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WRITTEN
IN STONE: AN
ARCHITECT DEFINES THE
CLINTONS
by Mia T, 12-30-02
Whereas a huckster removes meaning from institutions--the wife picked up where the husband left off--an architect encodes meaning in buildings. James S. Polshek, the architect with the dubious distinction of having been commissioned to build the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, believes that a successful architectural solution must necessarily be rooted in relevance. Just as Polshek's buildings have physical layers, so too do they have layers of meaning. His Rose Center for Earth and Space, for example, is informed formally and programmatically by the historic architecture of a designated landmark even as it redefines itself, (often too self-consciously, in my view), in Star-Trekian terms. Reduced to its essence, the building is the nascent universe before the Big Bang, the promise of the undifferentiated cell in its mother's womb. The "bridge to the 21st century" was, perhaps, clinton's most delusional conceit, so it is not surprising that it would become clinton's self-referential metaphor of choice. His library was to be that bridge, if he had anything to say about it... ![]()
The architect is often the master of the inside joke, witness Robert Venturi's postmodern chairs. Venturi exploited--unabashedly and with abandon--the vocabulary of Las Vegas, its stage-set-as-reality and its roadside culture--bright, clashing, ugly and fake. The architect's inside joke is his hedge against the sycophancy that comes with patronage. The flip side of the encoded meaning of the architect is the terrorist's decoding of it. To bin Laden, the World Trade Center was Jewish capitalism encoded in urban space. If Polshek's vision of clinton's library is a bridge, the inside joke is that, at best, it is a bridge to nowhere. More likely, it is a bridge to the 7th century...or a doublewide to house clinton double-speak. Take your choice. ![]() copyright Mia T 2002, 2006 |
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Alien
Abductions, Flying Saucers + Other Weird Phenomena,
c.1992-2000
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Shameless pharisees in
stark relief crowd the Capitol frieze: Baucus, Biden,
Bingaman, Breaux, Bryan, Byrd, Cohen, Conrad, Daschle,
Dodd,
Gore, Graham,
Harkin, Hollings, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerrey, Kerry,
Kohl,
Lautenberg, Leahy,
Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Moynihan, Reid,
Robb,
Rockefeller,
Sarbanes, Schumer. These are the 28
sitting Democratic senators, the current Vice President
and
Secretary of
Defense -- clinton defenders all -- who, in 1989, voted to
oust
U.S. District
Judge Walter Nixon for making "false or misleading
statements to
a grand jury."
In 1989 each and every
one of these men insisted that perjury was
an
impeachable
offense. (What a difference a decade and a decadent Democrat
make.) "But Judge Nixon
took an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth. As
a
grand jury
witness, it was not for him to decide what would be
material. That
was for the
grand jury to decide. Of all people, Federal Judge Walter
Nixon
certainly knew
this. "So I am going to
vote 'guilty' on articles one and two. Judge Nixon lied
to
the grand jury.
He misled the grand jury. These acts are indisputably
criminal
and warrant
impeachment." Senator Tom
Daschle (November 3, 1989): "This morning we
impeached a judge from Mississippi for failing to tell
the
truth. Those
decisions are always very difficult and certainly, in
this case,
it came after a
great deal of concern and thoughtful analysis of the
facts." Congressman
Charles Schumer (May 10, 1989): "Perjury, of
course, is a very difficult, difficult thing to decide;
but as we
looked and
examined all of the records and in fact found many things
that were
not in the
record it became very clear to us that this impeachment
was
meritorious."
Senator Carl
Levin (November 3, 1989): "The record amply
supports the finding in the criminal trial that
Judge
Nixon's
statements to the grand jury were false and misleading
and constituted
perjury. Those
are the statements cited in articles I and II, and it is
on
those articles
that I vote to convict Judge Nixon and remove him from
office." "The hypocrite's crime
is that he bears false witness against
himself,"
observed the
philosopher Hannah Arendt. "What makes it so plausible to
assume
that hypocrisy is
the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist
under
the cover of all
other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal,
it
is true, confront
us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only
the
hypocrite is
really rotten to the core." If hypocrisy is the
vice of vices, then perjury is the crime of crimes, for
perjury provides the necessary cover for all other crimes.
David Lowenthal,
professor emeritus of political science at Boston
College
makes the novel
and compelling argument that perjury is "bribery
consummate,
using false words
instead of money or other things of value to pervert
the
course of justice"
and, thus, perjury is a constitutionally enumerated
high
crime. The Democrats' defense
of clinton's perjury -- and their own hypocrisy -- is
three-pronged. ONE: This argument is
spurious. The courts make no distinction between
perjuries.
Perjury is
perjury. Perjury attacks the very essence of democracy.
Perjury
is bribery
consummate. Moreover, (the clinton
spinners notwithstanding), clinton's perjury was not "just
about sex."
clinton's perjury
was about clinton denying a citizen justice by lying in
a
civil
rights-sexual harassment case about his sexual history
with
subordinates. TWO: Because the
Constitution stipulates that federal judges, who are
appointed for
life,
"shall hold their offices during good behavior,'' and
because there is
no
similar language concerning the popularly elected,
term-limited president,
it must
have been perfectly agreeable to the Framers, so the
(implicit)
argument
goes, to have a perjurious, justice-obstructing reprobate
as
president.
clinton's defenders
ignore Federalist No. 57, and Hillary
Rodham's
constitutional
treatise on impeachable acts -- written in 1974 when she
wanted
to impeach a
president; both mention "bad conduct" as grounds
for
impeachment. "Impeachment," wrote
Rodham, "did not have to be for criminal offenses --
but
only for a 'course
of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a
disregard
for the office of
the President of the United States...A person's 'course
of
conduct' while not
particularly criminal could be of such a nature that
it
destroys trust,
discourages allegiance, and demands action by
the
Congress...The
office of the President is such that it calls for a
higher
level of conduct
than the average citizen in the United States." Hamilton (or Madison)
discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue
in
Federalist 57.
"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to
be,
first to obtain
for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and
most
virtue to pursue,
the common good of the society; and in the next place,
to
take the most
effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst
they
continue to hold
their public trust." (Contrast this with
clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and
feloniously
subordinates the
common good to his personal appetites.) Because the Framers
did not anticipate the demagogic efficiency of
the
electronic bully
pulpit, they ruled out the possibility of an MTV
mis-leader
(and
impeachment-thwarter!) like clinton. In Federalist No. 64,
John Jay
said: "There is
reason to presume" the president would fall only to
those
"who have become
the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue." He
imagined that the electorate would not "be deceived by those
brilliant
appearances of
genius and patriotism which, like transient meteors,
sometimes
mislead as well as
dazzle." (If the clinton
debacle teaches us anything, it is this: If we are to
retain
our democracy in
this age of the electronic demagogue, we must recalibrate
the
constitutional
balance of power.) THREE: Such
indecorous, dual-purpose architectonics not only
threatens the delicate constitutional framework --
it disturbs the cultural aesthetic. The senators
must, therefore, roundly reject this elliptic
scheme. In this
postmodern Age of clinton, we may, from time to
time, selectively
stomach
corruption. But we must never abide ugliness.
Never. COPYRIGHT
MIA T 2005
"Impeachment
did not have to be for criminal offenses --
but only for a 'course of conduct' that
suggested an abuse of power or a disregard
for the office of the President of the United
States ... A person's 'course of conduct'
while not particularly criminal could be of
such a nature that it destroys trust,
discourages allegiance, and demands action by
the Congress...The office of the President is
such that it calls for a higher level of
conduct than the average citizen in the
United States."
Hillary
Clinton
Democrat assistant, 1974
effort to impeach president Nixon

ypocrisy
abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife
with
constitutional
deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual
surreality
polymarked by
presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case
of
Jefferson,
posthumously misappropriated.Senator
Herb Kohl (November 7, 1989):
clinton's
perjuries were "just about sex" and therefore "do not
rise to the
level of
an impeachable offense."
Presidents
and judges are held to different standards under
the
Constitution.

(viewing
movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
FOOL
ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON
ME!
The
president can be prosecuted for his alleged felonies
after he leaves
office.
(Nota bene ROBERT RAY.)

"There
are only two years left. What harm can he
do?":
Sen. Dale Bumpers
This clinton-created censure contrivance -- borne
out of what I have come
to
call the
"Lieberman Paradigm" (clinton is an unfit
president; therefore
clinton
must remain president) -- is nothing less than a
postmodern
deconstruction
in which the Oval Office would serve for two years
as a holding
cell for
the perjurer-obstructor.
December 7, 1941+64
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005
HILLARY
GOES NUCLEAR For more than
a half decade, the Clinton administration was
shoveling atomic secrets out the door as fast as it
could, literally by the ton. Millions of previously
classified ideas and documents relating to nuclear
arms were released to all comers, including China's
bomb makers. William
J. Broad So I have
real concerns, specifically about a plant in my
state near where I live, Indian
Point.... So we need to
resolve... questions of... proliferation... before
we go forward with nuclear power. hillary
clinton Missus
clinton's sudden concern about proliferation,
therefore, is a decade too late and a dollar too
cheap. 3 The clintons
turned the dilemma of the nuclear age--how to
exploit nuclear energy's peaceful and productive
potential while preventing the spread of nuclear
weapons-- on its head: They exploited nuclear
proliferation for their own gain even as they
prevented the realization of nuclear energy's
peaceful and productive potential. Moreover, by
ignoring terrorism for those eight
years,4
the clintons caused the nuclear dilemma to become
even more acute, complex and deadly with the
concomitant rapid rise in non-state actors'
involvement in the proliferation of nuclear and
other weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Contrary to
the clintons' quaint theories,5
rogue
states routinely violated their Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons
nonproliferation obligations, setting up a perfect
symbiosis for non-state actors--particularly
terrorists--seeking to acquire and use nuclear or
other WMD. The non-state actor is the rogue state's
perfect WMD delivery-system: there is no return
address. "I
remember exactly what happened. Bruce
Lindsey said to me on the phone, 'My
God, a second plane has hit the tower.'
And I said, 'Bin Laden did this.'
that's the first thing I said. He said,
'How can you be sure?' I said 'Because
only bin Laden and the Iranians could
set up the network to do this and they
[the Iranians] wouldn't do it
because they have a country in targets.
Bin
Laden did it.'
I
thought that my virtual
obsession 2
with him was well placed and I was full
of regret that I didn't get
him." bill
clinton The clintons,
almost singlehandedly, therefore, made
proliferation of WMD today's preeminent threat to
international peace and security. Some call the
clintons quislings, Manchurian Candidates, bought
off in Little Rock by Riady
and company6
decades ago (and much too cheaply, according to
their Chinese benefactors7),
trading our national security for their political
power. This argument is persuasive but
incomplete....
PROLIFERATION
IN THE AGE OF CLINTON
Spying
Isn't the Only Way to Learn About
Nukes
The New York Times
May 30, 1999
Nuclear
is now very much in the news as a potential power
source because of its lack of contribution to
global warming. If you look at nuclear energy,
which currently provides 20 percent of our energy
with virtually no emission of greenhouse gases, we
do have to take a serious look, but there remain
very serious questions about nuclear power... in a
world with suicidal terrorists.
Remarks
at The National Press
Club
May 23, 2006

illful
nuclear proliferation, the product of clinton
naiveté, corruption and obsession with
legacy,1
was the predominant clinton policy for eight long
years.2
Sunday, Sept 3, 2002
Larry
King Live
THE
(oops!)
INADVERTENT ADMISSIONS OF BILL +
HILLARY
CLINTON

The Times' 1996 endorsement of bill clinton1 was the problem. The endorsement, you may recall, was contingent on clinton getting a brain transplant--specifically of the character lobe.2 How could The Times square that shameful, irresponsible endorsement with this monstrous failure3?
Probing questions by the host, Brian Lamb, followed, eliciting this damning historical parallel from Sulzberger: "The Times dropped ball during Holocaust by failing to connect the dots." It appears that The New York Times doesn't learn from its 'mistakes.' 6 Will it take The Times another 50 years to understand/admit that by having endorsed for reelection a "documentably dysfunctional" president7 with "delusions" -- its own words -- it must bear sizeable blame for the 9/11 horror and its aftermath8? Sulzberger's carefully worded rationalization of the clinton endorsements points to clinton "policies," not achievements; is this tacit acknowledgement that clinton "achievements" -- when legal -- were more illusory than real -- that The Times' Faustian bargain was not such a good deal after all?
Elie Wiesel makes a distinction between "information" and "knowledge."6 Information is data; it is devoid of an ethical component; it is neutral. Knowledge is a higher form of information. Knowledge is information that had been internalized and given a moral dimension. At a minimum, The Times' failure -- whether concerning clinton endorsements, or classified leaks or the Holocaust -- is a failure to make this distinction. More likely though, it is a failure not nearly so benign.
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