Meet the Potemkin Candidate



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Meet the Potemkin Candidate
plus -- Tripp's false hope and poor Kenny's job woes

by Tamara Baker

Monday, Nov. 22 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJNS) -- Well, having seen both Shrubya's foreign policy address and his "smoochfest" with Tim Russert, I have a couple of questions:

If G.W. Bush was so well-prepared by his staffers, how come they didn't let him take any questions after the Friday night speech was delivered?
Since when is Clarence Thomas a "constitutional law" expert? He's got about as much right to claim that as does Ann Coulter.
I understand that Dubya is supposed to be very good at remember names, particularly of those people he likes. He said in the Russert interview that he likes Justice Scalia. But how come he was calling the poor man "Joe" instead of "Antonin"? Oh well, at least he didn't call him "General."
And what's all this about "allowing" (i.e., forcing) persons to partially invest their Social Security money in the stock market? Bad idea, sez my husband -- who happens to work for the Social Security Administration.

But what the heck? As Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) pointed out (and as NBC replayed in its Sunday evening newscast), these ideas really aren't Dubya's, they're from his advisors -- who are all former Reagan people that his daddy cast off the minute he took office in 1989.

That's one of the great untold stories of the Bush Administration: the dozens of Reagan appointees that met the axe before Poppy Bush even got Ronnie's old chair warmed, for any pretext or none.

Now why didn't Larry Klayman sue Dubya's daddy on their behalf?

Dubya's looking more and more like a Potemkin candidate: all false front.

Meanwhile, back in Maryland, the half-vast right wing conspiracy is breathing a touch easier tonight.

But their relief may be short-lived.

Linda Tripp's lawyers convinced Howard Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure to look into the question of whether Tripp's immunity dates from either January of 1998 (when the OIC told her it did) or February of 1998 (when it actually was allowed to take effect). The story was reported in the November 21st edition of The Baltimore Sun.

Tripp's people are trying to show that all the evidence the Maryland prosecutors have was evidence created after the immunity went into effect, therefore rendering it ineligible to be used against Tripp (and throwing the case into limbo).

But there's one teensy-weensy little problem with that scenario, as a sample from the Sun article shows:

(Tripp's lawyers) also said state prosecutors could not determine the date of the tape recording without Tripp's help. Tripp listened to the tape and gave Starr's attorneys information that allowed them to put a date on it.
(Prosecutor) Henneman disputed that. She said a Newsweek reporter [that would be one Michael "I'm in this up to my weaselly little neck" Isikoff] listened to the tape and stated in his magazine article in February -- before the court-ordered immunity was granted -- that the tape was made before Christmas 1997.

But wait... there's more!

[Henneman] also said a former attorney for Paula Jones listened to the tape.

Oooooops! Guess who gets to be hauled into court as material witnesses!

The HVRWC is hoping against hope that the judge isn't paying attention to this, because if they can't bamboozle Judge Leasure, the case goes to court -- and the chances of Ms. Tripp selling out her fellow "elves" in order to avoid jail time shoot up into the stratosphere.

And one of the persons who might be summoned before the Maryland Grand Jury could very well be Kenneth W. Starr himself.

It's not as if he doesn't have the free time. His old law firm, Kirkland and Ellis -- at which he was accustomed to getting $2 million per annum, the top of their pay scale, for his corporate lawyering on behalf of tobacco companies -- is not exactly eager to see him returning to their fold.

If he decides to return to Kirkland & Ellis, Starr would end up taking a humiliating 60 percent pay cut -- down to around $800,000, which is starting salary for a partner -- a not-so-subtle indication that his former partners doubt his ability to recruit new clients, The New Yorker magazine reported in its Nov. 29 issue.

In addition, the magazine quotes a person involved in the discussions as saying that the law firm wants to impose further restrictions on Starr:

He's not allowed to come back for six more months. And when he does become a partner again he's not allowed to give any more speeches.
The idea is, he's welcome to come back here to practice law but not to go on being a political figure.

Poor Kenny! He must decide between being a lawyer and maintaining a professional demeanor, or hitting the right-wing rubber-chicken circuit and try to cadge a few million out of the pockets of the Freeper brigade.

I feel so sad for him.

Not.