Witnesses? We Don' Need No Steenking Witnesses!

 Bill Clinton's Senate trial is now underway. I'm glad they finally came up with some kind of plan for the trial. I had this vision of them calling the trial to order, then going "Ummm...errr...so whaddya you guys wanna do?"

 I found it interesting that, when Chief Justice Rehnquist was swearing in the Senators as jurors, he had to remind them to "keep silence under pain of imprisonment." Seems fairly extreme until you realize you're talking about politicians. I guess it's official: You've got to threaten the buggers with jail to get them to shut up.

Serving as prosecutors in this case are what are known as "impeachment managers", including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and talk show host Jerry Springer. Okay, I made up the part about Jerry Springer, but I had you going there for a minute, didn't I?

 So far, one of the big questions involves whether or not the Senate is going to hear from witnesses, as if there's anything about this sorry mess that hasn't already been said, repeated, editorialized, and posted on the Internet. Among potential witnesses is Monica Lewinsky herself, which may very well give us a historic milestone: the first time oral sex is described on the floor of the Senate, instead of the cloakroom where the Senators usually discuss such things.

 The managers and some Senators insist that the Constitution requires witnesses. Well, I pulled out my "Little Golden Book of Historical Documents" and turned to the section on the U.S. Constitution. Maybe it's just me, but I can't find word one about witnesses, just the familiar stuff about the Chief Justice presiding and the the two-thirds vote required for conviction. Maybe the part about requiring witnesses is in that same hidden area where they found the right to privacy. Boy, wouldn't THAT be ironic?

Frankly, I don't know why the prosecution is so anxious to put Monica on the stand. If you'll recall, a crucial bit of her grand jury testimony (which--imagine this---never made it into the Starr Report ) was that "no one asked me to lie, and no one promised me a job for my silence." If she testifies to this on the Senate floor, and if Presidential secretary Betty Currie remains consistent in her testimony that she did not feel pressured to give Clinton's version of things in the Paula Jones case, those booming sounds you'll hear will be the obstruction-of-justice charges taking multiple torpedoes below the waterline. That leaves the charge of perjury before the grand jury, where Clinton, you'll remember, admitted an improper affair with Lewinsky, differing mainly in the details about who did who, where and when. In this event, potential witnesses will include sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who is expected to try to explain oral sex to Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, and adult-movie actress Lexus Deville, who will take over if Dr. Ruth fails.

 Clinton can at least be encouraged by the news that, according to DNA test results, he is NOT the father of a child by an Arkansas prostitute. This soiled dove has been claiming for years that her son, Danny Williams, looks just like Bill Clinton. She then proceeded to grab her fifteen minutes of fame by relating lurid tales about sex in the bushes while Clinton was jogging and orgies at the house of Clinton's mother. The story was picked up by the "Star", a supermarket tabloid which broke the Gennifer Flowers story, as well as scoring such journalistic coups as uncovering the truth about Elvis' secret affair with Bigfoot. The story was given even more play by Internet scandal-monger Matt Drudge, who used to manage a gift shop before he got himself a Web site, started sporting what was supposed to be an old-timey reporter's fedora, and began spreading every demented rumor that popped into his or anyone else's fevered brain. Drudge managed to get a couple of stories right, proving once again the adage that even a busted clock is right twice a day, so now he's treated as some sort of oracle by the same sort of people who believe 'The X-Files" is a documentary.

 Among the people on Bill Clinton's side, if not officially in his camp, is skin-mag publisher Larry Flynt, who has offered a cool million bucks for anyone who can come forward with credible evidence of an affair with a member of Congress. Flynt may be the one who discovered Bob Livingston's career-ending bimbo eruption.

 So, the President has on his side the publisher of "Hustler" and "Barely Legal," and the other side has sleazy tabloids, Arkansas hookers, and a crazed, self-aggrandizing net-geek with delusions of being both Woodward and Bernstein. O, brave new world, that has such people in it. Yecch, and Yecch again.