Tilting at Windmills: - Bureaucratic Buddies Pentagon Payoffs White's Flights Mrs. Iron Triangle Judicial Mating Love vs. Manolo Blahniks

Washington Monthly, May, 2002 by Charles Peters

To attend to just the last of this litany, there is to my knowledge absolutely no evidence that Bill Clinton was corrupt in the sense that the word is usually applied to politicians, which is to say they padded their personal bank accounts with money paid to them for public favors. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton could have become a rich man, as many governors of similar states have, but he definitely was not rich when he left Little Rock. Hadn't he made money from Whitewater? Even the independent counsel says the answer is no. And however ill-advised some of his pardons may have been, there is no evidence he personally profited from them. Indeed, a large number of the pardons were for impecunious minor drug offenders.

ONE OF THE OLDEST SCANDALS in the medical profession is hospitals and senior physicians enriching themselves by overworking low-paid interns and residents. Is something finally going to be done? A bill in Congress called the Patient and Physician Safety and Protection Act sounds hopeful. But the "reform" it requires is limiting the work week to 80 hours with no more than 24 hours at one stretch. The problem is that research reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that a person who stays awake for 24 hours performs at the level of one who is legally drunk.

REMEMBER THE bullies who used to torment you on the playground? I was fortunate in having only two to contend with in my childhood, and each for a relatively short time. But those experiences were enough to make me appreciate what a nightmare bullying can be for its victim. Apparently these days their favorite targets are boys who are or who seem gay. My hometown paper, The Charleston Gazette, recently reported an example:

A boy named Matt had a picture drawn of him in art class. He was hanging from a noose and labeled a "faggot." As he was walking home a few days later, an older boy put his arm around him and said, "You're coming with me." After a few steps, he pushed Matt to the ground and he and a friend kicked Matt as a third boy laughed. They proceeded to light one match after another and drop it on his stomach. Finally, they let him scramble to his feet, yelling after him, "Run, faggot, run."

His mother appealed to school authorities. Here's what they did. They had Matt sit alone in the art class away from the other students, and they held his tormentors for 15 minutes after school. The authorities told his mother, "This would give him time enough to get home if he hurried."

THE FINAL REPORT OF WHITE-WATER independent counsel Robert Ray, whose objectivity has been certified by his candidacy for the Republican nomination for senator from New Jersey, said "that evidence [of criminal conduct by the Clintons] was, ultimately, of insufficient weight and insufficiently corroborated to obtain and sustain a criminal prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt." All that's missing is a wink and a nudge to accompany Ray's implication: "Boy, do we know they're guilty! We just don't have quite enough to satisfy legalistic judges."