Hey, What's A Little Corruption Among the Powerful?
"Here's the latest Clinton
plot twist: Can Dan Rostenkowski prod the big health care plan
through his Ways and Means Committee before he's indicted on
low-rent financial-irregularities charges?"
- Time Senior Editor Bruce Handy, May 30.
"Are the charges here so
serious as to bring down one of the most powerful men in
Washington and in Congress?...What's involved is perhaps what,
fifty-some thousand dollars in stamps and some phantom jobs for
friends?...The contrast, here, though, is a guy who passes bills
or is shepherding bills that are worth billions of dollars
risking his career for small amounts, or you think, amounts
significant enough that there's real corruption here?"
- Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson
to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Mark Brown, May 26.
"You're a fierce partisan
on the other side of the aisle from Dan Rostenkowski, but you're
also an admirer of good legislators. How do you feel about this
personally? Is this an American tragedy?"
- Gibson to Newt Gingrich, same show.
"It's sad. It's not
something people are gloating about because the fact is, Bryant,
Congressman Rostenkowski came here as a political hack from
Chicago and turned into a very formidable national
legislator."
- NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on Today,
May 25.
"It's a big loss for the
President. It's a big loss for the Congress, and I think it's a
big loss for the country."
- NBC reporter Lisa Myers, same
show.
"They've got a very steep
hill to climb to make a case for personal enrichment, I believe,
and when you say penny ante, the way I read that phrase is, this
may be the operation of a political machine, but not the
enrichment of a person. And if that's the case, it looks a lot
more like Kay Bailey Hutchison to me than a true criminal
case."
- Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant on Inside
Washington, May 21.
GOP Scare Tactics
Sen. Don Nickles: "Chairman
[Rep. John] Dingell says the President's plan has choice. It
doesn't. The government is going to design a very comprehensive,
expensive plan that everybody has to have and then mandate that
on employers. My point is that tells that small employer in
Rhode Island or in Oklahoma or Kentucky, wherever, that they
have to buy this government-knows- best plan, that the plan that
they have -"
Steven Roberts, U.S. News
& World Report: "Isn't that just some of the scare
words, though, that Mrs. Clinton was talking about. Big
government. Aren't you just trying to scare people?"
- Exchange on a CNBC/U.S. News & World
Report special on health care, May 24.
Loving the Breyer Nomination
"This is a President who
really believes and takes the Supreme Court very seriously. That
hasn't always been the case in recent years. You've had some
obscure and ideological choices."
- Newsweek Senior Editor and CBS News
Consultant Joe Klein, May 15 CBS Evening News.
"I do think, however, that
Jack [Kemp] praises Judge Breyer erroneously from your point of
view because I want to say from what I know about Judge Breyer
- and I talked to a lot of his friends of the last two days -
he's a guy who on a lot of issues is going to be a very
compassionate progressive. He cares about a lot about social
issues, about race relations, about affirmative action. And this
is a guy who is so many cuts above Clarence Thomas. They will
vote together very rarely, I assure you."
- Wall Street Journal Executive Washington
Editor Al Hunt, on CNN's Capital Gang, May 14.
"Totally Free" Health Care
"The Clinton plan proposes
totally free coverage, no co-payment for preventative
measures....The single-payer plan, and the House Education and
Labor Committee would add free family-planning services and
contraceptives for poor women."
- ABC reporter Ann Compton, May 26 Good Morning
America.
Uncanny Kempton
"His prescience is often
uncanny. Writing of Ronald Reagan as Governor of California in
1968, he could have been summing up Reagan's presidency 20 years
later: `For touching a people who want to forget ugly problems,
no politician equals the one who has already forgetten them
himself.'"
- Time contributor Charles Michener reviewing
book by Newsday columnist Murray Kempton, May 16
Democrats Had Nothing to Do With Segregation
"[Jack] Kemp gets no
reaction at all from Republican audiences. He's not a guy
hitting a core within the Republican Party, and in fact, the
Republican Party, a lot of its gains have been based on racial
polarization. That's its game in the South, for instance, based
on taking advantage of white fear of blacks."
- Newsday reporter Susan Page on CNN's Late
Edition, May 1.
Thriving East Germans
+"Erich Honecker, whose
leadership brought east Germany prosperity, but who left the
nation polluted and in debt, was 81."
- front page caption, May 30 New York Times.
"It took the collapse of
communism in eastern Europe and the absorption in 1990 of his
country by the larger, immensely richer West Germany to lay bare
the extent to which the Honecker government had mismanaged the
economy and the environment. To the dismay of western Germans
and the federal government in Bonn, eastern Germany's
infrastructure, from telephones to railroads, needed to be
rebuilt, and vast sources of contamination had to be cleaned up
- all at enormous expense."
- Times obituary by Wolfgang Saxon, same day,
page 40.
Golfers Dropping Dead Across America!
"With the Memorial Day
weekend, you've been hearing plenty of stories about summertime
health hazards to watch out for in the weeks ahead. Some of
those hazards, though, may be less obvious than others. For
example, a day at the golf course. There's fun, sun, exercise,
and nature - and just maybe, a toxic cocktail right under your
nose. If you took all the golf courses in all the land and put
them together they would equal the size of Delaware and Rhode
Island. But the chemicals needed to tend those 3000 square miles
of grass are raising fears the links may be lethal."
- CBS substitute anchor John Roberts on lawn chemicals,
May 30 Evening News.
King's Quitting: Quite a Loss for Radio
"How do you think Abraham
Lincoln would have fared with today's right-wing radio talk show
hosts?...Doesn't the National Rifle Association sometimes make
arguments that are laughable?...Don't you believe that Kermit
and Miss Piggy are real?...When do you think Supreme Court
Justice Thomas will speak from the bench, if ever?...Do you eat
those little chocolates in the hotel rooms at bedtime?"
- CNN talk show host Larry King in his USA Today
column, May 9.
Thanks for the Plug
"Knocking the media is
today's last refuge of scoundrels."
- Larry King in his USA Today column, May 31.
Publisher:
L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: James Forbes, Andrew Gabron,
Mark Honig, Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: Patrick Pitman, Clay Waters