The Clintons' legal-defense fund mailed a pitch to Dr. Bernard Lewinsky. His daughter gave at the office - school vouchers; updates on presidential and congressional candidates; Religious Liberty Protection Act; other issues

National Review, Sept 27, 1999

Most folks sitting atop more than $5 million in unpaid legal bills, and who had not made a mortgage payment in 16 years, would have trouble getting a home loan, let alone one for $1.3 million. But then the Clintons have always been special people, with special friends. One of those friends is Terence R. McAuliffe, a Democratic fundraiser, who secured the Clintons' purchase of an eleven-room house in Westchester County. McAuliffe appears to be a subject of two federal investigations. In 1998, he was questioned by a grand jury about swapping funds between the Teamsters and the Democratic National Committee. Earlier this year, the Department of Labor began an investigation of two trustees of an electrical-workers fund, accused of making an improper loan to a development company owned by McAuliffe and his wife. Clinton defenders say that, though the home loan may look improper, there is nothing technically illegal about it. That, come to think of it, has been the best possible construction on the entire Clinton presidency--and now it looks like it will hold true for the post-presidency as well.

The notion that the law should accommodate religious practice when the two conflict is an old one: Catholic Masses were legal during Prohibition. That kind of legislative accommodation, however, is not enough for those religious conservatives who support the Religious Liberty Protection Act. That bill, which sailed through the House and will probably pass as easily in the Senate, would establish a blanket rule that judges should exempt religious believers from laws that conflict with their faiths. This rule, as Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley has pointed out, does not, strictly speaking, concern religious freedom at all, not least because in principle it treats any strong belief as "religious." It is a grant of power to federal judges, who may at their discretion decide that an individual's autonomy trumps the political judgment of states and localities. Which is exactly what the judges did in Roe v. Wade. That is why legal liberals such as Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State support the law--and why conservatives should not.

As the U.S. government has been demonstrating for 75 years, ever since it initiated the police action that escalated into the War on Drugs, it's hard to stop transfers of goods from willing sellers to eager buyers. Hence drug warriors increasingly are shifting their focus to the proceeds of such transactions. The trouble is that "dirty" money looks very much like "clean" money, so seizing the profits of drug trafficking requires close surveillance of financial transfers. Already banks have to report large cash deposits, and anyone who tries to leave the country while carrying more than $10,000 risks losing the whole bundle if he fails to announce the fact. Now, under a regulation recently announced by the Treasury Department, all businesses that transmit money--including thousands of mom-and-pop operations throughout the country, as well as big companies such as Western Union and American Express--will have to register with the government by 2002. The next logical step is to require them to keep records of cash transfers for official inspection. The government claims that money laundering is the "Achilles heel" of the drug business. But at best, the crackdown will force traffickers to find other ways of enjoying their profits. Their inconvenience will be temporary, while the invasion of everyone else's privacy will be permanent.