-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Impeachment Watch Busy Week for Judiciary Committee Impeaching Der Fuhrer and stuff WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Judiciary Committee, dominated by Republicans determined to punish President Clinton, is racing toward a likely recommendation to remove the president from office, as the nation's third presidential impeachment inquiry enters its final climactic stages. Clinton's lawyers demanded three or four days to call panels of expert witnesses -- but not any of the key players in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said in a statement Saturday that he's considering whether to slightly alter the schedule to accommodate the White House, but he still insisted on an impeachment vote by Saturday. Three witnesses on the White House list, for a proposed panel on the standards of impeachment, are Johnson administration Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach; Bruce Ackerman, professor of constitutional law at Yale University, and Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton. The committee already has heard from 30 witnesses on impeachment standards and perjury, and Hyde said he didn't want witnesses who would ``duplicate testimony ... already received.'' If witnesses testify, the Clinton lawyers would follow with their conclusions in the same room where three impeachment articles were approved against Richard M. Nixon in July 1974. Right after the Clinton team will come summations by two veteran lawyer-investigators, certain to clash over perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power evidence submitted by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. David Schippers, a one-time prosecutor who made his reputation fighting organized crime in Chicago, is speaking for the Republican majority. Abbe Lowell, an ex-prosecutor who specializes in government ethics, represents the Democrats. Committee Republicans, who have shunned polls and calls for censure, want a vote on impeachment articles Friday or Saturday. They are virtually certain to recommend that Clinton's efforts to conceal his sexual affair in the White House with Ms. Lewinsky, a former intern half his age, is misconduct serious enough for removal from office. When the issue comes before the full House, the public could see a much different political dynamic. Lawmakers not on the committee ``have to look at the polls, at the next election'' and face constituents who ask, 'What are you turkeys doing?''' said retired Rep. William Clinger, a Republican who investigated Clinton as chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Nobody knows the outcome of an impeachment vote in the full House, but a liberal Judiciary Committee member, Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, said, ``I am afraid it's a neck-and-neck vote. ... The simple arithmetic is this will be decided by one or two votes, and that's frightening to me.'' Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., retiring after 34 years in Congress, said, ``The politicians on the Judiciary Committee have very visible hard-core backers, and contributors and activists in their campaigns want them to support or oppose impeachment. Politics is driving them very strongly as well as conviction.'' But once impeachment leaves the committee, Hamilton said, ``Everybody recognizes the dynamics. The president will not be convicted in the Senate (where a two-thirds vote is needed). It's not quite as rigid as it might appear from just sitting in on committee hearings. There are a lot of back-room, back-channel negotiations going forward with a variety of people, most of whom are trying to be constructive and find an exit strategy.'' For many Democrats and White House officials, that strategy might be a censure that could include a financial penalty for Clinton. But a censure would have to clear considerable parliamentary hurdles to even be considered in the full House the same day as impeachment. In their appearance this week, Clinton's legal team of private attorney David Kendall and White House lawyers Charles Ruff and Gregory Craig will certainly try to make Starr the villain. Their audience won't really be the 21 Republican conservatives and 16 liberal Democrats in the committee room but millions of Americans watching on television. In this gravest of constitutionally mandated inquiries, there is no expectation that this politically polarized committee, led by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., will suddenly become a forum for lofty constitutional debate. To the contrary, the sight of lawmakers constantly interrupting each other at hearings has left the discourse ``at the gutter level, and both parties are responsible,'' said senior U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Wiggins, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee during the Nixon Watergate investigation. Julian Epstein, chief counsel for committee Democrats, looked at the coming momentous week this way: ``The stakes are higher. The adrenaline will be flowing. It's show time.'' The Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee has been drafting articles of impeachment that would accuse Clinton of lying in his Jan. 17 deposition in the Paula Jones case, lying again in his Aug. 17 grand jury testimony, obstructing justice and abusing his power. The staff also may consider whether Clinton lied again under oath last Friday when he submitted written answers to 81 questions from committee chairman Hyde. Those responses were similar to the president's previous testimony. The Associated Press, Dec. 5, 1998 Year 2000 British Navy Has Serious Y2K Problem Trident missiles and stuff ALMOST 90 per cent of the Navy's most critical computer systems - including those controlling Trident nuclear missiles - are still not protected against the Millennium bug, the Ministry of Defence has admitted. Computer experts say that unless dramatic progress is made in the next 12 months, Britain's defence could be at risk as computers fail because they cannot recognise the change to a new century. Military aircraft may be unable to fly, early warning systems and intelligence data banks could fail and key weapon systems may even collapse. "If Saddam Hussein wanted to launch an attack, January 1, 2000 would be the day to do it," said one American defence official. Eighty-two per cent - of the critical computer systems serving MoD headquarters in Whitehall are also "Millennium-unsafe". Two-thirds of the RAF's and half the Army's critical computer systems are not ready. The figures are contained in the MoD's quarterly report to the Cabinet Office. "This is very worrying," said Bruce George, chairman of the Commons defence select committee. "I had no idea that it was this bad." Kevin Tebbit, the ministry's most senior official, warns in the report that "some systems might need to be abandoned in the short term, pending resolution of the problem". The MoD's anti-bug programme is the largest in Whitehall, employing 700 staff and costing �200 million. But the report reveals that the ministry does not have enough skilled staff to complete its Year 2000 programme, and is having problems recruiting more. William Peden, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "The Government needs to come clean about the dangers associated with Trident. It is behaving like a sea captain standing on the bridge while the ship sinks around him." Many defence missile systems have computer chips embedded in them which record the time they were last serviced or used. Military officials say that when 2000 arrives, systems that have not been updated will register January 1 1900 and instantly shut down. The London Telegraph, Dec. 6, 1998 Federal Prison Industries, Inc. White Men Traded as "Sex Slaves" of Black Prisoners Prison rape and stuff WHITE male prisoners in American jails are being "sold as sex slaves" by black fellow inmates for money, tobacco, drugs and alcohol, according to campaigners who are urging action to end widespread homosexual rape behind bars. Damaging claims of complicity by prison guards are also emerging. Five wardens at a Californian maximum security jail are facing charges relating to the rape of an inmate by a notorious sexual predator. The wardens allegedly forced a troublesome prisoner to share a cell with a black gang leader, who was rewarded with extra food and clothes for imposing "discipline" on the man. According to the campaigners, the sex attacks often carry ugly racial overtones, with many white prisoners claiming that they were sexually abused after being placed in cells with black inmates. Most victims are too scared to complain, it is claimed, and those that do say they have been ignored by the authorities. The scale of the scandal has been uncovered by the pressure group Human Rights Watch, which next year will publish a report documenting the "staggering prevalence" of prison rape. The situation is not just provoking concern among civil liberties groups. In the state of Illinois, a prominent conservative figure, Republican legislator Cal Skinner, is also pushing for tougher government action. He claims that many of the rape victims have been infected with the HIV virus and that American prisons are becoming a breeding ground for Aids. Mr Skinner said: "There are sexual slaves in too many prisons. People are being given a death sentence." He wants to see the mandatory Aids testing of all prisoners with the segregation of those found to be HIV positive. He believes it is one of the few ways of protecting vulnerable inmates from the potentially fatal effect of prison rape. The renewed concern over rape in prisons has come too late for Michael Blucker, 29, a white man from Crystal Lake in Illinois, who was repeatedly gang-raped while serving a sentence for burglary. Blucker's ordeal is almost too horrific to contemplate: he was forced to become a sex slave to black prisoners at Menard State Penitentiary in Illinois. Prison rape is not confined to white victims but they are particularly vulnerable as black gang members make up such a large part of the American prison population. Blucker said: "I was the only white man in a gallery [wing] of more than 100 prisoners. Most of the guys were in for very serious crimes; they were people who weren't going to be getting out of there any time in the next 30 years." The first attack came when Blucker had been in jail just two weeks. He was set upon by three black prisoners, stripped, beaten and raped. "They would have killed me if I had refused. Killing means nothing to these people," he said. Once it became known that he had been raped, Blucker's life became even more of a nightmare. In the violent world of American prisons, an inmate who "allows" himself to be raped is regarded as fair game for every other inmate and is used as a sex slave, normally under the direction of a senior gang leader. In Blucker's case, one of the black prisoners sold him to other inmates on a daily basis. "He would physically threaten me and threaten to have harm done to my wife outside prison. Every day, I would be sold as a sex object while he was given money and cigarettes and marijuana and alcohol in return." When the threats of violence did not cow Blucker, his tormentor would beat him into submission. While filming in Butner prison in North Carolina, I met Ivory Rhodes, a black prisoner, who was attacked within days of being placed in the cell of a known rapist. The pattern he described was almost exactly the same as that experienced by Blucker. A violent attack and the threat of death followed by brutal rape. Rhodes's solution was to try to spend long periods in solitary confinement, a deprivation he preferred to risking his life in the main cells. Rhodes managed to avoid being raped again, but whenever he was transferred from one prison to another, the stigma of "rape victim" went with him. After his rape, Rhodes never moved out of his cell without carrying a knife. He described a world in which any weakness is preyed upon by the tougher and older inmates. The young, the first-time offenders, the middle class are especially vulnerable to attack. Blucker said: "There are people who say that if somebody attacked them in prison they would kill themselves or kill other people. That is bull. It just doesn't happen that way." What was almost certainly his worst experience occurred in the showers when he was set upon by a large gang of prisoners. "They pulled bricks out of the wall and they hit me in the nose and the eye and then on the back of the head, which knocked me out." Then he was repeatedly raped. "I couldn't tell you if it was one, three, 10 or 15 people. All I know is that I felt very unwell." At first, Blucker said, he was too frightened to report the rapes for fear of being killed by the other inmates, but after the shower incident he spoke to prison officials. The result, he claimed, was indifference. "I spoke to officers and medical people and no one believed me." Blucker subsequently took a court action against several prison guards and the prison psychiatrist but was unable to prove his claims. What is not disputed is that he needed extensive surgery for injuries sustained in the attack and that while in prison he contracted the HIV virus. Blucker was eventually transferred from Menard after lobbying a local politician. Now a free man, he is looking for a job and is actively involved in his church. God, he says, will save him from Aids. The London Telegraph, Dec. 6, 1998 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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