Replies

-Seattle Times
December 31, 1998
by John Hanchette
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - More than 150 theology professors and ethics scholars have published a withering protest of President Clinton's "manipulation of religion and debasing of moral language" during the national discussion about his impeachment.

The prominent ethicists and religion professors - many of them self-declared proponents of Clinton policies and from recognized bastions of liberal political thought - express doubt in President Clinton's "spiritual sincerity" in a "A Critical Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion."

Maxine,are you listening?

Precisely.
Only Republicans can out Lott. Are we going to allow ourselves to be blackmailed and follow the orders of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Democrats? Then we might as well just dissolve the Republican party and give up trying to turn the country around.

Whether you like Lott or not, he was elected by the Republicans in the Senate as majority leader. Are we going to let the piranhas and jackals hound him out of the office for a TRIVIAL, and yes, it was a trivial gaffe.

Remember he NEVER said anything about segregation, merely at the 100th birthday party of a guy tried to say something nice, "gee, the country would have been better off, if you got elected 50 YEARS ago". And how does anyone know that the country wouldn't have been better off? The big civil rights act didn't pass until 1964, it is not like it passed in 1948 or 1950 and MAYBE it wouldn't have, if Thurmond had been president. Am I getting the point across? We are dealing with HUGE maybes, nobody knows. And THAT is what all Republicans should come out and say over and over, just as Lott said in his very first apology. That while his statement was thoughtless, he never meant to promote nor endorse segregation, AND THAT people who read racism into it, are the ones who have a mind focused on racism.

Kind of like if a father kisses his daugther, just a simple father-daughter kiss, and some pervert comes around and accuses the father, that the simple kiss on the cheek means he is molesting his daughter, and start accusing the guy with incest. Now should we lock up the father and throw away the key based on some pervert's accusation? Maybe the father isn't your best friend, and you don't like him that much as a person, but do you think he should be punished, even if he didn't do anything wrong, just because a pervert is accusing him, you know he is not guilty, but don't like him that much. Is THIS fair? IMHO this is exactly what some Republicans want to do, when THEY get on the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton-Terry McAuliffe-Hillary bandwagon and demand that Lott step down.

If we, the Republicans and conservatives stand firm and tell the rest to just drop it and shut up, the jackals may scream howl for a while, but if they aren't getting anywhere, eventually it will disappear from the front pages and life goes on.

In the meantime let's get back to the business of the country -- isn't that what Clinton kept saying?!.

Let's focus on passing conservative judges, and President Bush's agenda.

It's time for some realism. We do not live in an ideal world, we don't get everything we want, we don't get all our favorites in all Senate and House leadership positions.

Right now what we got, is pretty good: we have Bush as president, and we have a Republican House and Senate. Are we going to blow it? Are we going to allow the Democrats to manipulate us into blowing it, so we can have more deadlock and NEVER get the judges passes? You all saw what was happening when the Democrats ruled.

I think we should support Lott forcefully, to send a signal to the Democrats that their shinanigans failed and it's time to move on. Whatever problems we may have with Lott, that is internal. Just because you are fighting with your spouse, you may even be contemplating a divorce, but when a burgler breaks in, you better fight the burgler, instead of being so busy fighting each other that the burgler will take everything you have.