From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, July 6, 2001 12:19 P.M. EDT

A Hell of a Story
"Investigators searching for missing intern Chandra Levy are probing Rep. Gary Condit's ties to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang," the New York Daily News reports. The paper cites "sources close to the Levy family investigation" for its report that "Condit, who rides a Harley when he is home in his northern California district, has close ties to members of the infamous outlaw bikers."

Meanwhile Levy's aunt Linda Zamsky tells the Washington Post that Chandra "provided her an extensive account" of "a relationship" with Condit, "describing how the congressman went to great lengths to keep the liaison a secret and explicitly warned that he would stop seeing her if she told anyone." Reports the Post: "Zamsky's account places Condit at the center of Levy's life in Washington--a married man who gave her gifts, paid for a couple of plane trips to California, orchestrated their meetings and often spent weekends with her in his Adams Morgan apartment. The details contradict the account provided by Condit's aides and attorneys, who say there was no relationship."

We think we've finally found out what the mysterious illness is that Carolyn Condit, the congressman's wife and alibi, suffers from. Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby mentioned on the air yesterday that it is encephalitis. We found a few press accounts that confirm this, including this June 24 story from the New York Daily News.

According to WebMD, encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, usually viral in origin and spread by mosquito and tick bites. It is a rare condition, affecting only some 1,500 people a year in the U.S. And it can have psychiatric symptoms, including "irritability or poor temper control." Among the "emergency symptoms" is "sudden severe dementia," including moods "inappropriate for the situation" and "inflexibility, self-centeredness, indecisiveness, or withdrawal from social interaction."

On last night's "Special Report With Brit Hume," Cosby also told Hume that stewardess Anne Marie Smith and "also some sources very close to Congressman Condit" say that Condit did own "an old, beat-up red car" but "rarely used it." If true, this would seem to contradict the assertion in Condit's timeline that "he has no car."

Condit's "Intern Opportunities" ad, which we mentioned yesterday, disappeared from his House Web site shortly after we published yesterday's column (about three hours after the Drudge Report carried news of it). Unlike Chandra, though, it was back yesterday evening. In case it vanishes again, we've put a copy here.

Condit has hired a new PR flack, Marina Ein, whose past clients have included The New Republic and, at $20,000 a month, Indonesian armed forces chief Gen. Wiranto. Joshua Micah Marshall notes that when Wiranto hired Ein, he was under scrutiny in connection with alleged war crimes in East Timor: "I guess the real question is, who will Ein have a harder time defending, Wiranto or Condit? And does Condit have to pay her 20Gs a month too?"

Abbe Lowell, Condit's lawyer, declares in a statement: "Unlike some, Congressman Condit remains singularly focused on what is and remains the central mission at this time--locating Chandra Levy. Congressman Condit hopes and prays for Chandra Levy's safe return."

Here's a thought: If Condit is really concerned above all with finding Chandra, why doesn't he invite police to search his Washington apartment (and his car, if indeed he has one)? We don't make this suggestion lightly; we wouldn't want cops poking around our apartment. But if Condit is innocent, a voluntary search would help dispel suspicion--which would be to the advantage of both Condit and the effort to find out what happened to Chandra Levy.

What Justice O'Connor Said
To judge by the press accounts, you'd think Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's speech in Minnesota this week was nothing more than a jeremiad against the death penalty. In fact, as Overlawyered.com's Walter Olson notes, she had a lot more to say:

O'Connor also said she is bothered by contingency fees that allow for big payoffs for victorious lawyers, especially in class-action lawsuits. "Such arrangements have made more overnight millionaires than almost any other businesses and the perverse incentives and the untoward consequences they are creating within our profession are many," O'Connor said, adding that lawyers become "business partners of plaintiffs in seeking large-dollar recoveries rather than act as objective servants of the law." O'Connor also said she is worried that zero tolerance laws were too willing to sacrifice common sense for the politics of public safety.

10 Years in Prison for Writing Fiction
Here's a story that's disturbing in more ways than one. Fox News reports that 22-year-old Brian Dalton of Columbus, Ohio, was on probation for a "1998 pandering conviction involving pornographic photographs of children." During a "routine search of his home," a policeman found a 14-page journal that "contains the names and ages--10 and 11--of three children it said were placed in a cage in a basement. It details how the children were sexually molested and tortured."

Dalton said the stories were fictitious, and there is no evidence to the contrary. No one had seen the journal but Dalton himself; it was a private account of his fantasies. Nonetheless, Dalton was charged with two counts of pandering obscenity, because he "did create, reproduce or publish any obscene material that has a minor as one of its participants or portrayed observers." He pleaded guilty to one charge in exchange for prosecutors dropping the other one. Sentence: 10 years in prison.

We have no brief for Dalton, who sounds like a truly depraved man. (The Fox News report says "the contents of the journal were so disturbing that members of a grand jury asked a detective to stop reading after about two pages.") We're not sure we'd object to Dalton's prosecution had he posted the journal on the Internet or otherwise distributed it. But 10 years in prison for privately writing down one's fantasies? Is this America?

Zero-Tolerance Watch
That same question--is this America?--came to mind when we read this horrifying story from the Las Vegas Weekly. It seems that a 14-year-old boy, whom the paper identifies by the pseudonym "Joseph K.," was arrested at school and jailed for 10 days. Every time his grandparents, who are his legal guardians, came to visit him in prison, he was invasively strip-searched. Police didn't even tell him why until he'd been behind bars for three days.

So what was his crime? A couple of girls had called to ask him to hang out. He said no, and they called back 15 minutes later. Irritated, he told them, "It's people like you who get on the Columbine lists." After his arrest, the Weekly reports:

School police also found in Joseph K.'s locker and backpack more "evidence:" a class report he'd been writing about the Holocaust, which included sketches of Nazi symbols. Also taken was an essay he'd written for another class, answering the question: What's the biggest problem facing schools today? Joseph K.'s essay focused on school violence.

After questioning the teen--Is he depressed? Did he have a "list?" Did he hate anyone?--police took him to his grandparents' house, grandpa signed a consent form specifically letting them search Joseph K.'s room, according to the grandfather. They not only searched the kid's room, including his computer files and email, they also went through grandpa's closet, where they found his shotgun. They took it and the boy's BB-gun.

Prosecutors charged him with "harassment," then dropped the charges two months later. But Woodbury Middle School nonetheless kicked him out for a quarter. His grandparents were also told that he fits the "profile" of a school shooter. What would that profile be? "He's well-groomed, gets good grades and is well-liked."

New York's Daily News, meanwhile, reports that sex-crime hysteria has struck city schools. "Calls to police skyrocketed after Schools Chancellor Harold Levy blasted school staffers in late May for failing to follow his year-old order to report all potential crimes to the police and the central Board of Ed." Result: A Bronx middle-school principal tells the News, "I called 911 every time some boy looked at a girl funny. I was afraid not to. It was crazy."

The number of "sex crimes" reported in schools "skyrocketed to 593 this year from 339 last year," the paper reports. "Of the increase in reported sex crimes, 95% fell into the category of what police call third-degree sexual abuse and the Board of Ed calls 'inappropriate touching,' in which one student grabs or gropes another over clothing."

Disclosure for Me, but Not for Thee?
Roll Call reports that a bill to require disclosure of donors to presidential libraries has stalled in the House: "The enthusiasm among Members has suddenly waned since Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) decided to offer an amendment requiring all non-profits named for or controlled by Members of Congress to abide by the same law."

The press secretary for Rep. John Duncan, the Tennessee Republican who sponsored the original legislation after Pardongate figure Denise Rich donated $450,000 to the Clinton library, complains that the Schakowsky amendment is "not germane." Well, maybe, but it does seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the Contract With America, whose first plank was a requirement that "all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress."

Restorative Therapy
The New York Post's Neal Travis reports that singer Melissa Ethridge claims Bill Clinton flirted with Ethridge's then-lesbian lover, Julie Cypher, at a campaign rally in 1992. In her new autobiography, "The Truth Is . . . My Life in Love and Music," the Sapphic songstress writes that Clinton "took one look at Julie, and he started checking her out. He didn't know that she was with me." Now, Travis adds, "Cypher has decided she's not gay." So has Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres's ex, who visited Clinton in the White House a few years ago. Quips Travis: "Maybe Bill could be the poster boy for those religious groups who maintain homosexuality is a matter of choice, not genes."

Hillary Milks New Yorkers
New York's junior senator thinks her constituents aren't paying enough for milk. The Plattsburgh Press-Republican reports Hillary Clinton and the other New York Senator have introduced legislation to renew the Northeast Dairy Compact, Jim Jeffords's favorite cartel, and to expand it to include New York as well as New England.

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Saadi
We keep hearing about how world leaders preferred the Clinton administration to its successor. Here's another piece of evidence. The BBC reports that Saadi Gadhafi, the 27-year-old son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, said on a visit to Japan "that Libya has yet to assess its relations with the United States under President Bush, but felt the relationship with the Clinton administration had been better."

Red Alert
Remember those statues of Lenin that newly free Russian and Eastern European citizens joyfully tore down when communism fell? Well, Matt Rosenberg reports in the Seattle Times that one of them--salvaged from a Slovakian junkyard--is now on display in Seattle, a city whose "limousine liberals and bicycle-riding bohemian bourgeoisie" have always enjoyed the benefits of freedom. Rosenberg writes:

Imagine a statue in Westlake Plaza of Hitler, who stoked ethnic and class hatred to inspire extermination of six million Jews. Unthinkable. Yet, under the insidious, value-neutral rubric of "provocative art," Seattle proudly displays a larger-than-life sculpture of a man equally abhorrent.

Indeed, today's New York Post reports Jewish leaders are up in arms over a plan to build a resort at on the site of "Hitler's holiday hideaway in the Bavarian Alps." "It's sick, " Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League tells the Post. "The place should remain a wasteland where people are told, 'This is where the infamous dictator thought he was going to lead a life of joy and pleasure and look what it is now'--not a joy palace for the rich and famous of our time."

Seattle's is not the only Lenin statue in America; as Rosenberg notes, "a fancy Las Vegas eatery, Red Square, also installed a statue of Lenin for arty, edgy atmosphere." We visited Red Square with some friends last year and expressed our outrage that communism is considered "cute." A restaurant with a Nazi-nostaliga theme, we noted, would never be tolerated. Kudos to Rosenberg for making the point in print.

The CIA's China Problem
An outside commission that included an array of conservative experts on China--including Arthur Waldron, James Lilley, Peter Rodman and Larry Wortzel--found that the CIA's reporting on China is flawed and slanted toward a benign view of the communist regime, the Washington Times reports. Sen. Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells the paper that the CIA has "not viewed China in a realistic way. They have tried to look the other way when China, in my opinion, may be moving toward a belligerent stand, if not attitude." Shelby said the CIA's analysts "are always looking the other way to put their spin on the U.S.-Chinese relationship, that everything is going well in the long run."

Left-Wing 'Humor'
The Nation publishes the "AMDS (Acquired Morality Deficiency Syndrome) Knowledge, Attitutes, and Practices (KAP) Self-Test" (link in PDF format). You're supposed to take the test to figure out how moral you are. It's mostly just a lot of left-wing cant: You're immoral if you're make a lot of money, if you spend more on food than you donate to "social justice" organizations, if you favor cutting taxes, if you aren't obsessed with AIDS in Africa--yadda yadda yadda. The scoring section advises: "AMDS/VL levels exceeding 100,000 indicate you are a serious threat to global health. Enter a behavior modification program immediately."

A "behavior modification program"? Are these guys so oblivious that they don't realize they sound like a bunch of authoritarians?

Are Journalists Gullible?
Reader Francis Merton had a different take on the story of 15-year-old Zei Mathias, who, according to a Knight Ridder report, had escaped from slavery in Ivory Coast and needed $15 for a bus ticket home to Burkina Faso. The reporters, Sudarsan Raghavan and Sumana Chatterjee, gave the boy the $15 (though they didn't mention it in their story), prompting a debate over whether their doing so was a violation of journalistic ethics.

Merton says Zei's story sounds to him like a scam; he recounts once encountering a similar con on the streets of New York. He writes:

I would certainly expect a flood of credible slavery stories once the word gets out that a good slavery story pays $15--or about the equivalent of the pay for a month of backbreaking labor in the cocoa fields. Which is exactly why I would think it would be a serious breach of journalistic ethics to make such a payment, let alone not reveal it in the story. And the issue is not whether the payment was made after this one guy had already told his story; such a payment affects the credibility of the whole reporting on slavery from Africa. Certainly these people must talk among themselves--about the gullible American journalists and how easy it is to talk them out of some money.

Merton's theory rings true to us. We've never run across the bus-ticket scam, but can think of at least four occasions on which people have approached us on the street--in Los Angeles, Washington and New York--telling various dubious stories of trouble and asking for money. Mark Braykovich, the Akron Beacon Journal assistant managing editor who called the reporters' actions unethical, criticized them for "messing with reality." Maybe reality was messing with them.

A Marriage Amendment
A National Review editorial urges a constitutional amendment to the Constitution to prohibit the recognition of same-sex "marriages," which, the magazine reasonably fears, may be imposed through litigation over the objections of the public.

Cheney's Heart
Columnist Charles Krauthammer weighs in with a defense of Vice President Dick Cheney, who's been under fire from such luminaries as Arianna Huffington for having heart trouble. "Cheney has been straight," Krauthammer writes. "Rather than being hectored about his health, perhaps he deserves a little credit for the grace and good humor with which he faces a problem that seems to scare others a lot more than it scares him."

Needed: Space-Based Tax Cuts
One of President Bush's signature issues is tax cuts. Another is space-based missile defense. How about combining them and pushing for space-based tax cuts? We're going to need them if Los Angeles County gets its way. Ananova reports the county is trying to collect back taxes from Hughes Electronics on eight satellites it owned from 1991 to 1994. The county insists that the satellites are "subject to the same tax laws as the firm's laptop computers. . . . They say the satellites are state-taxable because they meet basic taxable property rules, were owned by a California company and are not taxable anywhere else."

California State Controller Kathleen Connell, however, disagrees. "It is a stretch of the imagination to say 22,000 miles above the atmosphere is California," She says. We're not so sure about that. We grew up in California, and it seemed to us a lot of folks there had their heads in the clouds.

Your Tax Dollars at Work
Kenneth Dossey of Glasgow, Ky., is a felon, convicted recently of mail fraud and wiretapping. He's also an employee of the Internal Revenue Service, which continues to pay him $80,000 a year, even though he's done no work for the agency for the past three years.

Dumb Lawsuit of the Week
Invesco Funds Group is threatening to sue the Denver Post over a sports column by Woody Paige. In his Sunday column, Paige made fun of the new Mile High Stadium, officially known as Invesco Field at Mile High. Paige quoted an unnamed Invesco executive as mocking the name:

"We thought it was a mistake. Too much money. Too little return. And too many people don't like it. But it's Mark's baby, and that's what he wanted."

"Mark" is Mark Williamson, the Invesco chairman and CEO who, it was suggested, wants Mile High Stadium to be his baby.

"You want to know what we call it at the company?" the exec bragged. "The Diaphragm."

This was a reference to the stadium's shape, which apparently is similar to that of the birth-control device. Williamson insists none of his employees would ever say such a thing:

In a statement Sunday, Williamson said Paige's assertions "are categorically untrue. . . . To imply otherwise is reckless."

"Through this article, The Denver Post and Mr. Paige have impugned the reputation, character and values of Invesco Funds Group and its 850 employees."

It sounds to us as if Williamson is really after the executive who was making fun of him. Is this really the best use of Invesco's investors' money? Come to think of it, is buying the naming rights for a stadium the best use of it?

Dumb Criminal of the Week
A 28-year-old Kansas City, Mo., man was celebrating July 4 with fireworks, the Associated Press reports. The noise bothered neighbors, who called police. So the man and his buddies hid the fireworks--in the oven. All was well until 3 a.m., when the man "decided to bake some lasagna and turned the oven on." Jim Duddy, Kansas City's assistant fire marshal, says "it blew the kitchen all apart. The walls were all blown out, the oven flew right through one of the walls."

The man wasn't hurt. Talk about dumb luck!

(Ira Stoll helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to George Lenz, Jerry Skurnik, C.E. Dobkin, John Archer, Randal Voges and Damian Bennett. If you have a tip, e-mail us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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