Jones wasn’t a factor in the ’92 election because word of GHWB’s relationship with Jennifer Fitzgerald contered that.

As for Paula Jones — aka the tool the GOP used to start the decade-long $150-odd-million-plus fishing expedition run by Ken Starr’s OIC (go look up “Arkansas Project” sometime) — she couldn’t keep her stories straight:

The most compelling of Retter’s discoveries is his painstaking reconstruction of the events of May 8, 1991, the day Paula Jones claims she was propositioned by then-Gov. Clinton in an Arkansas hotel room. Retter concludes that due to the governor’s schedule that day, it is nearly impossible that he met Jones in the early afternoon, as she has claimed in court filings. Clinton had indeed been at the Excelsior Hotel in the morning delivering a speech but had returned to the governor’s mansion for a luncheon by the time he allegedly harassed Jones.

The Jones lawsuit — which was originally for defamation, by the way, but kept changing to fit Jones’ changing story — served mainly as a way to get Bill Clinton under oath to talk about sex. (Note that the judge tossed out the suit shortly after Clinton made his depo? It’s because it was bogus.)

They wanted him to deny, in a way that would hold up in court, that he’d had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. They were planning to use this to win the impeachment and removal trial, by claiming perjury. However, because the question about Lewinsky was not germane to what was alleged in the soon-to-be-dismissed Jones case, it meant that the perjury trap fell apart rather quickly.

For more on this, look up the work of Gene Lyons and Joe Conason.

Reminds me of HST’s descriptions of the bus tours done of Haight during the ‘Sixties — the same “ooh ooh ooh lookit the freaks!” vibe obtained there as well. But then the occasional hippy would run alongside the bus, holding up a mirror.

Would it help if you collected a bunch of stories from us elders on Really Dumbass Things We Barely Survived And Truly Regret?

Frankly, I’d rather see lots of piefights like this one than see FDL devolve into a monoculture that only allows utter and total agreement to one POV.

But again, if Bradley Manning’s wishes and welfare are what’s supposed to be paramount here, why not ask him how he feels about this, and if he approves?

Yeah, a lot of the letters to him might get held back — but not all of them. (And which letters didn’t get forwarded to him might be a story in itself.)

How about this: Why don’t you — or any other person who’s concerned about Bradley Manning — start up a MyFDL diary and call it “Writing Private Manning” or something similar? You could ask people to a) write to Pfc. Manning, and then b) report back after, say, three to four weeks, to see what happened.

If nothing else, the influx of so many letters on the same topic would show his keepers that a number of people still follow his fate. And if he sees some of the letters, he’ll know he’s not been forgotten.

It would be a way to put all the energy stirred up over this to good use.

Ah, yes, Charles Murray, Crossburner:

In all the recent hullaballoo over the not-so-subtle efforts by Andrew Sullivan and other right-wingers to rehabilitate him, let’s not forget that Charles “Bell Curve” Murray is also a known cross-burner.

As City Pages editor Steve Perry wrote back in the last century:

…Near the end of his high school days in Newton, Iowa, Murray and some of his pals went out one night and burned a cross next door to the police station. To my knowledge, the reams of coverage accorded Murray for his pseudo-scientific apologia on behalf of racism have produced only two mentions of this incident. One was in a 1994 New York Times Magazine profile, the other a bit later on the Donahue show. In both instances Murray protested that he had no idea as to the racial significance of cross-burning. There were only two black families in Newton in those days, an old school chum of his added in the Times piece. Well. As it happens, I grew up just 30 miles away from Murray’s central Iowa hometown, in an even smaller farming town with no black families at all. But somehow I managed to learn what cross-burning meant by the time I finished high school, and I expect Murray did too.

Please keep this in mind whenever you see any attempts to pretend that Murray isn’t a racist pig.

Heh!

Rule #1 of Racist Club: never put the rules in writing.

You can tell how frightened they are by how often they forget to speak in code.

I think that a long talk is in order, perhaps leavened with useful advice and aid.

Such as: “Honey, if you’re in a situation where the dumbest, drunkest and/or stonedest person is the one driving you around, call a cab — or call me and I will come get you. You don’t have to rat out your friends, just make it clear that you’re not going to take stupid risks.”

(Don’t tell anyone, but I haven’t actually smoked out of a bong for a good quarter-century now. That hookah in the corner is just where I keep my Pernod.)

One can think, as I do, that Bradley Manning is a patriotic whistleblower and also wonder about the wisdom of pushing a bid made on his behalf to be an SF Pride Grand Marshall. (As I and some others have noted already, it’d be nice to know what he himself actually wants. If he approves, fine. If he doesn’t, we should know about that.)

I likely have less in common with TBogg than I do with a lot of his more energetic detractors, but one thing I do notice is that his posts seem to be a lot more likely to get heavily retweeted and Facebooked than do posts in any other part of this site, so he must be doing something right.

TBogg’s house and Pam’s House Blend each bring in enough of a different crowd base to help keep FDL interesting. I don’t want it to become a monoculture where the same dozen-odd tribally-blinkered people Recommend each other’s identical postings. (Which reminds me: Why not try posting a diary over in MyFDL sometime?)

Did you look in the mirror when you typed that?

By the way, two of our better regulars (here and here) brought up the question of what Pfc. Manning himself thinks of all of this. Perhaps it might behoove someone to write him and try to find out?

You can write to Bradley at the following address:

Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211

Bradley is currently eligible to receive mail from anyone who wishes to write to him. Bradley does receive a good amount of mail from supporters; however, he usually only replies to family and longtime friends.

There are restrictions on what you can send. The military will reject any mail that violates postal regulations or contains obscenity, blackmail, contraband or threats. Additionally:

a) PFC Bradley Manning cannot receive any cash, checks, or money orders. His legal team is responsible for ensuring that Bradley has sufficient funds in his detainee account to purchase items such as stamps, envelopes, toothpaste, etc.

b) Photographs are only accepted if printed on copy paper. A maximum of six (6) pages are allowed. Pictures on photograph weight paper are not allowed.

c) Incoming mail will be returned to the sender if, in the opinion of the confinement facility, falls into any of the following categories: 1) Contains inflammatory material or advocates escape, violence, disorder or assault; 2) Directly or indirectly threatens the security, safety or order of the facility; 3) Contains coded or otherwise undecipherable language that prevents adequate review of the material; 4) Is received with “Postage Due”; or 5) Contains items of contraband (including anything of any material value, including postage stamps or cigarettes).

Hey, what happened to the Rule that you can’t say the C word at FDL?

That’s also a good question.

That’s a good question. I have no idea what he personally thinks of all of this.

The people at the Bradley Manning Support Network (which favors his being a Grand Marshall of the SF Pride parade) have the following contact information for him:

Thank you for supporting Bradley Manning! You can write to Bradley at the following address:

Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211

Bradley is currently eligible to receive mail from anyone who wishes to write to him. Bradley does receive a good amount of mail from supporters; however, he usually only replies to family and longtime friends.

There are restrictions on what you can send. The military will reject any mail that violates postal regulations or contains obscenity, blackmail, contraband or threats. Additionally:

a) PFC Bradley Manning cannot receive any cash, checks, or money orders. His legal team is responsible for ensuring that Bradley has sufficient funds in his detainee account to purchase items such as stamps, envelopes, toothpaste, etc.

b) Photographs are only accepted if printed on copy paper. A maximum of six (6) pages are allowed. Pictures on photograph weight paper are not allowed.

c) Incoming mail will be returned to the sender if, in the opinion of the confinement facility, falls into any of the following categories: 1) Contains inflammatory material or advocates escape, violence, disorder or assault; 2) Directly or indirectly threatens the security, safety or order of the facility; 3) Contains coded or otherwise undecipherable language that prevents adequate review of the material; 4) Is received with “Postage Due”; or 5) Contains items of contraband (including anything of any material value, including postage stamps or cigarettes).

Additional notes:

JBM is short for Joint Base Myer. HH is short for Henderson Hall–the unit that provides support services for JBM. Bradley has been officially “attached” to this support unit pending court martial. The commander of the unit is responsible forwarding Bradley’s mail appropriately, either to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, or to the DC area confinement facility where he is held during Fort Meade court proceedings. The actual location of Bradley’s DC area confinement remains classified, but members of Bradley’s legal team regularly visit him at this facility. They continue to report that Bradley has no complaints regarding his treatment at this location. As this facility is geographically close to Quantico, Virgina, where Bradley was subjected to torture-like conditions for ten months, this remains a concern of ours.

As the reactions to him show, quite clearly.

By the way: Note how many times this post was retweeted and Facebooked? More than any other Dissenter post this week — even more than the TBogg post that inspired it.

I notice that this post has been Liked fifty times on Facebook and retweeted 145 times on Twitter.

Meanwhile, this (very good) News post by DSWright has been Liked fifty-three times and retweeted 35 times.

Looks like regardless of what side or sides one chooses, a lot of people think TBogg’s post on this topic needs to be shared.