Impeachment Coup Alumni Society Headlines

Doc's DIS-patch
Impeachment Coup Alumni Society Headlines
Like GOP candidates drawn to elephant poop, the "Get Clinton" gang can't resist the limelight

by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo

Wednesday, October 6th, 1999-- New York (APJ)-- What it is getting into the Impeachment Coup Alumni Society these days?

Last week, as reported in American Politics Journal (among many other publications), Linda Tripp decided to sue the White House and the Pentagon for allegedly violating her privacy.

Get that--her privacy! How my heart bleeds for her! Poor Linda claims that evil operatives in the Executive Offices and the Defense Department used "Confidential records" in a smear campaign against her "good" name.

Of course, Ms. Tripp seems to have forgotten that the "smear"-- specifically, the fact that she had been arrested as a teenager--came from one of her own relatives who related the story of Linda's arrest to the New Yorker, not some sinister Democrat apparatchik!

Ms. Tripp seeks an unspecified amount of money for what she is calling "harm to reputation and emotional distress and humiliation. "

Harm to reputation? Cue the laugh track! She's one to talk-- especially after having taped 20 hours of conversations with her "friend" Monica Lewinsky in a scheme that ended up humiliating the President and harming his reputation!

However, The Doc can certainly empathize with the emotional distress and humiliation she must have suffered--that is, when she realized that she's NOT "just like" us, as she so famously asserted.

Oh, the pain... pass the Kleenex!

Tripp pops up every few months in the media, hyper-conspicuously "made over" (no doubt by the same idiots who do makeup and wardrobe for the Scaife-dependent... excuse me, Independent Women's Forum)--prior to the current lawsuits, she surfaced for a series of self-serving, self-spinning appearances a few months back, most notably on CNN's Larry King Show, where cable's "King of softball questions" essentially gave Ms. Tripp a clear path to bend her story her--and Ken Starr's-- way.

You'd think she would have learned her lesson when the Senate laughed the phony, tarted-up impeachment charges and the thirteen hypocritical House "Manglers" out of their chamber earlier this year.

So The Doc will spell it out for Linda: trial by press release, media appearance and sound bite is bound to backfire!

Linda sort of reminds The Doc of one Mark Harris. You may have heard of this marginal "celebrity" whose most notable feat was somehow managing to marry the late Martha Raye despite--well, not to be to indelicate, but let's just say his gigolo-like behavior and a demeanor that falls a couple degrees short of "butch." Harris periodically shows up on The Howard Stern Show to plug his latest attempt at becoming a legitimate celebrity. And inevitably, this listener (along with most major metropolitan commuters) is left with the impression that once again, Harris's latest antic is as doomed to failure as, say, John Anderson's presidential run in 1980.

And no, I do not digress--because this is the very same impression I get from the of the Rutherford Institute.

If you were an impeachment junkie--and what true American wasn't--you remember The Rutherford Institute. Our own Mac MacArthur referred to it as a "Virginia-based sting operation" in a profile published in APJ just over a year and a half ago. The Rutherford Institute claims to be an advocacy organization and legal think-tank supporting civil rights. Quoting our own Mac:

The "Institute" garners its name from Samuel Rutherford, a batty 17th-century Scottish minister, who was best known for his hatred of the King of England. Sam Rutherford said that as kings were not divine, kings' laws were not above God's laws, and asked his minions to disobey any royal decrees that failed to follow "God's laws."... Ne'er-do-well attorney John W. Whitehead, "writer/filmmaker" Franky Schaeffer, and a coven of "concerned Christians" formed Rutherford to act as "the legal arm of Christian civil liberties in this country."... The "Institute" contends that "all of civil affairs and government, including law, should be based upon principles found in the Bible." That statement is a moronic definition of Christian Reconstruction, a hilarious movement within evangelical Christianity.

In other words, the "Institute" is a stalking horse for Theocratic wannabes disguised as "civil rights" champions.

And their latest cause--which landed them back in the headlines on Monday--turns out to be defense of a bunch of "memorial tiles" at Columbine High School, site of the most notorious school shooting incident in recent history. The Rutherford Institute filed a federal lawsuit against the Littleton school district on behalf of "several people" who are seeking a court order to force Columbine High to display the tiles.

Before the school district had even had an opportunity to see the latest legal gobbledygook to emerge from the evangelical Twilight Zone, Rutherford attorney Jim Rouse was making his grand pronouncement to the press that "this is a violation of our clients' First Amendment free speech rights."

Of course, you don't have to be a legal eagle to know that there just might be a problem with the overt display of a crucifix on one of the tiles in question--a display of a religious symbol that would become a permanent fixture in a public school, one which members of other religions would likely take umbrage with.

You'd think that The Rutherford Posse had not heard of "separation of church and state." But of course they have. And a closer look at their philosophy and doctrine--especially the part about "Christian Reconstruction" which calls for theocracy in the extreme--confirms that they are using "civil rights" and the civil courts in an attempt to unconstitutionally rip down the wall between sectarian religion and state.

"Civil rights" my butt. It's a scam. A fraud. And an affront to one of the few smart things our founding American slaveholders did--try to prevent religious doctrine from infiltrating government.

'Nuff said--except that you should check out Mac MacArthur's side-splitting RutherFraud Institute parody web page!

Click here for more Gonzo in APJ!