But to Oklahoma City and McVeigh: my understanding of the militia movement that produced him is definitely shaped by Joel Dyer’s excellent series Harvest of Rage in the Boulder Weekly in the 90s. I see he turned it into a book that I need to pick up some day. I tried to find the original series without immediate success.

Though I don’t recall the specific hearings you mention, I think it was probably wise for the government to at least give the appearance of looking more deeply into both Ruby Ridge and Waco as a means to defuse further attacks. I don’t see evil intent by the government in either incident. My understanding at Waco is there was evidence of child abuse and after 51 days, something had to be done for the children inside who were essentially hostages. It might be useful to look at Waco in light of the Beslan school hostage crisis too. I can see an equally good argument that we should have staged a rescure attempt at Waco almost immediately.

Ultimately the most paranoid and dangerous militants will never be appeased, but if the hearings help keep some people from reaching that stage of paranoia, they probably served some good.

And speaking of paranoia and the Clintons… Last summer about a week before the Democratic convention opened, I witnessed a young man in his 20s walking down the 16th Street mall in downtown Denver shouting a warning that was almost pure gibberish about how “Hillary Clinton’s forces have already taken out the Al-Qaeda operatives in Denver, and now she is running this show.” It was an exceptionally hot day and I wondered if maybe the heat had gotten to him. That he wore a shirt around his head like a turban didn’t make me feel a lot better about the encounter, such as it was. The scary thing was that he looked just a little like McVeigh.

The thing I really, totally, and completely don’t understand at all is, why Bennet? Does he have some massive scandal files on Phil Anschutz, Bill Ritter, and Barack Obama? Who’s he connected to that they fear? Why all of this loving Affirmative Action for a man who has yet to do anything independent with his blessings and talents?

I thought Obama respected the democratic process that includes primaries, and that he regretted how so many pundits made their decisions to support Clinton so early on. It’s all different once one wins, innit?

When Congress refused to renew the special prosecutor law (either late in the Clinton presidency or early in Bush II’s first term), and then with the return of the imperial presidency under Bush II and Cheney (and the post-9/11 era), I think I just kind of forgot about the possibility that a sitting president might be deposed or sued over pre-presidential matters. But, that’s exactly what happened, courtesy of the Special Prosecutor, the U.S. Supreme Court, and Paula Jones…

Bill Clinton was a very good conservative president, Paul–I don’t know what you might complain about!

My memory was that after Oklahoma City Clinton and most Democrats tried to smear Republicans by associating them with anti-government extremists, and that there was a push for a bill that sort of foreshadowed the Patriot Act in terms of expanding government surveillance powers. On the other hand, my memory of what happened is still skewed by my political views of the time.

It looks like the White House is working hard to make sure that Bennet stays in the Senate. I just wish they were so intent on making real health care reform happen, instead of passing an underfunded mandate to purchase insurance from private companies.

Fortunately for Clinton, Gingrich’s pinnacle of leadership was in fact the election of ’94, and Gingrich spent all of 1995 and 1996 making Donald Duck look like a serious and sober leader by comparison. So although the American people definintely love them some pandering, I actually think their B.S. detectors are sometimes dialed in to the right frequency. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, . . . as the old saying goes.

Um — That does seem to be true, no?

Bill Clinton is super-smart too, but 2 brains are often better than one. Yes, she had a better long-term sense of how the special prosecutor law could hurt the president and the presidency. His political instincts were off on that issue.

Hillary definitely has more of the total mental-electron package, and Bill more of the intuitive stuff. I keep trying to imagine their first encounter at the Yale Law orientation meet-and-greet!