Democrats FIRST responsibility is to uphold the US Constitution and restore the rule of law and open government...

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer at a January 2001 press briefing, fanning the flames of the bogus "White House TRASHING" 'SCANDAL'.





Dear Democrats: Based on some degree of equal amounts of DNC/DCCC/DSCC party money, and the fighting efforts of NEW, outsider (from Congressional Dems) candidates, the Democratic Party has retaken the US House and Senate from Republican rule. "Rule" as in 'rule' - NOT a bipartisan MAJORITY, but from the fiercely partisan, divisive, and EXCLUSIONARY _RULE_ of the Bush-Republican party.

The Rove-DeLay-Frist dominated Republican Congress had NO problem with LOCKING DEMOCRATS OUT of committee hearings.

The Bush-Cheney White House had NO PROBLEM concocting the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" out of THIN AIR against the Democratic staffers of the outgoing Clinton-Gore administration.

It was a terrifically effective political tactic: it effectively SMEARED not just the Democratic staffers - throughout the entire nation, American citizens were aghast and disgusted at the low, sore-loser, vandalistic nature alleged of the Clinton-Gore staffers as reported by the whore media — but national POPULAR VOTE WINNER and Vice President Al Gore was SMEARED AS WELL!

Indeed, THE_ENTIRE_DEMOCRATIC PARTY was SMEARED by association from the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Hughes-Fleischer orchestrated SMEAR campaign, a story that was so willingly picked up by a whore DC press corps primed and voracious for new tidbits of CLINTON SCANDALS fed to them by the GOP leadership.

That was then... early January 2001. The effectiveness of the "White House Trashing" SMEAR campaign gave George W. Bush and his White House, and the Republican Party, the POLITICAL CAPITAL they needed to ram FIERCELY PARTISAN nominees past the somnolent and quiescent Democratic Senate 'leadership.' Nominees like Attorney General John Ashcroft, so partisan in his view of "Moral Values" that he ordered statues at the Justice Department to be covered with draperies to hide the sensuous features that had been on display there for DECADES!

The effectiveness of the "White House Trashing" SMEAR campaign also ALLOWED President Bush to ram his controversial budget-busting TAX-CUTS for billionaires through Congress, an economic policy so fraught with problems that the president's first Secretary of Treasury, Paul O'Neill, was also the administration's first cabinet official to resign... under a moniker of "loose canon" as portrayed by the White House, even though it was the monster tax cuts that were the "loose canon" on the national economy.


(Note: Paul O'Neill had a tremendously effective and illustrious career in private business, he OWED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to George W. Bush or even George H. W. Bush (Sr.) for that career, and neither O'Neill or his wife wanted the job in the incoming Bush administration. He allowed himself to be talked into the post by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, on the assumption that the Republican's "business friendly policies" would be good for America, and the Bush team could use some experienced, creative corporate leadership in the cabinet. Despite that reluctance O'Neill's entire lifetime career will forever be framed and capped in terms of his brief tenure as Secretary of Treasury, and indeed the title of O'Neill's autobiographical tenure as Secretary is "The PRICE OF LOYALTY" - AS IF self-made success story Paul O'Neill owed President Bush or the Bush administration ANYTHING!)

This has already been a long post, devoted to merely REMINDING about the false accusations of the "White House TRASHING 'scandal'" and other Republican tactics and means at denigrating, disempowering, and delegitimizing the Democratic Party, the Democratic agenda, and even (illegal) DISENFRANCHISEMENT of Democratic voters.

Which brings us to the point of this post: THE FIRST PRIORITY of the new Democratic Congressional majority is TO UPHOLD the LAWS of the United States, and to UPHOLD the United States Constitution.

IF, down the road, that means the IMPEACHMENT of the President and Vice President for gross and/or criminal abuses of powers, there is NO NEED to make that the focus of Democratic efforts today. (Neither does that mean that impeachment should be categorically disavowed.)

The answer to press inquiries - from BOTH the "Left" and the "right" is that the Democratic Majority of the 110th Congress is simply dedicated and determined to UPHOLD US LAWS, and to hold EVERYONE in government ACCOUNTABLE TO THOSE LAWS.

We here at C-dems.blogspot.com have NO doubt that, if President Clinton's response to the Ken Starr/Paula Jones PERJURY TRAP warranted THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bill Clinton, then the wrongs and abuses of the Bush 43 White House- from intentional, premeditated lies to war; gross, criminal negligence before the 9-11 terror attacks; the failure to capture and prosecute the anthrax terrorist; the failure to protect America's ports, chemical plants, and nuclear facilities from future attacks (witness FEMA and Homeland Securities appalling failures re Katrina); the failure to provide a master environmental recovery plan for New Orleans (spurred in part, we feel, by the desire of the Bush administration to permanently DISENFRANCHISE New Orleans's minority voters); the close connections of the Bush White House to ENRON fraud and Halliburton profiteering; the instigation of Torture and the promotion of the Torture generals; and of course the administration's own efforts to "PRIVATIZE" the nation's voting process with computerized machines that would not pass ANY state's slot-machine code inspections - on these and a dozen other issues, the administration has, in our estimation, FAR exceeded the threshold of the Clinton Impeachment.

What is important is that the Democratic 'leadership' NOT fall into the abyss of RUNNING AWAY FROM THOSE ISSUES (and scandals) that have so typified the party since the Republicans orchestrated the lame-duck congress impeachment.

Again, the focus of the Democratic Party should be on the RESTORATION of the RULE OF LAW, and defense of, and UPHOLDING of, the United States Constitution.

=======================================

The White House vandal scandal that wasn't
How the incoming Bush team nudge-nudged a credulous press corps into swallowing a trashy Clinton story.
By Kerry Lauerman and Alicia Montgomery
Salon.com, May 23, 2001

| WASHINGTON -- The "scandal" broke benignly enough, with an item in Lloyd Grove's dishy Reliable Source column in the Jan. 23 Washington Post, three days after the inauguration of George W. Bush.

"Incoming staffers of the Bush White House," Grove wrote, were "apparently victims of a practical joke." Bush aides in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB), adjacent to the White House, discovered that "many computer keyboards in their work spaces are missing the W key -- as in President Bush's middle initial."

Some W keys were discovered "taped on top of the doorways," while others were broken.

The report was more CUTE than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work."

But within two days, Grove's playful item had MORPHED INTO ONE MORE FULL-BLOWN Clinton SCANDAL. Suddenly NEWSPAPERS and TV _'NEWS'_ shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration "vandalism," stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, "a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing."

"Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices," a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."

While cautious GSA staffers won't issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency's director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar's conclusion, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the ardent Clinton foe who requested the GAO review, has tried to interpret the agency's findings to mean no "record of damage" had been compiled, not that no damage had occurred. But the lack of records "cataloging" any damages -- which Bush press secretary ARI FLEISCHER promised in January the White House would compile -- would seem to suggest one thing: Widespread acts of vandalism never occurred.

So how did the vandal scandal that wasn't get blown into a MEDIA FIRESTORM?

"Certainly PEOPLE INSIDE the [Bush] administration FED THIS STORY," says an angry John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff. "At least they got what they wanted out of it."

A close look at the way the scandal mushroomed bolsters Podesta's view: The BUSH ADMINISTRATION HELPED THE 'VANDAL SCANDAL' ALONG, publicly appearing to try to douse the flames, while PRIVATELY FANNING THEM with detailed, off-the-record allegations of damage. On Tuesday, after the GAO's review was made public, Fleischer was left trying to spin himself out of a very deep hole, insisting he had tried to "knock down" the vandal story when it first emerged.

But [an official WH] TRANSCRIPT of Fleischer's Jan. 25 briefing on the issue contradicts him. It shows the Bush spokesman coyly encouraging reporters' suspicions about the vandal scandal, while refusing to confirm or deny the reports of damage. According to one leading White House reporter, the story was also nudged along by two unnamed Bush aides.

Fleischer and the off-the-record Bush staffers, meanwhile, got a lot of HELP from a PRESS CORPS EAGER for early scoops from a new administration. For some reporters and pundits, the White House vandalism story was just too good to pass up.
(p.1 of 3, http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/23/vandals/index.html )