UNDERNEWS Sam Smith August 11, 1999 The Progressive Review 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] INDEX: http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS: http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINE NEWS: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.com DONATIONS AND ORDER FORM: http://prorev.com/order3.htm UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. For a free subscription to our e-mail updates send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 1999, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://prorev.com/letters.htm ---------------------------------------------------------- FROM AN OP ED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BY YALE LAW PROFESSOR IAN AYRES: As a handful of state wiretapping laws are now written, the crime is creating an unimpeachable record of a conversation. The laws certainly don't protect anyone's privacy, since the substance of the late-night Lewinsky-Tripp chat sessions could have been divulged. If you think about it, the only thing the law protected was Ms. Lewinsky's option of misrepresenting what she said .... It is bizarre to have a law that protects a person's privacy only if he lies about what he said. Maybe that's why secretly taping calls is legal in 38 states (though not in Maryland, where Ms. Tripp lives). THE BATTLE OF THE EPIGONS Speaking to a Baptist group, Al Gore described his father as having "supported the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and lost his next re-election. But his conscience won and he taught me that was more important than any election." In fact, as the National Review points out, Gore Sr. lost his seat to Bill Brock, who had voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a member of the House. Incidentally, Gore Sr. opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and earlier civil rights legislation. LA TIMES: At the private meeting with potential donors, Gore distanced himself from the federal inquiry into Hollywood's marketing of violent movies launched recently by President Clinton. Participants said Gore made clear that the government study -- disparaged by some in Hollywood as a witch hunt --was the president's idea, not his, and was initiated without his input." CORRECTION The Reagan-appointed judge mentioned yesterday is Douglas Howard Ginsburg, not Ginsberg THE MEDIACRATS COKIE ROBERTS ON THE IMUS SHOW: "I can't get over it, I really, I've known Al Gore since the day he was born and he's never done anything bad in his life. He's been the best boy. And you know, for him to be the person getting caught in Bill Clinton's problems is the textbook example of Life's Not Fair. I mean, I keep thinking he must be thinking to himself, 'I could have had more fun in college,' you know. But he is being caught in it and to the degree, the poll numbers are just awful." THE HIGH ON COKE The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz joins those trying to make a campaign issue out of George Bush Jr.'s past cocaine use while maintaining the media code of silence about W.J. Clinton's much deeper involvement in the coke culture. Kurtz' spin continues the fiction that the only drug questions about Clinton concerned his use of marijuana while a student. Interestingly, Kurtz also writes: "Questions about the personal lives of candidates have become far more common in the hyper-competitive media climate of the '90s. But they are often triggered by specific allegations, such as when Gennifer Flowers charged in 1992 that she had had a long-running affair with candidate Bill Clinton." Kurtz is apparently unaware of Flowers' more recent allegation that Clinton offered her cocaine. More important that the political double-standard, though, is the fact that not only are both leading presidential candidates former users of drugs for which hundreds of thousands of Americans have received criminal penalties, including draconian prison sentence, but that the incumbent was closely connected to major Arkansas drug operatives. Here's how Kurtz brushes off this issue: "Other politicians, including Vice President Gore, have acknowledged past marijuana use with no apparent penalty. But an admission of having tried cocaine, the focus of major federal anti-drug initiatives and much inner-city violence, could be more problematic." For one person to end up in prison for years for doing what someone else can do and still be elected president is not problematic, it is obscene. THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY FAIR: In a major relaxation of broadcast ownership rules, the Federal Communications Commission has announced it will allow networks to own two TV stations in the same city. Previously, the FCC limited a network or other company to one television station per city. Under the new regulations announced August 5, a company can own two television stations in the same city, so long the city has at least seven other separately owned stations. A land rush that is all but certain to be won by the biggest players in the increasingly concentrated broadcast industry. For example, since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, over 4,000 commercial radio stations have been sold, and there have been over 1,000 radio company mergers. FAIR: http://www.fair.org ECO NOTES GUARDIAN: Monsanto, the US based food company, has been criticized by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading the public about its genetically modified food and crops. In a report published today, the authority has upheld four complaints made by environmental groups about Monsanto's 1998 UK advertising campaign. One complaint was over wrongly suggesting that GM potatoes had been approved by government regulatory agencies in 20 countries including the UK. Another complaint upheld concerned a newspaper advert which could have given the impression that the benefits of GM tomatoes were proved. MORE GUARDIAN NEWS: http://www.prorev.com/ altnews.htm WASHINGTON POST: The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the largest water and sewer agency in Washington's Maryland suburbs, reported that the average daily water use from Thursday through Sunday was 18 percent lower than the average daily consumption during the week leading up to [Maryland Governor] Glendening's call for voluntary restrictions on July 29. When he imposed mandatory statewide limits six days later, Glendening (D) said he hoped to reduce consumption by at least 10 percent, and yesterday his aides were encouraged that use has apparently declined by even more. DRUG BUSTS DENVER POST: Veteran TV anchorman Hugh Downs proclaimed his opposition to the war on drugs Monday while addressing a convention of more than 5,400 prison managers from across the nation and Canada. "I'd like to see an end of the war on drugs - it is just insane,'' he said, adding that the federal government's long-term, multi-billiondollar war on drugs has "turned a medical problem into a crime problem" YOU DIDN'T REALLY BELIEVE US, DID YOU? ASSOCIATED PRESS: A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit by a veterans group that said the government broke its promise of lifetime health care benefits for those with 20 years of military service. The U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit Monday, saying retirees do not have the absolute right to medical and dental care, but they may be given the service subject to availability .... In recent years, retirees have had their access to free care at military hospitals trimmed by budget cuts and base closings. Retirees are urged to join an HMO-like system with an annual premium. They drop out of the program once they reach 65 and are eligible for Medicare. CLINTON SCANDALS WASHINGTON TIMES: A judge ordered the government yesterday to pay $625,000 for the "disobedience" of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin in withholding documents of a lawsuit involving the mismanagement of Indian trust funds. In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth angrily accused Mr. Babbitt and Mr. Rubin and their government attorneys of disobeying his November 1996 order to turn over the records in a suit brought by the Native American Rights Fund, saying they "covered up their disobedience through semantics and strained, unilateral, self-serving interpretations of their own duties." THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1739 Connecticut Ave NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 202-234-6222 Fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam Smith INDEX : http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS : http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINES: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.htm For a free trial subscription to both our bi-monthly hard copy edition and our regular e-mail updates send e-mail and terrestrial address to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To order "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton) direct from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/
