December 17, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- The fix was in last week. The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, looking like sheepish schoolboys and schoolgirls, were all nicey-nice during last Friday impeachment "hearings" -- taking the time to rebuke the President for his unseemly behavior, but insisting quite rightly that censure is the deserved punishment.

On the other side of the aisle, the polarizing windbags of the GOP -- some of the farthest-right Cro-Mags in the House via the Hatfield and McCoy bloodlines -- scream for ensanguination! Impeachment now, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever!

They voted out four articles of impeachment against the President to the House floor.

And now it looks as if there will be enough votes in the House to impeach on all four counts -- due entirely to pressure from Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, House Majority Whip the de facto "Speaker." He saw his window of opportunity to "assume" leadership and strong-arm Republican moderates, who caved in one after the other yesterday under the pressure of being stripped of leadership positions and deprived plum seats on House Committees.

And it's being widely reported that DeLay is doing this with the full knowledge that the Senate will in all probability not even come close to convicting Clinton -- he's doing it to punish Clinton, diminish his status, demean and belittle him, strictly out of hate for the man. DeLay figures that voters will forget by the year 2000.

Right, Tom-Bob, just like they forgot George Bush's "Read my lips; no new taxes" lie in 1992.

Americans are not stupid, Tom. They can tell an attempted coup by the House GOP when they smell one.

But with "geniuses" like DeLay running the hard-right GOP show in Congress for the time being -- that is, until well-known harmonica player Bob Livingston takes over next year -- The Doc says go ahead!

Please, let the entire House vote all four articles!

Send it to the Senate for trial.

The Doc can't wait.

If the "Lewinsky gambit" drove Gingrich into retirement, then the "impeachment gambit" will both purge the GOP of the right-wing thugs who want to strip our nation of democracy and freedom and return both houses of Congress to the Dems in 2000.

The first effect of an impeachment vote will be a downturn in financial markets -- just in time for Christmas. And it won't just be CEOs screaming bloody murder -- it will be middle-class investors, many conservative, watching their retirement nest eggs evaporate -- all because the Christian Right, the New Moralists and the Neanderthal Segregationist Southern GOP Cabal want to "get" Clinton.

They'll get Clinton, all right -- along with millions of investors.

The second effect -- supergridlock. You'd think that congressional Republicans would have learned from the government shutdown debacle of a few years back. Cue John Belushi: "Buhht NOOOOOOOOO!" House GOPers will succeed in shutting down all three branches of government. the President will be spending inordinate time on his defense. The senate would have no other business. And the Chief Justice would be booked indefinitely.

How is this all being justified? "Oh, it's all because he perjured himself in a civil deposition."

The result of effects one and two? Can you say the words "Democrat Supermajority" in both houses of Congress?

A few weeks ago White House staffers were laughing about "the Lewinsky gambit." Two years from now, they'll be laughing about "the sucker them into calling it perjury" gambit.

But it is the third effect which will have the most profound effect on the GOP. They want to try the President for committing "perjury" in the Jones lawsuit.

Which means that the defense will be able to examine everything that led up to the set-up "perjury" -- and there are eight more reasons The Doc can't wait to watch the gavel-to-gavel exposure of the most avaricious, evil and fascistic elements of the GOP for what they are.

Henry "Mister" Hyde wouldn't let the Dems call any witnesses to look into the bizarre circumstances of how Clinton found himself in a situation where he had to use carefully selected language to conceal involvement with Monica Lewinsky without lying. The closest they got was a question from Rep. Zoe Lofgren to Ken Starr about when exactly he knew what he knew about Linda Tripp. Starr turned white as a sheet and answered evasively.

Lofgren had hit a nerve -- and given only a hint at what investigators for the minority for the panel had uncovered on their own.

if only they could have called the witnesses they wanted to.

Now, The Doc does not have time to name all the witnesses he'd like to see the president's counsel call in an ipeachment trial, but here's a sampling of names that whet the appetite (and I don't mean for cannibal Republicans, either):

1: Richard Larry. Never heard of Richard Larry? Unless you, like The Doc, are a Starr-gate junkie, you probably don't know the name.

Dick Larry is the lieutenant to wacko billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife -- the paranoid "Daddy Warbucks" to four of his own foundations that pay the big bucks for conservative think-tanks and the Matt Drudge Defense Fund. Scaife hates the sixties and the Clintons, whom he regards as the incarnation of the worst excesses of that decade. He wants to bring back the 1950s -- the decade of McCarthy, segregation, Red Scares, and the arms race.

Now a lot of people would love to see Scaife put under oath to testify to his role. But Larry's the man to grill -- he knows where all the cash goes and what they really are going to do with it. Scaife may hold the pursestrings, but Larry does the dirty work -- and would no doubt have interesting tales to tell about the funding of American Spectator and why Scaife really yanked the funding.

Larry would allow the nation to see the pernicious influence of so-called "think tank" money which is actually used to finance character assassination, defamation and ruination of entire families.

Besides, The Doc bets that Scaife pulls a "Charlie Trie" and opts for a long stay overseas while the GOP throws more cow pats on the blower, and may "not be available" to testify in person.

2: Ann Coulter. This feisty, cartilaginous blonde seems to have dropped from the media radar and the guest lists of MSNBC, CNN and hate radio since the news hit that she had Tripp-Lewinsky "party" tapes well before the scandal broke. We'd love to see the spectacle of the snippy, sharp-tongued Coulter on the stand telling us from whom she got the tapes -- and to whom she played them. We'd be even more interested to hear exactly when she started briefing news organizations on the dirt -- especially at CNN, MSNBC and Newsweek.

Coulter's testimony would reveal another link to how the "unseen hand" manipulated the media into trying Clinton in the press.

3: Ronald Burr. Burr used to big one of the big, swinging dicks at American Spectator -- until he started asking too many questions about "Arkansas Project" money (I don't think I have to brief regular readers on the Spectator's "project" to dig up rumors on Clinton and turn them into fact -- including the arguable "making" of Paula Jones).

Burr got unceremoniously cashiered. He was also forced to sign an agreement not to talk about the reasons Spectator terminated him.

Do Bob Tyrrell and the Spectator board have something to hide? Maybe facts that could end tax-free status for not only the Spectator but other "nonprofits" that abuse their status to manipulate politics? Facts that could point toward the Spectator's direct and seditious role in trying to overturn two elections?

Better ask Ron.

4: Matt Drudge. Drudge has used his gossip web site to dish dirt on the President -- and Sid Blumenthal. In fact, Blumenthal was slandered by The Fedora'd One earlier this year -- and sued to boot. Drudge still refuses to name his source and settle the suit -- because he evidently stumbled onto enough funds to mount a defense even before Fox News Channel signed him to do a weekly show.

A rigorous questioning might expose who really prompted Drudge to post his stories -- an even more important question than Drudge's sources. And here's another question -- he's not accepting banner ads, so how the heck had Drudge been making a living and financing his web site prior to his deal with the Fox Spin Channel?

An investigation of how The Drudge Report was publicized early on -- and who has been financing operation of both The Drudge Report and the Drudge Legal Defense Fund -- would further elucidate the workings of "unseen hands."

5: Bob Barr. Barr has been pushing for impeachment for literally years. In fact, he had been taking regular meetings with the senior staff of American Spectator. What was discussed? Was he being used as a conduit to pass information between Congressional employees and Spectator staffers? Were they coordinating strategy? Was he involved with the Arkansas Project? Advice to the Dems -- make sure to call him before you call Burr.

6: James Moody. Now here's some big news that the mainstream press missed in the midst of covering statements by all of the moderate Republicans who jumped on the impeachment bandwagon Wednesday: late last week, Ken Starr finally responded to that letter from House Judiciary Democrats demanding a clarification about when he first became aware that someone had tapes of a woman claiming to have an affair with the President. It accompanied the very quiet released (as opposed to dump, if you catch my drift) of a previously undisclosed batch of documents, including the 29-page letter from Starr, which confirms that the source of Ms. Lewinsky's so-called "false" affidavit in the Jones case was supplied by one of Tripp's revolving door line of lawyers, James Moody.

Moody claimed that he is "99 percent sure" the affidavit was provided to him by the Jones lawyers.

Now, stop right there. Weren't all of the lawyers involved in the Jones lawsuit under a strict gag order from Judge Wright? Well, gee, that would include leaking affidavits. Time to get Moody under oath to name names. The Doc predicts that a few law licenses at Rader, Fisher, Campbell & Pyke -- and the Rutherford Institute -- will get yanked for this criminal conduct.

And the question of the events leading up to the smoking affidavit involve an even more interesting gang of goons -- including former Starr law partner Richard Porter and book agent Lucianne Goldberg.

And the list of possible witnesses goes on. The Doc hasn't even scratched the surface.

The Doc hopes they open up that can of worms -- because the counsel for the defense would be able to call witnesses on how the President was put in a position where he would have to cover up a relationship!

And if, God forbid, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who would preside at any impeachment trial, does anything to block this evidence -- well, given that the GOP seems to want to use the impeachment of Bill Clinton to get even for Nixon, Bork, Douglas "Doobie" Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas and caring about average, everyday Americans like you and me, then turnabout will be fair play once the Dems take back Congress. Impeachment target number one would be the Chief Justice, for partisan denial of due process.

But I digress.

The bottom line is that an impeachment trial is just what the House and Senate need. It will kill the hard-right neo-fascist Tom DeLay wing of the GOP faster than the surly Bugman himself could exterminate a house full of termites!

So bring it on! 'Nuff said.

-- Dave "Doctor" Gonzo