WORKING RETIREMENT & BASTARD POLITICAL SPOUSES

I read recently that retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is going to co-chair with former Sen. Bill Bradley an American Bar Association Commission on Civic Education and the Separation of Powers. It seems that the majority of Americans know shit about our government. Seems ending those high school civics classes graduation requirements was a big mistake.

I am really unclear as to what exactly this group will do. They have absolutely no power to change anything. Are they just going to go around the country telling us all how stupid we are? Are they going to walk into churches and offices and other places adults congregate and pop-quiz them, "Jay-walking" style? Is this going to be made into a direct-to-infomercial video that we stupid Americans can buy so we can laugh at other stupid Americans? Seems kind of a futile thing to work on. Unless of course they're going to work with each state legislature to reinstate civics requirements in high school curriculums. That's useful. But that's not what this appears to be.

My take: go to someplace warm and sleep in a little and enjoy retirement.

This all was thrust back in my face the other day when I read an article in a New York paper about Jeanine Pirro announcing her candidacy for U.S. Senate. It seems Pirro (the Westchester County DA for the last three terms) has a white-collar felon for a husband. He was convicted of tax evasion and other similar crimes and spent 11 months in jail. All while she was an elected DA. Her name was dragged through the mud and her finances and questions about her luxury cars (Ferraris and Bentleys) and wrought-iron pigpen (for their pet pigs) arose. It seems she has mollified her critics sufficiently on those issues. None of it is stopping her from running, and appears not to be unseemly character traits for public officials, at least not anymore.

Long story short, the article referred to Pirro's maybe opponent Hillary Clinton (Pirro has to win the primary first) as having husband baggage of her own. The paper wrote that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was "nearly impeached." (Quotes mine because I don't have an italics command, damn work blogger.) If I remember correctly, he was the first elected president impeached. He was not, however, removed from office. It seems such a simple thing to get correct, and that copyeditors or editors or anyone who looks at the raw material of a newspaper, especially on such an high-profile announcement story, would have caught the obvious error. Clearly no one had to take a civics class.

But about the general matchup, Hillary is in no position to bring up husbands. It's like a no-lose for Pirro. She has this scumbag husband, someone whose existence would have precluded her aspirations for public office in the past, but if Hillary opens the door by attacking he-Pirro (don't know his name), she opens the door to much more about her own husband, and we all know there is plenty of material there.

Frankly, since America was sold on Bill in 1992 as getting "two for the price of one," and since Hillary acted with more authority as any First Lady in history, unlawfully perhaps, we can get an idea as to the type of president she would be. But that really doesn't apply to a Senate race.

It seems that Pirro will win the primary, unless the walls come tumbling down between now and March. It is going to be a dynamite election season, not the least of which will involve two intelligent, ambitious, political veterans duking it out in New York.