Lording it over us

We don't know about you, but Phillipe and Jorge are gnashing our teeth over Senator Joe Lieberman's praying in public at the podium and his holier-than-thou attitude, which has gotten real old, real fast.

"Jewish Joe" is playing up his heritage to the hilt, and if he wants to avoid any work or mechanical transport on the Hebrew Sabbath, that's fine with us. But when he starts claiming that you can't be moral if you aren't practicing a religion, we find that impossible to swallow. P&J are good old agnostics, and we think our morals are just fine, especially when compared to today's politicians.

During a recent stump speech in Detroit, Lieberman said, "John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

Aren't those the same religious and oh-so-moral chappies who didn't recognize the rights of blacks to vote or be considered full citizens of the US? Thought so. Stick a yarmulke in it, pious boy.

An unqualified endorsement

One of the revelations of the August 28 congressional debate, sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Channel 36, was that the candidates' positions on most issues are strikingly similar. The fact is that all four candidates in the Democratic primary for the Second Congressional District are pretty good. Jimmy "Courage" Langevin has been a strong and innovative secretary of state; Angel Taveras and Kevin McAllister register as intelligent and thoughtful candidates; and Kate Coyne-McCoy has proven to be the scrappiest and hardest charging of the lot.

But there are differences (particularly Langevin's anti-choice position and his TV ads that, frankly, say nothing) that do make a difference. Our take is that Langevin is just too cautious, McAllister too quirky and Taveras a bit too unseasoned. We think that Kate the Red, because of her background, experience and fighting spirit, is the right fit, and your superior correspondents enthusiastically endorse her.

By the way, was anyone surprised when, in the Urinal's next-day story on Monday's debate, the Other Paper neglected to mention that Jim "Opie" Hummel and the Phoenix's own Ian Donnis were also on the panel firing questions at the candidates? As usual, the BeloJo, while mentioning moderator Paul Zangari and their own reporter, Scotty "Scoop" MacKay, refused to acknowledge there are other news outfits in Vo Dilun.

We've got a beef

That said about our liking of Kate the Red, candidates Jim Langevin and Bob "Dorian" Weygand may have more to worry about than just P&J endorsements.

An anti-abortion group, the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee, headed up by executive director Donna LeBouef -- the female equivalent of a Bob Jones or Pat Robertson -- recently attacked both Coyne-McCoy and Richard Licht for their pro-choice stances. Ms. LeBouef, a real meathead if you ever saw one, is a frequent writer of loony screeds to the editors of the Urinal, and besides being against abortion, has been a vocal critic of anything progressive, such as the state's efforts to reform education to benefit all of Rhode Island's children.

P&J ran into Dorian August 24, along with his wonderful wife, Hurricane Fran, and told him we were astounded (not to mention appalled) to see LeBouef promoting his candidacy. When we informed him of her far-less-than-enlightened views of the world, Weygand told us that he had neither solicited nor joined Ms. LeBoeuf's attack on his opponent. We likewise called Langevin's campaign headquarters to inquire about his affiliation with the Right to Life Committee, and his press secretary, Ray Sullivan, echoed Weygand's remarks, saying this was an unsought-after endorsement, and their camp had been informed of the press conference only on the morning of the day it was to be held.

P&J might disagree with Langevin and Weygand's views on abortion, but we also know that they offer reasoned, non-inflammatory arguments for their positions. Still, we would warn them that being seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the wild-eyed Ms. Laboeuf and her cohorts could be a kiss of death to their candidacies, and we'd like to see them publicly, loudly and clearly distance themselves from this disreputable crew.

Whose side is he on?

P&J are surprised to see the recent flip-flop by state Senate candidate and mall developer Aram Garabedian, who after serving his constituents at the State House as a Republican, is now running as a Democrat in the District 14 primary that covers parts of Warwick, West Warwick and Cranston. What's more startling is that the Dems gave him their endorsement over P&J's old buddy Jack Casey, a retired teacher who has strong union support.

Knowing Garabedian's propensity for grandstanding and his naked political ambition, we can only think that he's lining up for a run for governor in 2002, however preposterous the thought may be. We'd urge the voters in that district to cast their lot with Casey, rather than feeding the ego of a turncoat.

Cover up

When Al Gore's son got caught speeding just before the Democratic convention on August 12, driving over 90 mph in a 55 zone on North Carolina's Outer Banks, on his way back from the family vacation in Wrightsville Beach, isn't it a bit strange that no reporters found out until after his father was officially ordained by the Dems? After all, the kid's name is Albert Gore III, and even the drunkest cracker police reporter could figure that one out. Then again, it sure wouldn't look good just prior to Daddy parading the Gore Girls onstage in L.A. like the Spice Girls every chance he got.

We wonder how the state troopers will like those new cruisers, which we presume they got for keeping a lid on their report.

Kicking around Nixon

Just when you thought there would be no more resurrections for the "man in the arena," the Jickey journalist Anthony Summers comes along with a new biography (The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon) in which he reveals yet more sordid doings by our favorite political punching bag, the old Trickster, Dick Nixon.

According to Summers, the King of Five O'Clock Shadow was slugging down mouthfuls of the prescription drug Dilantin back in 1968 that he'd illicitly received from one of his high rolling buddies, Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus Fund. Dreyfus twice gave Nixon a 1000-capsule bottle of the mood-altering chemical after Nick laughed off the suggestion that he might obtain the stuff legally by getting a prescription. Hey, why get the stuff legitimately when you can get it illegally and for free?

More to the point, Summers explains that Nixon's increasingly erratic mood swings became so unpredictable that, by 1974, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered all military units not to react to orders from the White House unless they were cleared through Schlesinger or Kissinger at the State Department. Adam Clymer of the New York Times contacted a number of sources (including Schlesinger), who verified that this was indeed the case.

Another bombshell in the new book is the allegation that, during the 1968 election campaign, Nixon's (as yet unelected) team was conferring with South Vietnamese President Thieu, persuading him to refuse participation in the peace talks taking place in Paris with the Johnson Administration. Thieu was informed that, if he held off, he'd get better support from an incoming Nixon administration. Whether or not Thieu would have participated in the talks anyway is unclear, but in classic Nixon fashion, he screwed Thieu anyway after being elected.

Far more dicey is Summers' claims that Nixon was kicking around his wife Pat, blackening her eye, back around 1962 when he was busy losing the California gubernatorial election. So even if, as he was claiming, the press wouldn't be kicking him around anymore, he was establishing his own little House of Whacks out on the left coast. Much as your superior correspondents have always loathed Nixon, we have a hard time buying this allegation that, allegedly, came from the lips of Lenny Garment's nominee for Deep Throathood, former Nixon aide John Sears. As twisted as the guy was, we just don't believe that physical abuse of his wife was part of Nixon's style.

Emotional abuse . . . oh yeah, by the truckload, but slapping around Pat? Someone will have to come up with better evidence than second and third-hand stories to nail that one down. Just the same, sounds like there's enough juicy evil in the book to satisfy all us fans of the American Hamlet.

Whose crony?

For our money, the nastiest ad of a particularly nasty primary season is Bob "Dorian" Weygand's spot on Jeff Newman, the former Richard Licht aide who was offered a state Education Department job that was unadvertised and later rescinded. The allegations from the Weygand camp are way over the top. Licht "created" the job? C'mon!

But here's some of the stuff that wasn't mentioned. Newman served as a House policy aide at the same time that Weygand was chair of the House Corporations Committee and he worked closely with Bob in crafting a lot of Weygand's legislative initiatives. While Weygand denies that he himself ever offered Newman a job, despite claims to the contrary by Newman and others, you could just as easily say that Newman was a Weygand crony. Also, it's particularly ironic that a fortnight or so before the ad started running, the Weygand campaign sent Newman a solicitation letter (he didn't contribute this time, but has contributed to Weygand campaigns in the past) boasting about the swell new ads they were crafting. Newman, by all reports a fine and conscientious public servant, doesn't deserve this drubbing.

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