In his latest column, the normally-brilliant Joe Conason, after nicely enumerating the various questionable
pardons done by George Herbert Walker Bush (my own personal favorite being Bush's pardoning of
mass murderer Orlando Bosch at the behest of Miami's Batista crowd) makes an error no conservative
would EVER make: beating (however gently) on one of his own.

He wonders about Bill Clinton's non-Rich pardons: "Yet if he can justify those other questioned cases,
it is difficult to understand why he hasn't done so already. In the absence of a plausible alternative,
and in the shadow of his relatives, blatant misconduct, many people who otherwise liked or admired
the former President have concluded that at least some of those decisions were bought."

I, and several other folks, have an alternate explanation for why Bill Clinton hasn't bothered to fax
Dan Burton fresh copies of his baptismal certificates, bank statements and Wassermann tests each time
Burton and the GOP orders him to do so:

Why the hell should he?

Nothing he could say or do, short of slitting his own throat on the House floor, would appease them.

Plus, it would be bad for the nation.
As John Dean pointed out in his 02/02/2001 FindLaw.com column "not only would cooperation
with Congress be a no-win for Clinton, it would be a dangerous precedent for future presidents."

Why? Because it means that after any future Presidents leave office, Congress could force them to explain their
presidential actions, be they pardons or signing legislation or breaking wind. This, as Dean (and any constitutional
scholar worthy of the name) points out, "would be a serious breakdown of our constitutional separation of powers."

Vincent Bugliosi noted in his book No Island of Sanity that the very idea of a sitting President, such as Bill Clinton,
being forced to put up with baseless nuisance lawsuits, such as the dismissed Paula Jones case, is beyond ludicrous.
But, to judge from the GOP's insistence on pursuing Clinton, even to the extreme recently suggested by National
Review columnist John Derbyshire of murdering Clinton's daughter Chelsea, the professional Clinton-haters
have long since gone from being merely ludicrous to just plain being outright evil in their hatred.

Sincerely,

Tamara Baker