Word: leached
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last Thursday, as Congressman Jim Leach (R.-Iowa) made serious-sounding allegations about the Whitewater affair for 45 minutes on the floor of the House, and then later on ABC's Prime Time Live and Nightline, millions of Americans wanted to know: Where on earth did he get that saggy pale green sweater? TIME has learned -- from sources deep inside Leach's office -- that it was a gift from his mother-in-law. No word about its last dry cleaning...
...those charges can be proved, they could harm the President far more than the ones he tried to turn aside in his news conference -- rated even by Republican foes as an impressively smooth performance -- or the accusations leveled by G.O.P. Congressman Jim Leach in a speech hours earlier on the House floor. The new charges involve not what obscure Arkansas wheeler-dealers did 15 years ago but what was said as recently as late February by George Stephanopoulos, the President's most trusted political adviser after his wife and the Vice President. And the story brings up the dread words...
...might get under way around May 1. That the House will match the Senate in conducting such hearings became likely -- though not quite certain -- last week, in somewhat roundabout fashion. Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, abruptly canceled a hearing into RTC matters last Thursday at which Leach, the ranking minority member, had planned to unveil some results of inquiries by his staff into Whitewater and Madison. In a letter to House Speaker Thomas Foley, Gonzalez ranted about a Republican "malicious campaign of character assassination" -- and called for full hearings into all aspects of Whitewater to counter that...
...what he may have said about Whitewater in phone conversations with Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman. As for congressional hearings, Clinton knows they will become a highly partisan circus. But the prospect nonetheless puts him in a dilemma pithily summarized by his chief Republican congressional tormentor, Iowa Representative Jim Leach: "If ((Democrats)) provide me a hearing, their President is likely to be embarrassed. If they don't, they look like they have been complicitous in working with the Executive Branch to block full disclosure...
...Watergate -- so far -- surpasses Whitewater by light-years in seriousness, there are disturbing parallels. Both concern whether what a President (and in the case of Whitewater, a First Lady) says can be believed. Whitewater, as Congressman Leach asserts, may be important "precisely because it is small ((and)) truth of character is more generally revealed in small acts than large gestures." It mattered that Lyndon Johnson lied about small things because he eventually lied (to the nation and, probably, to himself) about a very big thing, the Vietnam War. It matters if Bill and Hillary Clinton are telling the truth about...