There's Backwards and there's . . .

BurkeWords

Monday, November 17, 1997

Ron Brown died at a convenient time for the Clinton administration when his plane flew into the side of the mountain. Naturally, many Clinton conspiracy buffs used the opportunity to claim that the President had arranged it.

Well, if he arranged that one, he screwed up Hillary's flight. The First Lady took off for the former Soviet Union last week, but it took two tries to get going. On the first try, the plane dumped its fuel and returned home.

Watch out, Hillary! Maybe there was more than meets the eye in that case of papers found in that car wreck in Arkansas. Your hubby Bill could be covering some more tracks.

But seriuously, folks. If the President wanted to bump off the First Lady, as Hollywood has been suggesting repeatedly for the last couple of years, why would he do it here, where she could land and stay with him for another day. It would be much more advantageous to let her sit in the Soviet Union for a while due to engine troubles.

And how ironic is it that Bill sent Hillary off to Siberia!

"Do what I tell you, or you're a racist."

No, I can't tell you who spoke those exact words, though many have spoken code words that amount to the same thing. It's easy to spot these guys, they're the ones claiming that Republicans are using code words to hide their racism.

The search to pervert the Civil Rights Act has temporarily left California, where Proposition 209 was allowed to stand by the Supreme Court of the United States, and has shifted to the U.S. Senate. That's because the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to approve Bill Lahn Lee to head the Justice Department's civil rights division.

According to Jesse Jackson, such an action constitutes "a hate crime." And I'm not making this quote up, it was reported, among other places, in the Wall Street Journal.

I wonder if Jesse is hurling that slur at the Democrats. After all, they were the ones who blocked the vote until springtime in an effort to find some more support. The G.O.P. was ready to vote and send the nomination back to the White House for another try. Of course, there's a problem there, too.

According to a spokesman, the Republcans want "someone who subscribes to the fairly far right thinking of those in the Senate that want to interpret the Constitution according to their whim."

I don't know. Maybe they want someone who agrees with the Supreme Court on the issue of Proposition 209, a measure that Lee still opposes.

"Ancestors, birthplaces, skin color and X chromosomes are not components of sound engineering or management," wrote Judge Lynn Hughes.

Those were the words of a federal district judge in Texas. Judge Lynn Hughes struck down an "affirmative action" program for the transit authority that divied up the contracts on the basis of race.

I've been mentioning for a couple of weeks now about the use of the line-item veto on the military budget. Or rather, I've been complaining that he hasn't done what he should have with his newly-found power.

Well, I can give him one compliment, a very begrudged one. Congress voted to reinstate all 38 projects he vetoed. Keep in mind, this wasn't an override attempt, it was a separate piece of legislation. Clinton vetoed it, but only because he didn't want all 38 projects restored.

Now that fast track has been shot down, we can only hope he doesn't want the 29 projects he vetoed "by accident".