He's a Danger to Himself and Others

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He's A Danger To Himself And Others
Dan Burton, Burned by One Backfiring FauxGate, Sets Up Another

by Tamara Baker

Monday, Sept. 20, 1999--ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA--Clear the decks, everyone!

Yet another phony "Clinton scandal" is coming our way as Republicans try to divert attention from the very real Snort-, Vietnam-, Funeral- and DriversLicenseGate issues surrounding G. Dumbya Bush.

Last month's faux-scandal was Waco Redux; this month's, the FALN follies.

And Rep. Dan "Melonhead" Burton is at the epicenter of both.

Like "ChinaGate", Waco Redux started out promisingly, but then backfired. The reasons for this are as follows:

the "new" revelatory information hurt the Reagan-Bush appointees responsible, Bill Sessions and Larry Potts--and not Janet Reno, who had not even been nominated for the AG job (much less sworn in) when the Waco siege started;

Henry Waxman revealed that the very information Republican Witchfinder General Dan Burton was claiming had been concealed from him by the Justice Department was, in fact, given to Burton in 1995;

and, as AP reporter Michelle Mittelstadt revealed in a report published on September 17, well-known George Dubya Bush supporter James B. Francis Jr. took time out from raising money for BushBaby's presidential campaign and overseeing the Texas Department of Public Safety so he could give the order to the Texas Rangers to help exhume Waco yet again... at the very time that questions surrounding Dumbya's bizarre non-answers to the did-you-use-cocaine question (a question, remember, that every other Presidential candidate since 1988 was able to answer forthrightly in the negative) were getting more pointed.

With Waco Redux now a spent squib, Dangerous Dan and his GOP masters cast about for something else--anything else--to make into yet another phony scandal to use against Hill and Bill.

This time, it's the FALN--and just as with ChinaGate, froth-at-the-mouth Burton is stupidly waving the "National Security" and "treason" banners around.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether or not the FALN members deserved to be given clemency--even the condition-filled, cautious clemency President Clinton gave the FALN members. Bill Clinton, Cardinal John O'Connor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter are on one side of the issue; Hillary Clinton and Robert Torricelli are on the other.

But that does not give Dan Burton the right to strut around like a modern-day Mini-Me of Joe McCarthy, holding his tin-horn HUAC-style hearings on whether or not being merciful is an act of treason.

What, exactly, does Dangerous Dan propose to do about it? Is he going to have Jimmy Carter put in irons for treason? Or how about jailing Cardinal O'Connor, a man not noted for having any fire-breathing lefty beliefs of the kind that the Honorable Scumbag from Indiana believes led to the clemency?

Or will these hearings evaporate like the watermelons Burton vaporized with a gun in his ridiculous attempts to be Sam Spade a couple years back, once the press has been well and truly distracted from Dumbya's disasters?

It's almost like watching that Roger Corman movie about the giant leeches, as satirized by Mystery Science Theater 3000. Burton's in the role of the idiotic hick about whom Joel Hodgson and the 'Bots sang "We're a Danger to Ourselves and Others". It'd be hilarious, except for the fact that Danny Burton is so intent on trashing our liberties and the Constitution just to score political points.

Check back here in another week to find out more on this particular FauxGate, as it develops… or rather, falls apart like toilet paper in a rainstorm.