What You Mean "We"...

Greetings from the Left Coast! Back on October 3, we talked about the Phony Phony Soldier Controversy, and the unprecedented letter that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 40 other Democrats sent to Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel Communications. The letter asked Mays to publicly repudiate comments allegedly made by Rush Limbaugh (Clear Channel is the syndication partner for Limbaugh's show) and ask Limbaugh to apologize for them. The short story is that the comments had been taken out of context and distorted, as anyone with half a brain could tell.

So...a week or so ago, Mark Mays made the original of the letter available to Limbaugh, who posted it for auction on eBay, with the proceeds to go to the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation, a charitable group that provides financial assistance to the children of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers. The auction closed yesterday - for $2,100,100! This amount broke - in fact, more than doubled - the record for an item sold through eBay Giving Works - previously, the most expensive item sold was a Harley-Davidson from Jay Leno that went for a little over $800,000 back in 2005.

Shortly before the auction closed, Harry Reid took the Senate floor to apologize to Mark Mays, Rush Limbaugh, and all of the American people for the egregious abuse of power this letter represented, and promised to resign his senate post and spend the rest of his life raising money for charitable organizations that benefit the families of our fallen soldiers.

Hahahahahahaha....hahahahahahaha....*gasp*...hooooooooo!*pant*...*pant*...heheheheeeee. Golly, sometimes I just crack myself up! Of course he didn't do any of those things! Are you kidding me?

Well, actually, he did go to the Senate floor, and he did talk about the auction, and said it was "very, very constructive." "What could be a more worthwhile cause?" he said. "Never did we think that this letter would bring money of this nature," said Senator Reid. (emphasis added) Well, that's got to be the understatement of the year! Yeah, I'm sure it never entered into your wildest dreams, Senator, that the letter could backfire on you to this extent. He went on to say, "I don't know what we could do more important than helping to ensure that children of our fallen soldiers and police officers who have fallen in the line of duty have the opportunity for their children to have a good education."

So, let me get this straight: I guess now we are supposed to thank Senator Reid, because if he hadn't written this letter smearing Rush Limbaugh, then it couldn't have been auctioned off for all this money that's going to a good cause. You do understand, don't you Senator, that the only reason this letter was worth anything is that it represents one of the most outrageous abuses of political power in recent memory? That's what gives it the kind of historical value that would make someone pay over $2 million for it. Apart from that, Senator, I'm not sure anyone would give a plugged nickel for one of your letters.

I remember a rather tacky old joke (politically incorrect by today's standards, I'm sure) about the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Seems that they found themselves one day surrounded by hostile Apaches with no obvious way of escape. The Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said, "Well, Tonto, looks like we're really in trouble this time!" To which Tonto replied, "What you mean 'we,' white man?"

Rush Limbaugh, by the way, has pledged to personally match the $2,100,100 selling price, thus doubling the donation to the charity. He made this pledge when the letter first went up for auction, and called on Senator Reid and the other forty signatories to do the same. They've all been strangely silent on that issue. If they (or you) would like to donate, they (or you) can just go to http://www.mc-lef.org/Index.asp. The link is right there on Rush Limaugh's home page for their (and your) convenience. But until Senator Reid puts his money where his mouth is, pardon me for asking: "What you mean 'we,' Senator?"

Thanks for listening.

BullSCHIP!

Greetings from the Left Coast! This is my second blog entry today, but, dang it, there's just so much going on that demands attention! This entry returns to the subject of why I just can't imagine myself voting for a Democrat.

Today, Congress failed to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill. The Democrats are, as you might expect, accusing Bush and the Republicans who stood with him of heartlessly denying health care to millions of poor children. Here's a representative sample:

From the L.A. Times: "President Bush's bullheaded insistence on sabotaging reauthorization of the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP, will hurt the very people -- poor and middle-class Americans -- he claims he wants to protect." The Times goes on to refer to the Democrats' "relatively modest plans to increase funding..."

MSNBC ran the story on their Web site accompanied by a picture of Nancy Pelosi and a 2-year-old from Tampa, FL, who "was born with a serious heart condition and relies on...(SCHIP) for her health coverage." The implication is clear: those mean Republicans, led by the evil President Bush, want to deny poor Bethany access to health care for her heart condition.

Harry Reid has emphatically stated that he will not compromise with the administration on the issue. Pelosi promises she will keep working to find the votes needed to override the veto. Her words: "This isn't even an issue anymore...it's a value."

Singer/Songwriter Paul Simon called the decision "heartless." (Note to Paul: Love your music, but it doesn't automatically qualify you to set national fiscal policy. Go record another album, will you please?)

I'm sure you'll continue to hear plenty from radio, TV, and your local newspaper about what a terrible thing Bush and the Republicans did.

Here's the truth:

As the L.A. Times states, SCHIP stands for "State Children's Health Insurance Program." Under the program, the Federal Government gives money to the states (and let me again remind you that the only money they have to give away is ours - yours and mine) so the states can use it to provide health insurance coverage for children of families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to pay for private health insurance.

In 2006, federal funding of the SCHIP program totaled roughly $5.5 Billion. President Bush did not oppose renewing SCHIP funding. In fact, he asked Congress to increase the funding by roughly $1 Billion per year. Did you get that? The President was willing to sign a bill that would have increased SCHIP funding by around 20%. But that wasn't good enough for Congress. Congress wanted to double the funding. (That's a "relatively modest" increase to the L.A. Times.)

As things stand today, families who earn up to roughly $41,000 per year, which is twice the federally-defined "poverty level," can qualify for SCHIP subsidized health insurance coverage. The Democrats' plan would have increased that ceiling to three times the poverty level. That's $61,950 per year for a family of four. New Jersey would have been allowed to cover families with incomes of up to $72,275 for a family of four. New York was seeking a waiver that would have allowed them to cover families with incomes up to $82,600 for a family of four. (Hmmm...isn't there a Senator from New York who is an avid proponent of federally funded universal health care? And isn't she running for President? Ya think she'll be spinning this as a campaign issue?)

Now, I don't know about your neighborhood, but most of the people I know don't consider families who make $61,950 per year to be particularly "needy." So I'm not sure why you and I should be expected to subsidize their health insurance premiums. In point of fact, the Congressional Budget Office itself estimated that, had the bill passed, roughly two million people would have dropped private health insurance to go on publicly-funded insurance.

Hey, I'd love to have someone else pay my health insurance premiums, too. I'm a partner in a rather small business, and it's danged expensive, given the number of employees we have, for the business to pay those premiums. But I don't think it's right to ask you to pay my health insurance premiums. If you don't agree with that, heck, just send your check directly to me and I'll make sure that 100% of it goes toward my health insurance coverage - there won't be anything wasted on adminstrative overhead! Any takers? No? Hmmmm.

Well, how about this: tomorrow evening, just canvass the neighbors on your block. Knock on their doors, and explain that in the spirit of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, you're asking all of them to chip in to pay your health insurance premiums for you. Let me know how that goes, will you?

So keep all this in mind as you hear the Democrats, and their willing accomplices in the media, beating the drums about how the President vetoed coverage for all these millions of poor children and what a terrible thing it was. The fact is that he wanted the coverage renewed. He even wanted the coverage increased by about 20% per year. He didn't agree that it should be doubled. And, as a matter of fact, neither do I.

Some time ago, Scott Adams made the very astute observation in his "Dilbert Blog" that people on both extremes of a given issue tend to frame their arguments by misrepresenting the other side's position, then attacking the misrepresentation. He's correct in that both the extreme left and the extreme right tend to do that. It seems to me, though, that it's standard operating procedure for the Democrat party...and the biggest problem is that when they do it, the story is picked up and amplified by the media and they harp on it, and harp on it, and harp on it, until it becomes the conventional wisdom.

I'll try to be nice here and just say that the Democrats' arguments strike me as, shall we say, disingenuous. That sounds better than me saying that they're a bunch of lying S.O.B.s. Either way, I'm not voting for them. Not now, not ever.

Thanks for listening.

ABC to the Terrorists: Come On Down!

Greetings from the Left Coast. As I was driving home this afternoon, through the first serious wind storm of the season, I heard something on the ABC radio newscast that caught my attention. They were reporting that the TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago O'Hare had missed up to 75% of the phony "bombs" during recent test runs by federal agents.

Am I the only one who thinks that it was pretty stupid to broadcast this story? I didn't need to know this, and neither did you. What we needed was for the government to quietly get to work on solving whatever the problem was. What we most emphatically didn't need was a major news network saying, in effect, "Yo, terrorist dudes, come on down! Now's your big chance - the odds are 3:1 in your favor at the moment!"

Yeah, yeah, freedom of the press, blah blah blah, public has the right to know, etc., etc. I'm sick of journalists hiding behind those cliches to justify their own irresponsible behavior. There are lots of things in life that I have the right to do, but I don't do them - just because I can doesn't mean I should. What a concept. But I suspect that they don't spend a lot of time talking about that in your modern school of journalism.

How about some common sense, folks? How about actually putting the welfare of your own country ahead of breaking a story? Oh, wait, I forgot - the TSA is part of the Executive Branch of government, and Bush is still the President, so any story that might reflect badly on the administration takes precedent over any other concerns. Besides, if ABC hadn't run the story, they'd just look bad because CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc., etc., would surely run it, and then ABC might look....like what, exactly? Like they were showing some leadership in responsible journalism? Like they were maybe rooting for their own country? Like they were actually concerned about the possible consequences of the stories they broadcast? Can't have that!

OK...deep breath...flame off...put down the soapbox and back away slowly...

Thanks for listening.

Blah Blah Blah Ginger Blah Blah Ginger Blah Blah Blah

Greetings from the Left Coast. One of my favorite Gary Larson The Far Side cartoons was the one that contrasted what you say with what your dog hears. What brought this to mind was the recent article that ran in just about every newspaper in the country about how retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, leveled a "sweeping indictment" of the situation in Iraq. From the New York Times to the Everett Herald, it was the same thing. HERE is a link to the New York Times version of the story.

Here's what didn't get reported. General Sanchez was addressing the annual conference of Military Reporters and Editors, and as part of his comments he delivered a scathing indictment of media bias in the coverage of the Iraq war. He said, in part,

"As I understand it, your measure of worth is how many front-page stories you have written, and unfortunately some of you will compromise your integrity and display questionable ethics as you seek to keep America informed...For some, it seems that as long as you get a front page story there is little or no regard for the 'collateral damage' you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct...The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war...For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own pre-conceived notions, biases and agendas."

Didn't read that in your local paper, did you? I encourage you to read more of what General Sanchez had to say. You can find it HERE.

"Blah blah blah Bush is bad blah blah blah blah Iraq is a disaster blah blah blah blah blah." It would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous.

Thanks for listening. I can only hope you actually heard everything.

A REALLY Inconvenient Truth

Greetings from the Left Coast! There are days when it feels like I am trapped on the wrong side of the looking-glass, and today is one of those days. (Anyone who doesn't understand the reference I just made needs to spend some time reading Lewis Carroll.) The Nobel Prize committee in Oslo, Norway, today awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore. Oh, and also to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Peace Prize. Setting aside for a moment that there is still a fair amount of scientific controversy about climate change, regardless of what you may have heard elsewhere, how does this relate to peace?

I spent a fair amount of time on the official Nobel Prize Web site today trying to find some statement of what the guidelines for nomination might be. I was not successful. However, in reviewing the list of people and organizations who have won the Peace Prize over the years, nearly all of them had something to do with, well, peace. Or at least with humanitarian efforts that relieved human suffering, like Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, or the Red Cross. (The glaring exception being the award to Yasser Arafat in 1994, whose primary contribution to peace was killing innocent people.) Climate change? Peace Prize? I'm not getting the relationship.

Al won the prize, of course, largely because of his film An Inconvenient Truth. That film, if you recall, also won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. There were a few people who protested that the film shouldn't even have been considered in the Documentary category, because, according to the Academy's own rules, a documentary "may be photographed in actual occurrence, or may employ partial re-enactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other techniques, as long as the emphasis is on fact and not on fiction." (emphasis added) The protesters pointed out that several aspects of the film, including the scene of the poor drowning polar bears, failed this test. Of course, as most people expected, political correctness trumped factual accuracy, and Al got his Oscar.

Interestingly enough, the announcement of the Nobel award comes hard on the heels of an announcement that a British court has found that the film does indeed contain at least nine inaccuracies, is politically biased, and that teachers who want to show it to their students must warn them of the bias and inaccuracies first. James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environmental policy at The Heartland Institute, elaborated on the courts findings:

• The film claims global warming is responsible for the gradual retreat of the alpine glacier atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. Scientists have conclusively demonstrated no such link exists.
• The film presents graphs indicating that fluctuating carbon dioxide levels have always preceded and caused global temperature fluctuations. In fact, temperature changes have always preceded carbon dioxide changes.
• The film suggests global warming caused Hurricane Katrina. Few hurricane experts believe this, and substantial scientific evidence indicates global warming is having no impact on hurricane frequency or intensity.
• The film asserts global warming is causing Central Africa's Lake Chad to dry up. In fact, land use practices are causing the drying up of Lake Chad, and Central Africa is in an unusual and prolonged wet period.
• The film asserts global warming is leading to polar bear deaths by drowning. Yet the only documented drowning deaths occurred due to a freak storm, and polar bear numbers are growing substantially.
• The film claims global warming threatens to halt the Gulf Stream and initiate a new ice age. The vast majority of scientists who have studied the issue have determined such a scenario is implausible.
• The film asserts global warming is causing the destruction of coral reefs through bleaching. Scientists have identified other causes for coral bleaching and have additionally noted bleaching is a natural process by which coral continually selects ideal symbiotic algae.
• The film asserts Greenland is in danger of rapid ice melt that will raise sea levels by 20 feet or more. The scientific consensus is that any foreseeable Greenland ice melt will be gradual and will take centuries to substantially raise sea levels.
• The film asserts the Antarctic ice shelf is melting. In fact, only a small portion of Antarctica is getting warmer and losing ice mass, while the vast majority of Antarctica is in a prolonged cold spell and is accumulating ice mass.

According to Taylor, the court also took into account Al Gore's statement in Grist Magazine that "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [global warming] is."

Um...Al...an over-representation of factual presentations? Is that anything like the over-representation of facts that went, "I did not have sex with that woman?" Guess you were paying attention during those 8 years you worked for Bill.

So the real inconvenient truth here is that the Academy Award, and now the Nobel Peace Prize, has been awarded largely on the basis of inaccuracies and "over-representations." Olympic athletes who are caught cheating have to give back their medals - how about it, Al? Gonna give back the Oscar? No, I didn't think so.

Every American soldier who has been wounded or killed in Iraq or Afghanistan is more deserving of this prize than Al Gore. Every family member of every American soldier who has been wounded or killed in Iraq or Afghanistan is more deserving of this prize than Al Gore. I find it absolutely outrageous. And don't even get me started on awarding a Peace Prize to anything associated with the United Nations.

If you want to get a more balanced view of the whole global warming industry - and make no mistake, it is an industry that's making a lot of money for a lot of people, including Al Gore - read this article by Sci Fi author Orson Scott Card, then do an Internet search on Stephen McIntyre. But in case you don't have time to do that, here's what we really know about global warming:

• The earth's climate is constantly changing.
• We are currently in a warming period, and have been since the end of the last Ice Age.
• There have been times in recent history (meaning over the last couple thousand years) when the overall climate was warmer than it is today. A warm period during the heyday of the Vikings allowed them to establish farming communities in Greenland.
• There is NOT consensus in the scientific community over what impact mankind may have on climate change, nor over whether we are even capable of doing anything about it.
• It's likely that the solar cycle has more effect on the global climate than anything we do or don't do.
• One good volcanic eruption will cause more climate change than anything we've done in the last thousand years. (Just do an Internet search on "Mount Mazama" - which is now known as Crater Lake.)
• Pollution is bad, and we should try to do less of it.

Thanks for listening - and stay warm out there!

Back to School Reading Recommendation

Greetings from the Left Coast! From time to time, we'll share with you some of the contents of our Left Coast Reading Room. Since school has started, we'll start things off on an educational theme.

Over the summer, I picked up Volume II of William Bennett's synopsis of American history: America the Last Best Hope. I read Volume I shortly after it was published in 2006, and snapped up Volume II as soon as I knew it was available. I cannot adequately express how strongly I recommend this work. If you have a child who is studing American history, please buy these books for your child. Even better, if you have children who have not been completely indoctrinated with the brand of history that's being taught in today's public school systems, buy these books for them! Read them yourself. They're even entertaining enough that you could read them out loud to your older elementary school age children.

This is the most refreshing and enjoyable historical work I have read in a very long time. While not glossing over the darker episodes in our nation's history, Bennett clearly believes that there is much about America that is worth remembering, and cherishing. Here is an excerpt from the introduction to Volume I:

"I wrote this book for many reasons. The first and most important is the need for hope. When President Lincoln wrote to Congress in December, 1862, shortly after he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote, 'We shall nobly save or meanly lose this last best hope of earth.' For nearly a century before that message - and easily for a century afterward - Americans would not have doubted that this country was indeed that last best hope...I believe America is still that hope, but I also believe that our conviction about American greatness and purpose is not as strong today. Newspaper columns and television reports are full of cynicism. Many express doubts about American motives on the world stage. Some Americans seem ready to believe the worst about our leaders and our country. Thinking and believing the worst certainly is not hopeful. It is my humble wish that those who read this book will find reason to reclaim some of the hope and conviction we have lost."

Later in the introduction, Bennett quotes from Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address, delivered as he was leaving office:

"There is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

"An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over thirty-five or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

"But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't institutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs [protection].

"So we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important - why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those thirty seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word.

"If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."

I'm sorry to say it, but things haven't gotten much better in the almost 20 years since Reagan spoke those words. In fact, they've arguably gotten much worse. There is an erosion of the American spirit, and it is being driven by popular culture, by school systems whose curricula are driven by what's fashionable and politically correct, by news broadcasts anchored by individuals who worry out loud about whether it's inappropriate to wear a flag lapel pin and feel that their credibility would be compromised if they were perceived to actually be rooting for their own country. All things considered, in a way I'm glad that a true patriot like Ronald Reagan didn't live to see the likes of Fahrenheit 911.

William Bennett has done a marvelous job of telling us what's important in the sweep of American history, and managed to make it interesting and entertaining in the process. Please. Read these books.

Short Attention Span Theater - Part III

Greetings from the Left Coast! As you know, Short Attention Span Theater focuses on those items that Democrats really hope the American People have forgotten about. We here at LeftCoastBlues feel it is our patriotic duty to remind you of them.

I heard an interesting item on the radio this morning. Apparently Sandy Berger is now an "informal, unpaid advisor" to the Hillary Clinton campaign. The campaign has stated that he "has no official role," but he has "valuable and welcome input that he is providing voluntarily." Reports are that the arrangement is similar to the one Berger had with John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign. You may not remember this, but Kerry severed ties with Berger when Berger was inconveniently caught stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives.

I don't want to take up a lot of room here describing the case. Internet search engines are wonderful things, and if you simply put in "Sandy Berger" + "National Archives" (I even did it for you) you'll find a wealth of information. Bottom line: In 2003, he stole highly secret documents from the National Archives - documents that were classified at what is known as "code word" level. That's one of the highest levels of secrecy we have. People who are authorized to remove those documents from the secure room in which they are kept have to do it in a locked case handcuffed to his or her wrist. (Yes, they actually do that - it's not just something you see in the movies.)

Berger not only took the documents, he admitted to destroying some of them. He also smuggled out his own handwritten notes that were supposed to have been examined and cleared before he could take them. Then he lied about the whole thing as long as he could. Finally, in 2005, he pleaded guilty to a single count of "unauthorized removal and retention of classifed material." He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Oh, and he lost his security clearance for three years. Yep, three years. As near as I can tell, that means that sometime in 2008, a man who stole highly classified documents from the National Archives will actually be eligible to get his security clearance back. What a great country, huh?

Now he's advising the Clinton campaign. Perhaps he's advising them on how double-standards work in Washington. I recall another legal case recently in which Scooter Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying to investigators in the investigation over the alleged "outing" of Valerie Plame. The Democrats and the media spun that case for all they were worth to try to build the perception that Libby, working on behalf of people higher up in the Bush administration, had "outed" Plame in retaliation for her husband's criticism of pre-war intelligence. But the fact is that very early on in the investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was actually the first to leak Plame's name to the media - but Fitzgerald continued to pursue other people until he finally caught Libby in what is known in the legal biz as a "process crime." The court never determined - or even allowed any evidence - about whether Libby had actually violated the Intelligence Identites Protection Act, which prohibits revealing the identities of secret agents. Personally, I'm still scratching my head over (1) why Fitzgerald never brought any charges against Armitage, who actually committed the act that the whole investigation was supposed to be about, and (2) why Fitzgerald kept the investigation going when he already knew whodunit.

Scooter Libby: 2 1/2 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for what could have simply been a bad memory about who said what to whom and when, when the prosecutor already knew that he wasn't guilty of the crime the investigation was allegedly about. Sandy Berger: two years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine for stealing and destroying highly classified documents from the National Archives. Somehow that doesn't add up to me.

The documents in question, by the way, were the "after action" reports on the thwarting of the "millennium bombing" plot of 1999/2000 - reports which some have claimed are highly critical of the counterterrorism efforts of the administration that at the time was being run by the husband of the candidate Sandy Berger is now advising. Heck, maybe he does have some valuable and welcome input, along the lines of, "Here's how not to do it, Mrs. Clinton."

I think there is a lesson to be learned here, though (besides the obvious one, I mean): If you're ever questioned under oath about exactly when you said or did something, regardless of how confident you are in your memory, the correct answer is, "I don't recall, counselor." Thanks for listening.