Posted on 06/10/2003 3:38:36 PM PDT by fightinJAG
Clinton book rips Hyde on impeachment
June 10, 2003
BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON--Hillary Rodham Clinton writes in her new book that she saw a "double standard'' in how Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) dismissed the news of his adultery that surfaced while Hyde was presiding over impeachment proceedings against her husband.
Hyde, then the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was "particularly intransigent'' in his opposition to a compromise that would have let the president escape with a censure rather than an impeachment trial, Clinton writes in Living History.
After being outed by Salon, an online magazine, Hyde acknowledged on Sept. 16, 1998, that he had a five-year affair with a Chicago woman in the late 1960s, when he was married. Salon during that time was critical of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's probe of Bill Clinton's fling with Monica Lewinsky.
Hyde, who was then 74, blamed the Clinton White House for the story and called his affair a "youthful indiscretion.''
"Despite my many personal and ideological differences with Hyde, I was sympathetic to his distress,'' Clinton writes, "although mystified that he didn't see the double standard in his reaction.''
Clinton's much-anticipated book, which fueled speculation she is laying the groundwork for a 2008 White House run, hit bookstores on Monday. The book, which snagged Clinton a $8 million advance, already has blockbuster potential.
Publisher Simon & Schuster spokesman Victoria Meyer said the company on Monday added another 100,000 to its initial order of 1 million copies.
In the 528-page memoir, Clinton tells of her family's roots in Chicago, her Park Ridge youth, her transition from a Goldwater Girl to a Democrat, her turbulent eight years as first lady and her decision to run for the Senate from New York.
Lewinsky's name first appears on page 441.
Clinton's autograph session at a Manhattan bookstore drew a crowd--some waited overnight to get in--and she will be on the book tour circuit this summer. She will hit most big cities between her regular Senate duties.
Clinton, who stayed popular in Illinois through all the White House scandals, reaches Chicago at the end of June. She has remained in constant contact with her friends from Park Ridge and they will throw her a party on June 27, which will be followed by a fund-raiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
On June 28, there will be a breakfast to benefit her political action committee, called HILLPAC, followed by a book-signing at Women & Children First bookstore at 5233 N. Clark.
She's had quite a run:
Looking for ghost voters
Clinton writes how as a kid, she and Park Ridge buddy Betsy Johnson Ebeling--still her good friend--sneaked downtown to look for ghost voters following the 1960 election, when Mayor Richard J. Daley was accused of stealing votes for John F. Kennedy.
Clinton went off with "total strangers'' to a "poor neighborhood'' on Chicago's South Side checking names against registration lists.
The girls had to sneak because they would not have been permitted to go if they asked their parents. Clinton writes when her father found out, "he went nuts. It was bad enough to go downtown without an adult, but to go to the South Side alone sent him into a yelling fit.''
Waste not
She tells how her late father, Hugh Rodham, who once ran a drapery business at the Merchandise Mart called Rodrik Fabrics, could not stand waste. His feelings were so strong that if Clinton or one of her two brothers forgot to put the cap back on a tube of toothpaste, "my father threw it out of the bathroom window.''
Rosty's bum steer
Clinton's big flop as first lady was her health care plan, a 1,342-page proposal. She writes that she wanted to give Congress only an "outline of principles that would shape the health care reform legislation,'' say, 250 pages.
She changed her mind at the behest of former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), the Chicagoan who headed the Ways and Means Committee.
"But we subsequently learned that Congressman Dan Rostenkowski expected us to produce a detailed bill, complete with legislative language.''
Giving Rosty what he wanted turned out be, Clinton writes, "a tactical mistake for us.''
Remember the Busy Bee
Clinton reflects on one of her biggest flaps, which happened just before the Illinois primary, on March 15, 1992, at the now-shuttered Busy Bee Restaurant at 1546 N. Damen.
"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and given teas," Clinton told reporters, trying to deflect charges from challenger Jerry Brown, who accused Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton of steering business to his wife's Rose law firm.
Writes Clinton, "It wasn't my most eloquent moment.''
Bill's hands
"His wrists are narrow and his fingers tapered and deft, like those of a pianist or surgeon."
Now his hands are "like their owner, weathered, but still expressive, attractive and resilient.''
It hurt
After transferring from Maine East to the new Maine South in her junior year, Clinton ran and lost for senior class president, "which did not surprise me but still hurt.''
Hyde's hearings
Clinton is blunt when she writes about the impeachment proceedings chaired by Hyde and writes it fell short of how the House Judiciary Committee handled matters during the 1974 Richard Nixon impeachment--which she worked on as a Democratic staffer.
"I was disgusted when Hyde announced that the committee would be calling Kenneth Starr as its main witness.''
During the "Soviet-style show trial procedure, Starr had to admit that he had not himself examined a single witness before a grand jury.''
Being as she was instrumental in forming the group that got and distributed this information, her crocodile tears are particularly repellant.
Chicago book signing info
Clinton was really being impeached for the thousands of other facts known which the spineless republicans had not the stomach for bringing forth out of fear for their own hides over their similar acts.
Clinton had banked on that fact and it worked. To judge the president over a horny girl with a slippery dugout bad manners only exceeded by the president's was just wrong.
I think they're only in favor of them when the accused is executed.
Passing the buck. Somehow I suspect Rosty was too shrewd to have done this. But didn't he get some sort of commutation from Clinton? He may choose not to go public with the truth on this.
Amazing isn't it? This "LITTLE" tidbit of data is LEFT OUT of every defense made of the cigar toting oval office and women abuser. Posterity, if left to the gimmies, will observe that a POTUS was IMPEACHED for nothing more than marital infidelity.
As John Adams and the Gipper used to say, facts are stubborn things. Clinton lied under oath to a federal judge in a sexual harrassment lawsuit and compounded his lie before a federal grand jury, for which he was impeached, held in contempt of court, lost his license to practice law and had to pay $700,000 to settle the lawsuit. We must repeat those facts at every opportunity.
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