Insight on the News back issues from December 1997:
Memos suggest obstruction linked to Big Brother database.(White House fundraising)
Dec 01, 1997; ... As Insight first reported last year, and extravagant computer system at the White House is churning up questions of fund-raising scandals, obstruction of justice and other violations. It was a stunning revelation: The White House intentionally had withheld from congressional ...
All recorded history.(politics of taping White House conversations)(Cover Story)
Dec 01, 1997 ... Americans are listening to tapes of presidential political intimacies, witnessing dramatic moments of nations in crises and leaders with hair down and knives out. On March 9, 1964, evidently having trouble hearing his close friend Edwin Weisl Sr. on the telephone, President ...
The White House walls have ears.(audio and video recordings of modern presidents)(Cover Story)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Here's news for Americans: The White House Communications Agency, an 800-employee unit funded but not overseen by the Pentagon, records the president's every move -- with a spin? Videotapes recently released of presidential kaffeeklatsches reveal more than Bill Clinton's ...
Raising voices for peace in Ireland.(Northern Ireland Women's Coalition)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... It was the seventies, it was Northern Ireland, and bell-bottoms and violence were in style. A cadre of Irish Republican Army volunteers hijacked a Belfast City bus and, just as the hard men announced their demands, a crew of mothers made their way onto the vehicle. With purses dangling ...
Whoops, there it is!(Clinton Administration and subpoenaed documents)
Dec 01, 1997; ... The Clinton administration received requests for as many as 13,000 documents. Which are still outstanding, and how can Congress punish obstructionists? Consider the provocation and the remedies. During a Dec. 15, 1995, appearance on CBS' This Morning, Bill Clinton bit his lower ...
Reagan majority alive and well.(national politics; Dick Morris comments)(Interview)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Bill Clinton's seer, Dick Morris, claims recent balloting indicates that the Clinton era is over and Democrats are likely to face `unmitigated disaster' in the 1998 elections. The media and political pundits barely stifled a collective yawn at the end of the 1997 elections ....
Past and future collide in Moscow.
Dec 01, 1997; ... Gridlock luxury ears, cellular phones -- even American-style housing -- have hit new Russia like a tide wave. But Muscovites still lovingly tend to their gilded and resplendent history. Moscow The towers of the Kremlin no longer are shrouded in mystery. All summer ...
Q: should china be allowed to join the World Trade Organization?(Symposium)(Panel Discussion)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Yes: The built-in sanctions of the WTO will speed China's market reforms. China has replaced Japan as the Lex Luthor in America's imagination and in its public-policy domain. It is facile, however, to conclude that we need an enemy to feel comfortable and that the end of the ...
Why do so many questions yield so few answers?(Sen. Fred Thompson's investigation of '96 campaign funds)(Fair Comment)(Column)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Fred Thompson, former movie actor and now chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, has taken a dive. Touted just one year ago as the next Ronald Reagan and charged by Senate Majority Leader Dent Lott to investigate and root out corruption in the White House and Democratic ...
Get American troops ready to march on cyber battlefield.(Fair Comment)(Column)
Dec 01, 1997; ... In the science-fiction film Independence Day, the humans used a computer virus to defeat the invading space aliens. That and other fictional displays of computer-hacking talent gives one the impression that America rules the electronic waves. However, in the real world, the United States ...
Robinson scales the Ivory Tower to spread the conservative word.(Young America's Foundation president Ron Robinson)(Interview)
Dec 01, 1997; ... `It's very important the young get a rich ploy of ideas, including conservative ideas, when they're students,' says the president of Young America's inundation. He works hard to see that they do. When Oliver North appeared as a speaker sponsored by Young America's Foundation ...
An English painter's odd perspective.(Stanley Spencer, Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... With so much poorly executed, offensive and dehumanized art scattered about museums and galleries, it is a privilege to view Stanley Spencer's deeply felt and superbly executed paintings on exhibit in the retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. ...
Stanley Spencer: An English Vision. <Subdivision>
(book reviews)</Subdivision>
Dec 01, 1997; ... A new study of Stanley Spencer, a British painter whose religious subjects have an uncanny power, has been published in conjunction with a retrospective of his works touring the United States. In 1935, the Royal Academy of Arts, or RA, rejected The Dustman and St. Francis and the ...
Can supplements beat arthritis, the scourge of 9 of 10 Americans?(vitamins and natural supplements)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Arthritis and other diseases of the joints and muscles are considered the No. 1 medical problem in the country. But nutritionists believe relief is an hand -- in the form of vitamins and natural supplements. When talk turns to disease, as it often does, people are likely to seize ...
Social Security information: privacy issues continue to prompt debate across the country.(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Privacy issues continue to prompt debate across the country. But Americans may have more to fear from private enterprise than unwarranted government intrusion. What to do when a private company requests your Social Security number, or SSN? "Generally, you don't have to give it to ...
Firms find that barter is better.(Business)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... An ancient practice is gaining popularity, particularly among small, cash-starved businesses. More and more, small and medium-sized retailers are joining countertrade "exchange" companies, or bartering networks, in an effort to circumvent cash shortages, an especially useful ...
Coaches are turning on laptops to fine-tune game strategies.(pro basketball scouting and strategy)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Businesses have used data programs to give them an edge on their competition. Now basketball teams are crunching numbers in an effort to win games. Indeed, algorithms are like a 'digital sixth man.' The Orlando Magic dropped its first two National Basketball Association playoff ...
As the millennium approaches, the 'Force' remains with us.('Star Wars: The Magic of Myth', National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.)(Brief Article)
Dec 01, 1997; ... Star Wars, still popular two decades after the original movie hit the theaters, is celebrated in a new exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. Why are Americans so fascinated by this futuristic fantasy? The names have become so familiar they need no introduction: Luke ...
American future is dim is English isn't learned.(The Last Word)(Column)
Dec 01, 1997; ... As sure as bears romp in the woods, much of the social and political loopiness that infests the land originates in California. That complaint, however, may have to be revised. Californians are demonstrating that they are able to correct the lunacies on that western littoral. ...
Up the down (Grand) Staircase (Monument).(the actions of Kathleen McGinty of the Council of Environmental Quality, and others in the Clinton administration, during the planning of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... During the middle of the 1996 presidential campaign, President Clinton stood on the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Colorado and proclaimed that 1.7 million acres of federal land in Utah would be designated as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, locking the door to ...
Is there nothing sacred?(rumors of the allocation of national war cemetery burial plots for political reasons)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Burial plots in the national war cemeteries, including Arlington, allegedly have been `bought' by fat-cat donors to Clinton's reelection committee and the DNC who aren't even veterans. Pressure from political bigwigs at the White House and within the Democratic Party apparently ...
Fixing the system.(Social Security)(Cover Story)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Baby boomers are expected to begin retiring in the year 2015; the Social Security trust fund will run out of money by 2029. Congress, seems ready to act. A specter is haunting the federal government -- that of 76 million baby boomers ambling complacently toward I retirement ....
Privatization and prosperitry.(Social Security)(Cover Story)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Social Security privatization has been labeled radical and untested by U.S. critics, but countries including the United Kingdom and Chile already are ringing in dramatic success with it. Now is not the time to turn to `untried and demonstrably unsound panaceas,'" proclaimed ...
Congressman Barr lowers the boom.(Representative Bob Barr)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Nearly 24 years after the impeachment inquiry about President Nixon was initiated, Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a former federal prosecutor, asks similar questions about President Clinton. On Oct. 11, 1996, Bill Clinton proclaimed National Character Counts Week, declaring, ...
Access granted when price is right. (campaign finance investigations)
Dec 08, 1997; ... For some donors, a grin-and-grip glossy with the president for the mantle or a midnight snack in the Lincoln bedroom are reward enough. For others, the stakes are higher. If Roger Tamraz is a crook, at least he's an honest one. In a rare moment of candor during a Capitol Hill ...
Steve Forbes sees bright future for Americans through personal Social Security accounts.(includes related biographical information)(Interview)
Dec 08, 1997; ... A new, privatized social-security system would preserve the rights of those who now are receiing benefits, and stop the potential intergenerational conflict between retirees and young workers, says the founder of Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity. He means to see that it happens. ...
Q: are single-parent families a major cause of social dysfunction?(Symposium)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Q: Are single-parent families a major cause of social dysfunction?Yes: Broken families strongly correlated with a range of social pathologies. Is the single-parent family a symptom or a cause of social disintegration in the United States? Paradoxical as it may sound, it ...
House committee must question Clinton, Huang.(House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight; John Huang)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Contrary to the claims of Tennessee Republican Sen. Fred Thompson's Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, there is no lack of available witnesses to question in what may be the biggest scandal in American history. This scandal, at its core, involves the sale of taxpayer-financed services ...
Haze of air-quality regs may choke minority communities.(air-quality regulations)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Is cleaner air worth sacrificing the health and well-being of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities? The Clinton administration may believe the answer is yes. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, received President Clinton's blessing to impose expensive new ...
Israelis recognize Arafat terrorism.(Yasser Arafat)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Yasser Arafat and his quasigovernment, the Palestinian Authority, continue to pay lip service to the concept of peace but appear committed to violence to `liberate' Palestinians.The common wisdom in Washington is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to sustain ...
The Apostle. <Subdivision>
(movie reviews)</Subdivision>
Dec 08, 1997; ... Actor Robert Duvall has written, directed and produced a film that takes an unsentimental look at evangelists. The movie arrives in theaters just as television dares to present a questioning priest. Hollywood's treatment of religion I in American life could hardly be called ...
Nothing Sacred. <Subdivision>
(television program reviews)</Subdivision>
Dec 08, 1997; ... Actor Robert Duvall has written, directed and produced a film that takes an unsentimental look at evangelists. The movie arrives in theaters just as television dares to present a questioning priest. Hollywood's treatment of religion I in American life could hardly be called ...
Aging America is big business.(includes related article on John Knox Village, a Lea Summit, Missouri, continuing-care retirement community)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Many baby boomers don't want to think about growing old. Yet they have no choice, and not just because they are aging. Many are looking after elderly parents. Not so long ago, there were two choices for the elderly who no longer could stay at home--neither option very palatable ....
'Solar max' will mar millennium(the peak of the sunspot cycle should coincide with the turn of the century, possibly causing trouble with telecommunications, satellite components, and global positioning systems)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Scientists are forecasting `space weather' in an attempt to cope with a worrisome peak in solar flares expected to coincide with the arrival of the third millennium. Call it a "solar El Nino," an increasingly troublesome aspect of the sun that should make itself known about the ...
Can parks sell Mother Nature?(Yellowstone National Park has agreed to a 'bioprospecting agreement' with Diversa Corp., permitting the search for microbes of commercial value)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Yellowstone is home to heat-loving microbes of enormous commercial value. To assure a share of this bounty, the park is pursuing `bioprospecting' deals. When pharmaceutical giant Cetus-Hoffman developed "Taq polymerase," a genetic marker used for DNA fingerprinting, AIDS testing ...
In Islamic Iran, skiing provides big lift for disenchanted youth.
Dec 08, 1997; ... Iran's ski resorts have some of the world's best slopes. For the moment, however, Americans must wait for relations to improve between Washington and Tehran before they can run the pistes. Hey babe, watch this!" yells Behzod, slowing to a halt with a neat parallel turn. spraying ...
Why is Matthew Eappen sharing victim status?(the televised trial of au pair Louise Woodward, accused of the death of infant Matthew Eappen, brought insights and sympathy but perhaps not real justice)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Louise Woodward, the au pair responsible for baby Matthew Eappen's death, is a phenomenon for our time. She synthesizes the diffuse and unfocused emotional rage that torments nearly all of us. A phenomenon differs from an individual. A phenomenon is an event, a happening, an ...
The burials at Arlington.(charges of favoritism in burials at Arlington National Cemetery)
Dec 15, 1997; ... A House committee promises to get to the bottom of Clinton administration claims that politics or favoritism were not involved in waivers for burial given to unqualified candidates. Disclosure Quiets Uproar Over Arlington Burials" was the Washington Post's headline following Army ...
Sex & salvation: mainstream pop culture is beginning to reflect changes in the country as baby boomers mature into reflective wonderment at what the seventies hath wrought.(Cover Story)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Mainstream pop culture is beginning to reflect changes in the country as baby boomers mature into reflective wonderment at what the seventies hath wrought. In early October a million men, more or less, gathered on the Mall in Washington as part of "Standing in the Gap: A Sacred ...
America's appetite for forbidden fruit.(influence of the Kinsey reports on sexual ethics)(Cover Story)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Nearly 50 years ago, a scientist released a landmark study describing Americans' sexual proclivities in excruciating detail. Shocking? Yes. Fascinating? Let public reaction be the arbiter. When Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male went on sale in January 1948, in ...
Making up memories?(repressed-memory syndrome)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Pop psychology often results in diagnoses that straddle the line between science and fantasy. The latest example is `repressed-memory syndrome,' which many are claiming is a figment itself. Treatments ranging from frontal lobotomies to repressed-memory therapy for the neuroses or ...
Who has the right to go straight?(controversy over treatment of homosexuality as a mental illness)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Reparative therapists say they can help gays become straight, but some activists want medical associations to outlaw such a practice even for patients who demand the right to change. Less than 25 years ago the American Psychiatric Association, or APIA, and the American ...
Flaky climate data will cost U.S. dough.(economic costs of global warming treaty)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Only 13 percent scientists believe that global warming will result in catastrophic consequences, so why the push for the world's signature on a faulty treaty? Wait until you see the bill. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a devastating sneak attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl ...
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard talks about secret life of Bill Clinton.(author of 'The Secret Life of Bill Clinton')(includes biographical information)(Interview)
Dec 15, 1997; ... This British investigative reporter says the trouble with American newsman is that they have accepted a liberal consensus that doesn't always fit the truth. But one man's truth is another man's balderdash. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard may be back in England, but his recently ...
Q: Are public-school-based health clinics an idea whose time has come?(opposing views)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Yes: They are the best sites through which to treat students without medical insurance. Are school-based health clinics a good idea? Just ask Roberto, a third-grader from a predominantly Hispanic community in West Texas. His young Anglo teacher was having major behavioral ...
'Little Beige Book' stokes fires of campus PC battle.(controversy over statistics on date rape and anorexia in 'The Guide: A Little Beige Book for Today's Miss G.')(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Forces of tradition have established a new beachhead at Georgetown University in Washington. Some female students have the temerity to challenge the campus' prevailing feminist ethos. The Washington Times reports that in early October, two conservative female students ...
Conservative balance upsets Boston Globe's spin.(defense of conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... By 1994, editors at the Boston Globe were tired of hearing readers complain that the paper's editorials and op-ed columns were all saying the same thing, so they took a daring step: They hired Jeff Jacoby, a young lawyer, "to provide a conservative balance to the Globe's notoriously ...
Abandoning deterrence will be nuclear nightmare come true.(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 15, 1997; ... For seven years, the West has been an unwilling participant in a variation on the fabled game of Russian roulette. Let's call it "Iraqi roulette." The difference is that the Russian version involves a player spinning the cylinder of a revolver loaded with a single bullet, holding the gun ...
Lawyers 'discover' how to beat the rap.(discovery phase becomes tactic in civil litigation)
Dec 15, 1997; ... The discovery phase of civil litigation has become a tactical weapon used by plainffffs' and defense attorneys to drag out lawsuits. Each side blames the other for abusing the process. If you're a typical nonlawyer citizen, you probably don't like lawyers. Part of the reason is ...
Making the Corps. <Subdivision>
(book reviews)</Subdivision>
Dec 15, 1997; ... Covering the Somalia crisis for the Wall Street Journal, a journalist found himself with a squad of Marines led by an officer so young he would not be permitted to use that august paper's photocopying machine without supervision. The reporter decided to find out how the U.S. Marine CorDs ...
The United States Marine Corps in the Civil War. <Subdivision>
(book reviews)</Subdivision>
Dec 15, 1997; ... The U.S. Marine Corps is a 20th-century creation, its modern history begins at Belleau Wood. But the Corps was founded in 1775 (in a Philadelphia tavern, as every recruit quickly learns), and Marines have participated in all of this country's official wars. Still, the history of the ...
Can better sex come with a pill? The nineties' impotence cure.
Dec 15, 1997; ... A trio of new drugs promises to help men suffering from impotence, a condition that affects millions of Americans. But some doctors fear the pills may will be abused by men seeking instant virility. Approximately 52 percent of men worldwide between the ages of 40 and 70 ...
Raiders search for new talent: U.S. companies desperate for skilled employees are buying out competitors for their workers.(includes related article on seasonal recruiting in the retail industry)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... U.S. companies desperate for skilled employees are buying out competitors for their workers. During the roaring 1980s, takeover artists such as Henry Kravis sought targets with huge physical assets, such as RJR Nabisco. After raising $25 billion or so through junkbond offerings, ...
Long on losses, short on funds, BU football lets clock run out.(Boston University ends its football program)(includes related article on the university's lawsuit against Internet-based term-paper mills)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... While many universities depend on football for revenue and fundraising, Boston University has ended its pigskin program. The school plans to invest heavily in more egalitarian athletic pursuits. When several thousand alumni from the University of California at Berkeley and ...
No secrets at Energy Department.(General Accounting Office investigation finds lax security at Dept. of Energy's nuclear laboratories)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... Times were, back in the golden age of nuclear spying, that one needed to be a highly trusted insider -- a fellow-traveling physicist, say, fine-tuning Armageddon in remote Los Alamos -- to get one's hands on the world's most wanted secrets. But today, thanks to porous security and sloppy ...
Blair, Clinton scandals beg question time.(Pres. Clinton, United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 15, 1997; ... He looked shaken, gave as good as he took initially but then appeared resigned to no one believing him. The charm he mustered as the queries came thick and fast evaporated when Martin Bell, the respected former British Broadcasting Corp. war correspondent and now antisleaze independent ...
Gambling on the future.(US Native American casinos)(Cover Story)(Industry Overview)
Dec 22, 1997; ... For generations, Navajo elders have told and retold the Legend of the Great Gambler who, after losing everything in a high-stakes wager with the people, vows someday to return and destroy them. "Maybe the Gambler was the white man," muses Navajo chanter and medicine man Alfred Yazie, "or ...
Reservations about Indian paternalism.(US Native American reservations)(Cover Story)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Nearly 150 years ago the U.S. government cut a deal with the Indians, allotting them land on which they could live freely. But like federal paternalism elsewhere, the reservation system has been discouraging. It must have been one of the most splendid visual experiences in ...
China hawks warn of Bejing's bonds. (banking crisis)(National Security)
Dec 22, 1997; ... China has a banking crisis, with $90 billion in nonperforming loans. Beijing acknowledges 20 percent of loans have gone sour, and the U.S. taxpayers could be made to bail them out. The China hawks are armed with a get-tough-on-China bill that could limit Beijing's access to ...
When bilingualism is a dirty world. (California's English for the Children ballot proposition)
Dec 22, 1997; ... An unlikely coalition of Republicans, left-wing activists and Latino parents is amassing support for a 1998 ballot initiative that effectively would do away with bilingual education and replace it with English-immersion classes. The initiative radically would change education in ...
A top journalist for six decades, Toledano still knows the news.(Ralph de Toledano)(Picture Profile)(Interview)(Column)
Dec 22, 1997; ... We're starting to see the pendulum swing back from the vagaries of excess,' says Ralph de Toledano, a celebrated Republican journalist and octogenarian. He wasn't always a conservative: in fact, he says he was a liberal during the 1930s, and didn't swerve from that political philosophy ...
Q: Should scientists be allowed to 'study' the skeletons of ancient American Indians?(Symposium)(Panel Discussion)
Dec 22, 1997; ...Yes: Allow researchers to examine bones when there are no living descendants. The August 1996 unearthing of a remarkably well-preserved 9,300-year-old skeleton along the banks of the Columbia River in my congressional district sparked heated controversy between ...
Clinton profiteers sell high-tech to China.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Is the Clinton administration's dollar diplomacy to China compromising national security? Recently declassified documents and testimony of Commerce Department officials add to the mounting evidence that it is. Take the case of Richard Barth a former White House official who used his ...
Mainstream media spiked story of bombing embarrassing to FBI's account of Oklahoma City.(civil suits by victims of Murrah Federal Building Bombing; McVeigh trial inconsistencies)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Did you know that 475 members of the victim families of the Oklahoma City bombing have filed lawsuits this year against the federal government? The first lawsuit, joined by 170 family members and filed in federal court in April, charges that the federal government "knew or should have ...
'First Nations' seeks secure role.(Canada - reform of native American policies and governance)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... The lack of self-determination inherent in a century-old system of governance has resulted in a culture of marginalization, poverty and poor health for Canada's First Nations people.Names rich in American Indian heritage dot the map of Canada, drawing vivid historical ...