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[The Tin Man]

We, the Jury

Bruce Shapiro

"Do you admit or deny that you are the chief law enforcement officer of
the United
States?" So commences Henry Hyde's eighty-one-gun salute to the chief
executive, a
round of admit-or-deny queries fired off to President Clinton as a prelude
to the Judiciary
Committee's express-track Zippergate hearings. Let's consider the
qualifications of the
435-member prosecution team, who, if Hyde sticks to his schedule, may well
vote on
articles of impeachment by year's end.

No fewer than thirty members of the current House and Senate--most of them
just
re-elected--have confessed to, been convicted of or been credibly
documented as violating
laws or Congressional ethics rules. Among the House side of the Dirty
Thirty--ranging
from mouthy but obscure back-benchers all the way up to new
Speaker-apparent Bob
Livingston--are at least two Representatives who have been caught
employing prostitutes,
two alleged serial sexual harassers, four who covered up knowledge of
felonies in the
Iran/contra scandal and six who have attempted to use their influence to
win favor for
convicted criminals. And that's just the current Congress. Since 1971, at
least thirty-nine
members have been convicted and gone to prison.

Only a handful of transgressions--like Newt Gingrich's cruelty to his
critically ill first
wife--are well known. Here are queries for a few other members of the
Impeachment
Militia. (Some of these cases are detailed in Stanley Hilton and
Anne-Renee Testa's new
bipartisan field guide from St. Martin's, Glass Houses: Shocking Profiles
of Congressional
Sex Scandals and Other Unofficial Misconduct.)

Sexual Harassment
Dick Armey (R-Texas): Do you admit or deny that as an economics professor
before
entering Congress, you sexually harassed female students, as reported in
the Dallas
Observer?

John Peterson (R-Pennsylvania): Do you admit or deny sexual harassment and
hostile-work-environment claims by six women? (Peterson: "I may have been
an
excessive hugger.")

Foreign Funny-Money and Campaign Finance Dan Burton (R-Indiana): Do you
admit or
deny that in 1997 you accepted illegal contributions from Sikh temples and
from Zaire's
reviled despot Mobuto Sese Seko, returned only after negative publicity?
Do you admit
or deny that you tried to extort a sizable donation from a lobbyist for
Pakistan?

Tom DeLay (R-Texas): Do you admit or deny that in 1995 you drummed up
Congressional support for an easing of anti-dumping regulations sought by
a Mexican
cement company for which your brother was the lobbyist?

Jay Kim (R-California): Do you admit or deny that between 1994 and '96 you
received
$230,000 in illegal contributions from South Korean corporations? Oops,
you've already
admitted it in a plea bargain, which is why you're wearing that electronic
ankle bracelet
and why your wife calls you "the most crime-committing person I know." You
were
defeated in a Republican primary, but if Hyde stays on schedule you'll
still get to vote on
Clinton's impeachment, ankle bracelet and all.

Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho): Do you admit or deny that in 1994 you accepted
illegal
campaign contributions originating in Hong Kong? And do you admit or deny
that you
failed to disclose $50,000 in under-the-table financing for your 1994
campaign, delaying
an admission of fault until one day after the House deadline for filing
ethics complaints?

Bill McCollum (R-Florida): Do you admit or deny that you paid your top
Washington aide
$100,000 in ethically dubious "consulting fees" for campaign work?

Obstruction of Justice
Would-be Speaker Livingston (R-Louisiana), McCollum, Hyde and Bob Stump
(R-Arizona): Do you admit or deny that you were informed by Robert
McFarlane of
illegal contra funding, as documented in Oliver North's diaries, making
you accessories?

Moral Leadership
Bob Barr (R-Georgia): Do you admit or deny that though you were the
principal sponsor
of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, you've sustained two divorces and are
on Wife 3?
And do you admit or deny that at a celebrity fundraiser in 1992, you
licked whipped
cream from the breasts of two women?

Burton and J.C. Watts (R-Oklahoma): Do you admit or deny you spent years
covering up
your out-of-wedlock children? (Watts motto: "Character is simply doing
right when no
one is looking.")

Ken Calvert (R-California): You've said, "We can't forgive what occurred
between the
President and Lewinsky." Do you admit or deny that you were caught by
police in 1993
receiving oral sex from a prostitute and attempted to flee the scene? Do
you admit or
deny that even though you are a principal water-carrier for the Christian
Coalition, you've
been sued as an alimony deadbeat by your ex-wife?

Henry Hyde (R-Illinois): Never mind that five-year "youthful indiscretion"
that started at
age 41. Do you admit or deny that while on the board of an S&L, you were
sued by
federal bank regulators for participating in decisions that cost taxpayers
millions, even as
you served the S&L industry's interests in Congress?

Should the indictment of President Clinton move to the Senate: Strom
Thurmond
(R-South Carolina): Do you admit or deny that facts appear to corroborate
the story that
you fathered an African-American child whom you supported while you were
your state's
segregationist governor? Do you admit or deny that your staff calls you
"The
Sperminator"?

The Dirty Thirty make the current Congress a community with a lawbreaking
rate
roughly four times that of the general population. Twenty-three of the
Dirty Thirty are
Republicans, suggesting that GOP politicians are a decidedly at-risk
population: three
times as likely as Democrats to commit legal or ethical violations (or at
least three times as
likely to get caught). This record of fungible ethics provides essential
context for the
impeachment machine clanking into motion. In the words of Mark Twain:
"Congress is
America's only genuine criminal class."

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"Noel Noel Noel Noel. May all my enemies go to hell." - Hilaire Belloc

Robert Fernandez
rfer...@chuma.cas.usf.edu
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~rfernand
AIM: Gamaliel8