Capital briefs

Human Events, Jun 25, 1999

* FORBES KICKOFF: For all of the talk of his deploying his vast personal wealth to underwrite his presidential bid, Steve Forbes kicked off his campaign last week with a little help from his friends. More than 1,200 supporters showed up at a gala dinner Wednesday night at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, chipping in more than $1 million for the Forbes campaign. With novelist Christopher Buckley as emcee-and his parents Pat and William F in attendancethe Forbes event was hosted by a slew of notables, including Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, comedienne Joan Rivers, onetime New York GOP gubernatorial nominee Lewis Lehrman, Wall Street wizards Leslie and Tom Quick, and former Reagan Administration officials Caspar Weinberger, John Herrington and Helene Von Damm. The national campaign chairman of Forbes 2000 is Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and the cochairman is Godfather's Pizza chairman Herman Cain.

* CLINTON DEFERS TO INHOFE AND SMITH: The White House finally promised to give the Senate advance notice of key appointments the President plans to make while Congress is in recess, thus ending the "hold" that GOP Senators Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Bob Smith (N.H.) had on all major Clinton appointments. After the President's recent "recess" appointment of homosexual activist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg (which bypasses the Senate confirmation process and permits Hormel to serve until this session of Congress ends late next year), an angry Inhofe, joined by Smith, invoked senatorial courtesy to bottle up all major presidential appointments. With the White House acquiescing to what Inhofe wanted, the senator lifted his hold last week. Until the White House acquiesced on future recess appointments, Inhofe had said he would keep his hold on all Clinton nominees "until I die:'

* SHALI SCAM: Several publications-including HUMAN EVENTS (see "Capital Briefs" last week)-recently reported a sensational 2,000-word e-mail message listing retired Gen. John Shalikashvili as its author and blasting the Clinton's Administration's Kosovo policy in no uncertain terms and concluding that the world after Kosovo would be a "New World Disorder." But the message is a fraud. Besieged by calls from around the nation, Shalikashvili last week denounced the e-mail-which purported to come via old West Point friends of his-as a forgery, insisting, "Someone has stolen my name"

Shalikashvili (who now lives in Steilacoom, Wash.) told the Seattle Post Intelligencer that the controversial e-mail "doesn't represent my sentiment [on Kosovo] at all" and that he has been careful since retiring in 1997 not to comment on military operations out of respect for his Joint Chiefs of Staff successor, Gen. Henry Shelton. The retired general said he had received a call from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who had been handed a copy of the e-mail by the president of Finland, concerned that the article might complicate negotiations between NATO and Yugoslavia. Initially planning to ignore the e-mail, Shalikashvili said he decided to break silence because he kept hearing about it from former co-workers and "this thing doesn't seem to be dying"

* NO RIGHT TURNS, SAYS FORD: The Republican Party can win the presidency next year "unless it nominates someone from the right" So said former President Gerald Ford at a recent "Headliners Breakfasf' at Washington, D.C's Capitol Hill Club. Noting that Democrats lost the presidency with "three candidates from the left-McGovern, Mondale and Dukakisand finally won it when they nominated someone who seemed from the middle," the 85-year-old Ford voiced the familiar line that only a middle-of-the-roader can win the presidency. He did not explain how Ronald Reagan was twice easily elected President or which current GOP hopefuls are "from the right."

HATCH HEARINGS: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) has apparently secured the White House's commitment to nominate his friend and fellow conservative GOPer Ted Stewart as a U.S. District Court judge. Having refused for weeks to hold hearings on any Clinton appointments to the federal bench until Stewart was formally nominated, Hatch last week commenced hearings on the President's choices for eight of the 42 judicial vacancies, a sign he expects Stewart to soon be publicly named.

* BERZON SPELLS TROUBLE: Among the most controversial of Clinton's current nominees is Marsha L Berzon, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and former board member of the ACLU, whom Clinton wants to put on the already liberal9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. "From the right-to-work point of view, this is without doubt the worst judicial nomination President Clinton has made" National Right to Work Committee President Reed Larson said last week. "Berzon is not a pragmatic professional doing legal work for unions and feminist groups just to make a living. She is a believer" Along with Berzon's own statement that she has "devoted substantial part of my practice to aiding labor organizations;' Larson cited the nominee's involvement with feminist causes, notably the California Women Lawyers, which presented Berzon with its coveted Fay Stender Award in 1987.