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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski and William McGurn

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from: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

How Will Lieberman Vote on Ashcroft?

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2001, at 3:12 PM ET

Dear Bill,

Questions, questions. I'm especially troubled by the one that's gone unanswered since yesterday. Might as well be up front about it: No, I didn't read Bob Herbert's Monday column in the Times. You say it was about Eminem, the oxymoronic white rapper. For the first and last time I think I have to agree with Herbert: It is sheer lunacy to think that punk's output merits album-of-the-year recognition. And unlike me I bet he's even tried listening to the music.

Granted I have the same problem with Eminem that I had with Britney Spears. Until recently I thought he was named after a national treasure that melts in your mouth, not in your hands, and then I found out that, typically, the kid couldn't spell.

Moving on, I also managed to miss Andrew Cuomo's announcement. All I need to know about it is that it was originally scheduled to take place at Denise Rich's apartment. Rather hilariously, the Times claims it was Ms. Rich who "backed out" of playing host "after the furor over Mr. Clinton's pardon of her former husband, Marc Rich, a federal fugitive." And Cuomo the gentleman just let her hang?

Thanks for reminding me of Ira Stoll and his SmarterTimes.com site, which indeed has taken all the fun out of Times watching. I think I first came across Stoll on your editorial page last summer when he reported on Gore running-mate Joe Lieberman's 1970 book, The Scorpion and the Tarantula, which could have been written by George McGovern or William Fulbright or maybe even Henry Wallace. Stoll called it "a masterpiece of moral equivalency in which Mr. Lieberman draws a parallel between Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the American Monroe Doctrine of maintaining influence in the Western hemisphere." In a written statement to Stoll, Lieberman for all intents dismissed his book as a youthful indiscretion.

Lieberman figures in an interesting way in the Washington Post's on-going series on the Florida recount. Turns out, according to Monday's installment, that he opposed the Gore team's decision to drop the butterfly ballot issue. Bill Daley's argument that there was no practical remedy to the Palm Beach problem--a new presidential election in one county just wasn't in the cards--didn't seem to matter to him.

With this in mind, have you any sense how Lieberman will vote on Ashcroft? I know Al Hunt wants him to come out against. And he did oppose Robert Bork, if I remember right. More interesting still, has Lieberman said anything about President Bush's new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives? I think we'll soon have a sense just how far Lieberman has "come back."

Enjoy your lunch,
Wlady

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the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718
from: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

How Will Lieberman Vote on Ashcroft?

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2001, at 3:12 PM ET
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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is executive editor of the American Spectator. William McGurn is the Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer. (Read the Journal's editorial page here.)
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