Right. And yet some numbskull two threads down is still talking about Ruby Ridge and "Reno's federal thugs."

As if we didn't have any real problems in this country right now. Sheesh.

There are many unanswered questions from the Clinton years, and BHO should investigate them, rather than making threats about investigating the Bush administration.

Hey, give them some credit -- we still haven't heard a word about that haircut on the tarmac at LAX.

Yet.

Criminella. That right there is one of many reasons I opposed HRC's nomination in the primaries last year. If this is how they behave for former Clinton appointees, can you imagine the froth these bozos would spray if she had been the nominee?

It's strange living in a nation where fully a third of the populace is clinically insane. You go to public gatherings and rub shoulders with land mines.

And, hey, what about the Pueblo? Huh? Why don't they investigate that?

And, and, Huey Long. He was bad. Investigate him too.

Can I revisit the Teapot Dome scandal? How about that Eisenhower Administration Vicuna Coat brouhaha? What about the Checkers speech? What about Joe McCarthy? What about Watergate?

It's a tribute to the Dems that the Republicans have nothing more pressing to grouse about than Elian Gonzalez and Vince Foster.

The Republicans, I suspect, at long last sense that they are in deep, deep, oh-so-deep-and-gooey doo-doo.

Crankily yours,

If York and Goldberg are so fascinated with elite suicides, they ought to spend some time investigating the apparent suicide of this French guy (I forget his name) who used to administer money for some charitable fund or other an invested it with his trustworthy friend, Madoff. When the money disappeared, he killed himself. No suicide note at all. Now *that* is a mystery...

Al, your silliness knows no bounds. When W and his criminal band are in jail, then it might make sense to review what happened under the watch of the Bill Clinton, the only rational Republican we've elected to that office since Ike.

There are many unanswered questions from the Clinton years... -Al

Unanswered doesn't mean not answered the way you want.

But whatever, waste you energy rehashing this stuff. It'll make it all the easier to investigate and prosecute the actual crimes of the Bush administration.

Now get back into the circle jerk, Al. There's a gap between Jonah and Byron.

There are many unanswered questions from the Clinton years,

Hell, yeah!

Why did the House Republicans go ahead with the impeachment when their own senators told them to pound sand?

Was the impeachment process itself, and not Clinton the GOP's target? Was it all inoculation, from which Bush benefited enormously?

When does the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy apologize to Sen. Clinton?

Jeff Gerth and James B. Stewart. Who was the bigger hack?

Who's kinkier? Rep Livingstone or Sen. Vitter?

Hey, it's MY birthday, too (and Martin Luther King's). I had no idea that Vince Foster and I shared a birthday; the only other "famous" person seems to be Charo.

not knowing if any new porn will be 'coming' from the obama administration, the boys dust off some old copies of magazines they found laying around under the bed and behind the sofa...

Vince Foster's suicide was 15 years ago.

By way of comparison, World War II had only been over for 15 years when Kennedy was elected.

Idiots.

Of course the same folks who will be breathlessly bringing up all those Clinton-era non-scandals will be telling us in all seriousness that we need to let bygones be bygones when it comes to investigating and prosecuting Bush-era crimes and abuses of power like torture, warrantless wiretapping, and illegal politization of the executive branch.

Happy birthday phoebes!!!!!!!!!!

There may be two Al's, but I don't understand why people think this one is a real troll. He so frequently gives comments that are self contradictory, that I find it hard to believe he is not being satirical.

All the Clinton era happenings pale in comparison to the past eight years where our actual lives have been effected so negatively.

There are many unanswered questions from the Clinton years, and BHO should investigate them, rather than making threats about investigating the Bush administration.

President-elect Obama is going through great lengths to not make "threats" to investigate the GWB Admin. His approach is about looking forward and not backward. Where are you getting your misinformation from?

2009!?! 40th Anniversary of Chappaquiddick! And Woodstock!
Damn, it's going to be a golden year for the Vast Right Wing Whiners.

Moldy Oldies from the 1990s

One question: will the public buy this crap as eagerly as they went for it way back when?

And, equally important: will irrelevant re-investigations of Clinton-era fake scandals pre-empt legitimate investigations of the innumerable actual CRIMES of BushCo?

I'm thinking that The Public (i.e., us) needs to start making some noise with our elected officials and the media about what we actually WANT to see investigated and covered.

Hit the big sponsors, too - let 'em know that you'll simply fail to buy their stuff if you keep hearing irrelevant 1990s stuff on their "news" and commentary programs. With consumer demand on its knees and retailers closing, maybe this will have some impact.

Face it - doing SOMETHING has to be more effective than the traditional wallowing in cynicism.

Is this the best the right wing can come up with?

After all the dust settled back when Clinton left office, I asked myself the same question.

All this entry did was prompt me to ask the same question again.

Frankly, in 2009, if this is all the right has, I wouldn't be too worried.

The country can turn to more important issues, like fixing its problems, and investigating the real crime committed by the Bush Administration.

so this is what it looks like when a major political party runs completely out of ideas and has to desperately look for ways to fill the blank spaces. . . fascinating. nothing this interesting ever happened back when i was working on my poli sci degree.

so this is what it looks like when a major political party runs completely out of ideas

More accurately, runs out of presentable ideas it can put in the shop window and draw customers instead of half-bricks.

Divine-right monarchy, white supremacy, inbred aristocracy and the economics of David Ricardo never go away, they just go out of style.

It actually wasn't Clinton-hate that produced all the nonsense about Vince Foster. It was the media reaction to his death.

We had a guy thisclose to the President and the First Lady walk into a park and whack himself...and the Beltway media seemed to decide that asking why he did it was wildly inappropriate.

THAT'S the real root of the Foster paranoia, the fact that the initial press reaction to the suicide of a Presidential intimate was to pull an Officer Barbrady. "Move along! Nothing to see here!" If they'd asked some direct and blunt questions about why Foster killed himself, it would have taken much of the steam out of the nutjobs.

Mike

Behold the power of the Clenis! Fifteen years later, wingnuts still stare hypnotically at its gentle, glowing aura and dream of what might have been...

Jonah Goldberg and Byron York are off their meds. Again.

"If they'd asked some direct and blunt questions about why Foster killed himself, it would have taken much of the steam out of the nutjobs."

It would have only proven that there was a bigger and even more elaborate conspiracy!

So is Monica going to the Innaugural Ball or what??

And how many Iraq war veterans have committed suicide due to untreated PTST and depression? Just thought I'd bring that up in this "let bygones be bygones" era.

While I pretty much agree that it's silly to relitigate Vince Foster, a couple of brief posts on the Corner isnt exactly a major deal.

Moreover, I cant really get worked up over the fact that people on the right are talking about Elian Gonzalez, Marc Rich, and the rest.

Think about it - if 8 years from now a Republican is elected President and wants to bring in John Yoo as Attorney General, dont you think it's pretty likely that us folks on the left are going to want to bring up the stuff that Yoo did in the Bush administration? I sure would!

Rather that criticize the fact that they're bringing up the old stuff, why not actually criticize the points they're making?

I was looking over a daily almanac and saw that Vincent Foster would have been 64 years old today.

What almanac is that? The Almanac of Deranged Clinton Hating Wingnuts?

There are many unanswered questions from the Clinton years... -Al

We still don't know where exactly the little blue dress fits on the Clinton family tree, Ken Starr was never able to get Bill and Monica to "fully reenact the event" to his liking. Beyond those two I think Brian Ross has covered everything from the Clinton era.

Jonah and Byron should investigate the local enlistment office before their beloved war is over.

All "conservatives" miss the glory days of the Cult Of Clinton Hatred.

The only real content of the fake, phony, trumped-up, scripted, teleprompted, focus-group-tested, corporate-sponsored, pseudo-ideological cult called "conservatism" in America today is hatred of "liberals", just as the only real content of the pseudo-ideology of mid 1930s German brownshirts was hatred of "Jews".

And during the 1990s the focus of this cult of hatred was the Clintons. It was a time when "conservatives" could frolic in an orgy of pure hatred of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

When Cheney and Bush seized power in the bloodless coup of the stolen 2000 election, the programmers of this cult did their best to channel it into compulsory hero-worship of George W. Bush. And they were, for a time, successful -- as demonstrated by the comments of various Bush-bootlicking, talking-point-regurgitating, dittohead "trolls" who have posted here over the last eight years.

But hero-worship of Bush was simply never as satisfying to "conservatives" as hatred of Clinton -- especially as hero-worship of Bush became increasingly untenable, even for many Republicans. Many "conservatives" remain nostalgic for the good old days of Clinton hatred. That's what is shown by these comments that Steve Benen points to.

Now that a Democrat is about to become President again, "conservatives" are looking forward to a new era of hatred. Many of them are, in fact, gleeful about the prospect of the Obama presidency, which for them will represent a four to eight year long orgy of hatred of Obama and all things "liberal".

For "conservatives", Obama's election means that the good times of seething hatred are here again.

Just what was "travelgate" about anyway?

Happy birthday, phoebes!

So Vince Foster, who is dead, shares a birthday with Martin Luther King Jr., who, coincidentally, no doubt, is also dead. Martin Luther King was black, as is--get ready for this--the gentleman from Kenya who will be sworn in as president on Monday. Did Barack Hussein Obama, whose secretary of state will be the lesbian Hillary Clinton who had an affair with Foster, have anything to do with Foster's death? How much more evidence do you need?

Just what was "travelgate" about anyway?

The White House travel office serves at the president's pleasure. President Clinton didn't find them to his pleasure and replaced them with people who were. Some of those let go were Republicans, so much high-volume squawking ensued.

We had a guy thisclose to the President and the First Lady walk into a park and whack himself...and the Beltway media seemed to decide that asking why he did it was wildly inappropriate.

Yes, the media did, because Foster's suicide note said, "The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff." Take a look at the Travelgate backstory, where the media spent a lot of time talking about Hillary Clinton's "crimes" to cover up their own.

It's really a very simple story as long as you know that the media was accepting illegal benefits from the head of the White House Travel Office. Why would the media report the truth when the truth was that they were dishonest?

Rather that criticize the fact that they're bringing up the old stuff, why not actually criticize the points they're making?

Ok, how's this?

Vince Foster, Travelgate, Whitewater, the Clenis, etc. = minor pseudo-scandals and non-stories drummed up by Republicans with CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome), with help of a complacent, hacktackular MSM, which, while sometimes not reflecting well on Clinton's personal character, did not fundamentally threaten our democracy.

John Yoo = war criminal who, along with Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales, aided and abetted George Bush's efforts to subvert our Constitution and the balance of powers it prescribes while abrogating fundamental international treaties which the Constitution demands be observed as "supreme law of the land."

So, to recap: bringing up Travelgate 15 years later to raise doubts about Hilary Clinton = lame. Bringing up John Yoo 15 years later, if only to point out that he's not in a cell in the Hague = entirely appropriate.

Posted by: SecularAnimist on January 15, 2009 at 2:56 PM

So what you're saying is that conservatives make terrible managers when given the lead but they are great critics and backseat drivers?

Mnemosyne (3:05) - Great link, thanks. Must read if you don't remember or barely remember Travelgate.

Y'know, while the GOP's pushing to re-investigate old, closed cases, they might want to see if the Supremes will take another look @ Marbury v. Madison.

Morons. I really, really, really hope that they keep on doing this, since concentrating on problems from ~10 years ago while the country burns will surely boost their public approval right up into the stratosphere.

Morons,
-Z

The bottom line was that the Clinton administration fired the travel office director because they discovered he had something like $55,000 of travel office funds in his personal bank account, yet we were supposed to believe the SCANDAL was the firing, not the embezzlement.

RightWingers are from Bizarro World.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, doubtful@2.13p and shortstop@3.00p.

It's a lovely thought that this is my LAST fucking birthday with George W Bush as my president!

secularanimist--plus, Obama seems to be harder for them to attack, aside from the genuinely loopy "he's a commie pinko born overseas muslim secular humanist who wears plaid socks" stuff. As he actually does stuff, that may change, but Obama seems to have an ability to ward off attacks pretty well, so we'll see...

One wonders just how stuck in the past Byron is. I'm envisioning him driving an Oldsmobile, having a three-pound cellphone and wondering why he can't find UPN on his channel lineup.

Monica Lewinsky! Just because.

a three-pound cellphone -- noplot, @16:16

Please explain? Is it some kind of means of communication, used in monastic and penitentiary environment (cell-to-cell)? And why is the credit limit calculated in foreign currency (Great Britain Pounds), not in US dollars?

I have, just recently, re-read 25yrs worth of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines and it was amazing to see just how recently cell phones became a norm, rather than a curiosity. It was years and years before people were stuck, helpless, in poor reception areas, instead of just being stuck, helpless, with no means of communication other than smoke signals.

You mean they've finally given up on trying to find Barack Obama's birth certificate?

"Y'know, while the GOP's pushing to re-investigate old, closed cases, they might want to see if the Supremes will take another look @ Marbury v. Madison."

I seem to recall Tom DeLay calling for that, at least insofar as he argued that the concept of judicial review was illegitimate.

But what does Obama know re: who hired Craig Livingstone?

a three-pound cellphone -- noplot, @16:16
Please explain?

I think it just means it's one of the first models, when they looked like walkie-talkies.

I just noticed this quote from Mnemosyne's link:

In the famous "suicide note" that was eventually discovered in his briefcase, Foster wrote: "The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff."

So it's not just Jonah Goldberg that likes to put quotes around "suicide note". I have no idea why that is, but it seemed like it was worth mentioning...

The Wall Street Journal's fascist Editorial Page murdered Vincent Foster; as it has murdered the truth for the past 30 years - ever since small deficits were a huge deal under Jimmy Carter and huge deficits are nothing to worry about when any Rescumlican is in office.

And the whole paper is only getting worse now that it is a Rupert Murdoch property.

Vince Foster is the wingnut version of the Niagra Falls routine, as in:

"NIAGRA FALLS!!! Slowly I turned...step by step..inch by inch..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9lQe2YoBs

Does that mean that in fifteen, twenty years we will get around to dealing with the Bush Administration's Hatch Act violations, FISA Act felonies and war crimes? Even a few senile years in Spandau for Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Yoo, Addison et. al. would be greatly appreciated.

The current SCOTUS threshold for a MUST STAY of BHO’s inauguration is not whether he is ultimately determined constitutionally ineligible to be POTUS, merely whether there now is SERIOUS QUESTION on his constitutional eligibility, since any determination of inelligibility AFTER inauguration would pose unnecessary civil and military difficulties.