single vote yesterday an effort to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to ban desecration of the American flag, after a two-day debate freighted with political calculations and sharp disputes over the limits of free speech.

The 66 to 34 vote fell just short of the two-thirds majority required to approve a constitutional amendment and submit it to the states for ratification. It marked the latest setback for congressional attempts to supersede Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990. Justices narrowly ruled that burning and other desecrations of the flag are protected as free speech under the First Amendment.

As expected, three Republicans -- Robert F. Bennett (Utah), Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) and Mitch McConnell (Ky.) -- voted against the amendment. Fourteen Democrats voted for it. The House approved the measure 286 to 130 last year.

GOP congressional leaders have offered up several measures in recent weeks that are important to their conservative political base -- including an amendment banning same-sex marriage and further cuts in the estate tax -- culminating with yesterday's vote on flag burning.

Polls show that most Americans want flag desecration outlawed, and the amendment's proponents said they were trying to stop justices from thwarting the public's will. They said that burning a U.S. flag in public -- while rare these days -- is a reprehensible insult to the nation's founders and a dishonor to the Americans who died fighting tyranny.

The amendment's opponents agreed that flag burning is repugnant, but argued that U.S. troops died to preserve freedoms that include controversial political statements.

Flag burning "is obscene, painful and unpatriotic," Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who lost an arm in World War II, said in a floor speech yesterday. "But I believe Americans gave their lives in the many wars to make certain that all Americans have a right to express themselves -- even those who harbor hateful thoughts."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) summarized the proponents' views. The flag's special symbolic status, she said, makes its desecration different from holding a sign denouncing the president. Burning an American flag in anger, she said, is "conduct, not speech" because the flag is "the symbol of our democracy, our shared values, our commitment to justice, our remembrance to those who have sacrificed to defend these principles."

Behind the constitutional rhetoric were cold political considerations. Republicans are eager to energize conservative voters this fall, and the flag initiative -- even if doomed to fail -- is seen as a sure-fire way to inspire them, especially a week before Independence Day.

The vote is the closest that advocates have come to banning flag desecration in many years of trying. In 2000, the Senate fell four votes short, and supporters had hoped the GOP's 55 to 44 majority -- there is one independent, James M. Jeffords (Vt.) -- would put them over the top this year.

The GOP-controlled House has repeatedly approved the amendment by wide margins, and advocates say they could have handily obtained ratification by three-quarters of the states if the Senate had followed suit.

The debate divided senators along unusual lines. Opposing the amendment was McConnell, the Senate's second-ranking GOP leader, and Bennett, a quiet, mainstream Republican. Democratic supporters included Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), a presidential hopeful. Maryland's Democratic senators voted against the amendment and Virginia's Republican senators voted for it.

The amendment's chief sponsor, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), disputed assertions that the measure was politically motivated and was an unwise use of the Senate's time in the face of war in Iraq, high gasoline prices and a growing federal deficit.

"Fifty state legislatures have called on us to pass this amendment," Hatch told colleagues.

He and his allies had tried for days to pick up one more vote. But virtually all senators had stated their positions publicly, making efforts at negotiation or persuasion fruitless.

The Constitution was last amended -- for the 27th time -- in 1992, when the states belatedly ratified a 1789 bid by Congress to regulate lawmakers' pay increases.

Overturning a Texas law in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that burning an American flag in protest is a form of political speech protected under the First Amendment. Congress later passed a federal anti-flag-desecration law, and the high court invalidated it on the same grounds.

Ever since, lawmakers have debated whether flag burning is an unsavory cost of political freedom or something more akin to intolerable hate speech or monument defacement.

"All rights enshrined in the Constitution have certain limits," said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.). "There is no such thing as unlimited rights. Although we treasure and value our right of free speech . . . we protect our national monuments," including the flag.

But Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said Congress must "defend the right of all Americans to express their views about their government, however hateful or spiteful or disrespectful those views may be."

The proposed amendment said simply: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

Before the final tally, the Senate voted 64 to 36 to reject an alternative measure designed to provide political cover for those who opposed Hatch's legislation. The measure -- a proposed statute, rather than constitutional amendment -- was offered by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and was strongly endorsed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a possible presidential candidate who has sought a middle ground in the flag-burning debate.

The proposal would have outlawed flag desecration if the perpetrators were also damaging federal property, trying to incite violence or trying to intimidate someone. Opponents called Durbin's measure a political fig leaf that the Supreme Court would rule unconstitutional.

Hours before the votes were taken, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) thrust the issue into his reelection campaign. Noting that Democratic challenger James Webb had said he opposed the amendment, Allen's campaign issued a press release linking Webb to Sens. John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who voted against the amendment. The release said Webb is "totally beholden to the liberal Washington senators" who backed him in this month's primary.