Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Do the Right Thing

Friday September 15, 2000

Wen Ho Lee walked out of jail, as promised, and even Bill Clinton said he was "troubled" by the prosecution. He is obviously not troubled enough to drag Energy Secretary Bill Richardson or Attorney General Janet Reno in to explain themselves, though.

Reno, to the surprise of absolutely no one in the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the Virgo super cluster, or the observable universe said, "I'm not embarrassed" when asked about the Justice Department's handling of the case.

Once in a while someone is handed the opportunity to do the right thing and the right thing gets done. Former Democratic Congressman from Long Island, Tom Downey, is the person designated to play George W. in debate preparations with Al Gore.

The other day, Downey received a package which included videotape of George W. in a debate prep session with Senator Judd Gregg (playing Gore) as well as a book of documents related to that preparation.

Downey watched about 60 seconds of the video tape, called in his assistant and had her watch a few seconds, stopped the tape, and told his lawyer to call the FBI.

In addition to doing the right thing with the materials, Downey has also recused himself from any further contact with the Gore campaign dealing with preparation for the debates - which was his principal role during this campaign.

As noted above, once in a while someone is handed the opportunity to do the right thing. Tom Downey did it.

Not doing the right thing, however, is still standard operating procedure for the Clintons. A growing number of media outlets are pointing a finger at Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham for trading sleepovers at the White House and at Camp David in return for donations to her U.S. Senate campaign.

According to Matt Drudge's web site, this story was first uncovered by the New York Times which, for whatever reasons, didn't publish it. Other outlets, nevertheless, picked it up leading to a series of questions for White House press secretary Joe Lockhart who, without embarrassment, denied any impropriety.

Fox News' web site quoted sources saying, "since the summer of 1999 there have been at least 26 instances in which people, mainly couples, have stayed overnight after donating to the first lady's campaign or promising to do so."

Maybe someone should demand that Janet Reno investigate � ahh, don't embarrass her.

More not doing the right thing: The New York Times did go with a story which details a link between a request for a $100,000 donation from Al Gore and a trial lawyer from (uh, oh) Texas. The Times story suggests the arm was put on the guy in return for President Clinton vetoing a tort reform bill. Clinton, in fact, vetoed the bill and the lawyer has since funneled almost $800,000 into Democratic coffers.

For a look at a chart of lawyer money flowing to the Democrats since that bill was vetoed (and the Mullings "Catchy Caption of the Day") go here.

Mullings sponsor Craig Shirley has announced the formation of a new professional lacrosse team to play in Baltimore. The press release indicates the secretary of the new team will be Frank Lavin who, at last sighting, was in Singapore. Craig and his partners have not yet decided on a name. I'm submitting the Singapore Slings.

I hereby acknowledge I am the last adult on the continent who did not know that rapper Eminem's name was not spelled "M&M."

Here was a Reuters headline which was an attention grabber: "A Jumbo Contraceptive is the Solution." The story, it turns out, is about vets in South Africa having come up with a vaccine which acts as a contraceptive. For elephants.

Even I'm embarrassed about this: The other day I took a shot at Pat Buchanan saying that he was counting the $12.6 million he would be receiving from the government as "5,555,340 Deutsche Marks." A significant number of readers e-mailed to point out I had converted dollars to DMs incorrectly. Indeed I had. The Deutsche Mark was about .44 to the dollar. I should have divided by that number, instead of multiplying by it.

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