Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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What Did Istanbul Used to Be?

Friday, May 18, 2001

From Mombai, India

Mombai used to be Bombay. That answers THAT question. It does not, however answer the question, "Why am I the last person to find out about these things?"

Catching up on the news coming out of the US, we see that Louis Freeh admitted the FBI made a "serious error" in not releasing all the documents it had on Timothy McVeigh.

On one of the TV chat shows, Wednesday, the host asked a guest what he thought this "serious error" might do to "Louis Freeh's legacy."

Let's see: Waco. Ruby Ridge. Wen Ho Lee. Robert Hanssen. I would say the answer to that question is: Nothing.

The only humor in that whole sorry mess is listening to The MSS Hillary wring her hands and say how awful it was that the FBI lost track of its files.

Memo to Hillary: Maybe Freeh should have looked for these files among the hundreds you and your political hacks were pawing through when you first go to the White House. Or maybe, given the Harry Potter nature of the appearance of the Rose Law Firm billing records, you should just stay far, far away from this entire subject.

The Senate Democrats - thrashing about for some way to stop the string of Bush victories - have now turned their attention to Ted Olson's nomination to be Solicitor General.

Olson was the guy, remember, who argued the Bush side of the Florida recount case in front of the Supreme Court and won. At the time Gore's attorney, David Boies, was being treated as the legal equivalent of Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, and Will Rogers all rolled up into one. Olson beat him.

The issue is whether Olson was being truthful when he said he was not directly involved in a deal called "The Arkansas Project" in which money was provided to the American Spectator magazine to dig up dirt on the Clintons.

According to the reporting of Neil Lewis (of the New York Times Service) in the International Herald Tribune, even former American Spectator reporter David Brock told the committee, according to the Lewis piece, that Olson "was familiar with many of the efforts underway at the magazine."

Assuming everyone is telling the truth, having "direct involvement in" and "being familiar with" are not the same thing.

This is not so much about Ted Olson. This is an out-of-town tryout on the part of the Democrats to see how much energy they can generate to try and stop some number of the President's judicial appointments.

The original goal during the confirmation struggle over John Ashcroft to be Attorney General, we should remember was to defeat, it. In the end the Democrats claimed victory because they kept him from getting the 60 votes necessary to stop a filibuster. In the end John Ashcroft was sworn in as AG.

Down the hall - metaphorically, if not literally - in the Senate Finance Committee hearing room, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was getting whipped again. Glenn Kessler (Washington Post Service), also writing in the IHT, described the 14-6 vote by which the committee voted out the tax package more-or-less unscathed.

The top income tax rate won't come down as much as Bush requested, but he is getting - on our behalf - a huge tax cut which the Democrats and the National Association of Political Pundits all maintained, a scant three months ago, could never, nor would ever, happen.

By the time you read this, the full Senate may have approved the measure which will then, one suspects, will be sent over to the House with somewhat more dispatch than McCain-Feingold.

Daschle had demanded that the senior Democrat on the Committee, Max Baucus, not allow the package to come out so quickly. He sent Robert Byrd to the floor to threaten ANY Democrat who votes for this package, but to no avail.

Parts of today's Mullings were written in the Frankfurt airport, on the plane from Germany to India. And sent from, as noted above, Mombai. There are many, many time zones involved. I believe if it is 7:00 am in Washington, DC it is August in India.

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