Starr Crossed
Everybody leads with a federal judge's dismissal yesterday of the tax fraud
case recently filed against Webster Hubbell by Kenneth Starr. The Los Angeles
Times and Washington Post headlines put the matter flatly, speaking
only of the dismissal itself. The USA Today
headline goes further, stating, "Hubbell Ruling Hurts Starr on Whitewater." The
New York Times
goes further still, with the headline "In Slap at Starr, a Judge Dismisses
Hubbell Tax Case," and a second front-page piece flagged "New Rebuke, And
Harsher."
The federal judge, James Robertson, whom all the papers note is a Clinton
appointee, ruled that in pursuing the tax case against Hubbell, Starr exceeded
his authority and strayed too far from his original mandate of investigating
President Clinton's Arkansas real estate investments. Additionally, ruled the
judge, Starr turned Hubbell into an informant against himself in basing the tax
charges on records that Hubbell provided to him under a grant of immunity. The
view of some of the papers that the ruling was a quite personal assessment of
Starr is based in large measure on the judge's description of this records
seizure as "the quintessential fishing expedition."
The papers note that the adverse ruling is the latest in a string of
setbacks for Starr: his failed attempt to eradicate the postmortem
lawyer-client privilege, the death of cooperating witness James McDougal, the
release from jail of the non-cooperating Susan McDougal, and his failure thus
far to delve into communications between Clinton and his government-supplied
lawyers or into the observations made of Clinton by his Secret Service detail.
Most of the stories get a little lost among all these trees, with the
LAT alone in high up clearly sighting the forest: the ruling will
probably "make it more difficult for [Starr] to obtain evidence of alleged
criminal wrongdoing by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton," Hubbell's former law
partner. But, the NYT notes, according to the judge, the ruling doesn't
affect the Lewinsky branch of Starr's inquiry.
The NYT front reports that President Clinton taped an interview for play today on Chinese television in which
he signaled to ordinary Chinese citizens his support of continued greater
personal freedom and to the Chinese leadership that the U.S. has no wish to
impose its will on their country. A Times piece inside says the show
that will run the interview, the popular state-owned news magazine "Daily
Focus," resembles "60 Minutes" in that it features hard-hitting investigations
(mostly of local, not national officials) unthinkable just a few years ago. Two
differences though, according to the Times : the program has an audience
of 300 million viewers, and young reporters.
A few weeks back, the LAT reported that a women in the advanced
throes of childbirth asked for an epidural anesthetic to relieve her pain, only
to be told by the attending nurse that she couldn't have one unless she paid
for it on the spot. The suffering woman offered to write a check or use a
credit card, but no, said the nurse, it had to be cash. So the woman went
without. Today, the paper's front reports that the hospital has apologized to
the mother and has promised the state of California that it's instituting a
policy of epidural anesthesia to women in labor on demand, regardless of their
ability to pay.
The Wall Street Journal "Business Bulletin" reports that the
growth of registered trademarks using such words as "cyber," "link," and "web"
was off 14 percent last year. Two exceptions that remain on the rise are "tech"
and "power."
In a LAT "Column Left," Alexander Cockburn reports on a survey
recently filled out by 141 Washington journalists. Among the results: While 77
percent of the general populace think too much power is in the hands of a few
large companies, only 57 percent of the reporters asked think this. And for
information for a story on economic issues, over half the respondents usually
call someone in the government, while 31 percent usually call someone in the
corporate sector. Only 5 percent contact someone in the labor movement.
Back to Clinton in China: The president, reports the NYT , visited a
housing development illustrating the very recent Chinese phenomenon of
privately owned residences, and told families there that home ownership is an
investment in society, the bedrock of middle-class life. Wonder if the
Times had trouble resisting the observation that it's an investment
Clinton's never made, a bedrock he's never stood on.
