The Week

At the rate he's going, President Clinton will have to get impeached to distract attention from his bombing.

Judge Susan Webber Wright held Clinton in civil contempt for his lies in the Paula Jones case, lies that she found "were designed to obstruct the judicial process." The ruling, made in response to a charge filed by the Landmark Legal Foundation, is incontestable on the merits. But this justice was too long delayed. Judge Wright, in attempting to stay out of the political process of impeachment, nonetheless affected it by depriving Congress of important information. Not that it would have changed the outcome. Too bad no one can (legally speaking) hold the Senate in contempt.

So if Clinton gets disbarred, does that mean he doesn't have the ethics to be a lawyer?

President Bush, in defense of his verbal ineptitude, used to say, "I don't articulate much, but . . ." Only he wouldn't say "I," of course; and he'd pronounce "articulate" as an adjective, not as a verb. But it was endearing, sort of. Enter George W. The other day, according to reports, he referred to the Kosovars as "Kosovoians" and to the forces opposing Slobodan Milosevic as "NATO and its allies and the United States." Every public figure, as every person, sometimes trips over his tongue and fumbles his ideas. But Republicans have run enough candidates who can't talk. Wouldn't be prudent to run another.

Elizabeth Dole declared that while she would like to ban abortion, a Human Life Amendment is not possible and the debate over it should thus be abandoned as "irrelevant and divisive." Because of the "inordinate focus on an amendment," she says, "urgent issues such as domestic violence, child care, sexual harassment, women's health, and the financial security of women are nearly ignored." The GOP platform should be changed to "add the fact that good and honorable people disagree on the subject of abortion" and that "we should agree to respectfully disagree." We should "stop partial-birth abortions, enact parental notification requirements," and promote adoption. Let the respectful disagreement begin. First, disagreement among good and honorable people is hardly so unusual as to require a declaration specifically on abortion. Second, NOW and the like have already made sure that women's health, etc., get plenty of (often misleading) attention, while the unborn are still waiting for their Violence Against Women Act. Third, it is temporizing of the sort Mrs. Dole is engaged in that invites further scrutiny from the press: Would a President Dole work to overturn Roe v. Wade, for example? Finally, Mrs. Dole's minimalist agenda abandons legal protection for all members of the human race as a working goal rather than an airy wish. In her, the GOP now has its first objectively pro-choice candidate.

Jesse Jackson declared at a rally that the Diallo shooting in New York demonstrates it is "open season on blacks." Which is exactly the phrase he used two decades ago, attributing the Atlanta serial killings of black children to the early Reagan administration's skepticism about affirmative action. Al Sharpton, for his part, is "advising" the grieving parents of Diallo, which in this case means parading them around on a 16-city tour. Neither Jackson nor Sharpton is quite able to conceal his joy at the Diallo killing and the political opportunities it affords. When it comes to preying on racially charged tragedies, it's always open season.

The Defense Department has announced that it will be sending Certificates of Recognition to all veterans and selected civilians-in foreign service, DoD, intelligence-who served in the Cold War. Unlike the First or the Second, the Cold War ended without a Verdun, a D-Day, or a Stalingrad. But many Americans labored for victory, and many of them died. In light of this sacrifice, the certificate is a flimsy token: not even a medal, one step up from a parking-lot sticker. More appropriate would be a monument-perhaps in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill (with Harry Truman listening) delivered his Iron Curtain speech; perhaps in a permanently Americanized sliver of Berlin, where John F. Kennedy said, "Ich bin ein Berliner," and Ronald Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" As this evil century ends, our victory in its last great conflict deserves commemoration, and its heroes should be recognized before what Lincoln called "the silent artillery of time" begins to sweep them away.

In a familiar rite of spring, leftists brought protesters from points north to throw garbage in the yard of a Washington politician who threatens their cash cow-the Community Reinvestment Act. This year the home of Phil Gramm, the new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was targeted by 13 busloads of revelers. Under the act, liberal community groups can exercise an effective veto over many bank mergers or expansions by complaining about allegedly "racist and classist" lending practices. Banks can get off the hook by making huge payoffs to local nonprofits, adopting race quotas on hiring, and establishing set- asides for minority businesses. According to the Wall Street Journal, the merger of NationsBank and BankAmerica included payoffs worth $350 billion over ten years. Sen. Gramm, for his part, wants to put a stop to this type of thing. And he is not so easily intimidated. After all, his favorite local community group defended the Alamo.